Yrsa Sigurdardóttir - The Day Is Dark

Thóra held out a printed photo of the two drillers, which they had made especially for this visit to the village. In the photo the men sat side by side in the camp’s cafeteria, wearing thick woollen jumpers, their faces red. In front of them on the table were two heaped-up plates of food. The hunters made no move to take the photo, so Thóra turned it towards them. ‘These two,’ she said, pointing with one finger above the heads of the men in the photo.

The two Greenlanders looked at the photo with what at least appeared to be sincere interest. The one standing in the boat even moved closer to get a better look. Thóra extended the photo to him carefully until he took it. He looked over the photo without a word, nodded calmly and said something to his friend in Greenlandic. The friend took the picture and regarded it for a moment before returning it to Thóra. The image was now covered in blood but Thóra acted as if she didn’t notice, taking it back without any hint of hesitation. She suspected that the little sign of interest that the men had shown would disappear quickly if she frowned.

The men looked at each other and then at them. Both shook their heads. ‘Not here,’ replied the one on the pier. His Danish seemed as good as Thóra’s high-school Danish.

Finnbogi smiled from ear to ear over what he clearly considered an outstanding step in the right direction in their relations with the natives. ‘Can you refer us to someone in the village who might be able to assist us? Is there a police station here, municipal offices or a health clinic?’

The men shook their heads again. ‘Not here,’ repeated the man on the pier.

Thóra wasn’t sure whether the man still meant the drillers in the photo or whether he was saying that there were no public services in the village. She nudged Matthew with her elbow and asked him to show the men the objects that they’d brought with them: the drilled bone with the leather strap and the Tupilak figure. He pulled them out and showed them to the men – without handing them over. The men did nothing to hide their reactions. They started in surprise upon seeing the drilled bone and could not conceal their amazement. The Tupilak appeared not to surprise them at all, until they came nearer to get a better look at it. The man in the boat even clambered up onto the pier to get closer still, incredibly agile despite his thick clothing. Then they looked at each other inquisitively and exchanged a few incomprehensible words. The man who’d been on the pier at first then turned to Matthew and asked: ‘Where did you get this?’

Since Matthew did not understand a word, the doctor interrupted. ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Do you recognize this object?’

‘Where did you get this?’ repeated the hunter. His tone was determined and he continued to look stiffly at Matthew. ‘Where did you get it?’ He held out his hand, palm up. He wanted to hold the object. It was clear to all of them that if they gave it to him, they would not get it back. Thóra suddenly felt happy that the man who’d been standing in the boat was now on the pier, because there he was far from the knife that he’d set down.

‘I don’t think we’re going to get any help here,’ said the doctor suddenly but calmly in Icelandic, smiling at the men. ‘They don’t want to do anything for us and it’s unclear whether they speak any more Danish than what we’ve already heard.’

Although Thóra had no desire whatsoever to stand there on the pier surrounded by cold fog any longer than necessary, she didn’t want to give up so easily. ‘On the ice. We found it on the ice.’

The men stared at her. ‘Where? Where on the ice?’ asked the same man as before. He pointed up along the pier. ‘On land? On the sea?’ Thóra had so entirely lost her sense of direction that it took a great effort for her not to point out to sea. In her mind she tried to recall the position of the pier in relation to the foreshore and imagined the lie of the land on both sides of the hill when she had looked over both the work site and the village. ‘There,’ she said, pointing in what she thought was the right direction. ‘By the mountains.’ Her Danish didn’t allow her to provide a better description of the landscape around the drilling rig.

At first the hunters said nothing and instead looked again at the objects, apparently frightened. They both took one step back. ‘Leave,’ said the one who spoke for both of them. ‘We are working.’ He waved both his hands to indicate that they should clear off. ‘Leave.’ The red flesh of the seal lying at his feet on the pier gleamed, and for the first time Thóra caught the body’s iron-like smell of blood, which overwhelmed the suddenly mild scent of the sea. He didn’t have to tell her twice, and she walked away. Matthew and Finnbogi followed and the doctor didn’t bother to say goodbye to the men, since it would have been a waste of time.

As they walked back to land they heard the men speaking to each other, quickly and very animatedly. Their language was unlike any other that Thóra had heard and she had difficulty distinguishing where each word ended and the next began. There was no way to understand what they said to each other but she was relieved nonetheless that they did not simply watch silently as the three of them walked away, because if she could hear their distant voices she knew they weren’t running after them up the pier, brandishing their knives. She was enormously grateful when she got back into the car.

‘Greenlanders aren’t often like that, I can tell you.’ Finnbogi started the engine and turned the pickup truck around. ‘Generally, they’re extremely nice and can’t do enough for you. I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but I’m just so surprised at all of this.’

Matthew listened attentively, his expression revealing nothing other than that he highly doubted the doctor. ‘Hopefully we’ll meet someone friendlier in this strange village,’ he said. ‘We’d better go and see, although I don’t expect we’ll find anyone who can help us. Obviously, Friðrikka was right.’

Thóra’s desire to suggest that they simply go back to camp and continue to investigate the computers was overwhelming, but instead she stared silently out of the window. She watched how the fog cleared almost completely the farther it drew from their sight. It was a short trip and soon the houses reappeared, lonely and abandoned, or so it seemed. Her attention was drawn particularly towards one of the houses, rather ugly and ramshackle. It looked to her as if something had moved in the window.

Naruana let go of the curtain, closing the little gap through which he’d been watching the car drive through the village. He stood motionless, staring at the worn-out, mottled fabric on the curtain rod that was starting to come loose. It wouldn’t be long before it fell off, and he knew it would be left to lie there; no one, least of all him, would put it back up again. His life was in the same state as the house, and he was glad he’d come to live here; here nothing gave him any trouble. When he went to a place where everything was clean and beautiful on the surface he stuck out, and the ruin that he had become was even more obvious. He had tried to avoid this scenario, which is why he lived here, in the home of a woman who was only slightly behind him on the road to perdition, and if he left the house it was to be around people in the same boat as him. He did not love this woman; he didn’t even feel particularly fond of her. But neither did he hate or even dislike her. She was just there; she had inherited her mother’s house and could therefore provide him with both shelter and company in his drinking. Her feelings were just as absent. There was no affection, only practicality and loneliness.