“Before the war the painters around here painted trees and poets wrote about perfumed forests and transparent leaves rustling in the wind,” she says expressionlessly.
Then she takes a deep breath.
“Now this same forest is a death trap. Full of land mines. Those who dare to go there don’t see any leaves growing on the trees. Instead of cutting firewood, people prefer to rip up their parquets to heat their houses.”
She takes a breath.
“Why should one want to venture into the woods?” I hear her say in a low voice. “Not to pick pinecones.”
My new bedroom has a small balcony and a stairwell that looks like a fire escape and leads down into the backyard of the hotel. She points out the window and says that the garden has been swept for mines, but nevertheless she recommends that I stick to the path if I’m going down to the beach.
“There used to be a golf course once, but it was dug up in the war to plant vegetables.”
We stand side by side at the window observing the arid vegetation.
“I remember the smell of grass before the war,” she continues, “and all kinds of berries: blackberries, raspberries, strawberries.”
She hesitates.
“Then it was replaced by the smell of burning rubber, melted metal, dust, and blood. Especially blood.”
She is silent but then continues.
“The first summer of the war was the most difficult, that the sun should be shining, birds chirping, and flowers sprouting out of the cold earth, and bombs exploding. One didn’t expect it.”
I say nothing.
“We’re hoping for rain,” she says finally. “It hasn’t rained for two months and the land is parched.”
We both slip into silence, she is still standing by the window.
Should I tell this young lady who dreams of hearing the pitter-patter of rain in a tin bucket that soon something green will grow here again, out of the dust, just wait and see? I could even quote the “Somnambulist Ballad” by the poet who was shot and buried in some unknown place, and say that here something green will grow, Green green I want you green, wouldn’t that upset her? And add that the poet believed that a better country awaits us, bright beyond the edge of the sea. It also occurs to me to tell her that my sheep-farmer uncle and his young farmhands have burnt the withered grass every spring and left the scorched earth, black stumps that prickled out of the ground and smouldered for weeks on end after the flames licked the moss and heather, but ultimately it was overgrown in grass again, so good and green.
“We don’t understand why we haven’t had any spring thaw this year,” I hear her say.
The cabdriver said the same.
“We are waiting for rain,” he’d said as he shifted gears with his steering hand and the car swerved over to the other side of the road. “And when it starts to rain,” he continued, “the river rises by about six metres and flows over the fields where the bodies lie, and skeletons in uniforms rise out of bottomless lakes. Then we will finally be able to bury the dead.”
She suddenly approaches me with an outstretched hand. It’s time for introductions.
“May.”
I hold out my hand in return.
“Jónas.”
Our relationship has become personal now.
That means I can no longer impose myself on her by killing myself on her watch.
ADAM
The mother and son’s room is number fourteen on the second floor. Like the other hotel rooms, there are few personal items there, apart from some toys. The boy is in his pyjamas, with water-combed hair, sitting at the table eating an apple that has been sliced into pieces. He feigns not to see me. On the floor there is a row of little plastic men he has arranged one behind the other, with equal gaps, not unlike my tools on the table.
The mother and son clearly share the same bed, a stuffed rabbit lies on a pillow adorned with pictures of puppies.
“We fled with virtually no belongings, running from one place to another,” she says when she sees me scanning the room. “Adam was born at the beginning of the war and has never had a home.”
She follows me into the bathroom with the wrench and stands beside me as I clean the pipes. I also have a roll of black insulation tape, which I use on the spots where the seals have started to leak.
“This is just a temporary solution,” I say.
As I’m cleaning the pipes, she tells me that she had just graduated as a librarian when the war broke out and she worked in the children’s department of a library.
“We tried to live a normal life in between our escapes. I took on whatever jobs came my way and in the meantime Fifi took care of Adam. Sometimes I was paid, sometimes not.”
Once the water acquires a natural colour and pressure, she brings me the bedside lamp and shows me the wiring. She says she changed the bulb, but the lamp doesn’t work so she was wondering if it might be something else.
I immediately see the plug needs to be changed.
She nods with a grave and apprehensive air.
“It can be complicated to get spare parts,” she explains, adjusting a lock of hair. “The stores are out of stock. You have to have connections,” she adds.
The words of the man in the leopard socks in the hall echo in my mind: you can buy anything if you have the right contacts.
Then she’s suddenly positioned herself in front of me with her hands planted on her hips and wants more detailed information on my real purpose here.
“It’s not at all convincing that you are here on vacation,” she says. “With a drill.”
She tugs the elastic out of her hair and then almost immediately slips it back on again.
I remain silent. I’m good at remaining silent.
“Mom said you didn’t talk,” Waterlily said. That isn’t quite true, however, since at the beginning of our relationship, I did. I spoke and
