My Soul to Take: A Novel of Iceland (8 page)

ON The top
of the box lay a folded Nazi flag. The white field around the black swastika had turned slightly yellow, and the material was rough to the touch. Thora frowned as she carefully removed it and put it to one side. Perhaps the swastika in Birna's diary had not been a mindless doodle after all. Beneath the flag was a pile of magazines, the uppermost one even more faded than the flag. The magazine was called
Iceland,
and a Nazi emblem was centered under the title. Jonas had not mentioned this in his cryptic account of ghosts and the house's murky history. Thora picked up the magazine and saw that the others in the pile were the same. They were published by the Icelandic Nationalist Party. Thora shook her head. She knew there had been a small Nazi movement in Iceland before the war, but couldn't remember much about it. It had clearly been involved in publishing, although the magazines were thin and not big on content, judging from the headlines.

Leafing through the pile, she also noticed several issues of a student newspaper called
Mjolnir,
whose publisher, according to the masthead, was the Nationalist Students' Association. Thora removed the pile of magazines from the box to see what was concealed underneath and found a folded shirt, a swastika armband, and what appeared to be a military belt with a shoulder strap attached. How could anybody be into this?

By now Thora was close to the bottom of the box and she noticed a brass object, which when she picked it up turned out to be yet another swastika. Its base was a kind of socket, whose purpose, if any, was unclear. There were also various scraps of paper advertising dances, camping trips, and meetings that the nationalists had apparently organized, along with items of no political significance, such as an old wallet, shoes, and photographs of people who did not seem to be wearing swastikas. There were no children in the photographs, but they shared a common theme: smartly dressed people in the prime of life, either sitting on blankets as if picnicking or posing against the wall of a house. Although the same wall featured in more than one of the photographs, not enough of it was visible for Thora to make out whether it belonged to the old farmhouse upstairs. Judging from the outfits, the photographs were taken during the war and just afterward.

Thora tried to replace the objects in the box in the right order, although the box looked like it hadn't been opened for ages, so there was little chance of the person who had packed it noticing the difference. It just seemed better to leave it as she had found it. There was little to pique her curiosity in the next box that Thora looked at. It mostly contained finely crocheted tablecloths, quite old, and an old-fashioned floral-patterned vase with a gold trim. The third box contained an aged photograph album. Thora's grandmother had owned a similar album, and she suddenly felt sad as it struck her how short life was and how quickly we were forgotten. It would be difficult, now, to find someone who recognized the people in the album. Soon it would be impossible. She sat down on one of the boxes to browse through the photographs.

She lifted the thick cover. On the first page, under a flysheet that looked like carbon paper, were some snaps taken by the old farmhouse. The building, which looked almost new, was virtually unchanged, and a carved wooden sign above the entrance read
kirkjustett
.
Thora carefully unhooked the photograph from the corner mounts. On the back was a stamp showing that the photograph had been taken, or developed, in 1919. In delicate handwriting, which must have been female, was the inscription "Bjarni Thorolfsson and Adalheidur Jonsdottir." Examining the photograph more closely, Thora deduced that the photographer must have had his back to the sun, because the couple were trying their best not to squint to keep the sun out of their eyes. They were a handsome couple; he was tall with thick bushy hair falling in a quiff over his forehead, and she young and wearing a calf-length skirt, smart flat shoes, and an old-fashioned hat that fitted tightly to her head. Blond hair gleamed beneath it. He was dressed in light, baggy trousers with a pronounced crease, and a shirt and braces. They were standing beside each other by the front wall, their hands by their sides. Old-style proud homeowners.

On the same page was another photograph with the same subject, featuring these two with another couple. Thora carefully remounted the first photo and took out the second. In the same handwriting, it said that the second couple were called Grimur Thorolfsson and Kristrun Valgeirsdottir. Even without the shared surname, it was obvious that Bjarni and Grimur were brothers. Their clothing was very similar, but in different colors. She scrutinized the picture but could read nothing from their expressions as they grimaced into the sun. She could see that the woman who must be Grimur's wife was very different from the fair-haired Adalheidur. She was older and more buxom, stouter and less smartly dressed, in a plain skirt, thick sweater, and heavy flat shoes. Her dark hair was tied back in no particular style. Thora wondered how these two very different women would have got on together. She turned the page.

On the next pages were three photographs of the young Bjarni and Adalheidur, all taken outdoors. They had not changed much from the previous shots, except that the young woman was no longer wearing a hat. Thora kept going and examined two more pictures in which the elder brother and his wife again joined the younger couple, along with a little dark-haired girl, a chubby, bonny baby dressed in the fashion of that time. Looking at the back of the photograph, Thora saw that the girl was named Edda Grimsdottir, so she must be the daughter of the elder brother, Grimur. It was taken in 1922, and the girl looked about a year old. The following pictures were taken at intervals of several years. In one of them, dated 1923, Thora thought Adalheidur, the younger woman, looked pregnant, but there was no sign of another baby in the photographs that followed—not until she chanced upon one from 1924, taken at a studio and showing the young couple holding a baby, several months old. The child was swaddled in a mass of frills, and on the back of the photograph she was identified as a girl by the name of Gudny.

Another picture of the first girl followed, but an extremely peculiar one. She seemed to be sleeping, wearing a crocheted frilly cap that barely covered her head, and a white frilly dress, but her body was in a very strange position. Neither of Thora's children had ever slept like that, with their arms crossed over the chest and legs stretched out straight. Thora removed the photograph to read the back. The girl's name, Edda Grimsdottir, was written there, then two dates with a cross drawn in front of the latter one. She had died the same year that Bjarni and Adalheidur had been blessed with their little girl. Thora put it back in the album and sighed heavily. She knew that it had been a custom at that time to take pictures of the dead, but she had never seen such a photograph, let alone held one. She wondered if this was the photograph Jonas meant when he said he had seen one showing the ghost. All ghosts were born from sad or unjust circumstances and the death of this young infant must have been one if not both.

Thora felt she was just beginning to get to know the people from the farm as she flicked through the remaining pages. This imaginary familiarity left her saddened, as she saw how time had taken its toll on the family. There were no photographs of the elder brother after 1925, for example. It was as if he and his wife had moved away or otherwise disappeared from the young couple's lives. Perhaps the loss of their daughter, Edda, made them abandon their farm. Adalheidur also vanished from the photographs after 1927. The last shot of her, in which she was obviously pregnant, was dated 1926. The penmanship also changed that year, becoming rougher, and it did not take a handwriting expert to see that it was male. Thora felt she could see grief on Bjarni's face from then on. Yet he still smiled sincerely at little Gudny, who judging from the photographs grew and blossomed, beautiful like her mother but also uncannily like her father's side of the family.

The album was not full. The last two snaps of Gudny showed her standing up against the wall of the farmhouse, which was apparently the family's favorite spot for posing for photographs. She was well into her teens, a shapely girl with fair wavy hair. Thora could well imagine that she would have been considered beautiful; she was easily as attractive as the handful of film stars Thora could remember from that era. Both photographs were from 1941 and would have been sweet if they had showed Gudny alone, but they didn't; on either side of her was a young man, each standing bolt upright with a somber expression. It was not the boys' stiff posture that made the photographs look odd, however, but their clothing. They were both wearing plain dark trousers and white shirts with swastika armbands. They wore strange belts with straps at the side, and each rested one hand on a large flagpole beside them. The flag drooped lifelessly down against the pole, but it was obviously a Nazi flag; the pole was topped with the swastika that Thora had found in the first box. The socket was clearly designed to fit on the top of a flagpole. The young men's names had not been written on the back of the photographs, only Gudny's and the year.

There were no more photographs, only three empty double pages. A photograph had undoubtedly been removed from the first one: the dark space where it had been mounted stood out on the faded page, and the little corner mounts were still stuck in place. Thora shook the album, hoping the photograph had been slipped in between the pages, but nothing fell out. She put the book down.

Thora stood up. The light in the basement was dim, and she would be able to examine the photos better in her room. Also, she wanted to ask Jonas if the little deceased girl Edda from the album was the "ghost." Every step of the wooden staircase creaked as she made her way up and Thora was glad she wasn't any heavier. On her way back up to the hotel, she took a deep breath, relieved to be free from the smell of rising damp. After savoring the fresh air for a moment, she headed for the lobby.

Outside one of the corridor windows she noticed Soldis, the petite girl who had shown her to her room when she arrived the previous day. She was outside, smoking. Thora decided to make a detour to discuss in a little more detail the stories that she had hinted were connected with the farmland or the farmhouse. "Hi, Soldis."

The girl turned around. From her blank expression, Thora could not tell whether she was pleased or annoyed to see her again. At least she didn't run away. "What?"

Thora walked over to the girl. "Hello again. Do you remember me?"

"Yes, of course. You're a guest here. One of Jonas's friends."

"Right," Thora said, smiling warmly. "Listen, yesterday you mentioned some old stories about this place that you said you'd tell me later. It would help me a lot if you could fill me in now."

The girl frowned, avoiding Thora's eye. "I've got to get back to work."

"It would help Jonas out. I'm trying to assist him with something and, strange as it may seem, the local stories about this place might make it easier for me to help him." Thora waited.

The girl thought it over, then shrugged nonchalantly. "Okay. I don't mind."

"Great," said Thora. "Maybe we should go inside?" The weather was still overcast, although the fog had lifted. In fact, it only seemed to have lifted up a few meters, because all that could be seen of the nearby mountains was the lower slopes.

The girl gave another shrug. "Okay. Like I said, I don't mind."

Thora followed her through the staff entrance to a large kitchen, which presumably served the dining hall. Soldis sat down at a little table reserved for the staff and gestured to Thora to take a seat too. Then she reached over for a huge thermos flask and took two cups from a mismatched collection at the end of the table.

"I was brought up here, see, and my granny told me all sorts of stories from the countryside around here. Trolls and stuff, you know. Most of it was crap, of course, but she said some of it was real," Soldis began as she handed Thora a cup of piping coffee.

Thora nodded. "Like what?" She took a little carton of long-life milk and added a dash to her coffee.

"Well, like the land here. Granny said there was a curse on it."

"A curse?" Thora could barely stop her eyebrows from shooting up.

"In the old days, this lava field was famous for abandoned babies. Local women who couldn't provide for their children used to leave them to die of exposure, here in the lava." She shuddered. "Disgusting. You can still hear them, you know? I've even heard them myself."

Thora almost choked on her coffee. She leaned closer. "Are you telling me that you've heard crying babies who were left out here to die hundreds of years ago?" she asked.

Soldis gave Thora a scornful look. "I'm not the only one who's heard it, if that's what you think. Most people here have heard the crying. It's been getting worse recently, actually. No one ever heard it when I first started working here."

"Why would that be?" wondered Thora aloud.

"I don't know. Granny told me it comes and goes. She remembers stories about awful crying that was heard here around 1945. One of the farmers came looking for it because he thought it was a real child, and he heard a weak voice crying right beside him but couldn't find a child anywhere. He rushed off home and never came near the farm again. Granny said that the war came to an end soon after and the abandoned children might have sensed that and been letting people know they were happy. Or annoyed. Maybe there's something bad in the offing now. Or something good."

Talk about covering all bases, thought Thora. Things were always happening, so obviously there was always
something
in the offing. Regardless of whether the news was good or bad, it could always be used to explain why the dead babies started crying again. It was hardly surprising that the story about the ghost had spread among the staff like wildfire, if it could be used to explain pretty much anything that happened.