Auður Ólafsdóttir - Butterflies in November

When I finally come to the end of the track leading to the neighbouring farm, for a moment it seems like we might be welcomed with open arms. The man walks slowly towards us from the yard, followed by his wife. Peering through the web of the cracked windscreen, I see that he has a yellow towel draped over his shoulder and a kitchen stool in his hand. He gives me no sign of acknowledgement, however, having probably just seen me come from a meeting with his wretched brother, which obviously does not bode well. They’re more or less my age and could be cousins — same physique and hairstyle, a similar gait, both leaning heavily on their left feet. The man sits on the stool and, now that I’m out of the car, I see that the woman is holding a black electric razor in her hand. She starts shaving the back of her husband’s neck under the porch in front of the front door.

“It’s just to avoid any of the hair going on the carpet or sofa inside,” she explains. “It’s bad enough with chips and the dogs.”

The dog is going berserk and circles the car, barking up towards the window behind which the dead sheep lies, and makes several attempts to knock me over and scratch the paintwork off the car — not that it matters at this point — and finally jumps onto the hood, where he stands slavering on my neck.

“You’ve run over my favourite sheep,” says the woman. “We had to call a midwife when she came into the world and then a vet. She had a caesarean birth.” They examine the glazed-eyed animal after its shaky journey down two back roads to the farms of the two brothers, who live in this place where kinship is fatal and people haven’t spoken to each other for seven years, although little cousins sometimes secretly play together through the gaps under the barbed-wire fences.

“Do you want to pay by credit card or cash?”

It transpires that the animal was four years old, was called Lind, had a truncated right ear and split-tipped left ear, always gave birth to two lambs, full weight: 40.7 kilos, twice the winner of a silver medal at livestock shows. She turns out to be more expensive than she would have cost me in a store, all carved up, spiced and marinated in cognac and vacuum-packed.

“Milk,” says the boy, who has climbed out of the car and is standing right against me. I summon up the courage to ask if the boy can have a glass of milk. It’s impossible to buy fresh milk in the petrol stations along the Ring Road.

“It’s my husband’s birthday in a week’s time, a big birthday, so we were planning on slaughtering one anyway, I’ll try to make some stew out of it,” says the wife wearily, “we’re expecting sixty guests.”

“Not another of those spicy city recipes with beans,” says the husband.

“We should be used to it,” says the woman, “those animals are always getting run over, last time it was a pedigree horse that the priest reversed into. The irony was that he’d come to the wrong farm, no one had committed suicide here.”

“Not yet,” interjects the husband.

“We ate leftovers every single day for three weeks.”

She leans over to whisper something into my ear:

“Add cayenne pepper and no one can tell where the meat comes from, whether it was an accident or clandestine slaughtering at the farm, any trace of their breed or origin vanishes in a second,” says the wife. Then, striking a lighter and a more sisterly tone, she chummily adds that they sell quite a few run-over animals to the Sand Hotel.

I wonder whether I should pass her the Irish goose recipe, which only requires it to be cooked with the stuffing for all signs of the crime to be erased.

“Go take a look at his paintings,” says the woman suddenly, before lowering her voice to add: “if you buy a picture from him, I’ll give you a good discount on the sheep. No one knows where his talent comes from, he’s only just started, let’s hope it’s passed on to the children.”

I follow the farmer up to an attic where he’s created a studio for himself in the bedroom of his departed parents-in-law.

“It just started out of the blue, one day after dinner,” he says, “it was as if I was being guided from the other side.”

All the animals are in profile, like Roman emperors on those coins of yore. Most of the backgrounds are amber skies and sunsets. The prices on the paintings are quite low.

“ Hawaiian tropical sunset is the heading an art historian used in a small article in the local paper,” he says. “He was travelling around the country and devoted a quarter of a column to this quarter of the country.”

The farmer hands me the cutting. The boy calmly looks at the paintings and the man alternately.

“Do you want a portrait of your sheep or just any one?”

I pay 3,500 krónur for the picture and he throws in an extra two kilos of potatoes, freshly picked in November. Auður will appreciate the pure tones of this picture.

“If the weather continues like this, we’ll be able to grow crops all year round. Unless I start to paint all year round instead.”

Blind kittens tumble over each other in the hallway by the shoes as I settle the payment for the sheep and the portrait of the sheep. The girl of the house invites the boy to play with the kittens; they’re going to be drowned soon. The boy crouches over them by the pile of shoes and I fear they might be giving us another extra gift.

Once the transaction has been completed, the atmosphere lightens and the conversation turns to the weather. They mainly talk to each other.

“Yes, that’s a lot of rain,” says the woman.

“Yeah, very mild,” says the husband.

“Nothing’s the way it should be in the sky any more,” says the woman, “it’s all gone odd.”

“It’s a sign that the poles will be reversing soon.”

“We’ve almost reached the winter solstice and potatoes are still sprouting in the fields and we haven’t picked all the summer carrots yet.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t ever remember there being weather like this at the end of November. We had the highest temperature in Europe here yesterday, even warmer than Rome.”

“Yeah, imagine, just under the Arctic Circle. The potato plants are still sprouting and a lamb was born here two days ago.”

“That journalist Ómar Ragnarsson flew over here in his plane today and is going to be doing a report on it in the news.”

“Yeah, weird.”

“Yeah, you can only be grateful for every day.”

“Yeah.”

“It must be coming to an end now.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, probably with an eruption.”

“Or a flood,” I finally interject to join in the couple’s conversation.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the rivers seem to have swollen up quite a bit, the water is up to the roadway of the bridges, the roads are wet, the glaciers have turned grey with the rain, not to mention the overflowing lagoons.”

They look at me with suspicion.

As a farewell gesture, I apologetically pat the animal lying in the yard. The man tells me about a garage nearby where it will take them half a day to order a new windscreen.

“They’re always ordering new ones for the machines they’re using up on the dam.”

As soon as I’m back in the car and have closed the gate behind us, a small little ball of striped hair appears from under the collar of the boy’s hoodie. He looks at me through his glasses with moist, pleading eyes. In fact, four pleading eyes are now staring at me from the back seat. I give him an encouraging, understanding, approving smile, turn on the windscreen wipers and heater, and swerve back onto the highway. I’m back on track.

The best thing about this island’s road grid is the Ring Road; there’s nothing there to distract you, the back roads are only used to fetch milk and return any sheep one might have run over to the nearest farm. You can stop almost anywhere and pick up the thread again, without having to look at a map. It makes life so much easier not to have to dread new choices at every crossroad.