“So there it is,” says the young man. “We’ve been looking for this. It disappeared from the municipal museum. We thought it had been sold abroad.”
He carefully wraps the vase back up in plastic and holds it in his arms like a newborn child.
Then he nods at the goods I’ve collected.
“It’s difficult to price that,” he says. He hesitates.
“I’ll put it on your bill.”
He immediately corrects himself.
“I’ll deduct it from your wages.”
A darkness was upon the face of the deep
I place the drawing pad and coloured pencils on the desk of the bedroom we are working on, but Adam shows no interest in them. He doesn’t want to draw and prefers to handle the tools. He shoots past me and positions himself in front of the toolbox. He wants to be allowed to hold the screwdriver. He is waiting for us men to start our daily work.
“Mister Jónas.”
He’s learned my name.
His mother beckons him back to the desk, puts a cushion under him on the chair, places a sheet from the drawing pad in front of him, and asks him something. I’m guessing she’s asking what colour he wants to use because she opens the box of pencils and hands him a blue one. He immediately throws it on the floor. She hands him another colour and he throws that one on the floor as well, and pushes away the box of pencils.
He’s angry.
He’s not going to draw a sun and bright sky today. Or a rainbow.
His mom lets him sulk, but a short while later has to pop out and calls the boy.
He shakes his head.
She explains something to him, I sense she’s trying to persuade him, but he doesn’t move.
“He wants to stay with you,” she says.
“That’s okay,” I answer. “I could be his granddad,” I add, but immediately realise that requires further explanation.
“My daughter is the same age as you,” I say.
“He can’t talk to you,” she says hesitantly.
“Then we’ll both be quiet.”
“You’re so closed in,” Gudrún would have said.
“I won’t be long, an hour at the most.”
“No problem,” I repeat.
The second his mom closes the door behind her, the boy leaps off the chair to fetch the screwdriver.
“Later,” I say.
I sit at the desk and make him understand I’m about to make a drawing.
He observes me from a distance and I see that he’s not satisfied.
What am I going to draw?
I reach for the purple pencil and draw a box. Then I change colours and draw a red triangle on top of the box. It’s a house with a roof. Then he suddenly darts over to the table, snatches the sheet of paper, tears it in two and tramples on it. He hands me a black pencil. I’m not allowed to use colours.
“All right,” I say, “we’ll just use black today.”
I take a new sheet and draw another house. Then I draw a chair inside it. The boy looks at me questioningly. I add another chair, then more furniture.
He slowly edges closer and finally stands silently right behind me, looking over my shoulder.
When the house is finished, I draw people inside; a man and a woman and two children, a girl and a boy. He has suddenly crawled under the bed. I see his laced sneakers under the mattress but leave him in peace.
I liked to be left in peace when I was his age. When he reemerges from under the bed I fetch a glass of water and hand it to him. He drinks the water and then heads straight for the desk, eases himself onto the chair, grabs the black pencil and draws a streak across the sheet. Then another streak and a third streak until the page is full of black strokes and a black cluster has formed in the middle. I watch him. Once he has filled the sheet with darkness, he rips the drawing to shreds and throws it on the floor. I place another sheet in front of him. He looks at the box of colours and hesitates a moment before he reaches for the red and attacks the sheet. He doesn’t look up until he’s finished the work. This drawing is like the previous one, except it’s red. The world is a blazing fire.
I nod.
He pushes the box of colours away, his day’s work is done, and he positions himself by the toolbox. He wants to turn to real work. Show me what he’s made of.
LIMBO
In the evening I go back to Restaurant Limbo. Normally it’s the same dish two days in a row, but now the owner has added a new one and offers me a choice.
“We’ve expanded the menu,” he says, and asks if I’d like soup with dumplings or stew like yesterday. I go for the soup.
I’ve noticed that he, like other people in the town, frequently talks in the first person plural. But I have yet to spot another staff member or customer in this place.
The soup with little dumplings floating in it arrives after a brief wait.
The owner behaves as he did last time, standing by the table as I eat with a dish towel draped over his shoulder. Then
