The Draining Lake

probably put the most effort into that. Took along booze, you see, to break the ice. Everyone did. It helped the deals along.”

“Did you have any particular sales patches, I mean, did you share out the regions?”

“No, not really. The richest farmers are in the south and north, of course, and we tried to divvy them up. But the bloody Co-op had them all by the balls anyway.”

“Did Leopold go to any particular places? That he visited more than others?”

There was a silence and Erlendur imagined the old salesman trying to dig up details about Leopold that he had forgotten long ago.

“Come to mention it,” he said eventually. “Leopold spent quite a lot of time in the east fjords, the southern part. You could call that his favourite patch. The west too, the whole of west Iceland. And the West Fjords. And the south-west too. He went everywhere, really.”

“Did he sell a lot?”

“No, I wouldn’t say so. Sometimes he was away for weeks on end, months even, without producing very much. But you ought to talk to old Benedikt. The owner. He might know more. Leopold wasn’t with us for long and if I remember correctly there was some bother about fitting him in.”

“Bother about fitting him in?”

“I think they had to sack someone to make way for him. Benedikt insisted that he joined the firm but wasn’t happy with his work. I never understood that. Talk to him instead. Talk to Benedikt.”

At home, Sigurdur Oli turned off the television. He had been watching the Icelandic football late-evening highlights. Bergthora was at her sewing group. He thought it was her calling when he answered the telephone. It wasn’t.

“Sorry I’m always phoning you,” the voice said.

Sigurdur Oli hesitated briefly before putting the telephone back down. It began ringing again immediately. He stared at it.

“Shit,” he said.

“Don’t hang up,” the man said. “I just want to talk to you. I feel I can talk to you. Ever since you came round with the news.”

“I’m… seriously, I’m not your therapist. You’re going too far. I want you to stop. I can’t help you. It was an awful coincidence and nothing more. You’ll have to accept it. Try to understand that. Goodbye.”

“I know it was a coincidence,” the man said. “But I made it happen.”

“No one makes coincidences happen,” Sigurdur Oli said. “That’s why they’re coincidences. They begin the moment you’re born.”

“If I hadn’t delayed her, they would have made it home safely.”

“That’s absurd. And you know it. You can’t blame yourself. You simply can’t. No one can blame themselves for that kind of thing.”

“Why not? Coincidences don’t come from nowhere. They’re consequences of the conditions we create. Like me that day.”

“This is so absurd I can’t even be bothered discussing it.”

“Why?”

“Because if we let that sort of thinking control our actions, how would we ever make decisions? Your wife went to the shop at a particular time, you didn’t come anywhere near that decision. So was it suicide? No! It was some drunken idiot in a Range Rover. Nothing more.”

“I made the coincidence happen when I phoned her.”

“We can go on like this until the end of time,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Should we go for a drive out of town? Should we go to the cinema? Should we meet at a cafe? Who’d dare to suggest anything, for fear of something happening? You’re ridiculous.”

“That’s the point,” the man said.

“What?”

“How are we supposed to do anything?”

Sigurdur Oli heard Bergthora come in through the door.

“I’ve got to stop this,” he said. “It’s just nonsense.”

“Yes, me too,” the man said. “I’ve got to stop this.”

Then he put the telephone down.

22

He followed the radio, television and newspaper reports on the discovery of the skeleton, and saw how the story gradually paled in significance until eventually not a word was said about it. Occasionally a short statement appeared saying that there was nothing new to report, quoting a detective whose name was Sigurdur Oli. He knew that the lull in news about the skeleton meant nothing. The investigation must be in full swing and if a breakthrough happened someone would eventually knock on his door. He did not know when or who it would be. Maybe soon. Maybe that Sigurdur Oli. Maybe they would never find out what had happened. He smiled to himself. He was no longer sure that this was what he wanted. It had preyed on him for far too long. Sometimes he felt that he had no existence, no life, beyond living in fear of the past.

Before, he had sometimes felt a compulsion, an uncontrollable urge, to reveal what had happened, to come forward and tell the truth. He always resisted it. He would calm down and in the course of time this need faded and he became numb again to what had occurred. He regretted nothing. He would not have changed anything, given the way things had turned out.

Whenever he looked back he saw Ilona’s face the first time he met her. When she sat down beside him in the kitchen, he explained Jonas Hallgrimsson’s End of the Journey to her and she kissed him. Even now, when he was alone with his thoughts and revisited everything that was so precious to him, he could almost feel again the soft kiss on his lips.

He sat down in the chair by the window and recalled the day when his world had caved in.

Instead of going back to Iceland for the summer he had worked in a coal mine for a while and travelled around East Germany with Ilona. They had planned to go to Hungary, but he could not get a permit. As he understood it, foreigners were finding it increasingly difficult to obtain permission. He heard that travel to West Germany was also being severely restricted.

They went by train and coach and then mainly on foot, and enjoyed travelling on their own. Sometimes they slept outdoors. Sometimes in small guesthouses, school buildings or railway and coach stations. Occasionally they spent a few days on farms that they chanced upon in their travels. Their longest stay was with a sheep farmer who was impressed by having an Icelander knock on his door and repeatedly asked about his northern homeland, especially Snaefellsjokull glacier; it transpired that he had read Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth. They spent two weeks with him and enjoyed working on his farm. Much the wiser about farming, they set off from him and his family with a rucksack packed with food, and taking their good wishes with them.

She described her childhood home in Budapest and her doctor parents. She had told them about him in her letters home. What did they plan to do? her mother wrote. She was the only daughter. Ilona told her not to worry, but she did nevertheless. Are you going to get married? What about your studies? What about the future?

These were all questions that they had considered, both together and separately, but they were not pressing. All that mattered was the two of them in the present. The future was mysterious and uncharted and all they could be sure about was that they would meet it together.

Sometimes in the evenings she would tell him about her friends — who would welcome him, she assured him — and how they sat in pubs and cafes forever discussing the necessary reforms that were on the horizon. He looked at Ilona and saw her become animated when she talked about a free Hungary. She talked about the liberty that he had known and enjoyed all his life as if it were a mirage, intangible and remote. Everything that Ilona and