“You wouldn’t have to worry so much if you’d just done it steadily over the school year. If you’d just—”
He rolled his eyes, threw up his hands in exasperated defeat.
“Yes, yes, I know, Garún! I know how this-and-that would be if I had done this-and-that. But this is how things are right now. I can’t do anything about that.”
He went and started to get dressed. It looked as if he had decided to leave.
“All right. You’ll do what you want. As usual.” She went to the balcony and lit herself a cigarette. “I knew you didn’t care. Like you don’t care about anything. You have no problem with how people treat me. It’s no skin off your back. You don’t even care how the Crown treats people like me – they fund your university, after all.”
“Don’t say things you can’t take back. I do care! I can’t stand how these fucking snobs treat you, or me for that matter! They are thick-skulled, mindless drones. But I still have to go. Besides, it’s not like your friends treat me any better.”
A cold feeling sank in Garún’s stomach.
“Is that so? What about them? How are they mistreating you?’
Sæmundur struggled with buttoning his shirt as he responded.
“Well, it’s just … they think they’re so much better than anyone else. These people are so smug that it makes me sick.”
“Right. And you think that’s the same as me not being able to meet anybody in your department? As not being able to attend as a university student if I wanted to?’ The words turned to ice as she spat them out. “Spare me this pathetic pretence of an inferiority complex. They think you’re all right.”
“No, they don’t. They only tolerate me because they know I can get them moss. Without that I’m just an annoying stray that follows you everywhere.”
She smoked, contemplating. Tapped the ashes from the cigarette.
“And so what? Have you ever considered that the reason they might act strangely around you has nothing to do with you, but simply because you’re with me? Then you complain about it, when I can’t even meet the fucking snobs that you call your colleagues!’
“Yeah, but … that’s different.”
He shrugged, trying to make it seem nonchalant.
“Why?’ She shook her head, blowing smoke. “It’s different, all right. You don’t meet my friends because you don’t want to. I don’t have that choice, apparently. You are such a fucking hypocrite.”
“Your friends are artists! It’s completely different! You know how Svartiskóli is regarding huldufólk and blendingar – the Crown runs the entire goddamn university, like you said! What can I do about that? You know I don’t want to keep you a secret.”
“You say you don’t want to – but you do. You’re still ashamed of me.”
He was fully dressed. Her cigarette had burned up. Bluegrey smoke flowed from her mouth as she talked.
* * *
Garún sat for a long while on the sofa after Sæmundur had gone home, staring into empty air as she smoked and petted Mæja. She tried to paint but everything she made was flat and unexciting. She finally got up and put on her moss green coat.
The train rattled down the elevated railway. The trains in Reykjavík were tired and worn-out, second-rate carriages that the Crown imported from the mainland. She exited at Hlemmur. The station was packed. It was the height of rush hour. Two police officers stood guard at the end of the platform, lazily carrying heavy skorrifles as if they were toys. They made her sick, their faces hard and threatening.
They stopped her as she was heading from the train platform. Mæja was cuddled up to her inside her coat and they told her to stop and show them what she was hiding. It’s just my cat, she explained, I’m bringing it to my friend who will be taking care of it. Do you live in the city, they had asked. She said yes. They asked for documentation. She had some. It was one of the most expensive things she had ever purchased. The huldufólk living outside the city walls in Huldufjörður were not officially documented anywhere. If they managed to move into the city they could apply for official papers of identification, but a blendingur couldn’t even pass through the gates. The city’s bureaucracy wouldn’t make blendingar official citizens, not unless they were born in Reykjavík. Even then they would have a hard time. Diljá had been the one who had hooked her up with a forgery. She knew people.
The officers inspected her papers carefully, then her. She did not meet their eyes as they took her in from head to toe, obviously and obnoxiously eyeing her up. She felt afraid of what they might do.
“Fancy outfit,” one of them said, “for someone like you. Where do you think you’re going?’
“I’m just going to see a friend,” she replied.
The officer handed her papers to his comrade.
“Do these look fake to you?’ he casually asked.
He kept his eyes fixed on Garún, looking for the slightest sign of anxiety. Her heart was racing. She wanted to run. But they had guns. One false move and they’d shoot her without hesitation. And no one would mind. Just another illegal blendingur taken care of.
“I was born here.”
Her voice sounded weaker and less confident than she’d wanted.
The other officer went thoroughly over her papers with a stern look. This was it. This was how everything would end for her. They would ask her to come with them back to the station for questioning and she would disappear.
Then they’d handed her back the papers.
“Don’t go making any trouble.”
She nodded numbly, took her papers and walked away, holding back her instinct to run as fast as she could, trying to look composed.
“Fucking whore,” one of them muttered, loud enough that it would
