A short while later she had to go to the bathroom and when she came back, she said:
“The tap is leaking.”
The next day there was a note on the kitchen table that read:
“A bulb blew in the hallway.”
In this way we met halfway; I passed on suffering to her, she assigned me chores.
I could proclaim the world till dusk There is something everywhere
When I’ve washed the plate, dried it, and put it back into the cupboard, I wipe the drainboard and hang the dish cloth.
I open all the windows.
I close all the windows.
Once I’ve finished making the double bed, I lie on the sofa for two hours and try to think of nothing. Is there anything, I ask myself, that can still surprise me in life? The evil of man? No, my knowledge of human cruelty is complete. Human kindness? No, I have met enough good men to believe in man. The immeasurable beauty of mountaintops, multiple layers of landscape, mountains behind mountains, multiple blues on blue? Endless black sand beaches and glistening glaciers in the east, the outline of a thousand-year dream that moves slowly, as if it were under a sheet of plexiglass? I know all that. Is there something I still long to experience? Nothing I can think of. I have held a newborn slimy red baby, chopped down a Christmas tree in the woods in December, taught a child to ride a bike, changed a tire up on a mountain road alone at night in a snowstorm, braided my daughter’s hair, driven through a polluted valley full of factories abroad, rattled in the rear carriage of a small train, boiled potatoes on a Primus in a coal-black sand desert, wrestled with the truth under long and short shadows, and I know that a man both cries and laughs, that he suffers and loves, that he possesses a thumb and writes poems, and I know that a man knows that he is mortal.
What’s left? To hear the chirp of a nightingale? To eat a white dove?
As the taxi waits outside, I turn back at the doorstep and fetch a few tools. There is no telling what circumstances I might land in, I might need to put up a hook. I also take an extension cord and transformer, which is when I realise I may as well take the small toolbox, the one with the rechargeable drill. Before shutting the door, I grab the photograph of Waterlily from the bedside table. She is five years old with a thin pigtail and swollen gums, having just lost her front teeth. The photograph was taken at a camping site by a lagoon on the tail of a glacier, and she is stretching five fingers up to the sky, with a turquoise iceberg in the background. As I pass the trash cans, it occurs to me that someone could dig my diaries out of the garbage and read my confessions, Apologia pro Vita Sua. The journals are clearly marked Jónas Ebeneser Snæland. Why do I identify myself with Mom’s surname? I roll the notebooks together and stick them into my jacket pocket.
They’ll go into the first trash can I find abroad.
I’m off then.
To a meeting with myself.
And my last day.
I say goodbye to everything.
The crocus have opened.
I leave nothing behind.
I move from the all-enveloping light into the darkness.
What is now
ends now
I doze off on the plane and dream of a sheep licking my ear and wake up just before landing.
The plane dives through the clouds.
I glide.
I glide.
I glide to the earth close to the salty sea.
I manage to make out a flat terrain, fields, endless forests, and dead-still lakes like mirrors in the landscape. The shadow of the steel wing stretches over a field to the edge of a forest. The runway embraces me at full speed; I’ve landed. Trees with foliage appear close to the windows. I peer out at the horizon, at the seam between the woods and the sky. This is where I’ll go and no farther.
I give myself a week to finish the job.
I am a forest and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses
A man in a waist jacket stands by the exit holding up a sheet of paper with two names: “Mister Jónas” has been written with a red marker on the top of the page and below it is a female name. We are the only two passengers the hotel has come to collect and we share the back seat of the taxi. The woman sits behind the driver, wearing sunglasses despite the cloudy sky. It’s a dusty old cab with ripped upholstery, I feel the springs pressing against my back, the seat belt is torn.
“Married” is the first word to come out of the cabbie’s mouth as he nods at us, first looking at me for confirmation, and then at the woman, which is when I realise that it’s a question. The woman shakes her head and says something to the driver in their language. She is in a blue jacket and skirt with a foulard around her neck and she leans forward slightly, holding onto the front seat as if she were posing for a picture in a photo studio. I’ve never travelled far enough from home not to be able to understand a single word that is being spoken, never far enough not to be able to understand the waiter who is handing me a beer, or he me.
Hotel Silence stands by the shore, an hour’s drive from the airport, but the driver explains that the roads are still a mess and that we have to take a detour through the city, which will prolong our journey by half an hour. Parts of the route haven’t been mapped, he says. There are some hills in the distance, but otherwise the
