Yrsa Sigurðardóttir - I Remember You

Líf stared at the open doorway as if wanting to say something to someone standing just inside it. ‘Do you think if someone does something bad, they always get punished for it?’ She fiddled listlessly with the tattered cigarette packet. There was only one cigarette left inside.

‘What are you on about now?’ Katrín prepared to pull herself to her feet. If she knew her at all, Líf would follow her. ‘Some people get what’s coming to them, others don’t. Somehow my instinct tells me that the mess we’ve ended up in isn’t payback for past sins, if that’s what you mean. I can’t imagine we’ve done anything awful enough to deserve this.’ Her battered nerve endings sent her brain a desperate message to keep quiet. Putti seemed to sense this; he raised his head and looked at her with dark, melancholy eyes that seemed to tell her that there was nothing to be done. This was bad, and it would only get worse. Yet the pain in her foot told her that she was still alive; soon she would feel nothing.

‘I think this is revenge on us. Maybe the dead will work together and help each other carry it out. What do you think?’ Líf sounded half-dead herself.

‘I think that doesn’t make any sense. I mean, what could Garðar have done to deserve…’ She couldn’t complete the sentence; she didn’t want to, and indeed she didn’t know how to. What had happened to Garðar? Líf looked at Katrín and opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it again. Katrín turned back to the dark doorway, which the flickering candlelight wasn’t strong enough to illuminate properly. ‘Come on. Let’s eat. You’ll feel better afterwards, and maybe you’ll see how ridiculous this is when your blood sugar level rises. We mustn’t give up on ourselves completely.’ Putti stood up and hobbled on sore paws towards Katrín. His breed wasn’t meant to live under these conditions, and they were starting to take their toll on him.

‘Some people die of blood sugar levels that are too high.’ Líf didn’t look as if she was about to move. She laughed dryly and her shoulders shook beneath the blanket she’d wrapped around herself. ‘And others, too low.’ Again she laughed, but stopped without completing the laugh normally, laughing for one second and then staring straight ahead as if in shock the next.

‘We’re in no danger of either. I can promise you that.’ Katrín supported herself on the wall as an intense pain in her foot passed up her leg. Líf made no indication of either saying anything or getting up. ‘If you don’t come with me you’ll be here alone in the dark. Putti’s coming with me, and I’ll take the candle as well.’ There was no reason to take Líf’s candle; there were enough of them in the kitchen. This was a desperate attempt to get Líf to stand up and come with her. Katrín would never admit it out loud, but she simply didn’t have the nerve to go alone, whether Putti went with her or not. ‘You decide.’

Líf turned her head slightly to face Katrín. The dancing candle flame was reflected in her pupils, making it look as if something were squirming in her eyes. ‘I don’t want to die, Katrín. Not alone.’ She stood up. When she walked away her gait was like Putti’s, suggesting surrender and hopelessness; the steps of a doomed prisoner going to his execution.

‘You’re not going to die.’ Katrín’s words sounded to her like a lie, or a bad joke. ‘We’ll feel better after we’ve eaten.’ She didn’t want to say more, but she knew she would have to get Líf to understand that they needed to go out before nightfall. It was best to wait to tell her this until after they were full and hopefully feeling a bit braver. A ghastly smile crept over Katrín’s lips; as if food could overcome the dread that possessed them both! But they needed firewood, and they all had to go out to relieve themselves. Besides, they could call out for Garðar, send his name out into the darkness in the faint hope that he would hear it and follow it back. How ridiculous. ‘Take the candle with you, Líf. We need to be able to see.’

The shadows the orange light cast over Líf’s face gave her a terrifying aspect; her eyes sunken into black pools and her bones jutting out as if the flesh had retreated. The ghostlike effect wasn’t lessened when she spoke. ‘What do you think happened to Garðar?’ she whispered, as if not wanting anyone to hear her.

‘I don’t know, Líf. Hopefully he just ran into some difficulty and had to take shelter in another house. Maybe he’s unable to get back here – if he got injured or knocked out or something.’ Katrín bit her lip, hoping she wasn’t right to think that Garðar wasn’t anywhere inside, but rather lying in the open air with the cold snow as a mattress and nothing but the merciless wind as a blanket. ‘He’s probably at the doctor’s house.’ Katrín felt as if she could influence reality just by saying this. As if the universe was waiting for her to dictate his fate. ‘That must be where he is.’

‘Then why don’t we go there?’ The hope that filled Líf’s eyes was nearly enough to balance out the shadows from the candle and make her face look human again. ‘I could help you, and it would take us no time at all. Please.’

‘I can’t make it, Líf. We’d need to cross the stream and my foot is worse. I can’t make it over on one foot, and it would be risky for you to carry me piggyback. What if you slipped and we fell into the icy water? We’d freeze to death before we made it back inside. You could go alone, of course, but I’m not sure you have the nerves for it. Am I wrong?’ Katrín held her breath for fear that Líf would suddenly offer to go. It would probably mean the end for both of them if they parted.

‘He won’t be there either.’ Líf’s tone was once more full of surrender; the spark of hope that had been audible when she still clung to the illusion that if they got out of this house, things would be all right had been extinguished just as quickly as it had ignited. She looked at Katrín. ‘But you should know one thing. It’s better to lose your husband because he died than because he left you for another woman.’

‘Stop it.’ Katrín felt a surge of desperate anger envelop her and she had the urge to slap Líf in the face. She didn’t want to hear her potential fate put into words, and certainly not from Líf, like this. It was unfair to compare her relationship with Garðar to the one that Líf and Einar had ripped to shreds between them. But then her anger vanished, and sorrow was waiting to take its place. Katrín knew that if she gave in to tears it would be difficult to stop them; she forced down a huge lump in her throat and cleared it. ‘We should talk about something else. Garðar will come back. You can be sure of that.’

Líf didn’t reply, and they said nothing until they’d got into the kitchen and lit a new candle. Their stock had been dwindling rapidly but the need for light overcame common sense, and just to be able to see reasonably well perked them up enough for them to eat something. Neither had any appetite, so they made do with taking whatever they found in the boxes and laying it out on the kitchen table. Putti was given a slice of liverwurst, in which at first he seemed to have no interest, but then started to eat slowly and steadily.

‘I hate milk biscuits.’ Still, Líf didn’t let that stop her from taking another bite of biscuit number two. ‘There’s no point in eating them somehow. They taste of nothing, they’re hard and dry, and you’d think they’d been made in a cement factory.’ She took a drink from the milk carton and frowned. The milk wasn’t off, but since she had no appetite it was difficult getting anything down.

Katrín smiled and hoped it was a good sign that they were able to talk about something besides their situation. Maybe soon she could suggest that they go out for some fresh air. They had to fetch firewood and Putti surely had to pee, though he wasn’t showing any signs of it. She didn’t feel she wanted to let him go out by himself, in case he ran off and never came back. In case the child got him as it had got Garðar. She swallowed a dry mouthful of the flatbread she’d been nibbling. ‘I hate flatbread.’ Neither of them smiled.