Yrsa Sigurdardóttir - The Day Is Dark

‘I’ll come,’ she told him, without considering the matter any further. As soon as she said it she felt a definite sense of relief and anticipation. She actually also felt troubled, but pushed that feeling aside.

Matthew stopped for a moment in the elegant lobby of the bank’s headquarters. He hurriedly stepped away when he realized that he was standing in the middle of the entrance and that the large automatic glass plate doors were about to close on him. ‘Really?’ Now it was his turn to have doubts. ‘You realize it’s going to be a difficult trip – it’s a real wilderness of ice and snow there.’

Thóra was certainly aware of the snow. It was what was not there that attracted her most. Boring, routine cases. This would be different; that was for sure.

‘What colour are Greenlanders?’ asked Sóley, yawning. She was lying in bed and should have been asleep long ago, but in the light of her impending trip, Thóra had decided to ignore her daughter’s normal bedtime. She kissed the girl’s blonde head.

‘They’re just like us, darling. Not green, if that’s what you think.’

‘Mummy,’ said her daughter indignantly, ‘I know that. I meant whether they were yellow like Chinese people or something like that.’

‘Chinese people aren’t yellow any more than the Independents are blue,’ said Thóra, smoothing down the pink duvet cover.

‘What?’ asked Sóley, who knew as much about politics as any other eight-year-old child.

Thóra merely smiled at her. ‘You’ll behave yourself at Daddy’s while I’m gone, won’t you?’

‘Yes, if you bring back a nice present for me,’ replied Sóley, smiling. ‘Sweeties, too.’

There must be sweets in Greenland. ‘I’ll buy something,’ answered Thóra. ‘Maybe a polar bear cub.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Sóley, excitedly. ‘A real one.’

‘Well, I meant a teddy bear,’ said Thóra, patting one of the many soft toys lying on the bed. She prepared to stand up. ‘It’s much too late. Try to sleep now.’

‘A dog?’ implored Sóley, taking her mother’s hand, and Thóra shook her head out of old habit. Sóley piped up at least once a day about getting a pet. More often on weekends. ‘Why not? Gylfi got to have a baby – why can’t I have a puppy or kitten?’

‘Good night,’ said Thóra, standing up from the bedside. ‘We’ll wake up at the same time in the morning, you’ll go to school and Mummy will go to the airport. I’ll try to call you when you’ve got to Daddy’s, but I can’t promise that it will work.’ She responded in advance to the question that would inevitably follow: ‘There are phones in Greenland, but I don’t know if they work where I’ll be. They might be broken.’

After switching off the light in the pink room and staring for a few moments at the numerous glittering teddy bear eyes, Thóra went out to the garage. She had no rucksack, as Matthew had recommended she bring – a suitcase would have to do. Things became more complicated, however, when it came to what she should pack. No one knew how long she would be there or what the conditions would be like; it was best just to take a bloody big pile of clothes. The doorbell rang, forcing Thóra to put aside any further thoughts on packing. Her friend Gugga was standing in front of the house, smiling from ear to ear and waving two bottles of white wine. ‘You’ve got to let me in,’ she said as Thóra opened the door, as though Thóra were in the habit of slamming the door in visitors’ faces. ‘I just bought a new car and really want to celebrate it with someone.’ Thóra could think of a number of ways to celebrate the purchase of a new car without alcohol being involved, but she smiled nonetheless. She was well aware that the car had probably been bought with the highest loan Gugga could get, and that after six months her friend would show up at her door, again with bottles in hand, to drown her sorrows over the sea of debt she was in and her repossessed car. Sometimes one had to live in the here and now and indulge oneself in the spirit of Louis XIV. He would probably have taken advantage of a car loan if such things had existed in his day.

So there was to be no packing until later, when Gugga finally left in a taxi. Around that time Thóra was starting to see double, and when she dozed off, exhausted from the effort of trying to shut the overstuffed suitcase, it was impossible for her to recall what she’d thrown into it.

The coffee at Reykjavík City Airport was quite good, even though it was simply called ‘coffee’ and came not from a gleaming chrome machine that spouted steam like a locomotive as it brewed one cup at a time, but an old coffeepot standing on a hot plate, reflecting the style of the tired old terminal. You’d have to go a long way to find such an old-fashioned brewing method in town, where the fancy machines had taken over everywhere. Thóra had even received one of the newfangled contraptions as a Christmas present from her parents. On Christmas Eve she had gulped down immoderate amounts of coffee without realizing that the new coffee was much stronger than the weak liquid she was used to. All that night she lay stiffly with her eyes wide open, barely able to blink, much less sleep. Since then the coffeemaker had been collecting dust. However, now Thóra would not have objected to a double espresso from her machine to perk her up; her head was throbbing and her mental abilities were a wreck. An overly large dose of coffee would probably help.

‘You should have brought a rucksack,’ muttered Matthew as he sat down next to her in the waiting area. He was still agitated about the suitcase Thóra had turned up with. ‘I told you specifically.’

‘Oh, come on, sweetheart,’ she replied, putting down her coffee cup. ‘It’s on wheels. There are even four of them.’ She had been careful to select the suitcase that would be easiest to pull behind her, and it most resembled a well-trained dog, following almost automatically at her heels. Luckily she had chosen the bag before gulping down all that wine.

‘Thank goodness they all work,’ said Matthew, just as unimpressed as he’d been when he picked her up half an hour ago. Thóra hadn’t been able to disguise how sleep-deprived and hungover she was, which was not at all to his liking. She felt too poorly for that to make any difference to her, which seemed to irritate him even more. ‘Winters are rough out there.’ Matthew had clearly gone and bought himself a new rucksack. Thóra came to this conclusion partly because she did not believe that he would have already owned one, but also because his huge backpack was so brilliantly clean that it could have come straight from the shop that very morning. Apparently that hadn’t been his only new purchase, because, for once, he was wearing a proper coat. Beneath this, though, he was wearing pressed, neatly creased trousers and a shirt that was actually quite casual for him. At least he’d had the sense to skip the tie. But Thóra was pretty sure he had one or two in his backpack, just in case.

‘I know,’ said Thóra, trying not to let his grumbling about the suitcase get on her nerves. One of their fellow travellers, whom they had met at the check-in counter, had confined himself to a quick, dubious glance at the bright green lump of plastic. He had introduced himself as Dr Finnbogi Kolbeinsson; he looked to be approaching fifty, with a slender build, and his battered hiking boots suggested that he was quite the outdoorsman. On the large rucksack that he swung as if it were empty were the remains of all types of stickers and patches from distant lands. Thóra had the feeling that Matthew’s new and shiny rucksack inspired the same indignation in the doctor as her suitcase did – possibly even more. At least she wasn’t putting on pretences.