Medea
I hand Ísey a white waxed box containing four canapés. It took some effort to wrestle it all the way over to Nordurmýri in the stormy weather. I notice she has moved the cot out of the bedroom into the living room.
“That way I can keep an eye on Thorgerdur during the day,” she says. “She sleeps in my bed at night.”
She lays her daughter down in the cot, lifts up the lid of the box and smiles from ear to ear. I see that the canapés have shifted in transit and that streaks of mayonnaise have been smudged and squashed with the prawns. She puts them in the fridge and then sits facing me at the kitchen table. The door to the living room is open and she keeps an eye on the child.
“Remember I told you I had started to write a journal?
Which isn’t exactly a journal, though.”
“Yes, I remember that.”
“I walked all the way into town with the pram yesterday and bought another journal. Battling the storm. The man in Gudgeir’s stationery store remembered me well. He advised me to buy copybooks instead or squared exercise books since I was so quick to fill them up and it would be cheaper. They’re the only treat I allow myself.” She is quiet for a moment as she prepares coffee.
“I’ve started to write conversations,” she finally says.
“What kind of conversations? Things people say?”
“Both what people say and what they don’t say. I can’t explain it to Lýdur: that when he says something, I want to write it down. And even less that I write down the things he doesn’t say. Nor would he understand that I sometimes want to stop what I’m doing and write about it instead.”
My friend’s head droops.
“The other day we were invited to my parents-in-law in Efstasund and my sisters-in-law were there as well. They get the Yankee TV channel from the military base, which is really difficult to get. One line Dröfn came out with about her husband made me excuse myself and escape into another room to write down a few sentences.”
She shakes her head.
“Imagine, Hekla, I’ve started to walk around with a notepad in my handbag.”
She pours coffee into my cup and then adjusts the clip in her hair.
“When we got home and Lýdur had fallen asleep, I continued writing conversations. Before I knew it, I’d written eighteen pages about a woman who discovers her husband is having an affair and takes revenge by murdering their child. Lýdur wouldn’t understand that.”
She lifts the child out of the cot and places her on her hip.
“Tell me what’s happening out there, Hekla, tell me who comes to Hotel Borg, tell me about life beyond Kjartansgata.”
Should I tell her about all the men who won’t stop pestering me, who leer at me and seize every opportunity to touch me without my permission? Who ask me out. Powerful men. I always politely decline. They don’t take it well. They’re used to having their own way and getting the girls who spurn them fired. Instead I tell my friend who writes conversations at night that I’ve now got a municipal library card from Thingholtsstræti and can take out books for her.
Ísey wants us to move into the living room. She hands me the child, gets the cups and places them on the coffee table.
I notice that yet another Kjarval painting has been added to the collection because there are now three. To fit them in she’s had to move the sideboard and hang one painting above the other so that the brown frame of one of them almost touches the ceiling. Ísey says that they now have landscapes from three different parts of the country in their tiny living room.
She drops into the sofa and assumes a grave air. It transpires she’s dreamt a dream.
“I dreamt,” she says, “that we had moved into a new house and all of the furniture was made out of palisander wood and there was a long staircase up to the top floor, lots of steps, and I held Thorgerdur in my arms. There were four children’s bedrooms in the house. Now I’m scared that means I’ll have four children.”
Odin
(or when I acquired the God of poetry and wisdom)
Dusk is starting to fall and at the bottom of Ódinsgata I hear a piteous cry coming from the top of a tree that stands beside a green corrugated-iron house. It’s the only tree on the street. I look up and make out a scrawny creature hanging on a branch and feebly meowing. I find my footing in a cleft at the bottom of the trunk, climb up the tree, manage to grab the terrified animal and lower it down to the pavement. The cat isn’t fully grown, black but for a white spot over a missing eye and untagged. I stroke it a few times, but then have to hurry home because I want to finish a chapter. When I get down to Austurstræti, the animal is still behind me and follows me all the way up to Stýrimannastígur. I open the hall door and the cat immediately shoots past me and up the steep wooden stairs, where it waits on the narrow landing and meows. I let it in.
I pour milk into a bowl.
I’ve acquired a cat.
I stroke it several times.
A cat owns me.
The following morning a raven perches on a lamp post outside the skylight and croaks. The kids throw stones at it and when it launches into flight, I notice that one of its wings is damaged.
The joy of being alive and knowing
that I’m going home to write
I clock out at five.
I walk past Snæbjörn and Bragi Brynjólfsson’s bookstore windows in Hafnarstræti every day and often go in to browse through their shelves. I’ve already decided which books I’m going to buy when I get
