“Perfluoro particles,” she says, and I nod.
It’s from her that I get all my knowledge of the impact climate change has on ocean acidification and hypoxia.
Then I remember that when she was small she had a burning interest in flowing water and turned on all the taps. She stood with her chin hanging over the rim of the sink or pulled up a chair, climbed on top of it, and watched the flow.
“Water runs,” she said when she was two years old.
She wears her granny’s watch with lots of bracelets over it. They meet every week, the two Gudrúns, granny and the granddaughter, and chat about their worries about warfare and the future of the world.
My daughter has some cocoa and a Danish pastry, and I have a coffee and a cake called “wedding bliss.”
“Did you know,” she says, “that last year the world spent 240 thousand billion krónur on weapons and arms?”
She sips from her cup and wipes the cream off her upper lip.
“We need to calculate the damage caused by the people who profit from war and make them pay for it,” I hear her continue. “That way they would understand that war is much more expensive than peace. In any case, the only language they understand is money,” she adds.
My daughter expresses herself with her entire body when she speaks, then she suddenly falls silent.
“Have you seen your granny?” I ask.
“Yes, and she agrees with me.”
“I’ve no doubt she does.”
We both laugh.
What kind of a father was I?
I was never bad to my daughter, never annoyed. I answered her questions and took her to soccer practice and watched her inside goals, with her skinny legs in green socks and her big goalie gloves, diving fearlessly on the ball.
Answer: I was an average father. Grade: 7.5.
I think about whether I should tell her that I’m going to embark on my longest journey.
“What, Dad?” she says. “You’re looking at me in such a weird way.”
“Nothing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
I wonder: Does she know? Has her Mom told her?
She looks at me searchingly.
“Are you sure everything is okay, Dad?”
“Yes, everything is fine.”
“Have you heard from Mom?”
“No, nothing.”
“But you’re on good terms?”
“Yes, everything is fine.”
She carefully scrutinises me.
“And you’re not sad?”
“No, not sad.”
I then wonder if she will forgive me. Or blame me, hate me even. Will she baptise her son in my name, will he be freckled like his mom, will he be a loner or an explorer?
“Dad, are you ill?”
“No, no, nothing like that.”
She finishes the Danish pastry, collects the crumbs and deposits them on the plate.
“And you’re not lonely?”
“No, no.”
There is something she has to get off her chest.
“It’s just that I had a dream the other night.”
She hesitates.
“I dreamt I was giving birth to a big baby boy.”
“I see.”
“And he had an extra big head.”
Should I tell her I haven’t a clue of how to interpret dreams? She takes a deep breath.
“The problem was that the baby boy was you.”
“How do you mean?”
“The baby in the dream. I was giving birth to my own father.”
I do my best.
“Could this mean some new plan?”
“Yes, I looked it up and a birth can symbolise a rebirth or a new beginning, but also the part of one’s self that is neglected. And the size of the head means that a neglected part of the self requires care and attention.”
I hesitate.
“Have you found out what that means?”
I hear from her breathless voice that she is worried.
“In some cases a birth can signify a death.”
“I see.”
“But it doesn’t necessarily have to be a physical death, but rather much more the end of one thing and the beginning of another.” She finishes the cup of cocoa and we both slip into a silence. Then she turns to me:
“What about you, Dad, don’t you dream?”
“No, I don’t actually.”
“Doesn’t the son of an organ player ever dream of organ music?”
I smile at her.
“No, not even organ music.”
Once she has finished putting on her parka, she remembers something.
“No, the problem is,” she says as she adjusts the elastic in her hair, “that a cupboard door came off its hinges in the kitchen and fell, breaking a tile on the floor. Any chance of you taking a look at it for me?”
Waterlily rents a small apartment with a female friend of hers, and when they moved in, I sandpapered their kitchen cabinets, varnished them, and changed the handles. I also installed a shower instead of the old bathtub and placed tiles around it.
“Sure, no problem,” I say.
I do what the three Gudrúns in my life ask me to do. I put up mirrors and shelves and carry furniture from place to place and put it down wherever they tell me. I have tiled seven bathrooms and installed five kitchen units, I can lay a parquet floor, and I’ve smashed double-glazed windows with a sledgehammer. I’m not a man who destroys things, however, but rather one who fixes things that are broken. If someone asks me why I do what I do, I answer that a woman asked me to.
I wrap my arms around my daughter and embrace her.
I intend to say something else to her but instead say:
“Did you know that humans are the only animals who cry?”
She smiles from ear to ear.
“No, I didn’t know that. I thought we were the only animals who laugh.”
When I get home I scan through the bookshelves looking for the book on the interpretation of dreams. Gudrún hasn’t taken it with her because I find it on the same shelf as the manual on repairing teak furniture.
I look up organ.
To dream that one hears beautiful organ music is a sign of sexual energy and virility, the book claims.
“Dad, don’t believe everything you think,” Waterlily had said as we parted.
A ticket to the moon, one way
The neighbourhood sinks into silence. But for the sound of a bird.
The question
