sacrificed their lives for her. She always saw them in that light. As heroes battling for their lives and hers. She could not conceive of her parents being alive. For her, that was unthinkable.
When she met the fisherman, Mikkelina's father, she enlisted him to help find the answer, and they called at a succession of offices without learning anything about her, except that she was an orphan; her parents' names were missing from her entry in the national register. She was described as an orphan. Her birth certificate could not be located. She and the fisherman called on the family where she lived with all the other children, and they talked to the woman who had been her foster mother as far back as she could remember, but she had no answers either. 'They paid for you,' she said. 'We needed the money.' She had never enquired into the girl's background.
She had long given up wondering about her parents by the time Grimur came home claiming to have discovered who they were and how she came into the world, and she saw the morbid pleasure on his face when he talked about the orgy in the gas tank.
All these thoughts passed through her mind as she looked at Simon, and for a moment she seemed to be on the brink of telling him something important before suddenly she told him to stop asking those endless questions.
War was raging in much of the world and it had reached all the way up to the other side of the hill where British occupying forces had begun erecting buildings shaped like loaves of bread, which they called barracks. Simon did not understand the word. Inside the barracks there was supposed to be something with another incomprehensible name. A depot.
Sometimes he ran over the hill with Tomas to watch the soldiers. They had transported timber up the hill, roofing beams, corrugated iron and fencing, rolls of barbed wire, bags of cement, a cement mixer and a bulldozer to clear the ground for the barracks. And they built the bunker overlooking Grafarvogur, and one day the brothers saw the British bringing a huge cannon up the hill. The cannon was installed in the bunker with its gigantic barrel sticking several metres out through a slit, ready to blow the enemy to pieces. They were defending Iceland from the Germans, who had started the war and killed everyone they got their hands on, even little boys like Simon and Tomas.
The soldiers erected the fencing around what turned out to be eight barracks in total, which went up in no time at all, and they put up a gate and signs in Icelandic saying that unauthorised access was strictly prohibited. A soldier with a rifle was always on guard in a sentry post at the gate. The soldiers ignored the boys, who made sure to keep a safe distance. When the weather was fine Simon and Tomas carried their sister over the hill, put her down on the moss and let her see what the soldiers were building and showed her the barrel projecting from the bunker. Mikkelina lay looking at everything around her, but was silent and contemplative, and Simon had the feeling that she was scared of what she saw. The soldiers and the big cannon.
All the troops wore khaki uniforms with belts, and heavy-duty black boots laced up to their calves, and some had helmets and carried rifles or guns in holsters. In warm weather they took off their jackets and shirts and lay bare-chested in the sunshine. Every so often there were military exercises on the hill, when the soldiers would lie concealed, run from their hiding places, throw themselves to the ground and fire their weapons. Noise and music came from the camp at night. Sometimes they had a machine that made scratchy music with tinny singing. At other times the soldiers sang into the night, songs from their own country which Simon knew was called Britain and Grimur said was an empire.
They told their mother all that was happening on the other side of the hill, but she showed little interest. Once, though, they took her with them to the top of the hill and she had a long look over the British camp, then back home she talked about all the bother and danger there and banned the boys from snooping around the soldiers, because they could never tell what might happen when men had guns and she did not want them to come to any harm.
Time passed and one day the camp filled up with Americans; almost all the British left. Grimur said they were all being sent away to be killed but the Americans would have an easy time in Iceland, without a care in the world.
Grimur gave up shovelling coal and started working for the Americans on the hill because there was plenty of money and work to be had at the camp. One day he had strolled over the hill and asked for work at the depot, and without further ado he was given a job in the quartermaster's stores and the mess. Afterwards, the diet at their home changed for the better. Grimur produced a red can with a key on the side. He opened the lid with the key and turned the can upside-down, and a lump of pink meat plopped onto the plate covered in clear jelly. It wobbled and tasted deliciously salty.
'Ham,' Grimur said. 'From America, no less.'
Simon had never tasted anything so good in his life.
At first he did not wonder how the new food found its way onto their table, but he did notice the anxious look on his mother's face once when Grimur brought home a boxful of cans and hid them in the house. Sometimes Grimur set off for Reykjavik with a sack full of those cans and other goods that Simon did not recognise. When he came back he counted out money onto the table, and Simon saw him happy in a way he had never witnessed before. Grimur ceased being so spiteful to their mother. Stopped talking about the Gasworks. Stroked Tomas on the head.
As time passed, the house was swamped with merchandise. American cigarettes, delicious canned food, fruit and even nylon stockings that their mother said all the women in Reykjavik yearned to have.
None of it stayed in their house for long. Once Grimur brought back a little packet with the most wonderful scent Simon had ever smelt. Grimur opened it and let them all have a taste, telling them that the Americans chewed it all the time, like cows with cud. You weren't allowed to swallow it, but after a while you should spit it out and take a fresh strip. Simon, Tomas – and even Mikkelina, who was given a pink, scented piece to chew – chomped away for all they were worth, then spat it out and took some more.
'It's called gum,' Grimur said.
Grimur soon learned to get by in English and befriended the troops. If they were off duty he occasionally invited them to his house, and then Mikkelina had to lock herself in the little store room, the boys combed their hair and their mother put on a dress and made herself presentable. The soldiers would arrive and act politely, greet the family with handshakes, introduce themselves and give the children sweets. Then they sat around drinking. They left in their jeep for Reykjavik and everything fell quiet again in the chalet which, otherwise, no one ever visited.
Normally, however, the soldiers went straight to Reykjavik and came back at night singing. The hill resounded with their shouts and calls, and once or twice there was a sound like guns being fired, but not the cannon because, as Grimur put it, that would mean 'the fucking Nazis are in Reykjavik and they'll kill us all in seconds'. He often went for a night on the town with the soldiers and when he came back he was singing American songs. Simon had never heard Grimur sing before that summer.
And once Simon witnessed something strange.
One day one of the American solders walked over the hill with a fishing rod, stopped on the shore of Lake Reynisvatn and cast for trout. Then he walked down the hill with his rod and whistled all the way over to Lake Hafravatn, where he spent most of the day. It was a beautiful summer's day and he strolled around the lake, casting whenever he felt the urge. Instead of fishing with much motivation, he just seemed to enjoy being on the lakeside in the good weather. Sat down, smoked and sunbathed.
Around three o'clock he seemed to have had enough, gathered up his rod and a bag containing the three trout he had caught that day and strolled as casually as ever from the lake and up the hill. But instead of walking past the house he stopped and said something incomprehensible to Simon, who had been keeping a close watch on his movements and was now standing at the front door.
'Are your parents in?' the smiling soldier asked Simon in English and looked inside the house. The door was always kept open in good weather. Tomas had helped Mikkelina over to the sunny spot behind the house, and was lying there with her. Their mother was indoors, doing the housework.
Simon did not understand the soldier.
'You don't understand me?' The soldier said. 'My name is Dave. I'm American.'
Gathering that his name was Dave, Simon nodded. Dave held out the bag in front of the boy, put it down on the ground, opened it, took out the three trout and laid them beside it.
'I want you to have this. You understand? Keep them. They should be great.'
Simon stared at Dave, uncomprehending. Dave smiled, his white teeth gleaming. He was short and thin, bony- faced, his thick, dark hair slicked over to one side.
