I can then start working on the windows.
We write to each other for a whole week.
Floor materials have arrived.
The last message reads: Area has been swept for mines (garden safe).
NOLI ME TANGERE (TOUCH ME NOT)
Adam is with Fifi in the baths, helping him to sort through the body parts and search for three missing breasts, and I’m moving a wardrobe with May when she asks me:
“Are you married?”
“No, divorced.”
“Do you have any other children apart from the daughter you mentioned the other day?”
“No.”
“How old is she?”
“Twenty-six.”
Before I know it, I’ve told her that Waterlily isn’t mine.
“My daughter isn’t exactly mine,” I say.
By way of explanation, I add:
“I’m not her blood father.”
I think about those words: blood father.
“Have you been alone for long?”
“Six months.”
If she’d asked have I been lonely for long, I would have answered eight years and five months.
That is precisely what she asks about next, loneliness.
“Aren’t you lonely?”
“Sometimes.”
She edges closer to me, is almost standing right against me.
“Don’t you long to feel the warmth of another body?”
I’m silent and then say:
“It’s been such a long time.”
“How long?”
“Pretty long.”
“More than two years?”
Should I trust her with this?
I take a deep breath before saying it:
“Eight years and five months.” I could have added eleven days.
She slides against me and I feel her closeness grow like a full moon.
Should I tell her how things are, that I don’t know how to do it anymore?
That I’m scared?
I hesitate.
“You’re my daughter’s age.”
“I’m older than her,” she says. “I’m older than you. I’m two hundred years old and I’ve seen it all. Besides, I thought she wasn’t yours, your daughter.”
“No, but she’s still my daughter.” I could have added, “She’s the only Gudrún Waterlily Jónasdóttir in the whole world.”
“But I’m not her.”
My heart pounds.
“No, you’re not her.”
I try to think fast.
“What about younger men, of your age?”
“They don’t exist. I wake up and look at the man lying on the pillow beside me and think he’s killed somebody. Still, that wasn’t why I asked,” she adds softly.
What can I say?
That I’m not the man for her. That she’ll know him when he comes because he will have forged a ploughshare from a sword. And then I would start working on the tiling as if nothing had happened.
“I need more time,” I say.
“How much time?”
It’s not that the question isn’t an important one, just that I don’t know the answer.
A man is half man, half animal
There is a stew with some kind of meat and noodles at Restaurant Limbo. I detect a taste of paprika and cumin and pull the bay leaf out of the mash and place it on the rim of the bowl. The owner immediately drags over a chair to chat and says that he’s heard I’ve been helping women in the town with various odd jobs. He lists off sinks, TVs, antennas, washing machines.
“It’s the talk of the town,” he says. “We’ve also heard that you’ve thrown yourself into fixing up a house.”
He is quiet for a moment and assumes a grave air:
“These things get around.”
“Yes, they asked me for help,” I say.
I could have added, a woman asks me to do something and I do it.
I’m used to that from home.
“It can cause problems.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, it doesn’t look good. That you only help women. It doesn’t go down too well. Some people are offended by it.”
He has the expression of a man who is about to burst into tears.
He pauses in his speech, to give himself time to recover.
“Yes, there are also men in this world who need help. There has to be an equal share,” he says. And then adds, “Even though some people don’t realise it.”
He stands up to take the bowl and says that he had actually intended to offer me some almond cake. He stresses the words “had actually intended to” as if he’d given up on the idea. Because there is no longer any reason for it.
“While I’ve been cooking for you, almost every day, you still refuse to make those swinging doors.”
I’d forgotten them.
“I’ve discussed them with you several times.”
He stands with the bowl in his hands and doesn’t seem to be on his way to the kitchen anymore.
“I got you shirts and you say you can’t manage one set of swinging doors.”
I reflect on this.
“Didn’t we need some materials?”
“I’ve got them.”
“Including the hinges?”
“Yes, including the hinges.”
“And tools?”
“I’m working on them.”
I tell him I also want to be remunerated:
“I want to be paid.”
He throws up his arms.
“You’ll be paid in meals. Free meals. Once a day.”
I think about how much he needs me and what demands I can make. Barter is the only currency around here. I tell him I’ll make the swinging doors if I get to keep the tools:
“I want to be paid in tools,” I say.
And I turn over the menu and make sketches.
“I need both a normal saw and a jigsaw,” I say.
Screws
Chisels in two widths
Sandpaper
Spackle
Brushes and scrapers
He has sat down at the table in front of me and is making out his list too. There are a few things that need to be checked out at Restaurant Limbo.
“And,” I add, “I want to be able to choose the menu. Not just birds and stew. No more pigeons.”
Afterwards he wants to seal the deal with a shot.
The sun is red and sinking when I return to the hotel.
That night I dream there’s a rat on the loose in the bedroom.
The floor is covered in scraps of wood and I recognise fragments of furniture from my and Gudrún’s home, including the adjustable stool I made.
Virility is to kill an adult animal
I was longer than I had planned working on the windows on the top floor of the women’s house and soon the curfew begins. It’s getting dark and before long the moon will be the only source of light. I check to see if I can spot the moon and whether it’s in its place.
All of a sudden I get the
