May is holding a cake and presents it with a smile.
“Happy birthday, Mister Jónas,” says the boy.
“He’s been practicing,” she says.
I have drawn the blinds on the windows but the sun squeezes through the gaps and forms an elongated box on the floor, a white patch of light that falls on the tiles.
The boy hands me a drawing that depicts three trees with large crowns and orange peaks surmounted by a green sky.
“A forest,” the mother interprets.
They stand in the middle of the light, the mother and son, directly above the maze.
Clouds crash-landing salty tears
I wake up with a headache and pain all over my body. The bedsheet is pasted to me and I feel strangely clammy, my skin tingles with goose bumps, as if it had suddenly been covered with highly sensitive receptors to the world.
I wander into the bathroom and look into the mirror. My face is swollen and bloated and starting to darken around the eyes.
I turn on the shower and stand under the warm jet until the hot water runs out. The water is blood-tinted at first. I grope my body, joints, shoulders, wrists, knees, collarbone. I have a nasty scratch on my side, lacerations and cuts on my palms. When I’ve finished washing, I pluck the stones out of my hands, tiny pebbles the size of peas, I put on my pink shirt in honour of the day, and step out onto the balcony. The heavens have sunk and opened. I stretch out my hands and turn the palms up to the sky—there is a white band around the finger on my left hand where I used to wear my wedding ring—then I slowly raise my hands to the heavens and allow the rain to pour onto my wounds and the pink shirt, which clings to my water lily.
I have a body.
I am my body.
Suddenly a transparent butterfly flutters towards me, perches on my arm and folds its silver wings, it’s huge. The rain pitter-patters on the balcony. And I think to myself, the women’s house is rain-proof now. I changed the last window the day before yesterday.
Words have consequences
Fifi is standing outside the bedroom door with a box of books in his arms, wearing a cap backwards.
“I thought you might like to have the rest,” he says, “instead of having to go down to the basement every time you want a new book.”
He puts the box down in the middle of the floor.
“You can calmly and slowly go through them while you’re recovering,” he adds.
I tell him I’m almost better.
He looks at me with great scepticism.
“Not that I can see.”
He reaches into the box and pulls out a book.
“There’s a phrase book to learn the language, which you might be interested in. I recommend it. Obviously no one speaks Icelandic here and not everyone speaks English either.” I open the book and see that it’s designed to help tourists get by in various circumstances, such as ordering in a restaurant, buying a train ticket or stamps at the post office, asking for the route out of the woods. The pronunciation of the words is written in brackets at the end of each sentence. I browse through the pages. There is a special chapter called “Troubleshooting,” which, among other things, includes the following phrase:
I’m lost. How can I get back to my hotel?
And similarly:
Please wait a moment while I search for a phrase in this book.
I skim ahead and see that on the last page it says:
It was all a misunderstanding, I’m very sorry.
Further on there is a chapter called “Things That Sometimes Get Lost,” which includes an exhaustive list:
Raincoat
Gloves
Scarf
Umbrella
Glasses
Wedding ring
Passport
Pen
Screwdriver
It doesn’t say anything about one’s self, I say to myself.
I reckon I can learn five new phrases per day.
In a week’s time, I’d have thirty-five phrases. How many words does one need to survive?
It’s as if I could hear Mom: “Words can be misunderstood in so many ways. Look at your father, for example.”
Fifi says he has been gathering information, but no one knows exactly who attacked me.
“Some people thought you were working for a man—called Williams,” he says. The information is confusing and contradictory. There has also been mention of the women I’ve been working for. For free. Some people are dissatisfied about that, as had been pointed out to me the other day.
“They feel it’s not fair,” he repeats.
Finally, he heard that I provoked the assailant by looking him in the eye—right into his pupils—when I met him.
“We don’t do that here,” he says.
“We do that where I come from,” I say.
We look into the eyes of the people we meet on the street. Otherwise we don’t know whether we’re supposed to greet them or not.
Before Fifi leaves, he digs into the breast pocket of his chequered shirt and pulls out a pair of sunglasses.
“These are from the storage room,” he says, handing them to me. I try them on.
The price tag is still on.
“Pilot,” he says. “To shield your swollen eyes.” He hesitates.
“I can’t read books anymore,” I hear him say. “When I was a boy I read a lot, but then I stopped with the war.”
He hesitates again.
“It takes only one sentence to blow up a village. Two sentences to destroy the world.”
He doesn’t say I’ve seen it all, my father with a bullet hole in his head and my sister’s son being born in a musty basement.
He adjusts his cap.
And another thing, yes. He found four boxes of spare tiles in the ancient baths and was wondering if I could use them in the house I’m fixing up for the women.
“That house is also for you,” I say. “And for Adam.”
“Yes, that you’re fixing for the women, me, and Adam.”
I still exist
I’m still here
I open the diary and rapidly skim through densely written pages until I reach blank sheets at the back. I leave a gap of one page after the last entry, which
