Yrsa Sigurðardóttir - I Remember You

‘I didn’t know my own strength,’ grinned Katrín. ‘To be honest, I have no idea what I’m doing. I just had to get outside, and this was the obvious task to get on with.’

‘I should have come with you. Too late now; this stink is stuck in my clothes, and probably grafted to my skin, too.’ Garðar ran his hands through his hair and ruffled it to try and get rid of the smell. ‘I was thinking of going for a short hike; I need to air myself out a bit. Do you want to come along?’

‘Absolutely.’ Katrín stood up, relieved not to have to work out the best way to save the porch. She’d prefer to fill in the space beneath the wood with sand or pebbles and then lay new planks over the gap, but something told her that porches weren’t built on frames for nothing. ‘I’m going to get Líf. It’ll do her good to come along.’

‘It’ll also do the house good for her to take a break.’ The porch groaned as Garðar bent down and poked at the edges of the damage. ‘And it looks to me like it’ll do the porch good, too, if we stop for a bit.’ He stood up and followed Katrín inside. ‘Did you go down to the beach earlier?’ he added as he put on his coat in the front entrance and Katrín went upstairs to call Líf. His hand hit a shelf as he pulled on one sleeve and he swore vigorously.

Katrín turned on the stairs and waited until he’d stopped swearing. ‘Down to the beach?’

‘Yes, I saw wet shoeprints and shells on the floor in the living room. I hope you’re not planning on decorating the house with them. I’ve got enough on my hands with the basic renovations, never mind messing about with seashells.’

Katrín smiled quizzically. ‘I didn’t go gathering seashells. I got stuck straight into wrecking the porch.’ She unzipped her jacket. The cold air cooled her, but she soon felt a chill and zipped it back up again. ‘It must just be some rubbish that was here when we came.’

‘I doubt it. I don’t remember seeing it there.’

‘I didn’t bring any shells in here and if you didn’t either, then they must have been here already. Either that or Líf went and got them.’

Garðar looked puzzled. ‘She hasn’t been anywhere. I was working in the room next to hers and I had to listen to her constant racket.’

Katrín shrugged. ‘Well, I hardly think the fox could have brought them in. Or Putti.’

‘No, I suppose not. He’s been lounging around all morning. Anyway, the shells have been lined up to form letters, and to my knowledge dogs aren’t generally fantastic spellers.’

‘What did they spell?’

‘They said “Goodbye”.’ Garðar zipped up his jacket briskly. ‘They must have been there before and I’m just misremembering. Maybe the paint thinner’s going to my head.’

‘Goodbye?’ Katrín frowned. ‘It’ll do you good to get out of the house for a bit.’

The three of them set off, Putti following reluctantly behind them, without discussing where they were headed. None of them wanted to go uphill, and they were all in such a sorry state that they didn’t need to say as much. The sun was as high in the sky as it would get for the time of year, casting long shadows and creating distorted images wherever it shone. The crunching of the pebbles on the path was a familiar sound after they had tramped back and forth along it with the supplies on the first day. Garðar walked unusually slowly, apparently taking each step carefully. He paused at the first house and pretended to be looking at how the downpipes from the roof were set up. Katrín, however, knew that he was stopping to rest his sore heel.

‘Why are all the windows boarded up?’ Líf pressed her face against the panels covering the window beside the front door. The windows of all the houses had been given the same treatment, making them look as if they’d been blinded. Their house was the only exception – its dirty panes had been left unprotected against storms and wind, but luckily they had held.

‘No doubt to prevent interior damage, if the panes should break.’ Garðar took hold of the downpipe from the rain gutter and shook it.

‘Why should a windowpane break? There’s no one here.’ Líf leaned away from the house.

‘I don’t know, maybe they can get damaged in bad storms or something. Or birds could fly into them.’ Garðar seemed pleased to have come up with an answer for Líf; since neither she nor Katrín knew anything about the matter, neither of them could challenge him. He inspected the downpipe even more carefully and now began examining its fastenings.

‘This is so weird.’ Katrín looked out over the village.

‘The pipe?’ asked Garðar in surprise.

‘No, the settlement here. What must it have been like to live in such a small, isolated place? And how do you think the residents felt moving to Reykjavík after being accustomed to this?’ She gazed at the renovated buildings. Having now experienced for herself how much work was involved in restoring a house in such a place, she was finally able to appreciate how the others might have managed. ‘How must the people have felt, leaving their homes for the last time?’

‘Awful, I expect.’ Katrín heard the sadness in Garðar’s voice. Unless a miracle was about to occur, they would be in the same boat as these people in the middle of last century; they would lose their home in Reykjavík and be forced to shut its door behind them for the final time. The only difference was that she and Garðar would have to see their old home when they drove through the area, whereas the people in Hesteyri had moved far away and therefore were seldom reminded of what they had lost. Some time ago Katrín had resolved to avoid her old area when the time came for them to have to leave it. She didn’t want to see another family’s car in the driveway, other curtains in the kitchen windows, other furniture in the garden, and she knew that Garðar felt the same.

Líf came and stood next to Katrín and looked around. ‘But what were they supposed to do? There were no jobs to be had after the factory was closed and then it was pointless to try to go on living here, even though some of them might have been resisted the inevitable for a while.’

Just like her and Garðar . Katrín said nothing, but the words echoed in her mind. The miracle they needed to keep the property wasn’t going to happen; if they were really lucky they’d be able to hold on until the so-called ‘Key Bill’ was passed and they could return their house keys to the bank without any further financial consequences, unless the bank found a loophole in the new bill.

‘What’s that?’ Katrín pointed at the slope south of the settlement. On it was a large rock or pile of stones jutting towards the sky, apparently placed there by human hands.

Garðar turned to look where Katrín was pointing. He shrugged. ‘No idea. Should we wander over there? We can take a look at the houses on the way; maybe we’ll see something that might be useful.’

‘What I’d find useful is a nice spa,’ Líf grumbled. ‘I’d give anything for a massage right about now.’

‘There’s no danger of that.’ Katrín, too, would have given her right arm for just a warm bubble bath. She had long since stopped allowing herself to dream of expensive spas.

They walked gently down the path but had to keep stopping for Garðar either to pull up his sock on his sore foot or fold it over to try to cover the wound on his heel. Neither seemed to help for more than a few steps, and Garðar had started to limp by the time they finally reached the place that had drawn Katrín’s attention. They looked at the houses along the way without picking up any useful tips on how to restore their own house. If it hadn’t been for Garðar’s sore heel they would have gone up to each of them to get a better look, but that would have made the hike too long. The organization of the settlement suggested that it had had sufficient space, with some distance between the houses. On the other hand, it couldn’t have been expanded much before running out of habitable land.