Auður Ólafsdóttir - Butterflies in November

“You’ll never have any fun in this life, if you’re never willing to try something new,” an elderly man interjects.

“But you don’t necessarily always have fun, just because you’re trying something new,” chips in another woman.

“No, I’m not saying that one always has to be trying something new,” says the man.

“But it’s also true that you’ll never see anything new if you never go anywhere,” says the woman.

“Exactly, one has to go somewhere to see something new,” says the man.

“Yes, to meet new kindred spirits,” says the woman.

“Exactly.”

As I shift towards the massaging jet of the jacuzzi, I accidentally brush against the hairs of a man’s thighs. This earns me a stern look from one of the ladies; she’s not happy. I’m on the point of telling her that I didn’t do it on purpose.

There are clearly several specimens of the opposite sex in here. Not that I’m shopping for men. It’s not as if I were eyeing them, in search of potential candidates, as that woman’s censorious glare seemed to imply. It’s not as if I’m looking for anything special in this village. All I want is a break and a change. To take a long-overdue summer holiday in November.

The furthest I go is to loosely compare the men in my direct line of vision in the tub with my ex-husband, but only very roughly, glancing at their outlines. He’s starting to fade. I really have to concentrate to summon him up in my mind.

There must have been problems interpreting the sign in the locker room that says in five languages that all patrons are required to shower nude before entering the pool, because five explosive experts from the dam construction site have just appeared at the edge of the pool, stark naked. The lifeguard chases them vigorously with his whistle as they climb the ladder in a single file to the diving board. This brings the conversation in the tub to an abrupt halt, as all eyes turn to the men’s fronts and behinds.

“They need to have that sign in forty languages, since they’ve started work on that dam,” says a woman wearily. She’s no longer staring at me.

I close my eyes.

When I open them again, a new crowd has entered the tub.

Another man is sitting opposite me in the mist. I glance at him, unable to distinguish his face, and have to squint through my wet lock of hair for some time before I realize that it’s him again — the man from the landslide. The elf looks back at me with a teasing air, as if he’d been waiting for me to discover him and manifest my surprise. He seems a bit tense, though, slightly awkward, even a bit shy perhaps. I smile at him and shift, as a fresh jet of hot water spurts out from a pipe on the wall.

He returns the smile, but then starts talking to a woman who has been waiting for the opportunity to say something important to him. I close my eyes again and stretch back in the water, allowing my head to rest on the edge of the tub. I’m beginning to be able to picture myself living in this dark place, even if the mountain road is impassable and nothing seems to happen here.

The woman who was talking to him has stepped out of the tub, leaving only six of us behind.

“I was hoping you two would visit me,” he says finally. “I would have cooked something nice for us, I rarely feel like cooking just for myself.”

He has a peculiar round tattoo on his shoulder which looks a bit like a labyrinth, but could also be a spider’s web.

Apart from our conversation, a highlands silence has fallen on the tub, people have stopped exchanging recipes. He sidles up to me and we sit together, side by side. The others have shifted and withdrawn to the other side, as far as they can from us in this circular tub, and the four of them, two men and two women, sit there mutely, trying to remain as inconspicuous as they can, by veiling themselves in the mist and sinking into the water up to their chins. The steps are on our side of the tub and no one has the courage to draw attention to themselves by climbing out at such a delicate point in our conversation. He floods me with options:

“Anyway,” he continues, “I’d be willing to see you again. We could find things to do.”

Then, leaning forward, as if he were about to climb out of the tub, he stoops over me:

“My private tuition offer still stands,” he says, gently brushing against my shoulder.

He stands up and water pours off his body. The others quickly follow his example and exit after him, like a mass walkout at a trade union assembly. The water level drops considerably and I’m left there, sitting alone.

I suddenly catch a glimpse of a woman in the corner of my eye who seems familiar to me as she rises from the depths of the pool, swimming towards me.

It was on the same evening I’d taken the flower out of my hair, but kept my curly locks. It was Holy Thursday and all the shops were closed. I combed out my curly locks as best I could and tied my ponytail in a yellow band. I was wearing a new jacket and everything was new and strange in my head and I wanted to get away. But instead I went for a swim with my best female friend. My hair was much heavier than normal and stuck together. It was like carrying a new living organ on my back that I couldn’t free myself of. It must have been the hairspray or stuff that had been mixed into it out of so many bottles.

I hear the sound of someone diving close by and the ripples of water travelling all the way over to me. Someone swims below the surface to the bottom at the deep end of the pool. I suddenly feel a wave breaking against my thighs and a hand grabbing my leg and pulling me down. Then my other leg is tugged and I sink and feel the need to cough.

I shoot up and try to cough, but my friend is still holding my leg and tugs it away from the edge again, laughing. I try to break free and kick her, but she obviously feels it’s all part of the game and tightens her grip. I swallow more chlorinated water and feel it freely invading my lungs. My vision begins to blur; I’m losing the game, without ever having travelled abroad. My friend still doesn’t get it when I suddenly free myself and manage to grab onto the edge of the pool. I cough and cough, tears streaming down my cheeks, and try to spit the blood-tinted slime into the side gutter, but miss, and see how it spews out of me and floats straight towards my smiling friend.

When we got home she insisted on reading my fortune so I pulled a few cards out of the deck and placed them on the table. She reckoned I would be about thirty-three years old, but made no mention of a man or children. I was thirteen back then so it seemed like a reasonably ripe age, since I didn’t know that her granny had just spoken about the death of a thirty-three-year-old woman and my friend probably just wanted to sound like a credible fortune-teller.

The boy doesn’t want to play with other children or the ball I bought him. He prefers to stick close to me, and sit outside on the deck under the porch, watching me read or looking up the myths of ancient Greek gods. He also likes to lie on the floor by the fireplace, writing words and drawing pictures. One of them is of a little child holding the hands of two women, one of whom has a swollen tummy. After that he draws thirty pictures of Hercules in a row.

“So, you see, his macho-ness may not be buried as deep as you think,” I say to the music teacher and mother of this deaf child.

“Are you afraid of the other children? Are you afraid of what’s outside? I don’t ask him these questions; they’re not the sort of questions one asks a child.”

Sometimes the child sits totally still for long periods, as if he were somewhere far away. Or he rocks to and fro like an old man. But in between, he’s like just any other kid, always agitated, like the sea. He reminds me of one of those deadpan actors from the days of silent movies or a professional mime artist from the south, whose facial expressions can switch hundreds of times in the space of a few moments. His hands create images that I can understand, although not all of them yet.