“He was tired and apologized when we got back into bed. ‘It’s so easy to lose one’s bearings, Ísa dear,’ he said. He still finds me attractive. I told him I was writing a shopping list for tomorrow. I didn’t tell him there were just two things on it: haddock fillets and a bottle of milk. Eternity is too big for me, Hekla. It’s like being alone in the desert. I’d get lost. It’s enough for me to camp for two nights in a birch grove in the Thrastaskógur woods where Lýdur is helping his parents build a summer house. I try to find shelter from the cold wind and inflate the blow-up mattress. I cook for the men on the primus and some thrush sings. He doesn’t know that I’m listening to him. Do you know what I dream of, Hekla? Roe and liver. It won’t be before January. I can’t synchronize myself with time. When autumn comes with the darkness, I miss the light and meadowsweet; in the spring I long for blood pudding, in the autumn to suck the inside out of a freshly laid fulmar’s egg.”
She cuts two slices of fruitcake, placing one on my plate and the other on hers.
“When I fell asleep again, I dreamt I was giving birth to a child and I couldn’t find a midwife. In the end I gave birth to the baby on my own. It was a big and beautiful girl, but I needed help to unwind the umbilical cord which was stuck to her nose.”
I don’t have a number
My trawling sailor is back on land.
I spot him when I come out of Hotel Borg, leaning against the wall of a building further down the road, opposite the post office, bareheaded in the pouring sleet. He’s holding his duffel bag and is in the same woollen sweater he was wearing when he said goodbye to me. As soon as he spots me, he rushes over.
“How was the trip?”
“I thought I wouldn’t survive it, Hekla. We were fishing in hellishly cold weather, the toughest men didn’t even wear caps and had icicles dangling from their hair.”
When we get home to Stýrimannastígur, he drops onto the sofa and buries his face in his hands in silence before looking up.
“On the way home, there was crazy weather and we sprung a leak and almost went under, the mast and the bridge were the only parts above water. We had to hammer the ice away to stop the old tub from sinking. The captain made us put on our life jackets and later we resorted to prayer. After the amen we continued to break the ice. I thought we’d sink.”
He stands up.
“I was going to stay behind when we anchored at Hull, but they sensed it, the bastards, and watched me and wouldn’t let me off the boat on my own.”
He paces the floor.
“The only good thing about the trip is that I went to an art museum with the second mate who was keeping an eye on me. When word got out, they let him be, but not me.”
He stretches out for his bag and opens it.
“Your wish was granted. I bought two books for you and a white pantsuit with wide flares and a waist belt, it’s the fashion.”
He brandishes one of the books in the air.
“This has just come out and is called The Bell Jar and it’s by an American woman writer. She committed suicide this spring,” he adds.
I look at the other book.
“Is this a novel?” I ask.
“No, this is a book by a French philosopher. A woman.”
“What’s it about?”
“The woman in the bookshop said it was about how women are the second sex. You’re number two, Hekla.”
He hesitates.
“I’m much further back in the line. I don’t have a number.”
“Do they live on their writing, these women novelists?” I ask.
“Some do. Of course they don’t write in a language that’s only understood by 175,000 people,” he adds.
He looks serious and I sense he’s anxious and elsewhere.
“We anchored in Hafnarfjördur and in the taxi on the way into town, I heard that my girlfriend had been spotted holding a boy’s hand.”
He looks at me.
“Who is he?”
“His name is Starkadur and he’s a graduate from the Reykjavík High school. He knows Latin and he’s a poet.”
“Is he your boyfriend then?”
I hesitate.
“He’s asked me to move in with him. He lives in a room with a shared kitchen in Skólavördustígur.”
“And are you going to do that? Move in with him?”
“Yes.”
He is silent for a moment and then continues.
“I envy you. I’d like to have a boyfriend like you.”
In the evening I hear meowing outside and go down to let the cat in. It’s sitting in front of the hall door and shoots past me as soon as I open it.
“This is Odin,” I say. “He lives with us.”
The sailor bends over and picks up the cat, stroking it several times.
The cat rolls its eyes and purrs.
“Odin is a female,” he says.
“I know.”
He looks at me.
“You have the same colour eyes.”
He scratches the animal behind its ears and gives her an extra few strokes.
“Odin is expecting kittens,” he adds.
Motherland
I move out of the attic room on Stýrimannastígur into the attic room on Skólavördustígur. In the basement there is an upholstery store, beside which are a dairy shop and a picture framer, diagonally across from
