“Don’t you want to ask me what my favourite word is, Hekla? Whether it’s dewy? You don’t ask me about anything… One never knows what you’re thinking, I can tell by the way you look that you’re always writing, even when you’re not writing. I know that distant look in your eyes, you’re here but at the same time somewhere else…”
“That’s not true, Starkadur.”
“You betray nothing on the surface. When a man lives with a volcano, he knows there’s glowing magma underneath… You know, Hekla, you hurl boulders in all directions… which destroy everything on their path… you’re a prickly bramble. I’m no match for you…”
I take the bottle away from him.
He lies on the bed.
“Writing is more important than me, a single sentence is more important than my body,” I hear him mutter unintelligibly.
I’m unable to control myself and sit at the table to write: A single sentence is more important than my body.
He reaches for the bottle.
“How do you do it?”
“How do I do what?”
“Get ideas.”
He doesn’t wait for an answer but continues:
“Has anyone ever told you you’re beautiful?”
“Yes. A few people. You said it yourself a few days ago.”
“Did you know that seagulls fall silent when they see you?”
“Would you like me to boil an egg for you?”
The poet had come home with three eggs in a paper bag earlier in the day.
He follows me into the kitchen and, stretching his arms out on the table, he props up his head with his hands.
“I… have been… sneaking… to look at you… while you’re sleeping… to try and fathom you,” I hear him mumble. “Then I feel… we’re equals… When you’re sleeping. Then you’re… not writing… and then you’re not… a better writer… than me… And…”
Listen, Hekla
When I get home, the poet is awake.
He is sitting on the bed, holding the cat, but springs to his feet to welcome me. I immediately see that he hasn’t only tidied up the bedroom, emptied the ashtray and made the bed, but also washed the floor. I also notice that he’s shaved and put on a tie.
There’s a bouquet of yellow roses on the table, which he grabs and hands to me.
“Forgive me,” he says. “I’ve neglected my girlfriend.”
He embraces me.
“I was so scared you weren’t coming back, Hekla. That you’d left me.”
“I popped into a shop on the way home,” I say, brandishing some bread and a bottle of milk.
The cat leaps onto the floor and gives itself a shake.
We don’t have a vase so I hunt around for something to put the flowers in. The schnapps bottle which the poet came home with last night is empty, but there are seven roses and only three of them would squeeze through the neck of the bottle. And there’s little chance of any of the hermits in the attic owning a vase, so the only option is to knock on the door of the woman who rents the rooms out on the floor below. I’m holding the bunch of roses in my arms.
She eyes me with suspicion; a woman doesn’t ask another woman for the loan of a crystal vase.
“For how long?” she asks.
I could have asked in return: What’s the lifespan of a rose?
“Five days,” I say.
I’m expecting her to ask me about the odds of the poet breaking the vase.
When I come back up, the poet has slipped “Love Me Tender” onto the turntable. He shifts to one side on the edge of the bed, I sit beside him and he grabs my hand.
“They were asking about you.”
“Who?”
“The poets. Whether you’re going to pop by. I told them you were also writing. It took them by surprise. Stefnir wants to meet you.”
He looks at me.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
He says that he has a headache and that every sound is magnified in his head and turns into noise, even the cat’s purrs.
A collection of Steingrímur Thorsteinsson’s poems lies open on the bed.
He’s already chosen the piece he’s going to read to me and says: “Listen, Hekla.
“Of all things blue, my sweetheart dear,
The best is in thy glance sincere;
No sky such glorious blue has got;
So blue is not forget-me-not.”
Birth of an island
… and sometimes islands rise out of the sea,
Where chasms previously dwelt
(JÓNAS HALLGRÍMSSON, FJÖLNIR, 1835)
I’m wanted on the phone at work.
“It’s your father,” I’m told.
I stand with the apron around my neck and the receiver in my hand.
“An eruption has started, Hekla dear,” he says. “Out in the ocean where there is no land. South-west of the Westman Islands.”
He says that his sister Lolla phoned from the islands to let him know there was a lot of white vapour in the air.
“Before it was on the news. The eruption has taken everyone by surprise, she said. The day before her husband had cast his net in the same area, and now there’s an eruption going on under the sea and he hadn’t noticed anything abnormal, although he hadn’t spotted any whales. The birds had been diving into the water as usual, hunting for food. Her friend in the east village of Vík in Mýrdal had called her the night before to say she got a whiff of sulphur when she was putting on the potatoes. They’d connected the smell with the imminent eruption under a glacier.
“Lolla says that planes carrying geologists from Reykjavík and American military aircraft from the Vellir base are flying over the area, but that sea vessels have been warned not to get too close. That means that my brother-in-law Ólafur and I can’t sail up to the eruption on Fannlaug VE, as I’d intended.”
There’s a brief silence on the line and I can see that the head waiter has his eye on me. Service is required in the dining room.
As expected, my father is too restless to stay put in the west and is on his way south. He says he’s already made arrangements for a taxi driver, my
