Walking Into the Night (8 page)

23

It was a bright Saturday in December. Snow had begun falling in the morning and continued for much of the day, but now it was cloudless and the stars had begun to kindle. As I walked up the street towards our house, the moon rose over Mount Esja, pure white as if after a long wash.

It was five years since we had moved from Eyrarbakki into our new house in Reykjavik, five and a half to be exact, and I paused to take a look at it before going inside. The date 1911 stood over the front door and I reminded myself that it was I who built this house, with my money. Not yours, and not your father’s, but that’s another story.

I broke an icicle off the railing as I opened the front door. There was a fire in the living room, I’d smelled woodsmoke out in the street. One of the twins was crying upstairs; I could see Katrin’s legs when I came in, she was on her way upstairs to them. There was smoked lamb waiting in the kitchen, and I realized how hungry I was as I took off my hat and hung it on a peg in the closet. I scraped the snow off my shoes, new shoes that I had bought on my last trip to New York. I had been away for four months this time.

I had begun my visits to the States after the war broke out and communications with Europe became increasingly difficult. There were all sorts of problems with acquiring goods to import and no assurance of receiving payment for exports. I felt good in New York, better than in Europe. New Yorkers judged you on your merits, not on your family background.

The twin stopped crying. I could still hear Katrin crooning to him. I couldn’t hear you, but sensed your presence. The fire crackled and I went towards the light from the living room. It was yellow and warm, and I stopped when I heard Katrin singing to the child upstairs. I stood there for a long time.

I was wearing a dark suit because I had just come from work. I had recently moved my office; it was now down by the harbor and it took me only a few minutes to walk home, so I would let myself dawdle on the way, taking in the docks and the shipyard, smelling the seaweed and the boats as they came home from the ocean.

The suit suddenly felt too heavy and I was about to go upstairs and change when I heard you speak my name from the living room.

I walked towards the light, flicking some lint off one of my trouser legs.

You were standing by the window in the living room, looking out into the backyard. I walked over to you, laid my arm over your shoulder, and kissed you on the cheek. You gestured with your head towards the window and I saw that you were watching Einar and Maria sledding on the slope furthest from the house. It wasn’t a very large bank, but their short legs still had to work hard as they clambered up it with the sled in tow.

You enjoyed watching how solicitous Einar was towards his sister. He had just had his eighth birthday, she was five. He pulled her up the bank with one hand, dragging the sled with the other, held it steady while she got on, then gave her a shove, gently so she wouldn’t be scared. He ran down the slope after her and led her back up the same way.

We stood without moving by the window, the yellow light warm behind us, the moon white over the garden. Hand in hand. Suddenly they seemed to sense that they were being watched. They stopped on the way up the bank and looked over their shoulders towards the house, waving when they saw us. Then they came running.

Everything was as it should be. Life was rewarding, gentle, the days full of activity, the quiet nights spent deep in sleep. I stood still and thought about this, and about the children standing outside the window, smiling at us, about the warmth in the living room and the good smell in the house, about you.

And yet—my soul was troubled by restlessness; something was luring me away. My thoughts roamed, and although you couldn’t tell from looking at me, and I behaved in no way differently from usual, patting Einar on the head when they came in and kissing little Maria on the cheek, nevertheless I was leaving. Perhaps not the next day, nor the day after that, but I was leaving, all the same. With every day that passed I drew a little further away, with every night, even while we slept. When our embraces were at their most intimate, I was somewhere else. However strictly I tried to get a grip on myself and dissuade myself, sometimes out loud when I was alone in the office late in the day, whatever I did, I was drifting away. You couldn’t see it, but I felt I was losing control of myself. And I was afraid, Elisabet, I was afraid of what I would do.

Maria ran into my arms. I swung her round and round the room, her shadow racing across the walls.

“Let’s light the Advent candles, even though it’s not Sunday yet,” I heard you say. Your voice seemed to come from far off.

It began to snow again and when I looked out the window, I noticed that my tracks leading up to the house were disappearing, one after the other.

24

I always meant to tell you why I sold off most of your father’s property hardly more than a year after his death, but I thought better of it. When I look back, I suspect there were two reasons for my silence; first of all, I was fond of your father and didn’t want to tell you what a state the business was in when I took over from him, and, secondly, I thought it was natural that you would ask if you wanted to know. But you never asked, not even when I told you that your childhood home would be sold along with the Eyrarbakki store. Admittedly, you put down your embroidery and stopped stitching for a moment, looking up out of the window at the silver-gray wisps of cloud in the deep-blue sky, but then you carried on as if nothing had happened, turning the conversation to other matters.

I was aware of what your relatives were whispering behind my back about these transactions. I have a clear memory of how they looked away when I found them huddling in the living room at little Maria’s birthday party. I stopped dead in the doorway, not saying a word, just watching the look in their eyes. Of course, they didn’t dare say anything to me, but I suspect at least one of them brought the matter up with you. They will have got no satisfaction for their pains, for they didn’t know that you had signed over the property to me the day after the old man’s funeral.

We went for a walk along the shore by Eyrarbakki the day of his funeral and again the following morning. The weather was calm during those June days, the sunshine merry on the water’s edge. I remember an oystercatcher tripping around us on the first day, dignified and arch, and I pointed him out to you because he followed us as we set off and was there waiting for us when we turned back. When we came out of the church and bore the coffin to the grave, the bird was perched beside the freshly turned earth. It was the same bird, no question about it, dignified and a little cocky, darting away as we carried the coffin past your mother’s grave.

You mentioned the bird when we were getting ready for bed that evening.

“Didn’t he remind you of my father?” you asked, and I think I nodded.

I clearly remember my feeling of relief when I saw the bird waiting for us by the grave. I don’t suppose I had expected him to be there, but it didn’t surprise me that he was. I was suddenly overcome in church; I’m sure you remember that I asked to borrow your handkerchief to dab at my forehead, as mine was already soaked. This chill had come over me without warning, this fear of death. I sensed its presence, I felt as if it surrounded the coffin, which stood no more than a few feet away from me with nothing in between. I was angry at first, but when I found that I couldn’t conquer my fear, I began to shake. The notes of the organ flew past my ears, the singing brushed my temples on its way up above the coffin and the congregation, above the cross and the water in the font which caught the sunlight from the window.

I was exhausted when I rose with the other pallbearers to lift the coffin, and it was not until we walked down the aisle and the door opened and the blue sky met our eyes that I began to calm down.

The oystercatcher is a bird of the sea and shore, not the heavens. This makes its song different from that of other birds—you can smell the seaweed when it sings. Its share of heaven is like the sea’s share of heaven. The oystercatcher is the sea’s representative, carrying messages up to heaven. Then it returns, always.

Or so your father once told me. And now he stood there beside the grave, waiting for us.

They muttered, eyes darting, ganging up, plotting against me. Your uncle consulted a lawyer. Imagine! After all I had done for him. But, of course, they had nothing on me.

I want you to know that it was I who laid the basis for our prosperity, because your father was on the verge of bankruptcy when he died. He owed money to banks and businessmen abroad, but at home in Iceland he always took care to pay his debts. He cheated no one and when I took over the business he hid nothing from me, even pointing out where the problems lay. He didn’t go into any detail, just slapped me on the back and said: “That’s life, my boy, it’s not always a breeze.”

But your relatives thought I had been handed the family wealth on a plate and hated me for it. They despised the fact that I would sometimes go to sea on my own boats. They thought it proved that I wasn’t good enough for your family. They were wrong. I wasn’t good enough for you.

I know you noticed how happy I was when I was about to go out on the boats. I remember you encouraging me in your own way. “You haven’t gone fishing for a while,” you would say. “Maybe it’s time . . .?”

I couldn’t give a damn about your relatives. They don’t matter to me. But it saddens me if you ever think that I married you for money.

25

He glimpsed a statue of a white angel in the light between the trees. Its wings drooped in the evening shower.

They heard the first drone of the engine just after four. Kristjan stopped setting the table and hurried to the window, pushing the curtains aside and peering out. The sky was merciless, in the distance lightning struck the bay. He peered out into the blackness, but couldn’t see anything but rain and the leaves which the wind raked up and whirled along the terrace. A cluster of oak leaves plastered itself against the windowpane, then twirled away. He looked over his shoulder at the fire which he had just lit in the hearth; it sizzled with a familiar sound and gave off a comforting warmth.

“They can’t have flown in this weather,” he said to himself as a thunderclap shook the house.

He had expected the guests at three: James Lawrence, the bobsled champion, and his friends Lord Plunket and Lady Bearsted. Originally they had intended to fly from Los Angeles, but Kristjan gathered that they had changed their plans and decided to drive instead. The weather had been uneventful for most of the day, overcast with a light breeze, so it took him by surprise when all at once it grew dark and the window of the pantry blew open with a crash. He jumped, and when he stood up to close it, the rain started. He poked his head out for a second; the raindrops felt warm on his forehead.

He scanned the table once more to make sure everything was right. It was a long time since they had had guests; for months the reception room had housed nothing but silence and memories of happier days. Just over a week ago a kitchen maid had come to see Kristjan and asked whether the Chief had stopped giving parties altogether. Usually he would have tried to make her see that there was plenty in this world that she didn’t understand and shouldn’t therefore worry about, but this time he patted her on the shoulder and said:

“A lot has changed. We’ll just have to do our best.”

So it was good news when the Chief announced to him that he was expecting guests. He spoke as if a lot hung on their visit and went over the menu with Kristjan more carefully than usual; turtle soup and duck, fruit, ice cream, and cheese. The duck must be pressed and served blood red in the center. The turtle soup should be just warmed through, not chilled but not too hot. He wanted to see the fruit before it was sliced and served up with whipped cream; it must be soft and ripe, so he suggested strawberries, plums, nectarines, and apricots. He chose the cheeses himself and wrote their names on a piece of paper which he handed to Kristjan: Roquefort, Gorgonzola, Camembert, and Brie. Batard-Montrachet with the soup, Haut Brion with the duck, old port with the cheese. The sun shone as he passed him the paper, and just as Kristjan was about to leave, the Chief added:

“And have them bring the deer up to the house when we sit down to eat. They’ll make a nice view from the windows in the sunset.”

He went into the reception hall and lit the candles. Rather than retreating from the small glow, the darkness seemed to close in around it. In the distance the clouds reflected a gleam. He opened the front door and the rain slopped at his face, but instead of closing the door, he strained his eyes down the hill hoping to spot headlights on the plain. It was as wild and windy down there as up by the house, the waves crashing onto the rocks. Down the hill the animals were howling; the sound disturbed him, as always, and he turned to go back inside.

Just as the door fell to, the plane emerged from the clouds and flew over the campaniles. The glass rattled in the windows and the screaming of the wind was drowned out for an instant as the plane swooped over the house. Then it was swallowed up again by the blackness.

He ran to give the alert but the Chief, who had been in his study all day, was already downstairs.

“He’s going to try to land,” he said. “Hurry down and take some men with you.”

“Land?” asked Kristjan.

“They should never have set off, but now they must be running out of gas and won’t be able to get back.”

They drove down the hill in two vehicles, Kristjan and a young workman in front, a truck following behind. The fire engine came later. They crawled down the road and were forced to stop more than once when the car skidded in ruts. Rocks and mud had been loosened from the hillside and slid across the track which lay under water wherever it ran through a dip. They were dressed in black raincoats and boots. It was damp in the car. The windshield was misted. There was a stench of wet wool.

They didn’t catch sight of the plane until they were halfway down the hill. It had flown out over the bay but was now approaching the coast again, a speck in the darkness. It approached like a clumsy young bird, at the mercy of the squalls.

All of a sudden it vanished and they fell silent. Kristjan got out of the car, raised a hand to his eyes, took off his hat, but saw only darkness and rain.

Nothing else, until he heard the plane smash into the ground and saw the flames streaming out in the darkness.

When they reached the wreckage, the bodies were still warm. No one was burned, but the redness of the flames played over their faces. The men were badly battered, their limbs in disarray, but there was hardly a mark on the woman. She lay on her back, blood trickling from a scratch on her forehead. Kristjan took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped it away. Her eyes were closed. She looked as if she were sleeping.

They stretched a tarpaulin over the back of the truck and put the bodies on it, two by two, side by side. Then they got into the car, but just as the driver was about to set off, Kristjan noticed a rug on the backseat and asked him to wait a moment. He grabbed the rug, got out and spread it over the woman. The wind dropped as they drove up the hill; the flames from the wreckage died down. There was no explosion, no smell of fuel.

The Chief was waiting out on the drive. He looked like a ghost. He had forgotten to put on an overcoat and the rain was streaming down his large, white face. He waited while they lifted the bodies down from the back of the truck and looked away once he had identified them, then hurried inside, his movements awkward, unwilling to let his employees see his tears. Miss Davies was nowhere to be seen.

The meat locker was down in the cellar, directly below the kitchen. At the back hung carcasses of lamb and beef, while buffalo and reindeer were nearer the door. It was cold in the locker and Kristjan switched on the ceiling light before they spread out the tarpaulin on the floor and laid the bodies on top of it. He leaned over her, taking one more look. When he straightened up he thought he felt a breath on his forehead.

“Klara,” he said to himself. “Why do I sense that you’re here?”

He turned out the light behind them. When the others had gone upstairs he fetched a padlock and locked the door.

The doctor was traveling, wouldn’t be there until morning.

It was already nine. The Chief and Miss Davies still hadn’t emerged from their suite. The food grew cold in the kitchen as the good smells dispersed; the turtle soup and pressed duck, blood red in the center. Cheeses on boards, fruit in a bowl. The cream still waiting to be whipped.

The storm had died down. He blew on the embers in the hearth, warming himself by the fire before removing the unused dishes and glasses from the dining table and clearing them away. All was quiet in the house and the wind made no sound. Walking with slow steps to the window, he pushed aside the curtains and looked out.

In the pale illumination of the lamps out on the terrace, the wings of the angel drooped under the heavy evening shower.