Auður Ólafsdóttir - Butterflies in November

“Yeah, well I just wanted to reiterate what I said to you earlier, welcome to the building as a fixed resident. It’s always nice to know there’s a woman up the stairs.”

Ten minutes later he is standing in the doorway again, this time with a recipe book under his arm. I give him two eggs from my shopping bag and milk.

On his third and final trip he appears with pancakes and a sugar bowl. I put my papers down to accept the rolled pancakes. He is not going to invite himself in, however, because he is wearing a parka and on his way to the video store to return a DVD which he pulls out of his pocket to show me.

“Can’t say I liked it much,” he says, holding up No Man’s Land .

The film rings a bell, all about a war without winners.

“You just didn’t know who to root for, there were no good guys or bad guys. You couldn’t even tell who the main actor was,” he says, pointing at a list of names on the case by way of proof.

Then he sticks the DVD back into his pocket and cracks his knuckles.

“Right then, better get this film back.” When I’m on my own I normally just make traditional Icelandic pancakes with rice pudding leftovers.

My current abode is thirty-six square metres and has two walls of a yellow that is not dissimilar to the yellow of I can’t remember which South American flag. The other two walls are violet. I didn’t change the colours when I originally moved in. The window in the bigger room, where there is a kitchen and my computer and desk, faces the harbour, while in the other room there is a sofa bed, table, mirror and a sixteen-inch black and white Blaupunkt TV that once belonged to Mum. I kind of like it here.

He phones three or four times, until I finally answer. He tells me he has recovered from the skating incident and has started cooking, roast beef with potato salad, opened a bottle and set the table for two. I tell him that I’m recovering and need more time on my own to figure out where I’m at in my life, explaining that I’ll be quite busy over the next few days and, actually, right up until I leave for an indeterminate time, since there are a number of projects I need to wind up first. I don’t tell him that I’m thinking of changing my travel plans. It is then that he asks if he can bring me over some of the food.

After hanging up, I turn back to more serious matters and stretch out for the TV schedule.

Kathleen is pursued by a man. She reverses the roles and starts to follow him. This leads to an accident, which results in him following her again. Meanwhile, she gets into a quarrel with her ex-husband.

I turn the TV off and pull out the sofa bed.

One of the fundamental elements in any woman’s life is sleep. I haven’t washed the bedclothes; if I sink my nose into them I can still pick up the scent of my old home, the conjugal bed. I don’t allow myself to get nostalgic about a piece of furniture and change the duvet cover. Then I shake the pillow and slide it under my cheek. I’ve got eight hours of freedom in front of me and a pile of translation work in my direct line of vision.

My first night of sleep here is good, considering the lack of blinds and the flickering light of the lamp-post outside. There is nothing familiar about the sounds that travel through the open window. Nothing but the intimate smell of my office.

Some people are chatting three floors below and seem so close that they could be whispering in my ear. One of them is a man, but I can’t quite decide whether the other is male or female. The voices hover in the air.

“Like I said, he’s probably scared.”

“Are you sure you won’t come in for tea?”

“No way, thanks.”

“I have some Christmas cake to go with it.”

I furtively peep out of the window, maybe leaning out too far, balancing like a gymnast on a beam, but see nothing. I can’t sleep, so I fetch a nineteenth-century novel, a family drama that spans the lives of three generations and stretches all the way south to the Pyrenees. I finish the first half at half three and wander into the other room to make some tea and toast. I’ll buy Christmas cake in the bakery in the morning.

When I finally doze off, I have one of those totally meaningless dreams, in which I’m speaking Gaelic and muttering good morning out of the corner of my mouth to a neighbour on the landing of the stairs. Then I’m suddenly holding an empty glass bottle of Coke I want to sell, but I’m stuck out in some marshland in the middle of nowhere.

I’m suddenly wide awake again, as the first batch of buns come out of the ovens of the bakery below.

Auður is on the phone.

In celebration of the news that genetic research has now demonstrated that woman played a larger role in the development of humanity than man, she wants to come over and cook me lunch tomorrow. To consecrate the stove in my studio apartment, she is going to bring some holy water from the baptismal bowl in the church she plays the organ in and sprinkle my home. This is also because, she says, people are always inviting freshly divorced men around to dinner, pampering them and volunteering to scrub their floors for them. Men have such a vast support network behind them: mothers, sisters, friends, friends’ wives, ex-wives, the friends of ex-wives, ex-mothers-in-law, sisters of former mothers-in-law. They’re told not to think twice about bringing over their dirty laundry, which can be chucked into one or two machines while they’re enjoying their meals. What’s more, their children get to stay over if their dads are having a night out on the town with their buddies. Auður tends to talk a lot, with each clause crammed with multiple digressions and interjections, but apart from that, she’s great.

It has started to rain, making the ice treacherously slippery outside, and I rush out before my friend arrives to buy some coffee and Christmas cake. I decide to buy some rock salt to sprinkle over the icy steps, at least for the benefit of the postman with the red hairband, who rings the bell when documents are too big to squeeze through the mailslot in the door and likes to chat about his favourite hobby, pole-vaulting.

As I’m walking up the path with the bag in my arms I see my lovely musical friend is sitting somehow to the side of one of my unswept and unsalted steps, clutching one leg. She has fallen on a patch of ice and her left leg looks unnaturally twisted under her. She nevertheless waves at me with a strained smile. Crouching beside her, my first thought is to fulfil my civic duty and take out the rock salt in my bag to sprinkle it all around her, to mark her territory. Like those chalk lines they draw around corpses in that Scottish crime series I now officially subtitle, I trace a white outline around the six-month-pregnant woman on the path in front of my temporary new home.

“It’s just a ligament,” she says as we peer at the abnormally big swelling on her left ankle.

I’m filled with a deep sense of guilt and, for some peculiar reason, think of last night’s dream. I hear myself telling her that it will be OK and ask her if she can walk. She can’t touch the ground with her foot. I try to help her up, but she collapses again with a smothered groan, so I rush inside to call an ambulance.

They’ve already loaded her onto a stretcher in a woollen blanket, and fastened the straps around her big round tummy, which has suddenly inflated to the size of a huge balloon under the cover, when she turns her head towards a brown paper bag on the steps:

“Sorry, I just brought some takeaways,” she says. I promise to cook next. A shot of pain crosses her face as they carry the stretcher away. I follow her to the ambulance and she squeezes my hand as we say goodbye.