“Since the eruption isn’t visible from Skólavörduholt, the way it was with the 1918 Katla eruption,” he adds.
“Yes, yes, Daddy dear…”
Apart from that, he tells me he needs to see an optician. His old glasses are held together with sellotape, but only just about. Now he’s wondering whether he should go to the optician before or after his drive east to Kambabrún.
“Wouldn’t you be more likely to see the volcanic plume if you have new glasses?” I ask.
There’s another brief silence on the phone. The head waiter looms over me.
“I have to go now, Dad.”
“I’ll say happy birthday to you then, Hekla dear.”
That comes last.
“Like I said: you were born four years too soon.”
Ball of ash
It transpires that the poet has phoned his mother in the east, in Hveragerdi, to ask her if she can see the eruption through her kitchen window.
“She said she was washing-up after lunch when she heard a mighty rumble and saw the sky light up with flashes of lightning. She described a massive plume of steam to me that shot out of the ocean: a tall white pillar of smoke with a spherical crest at the top, and said that the cloud reminded her of a picture she’d seen of a nuclear explosion.”
This gives the poet an opportunity to raise the subject of the Cuban crisis and world peace hanging by a thin thread.
“Mankind’s lifeline is in the hands of three lunatics and total annihilation looms,” he says, banging his pipe over the ashtray.
A copy of Thjódviljinn lies on the table with Khrushchev on the cover. He hesitates.
“While I was at it, I told Mum I’ve met a girl.”
He looks at me.
“Would my girlfriend like to take a coach trip east over the mountain to Hveragerdi village?”
To see an eruption and meet Mum.
End rhyme
I get off work an hour early to collect Dad at the coach terminal and he suggests seeing my workplace, saying hi to my colleagues and having a drop of coffee before the taxi driver, his brother-in-law, collects him in his Chevrolet. Sirrí serves us and he removes his cloth cap to run a comb through his hair before greeting her with a handshake. She smiles at him.
He orders cream cake with coffee for both of us and slips two sugar cubes into the coffee.
“They say the eruption is at a depth of 130 metres and that the plume of ash is 6 kilometres high,” he says, stirring his coffee.
Next he wants a description of the boy I’m seeing.
“Is he a poet?”
“Yes.”
“Does he write blank verse?”
I give this some thought.
“He uses alliteration, but no end rhymes,” I say. “He also works at the library in Thingholtsstræti,” I add. I don’t mention that he’s thinking of quitting his job at the library and turning into a night porter.
My father then wants to know if I’m writing.
“Is my Hekla writing?”
“I don’t write as much as I would like to.”
“You used strange words as a child. You read books backwards.
“You knew all those old Icelandic words for the weather.
“You said: williwaw.
“Drizzle.
“Mizzle.
“Twirlblasts.
“Thunder-head.
“Your brother wanted to wrestle and become a farmer.”
He pats my cheek.
“You get that from me. The urge to scribble.”
He sips his coffee.
“Weather descriptions you mean?” I ask.
“No, not exactly. What I mean, Hekla dear, is that for twenty-five years I’ve kept a record of people’s premonitions of eruptions all over the country, including their dreams and the strange behaviour of animals.”
He finishes his slice of cake and scrapes the cream off the plate.
“That’s an area that geologists haven’t really explored much. I’m thinking of calling it Volcanic Memoirs and publishing it myself.”
He asks me to call over the girl for more coffee. I notice that the man from the Beauty Society is having his afternoon coffee at the window table and is keeping an eye on us.
“I don’t think it’s the destructive power that attracts me, Hekla dear, but the creative force.”
I tell Dad I’ve been invited to participate in Miss Iceland but that I’ve turned down the offer.
“Many times,” I add, “but they won’t take no for an answer.”
He finishes his cup of coffee and scoops the sugar out from the bottom with a spoon.
“You hold your headdress up high, Hekla dear, but don’t let them ogle you and measure you like some piece of cattle. Those Laxdæla women, Gudrún Ósvífursdóttir and Auður the Deep-Minded, didn’t allow themselves to be pushed around by men.”
He opens the bag he has brought with him, pulls out a parcel and places it on the table.
“Your birthday present, Hekla dear. From your brother and me. Örn wrapped it.”
It’s Paintings and Memories by Ásgrímur Jónsson. I open the first page.
“It’s the memoirs of that painter who painted the biggest picture of Hekla. Your grandfather was working on the roads east in Hreppur when Ásgrímur stood by the cranes and painted the mother mountain herself and most of the Árnessýsla district through the opening of a tent. He had raised a tent made of large brown sailcloth that smelt of mould—it had probably been packed wet. Your granddad greeted him in the tent and said that the patch of turf that the painter stood on had turned into a mire in the rain, a slimy pit of mud. Nevertheless, he had sensed the presence of something bigger. ‘I think it was the beauty, Gottskálk,’ he said to me.”
He stretches out over the table for the book and wants to read the opening lines about the Krakatindur Hekla eruption in 1878:
“I’m standing out in the yard, a two-year-old toddler, all alone. But suddenly I look north-east and there, out of the blue, I see sparks of fire shooting into the air, giant red poles slashing the dark sky…”
He closes the book, looks at me, and wants to know how long I intend to hang around in the capital and if I’m considering rushing abroad after my friend.
“I think
