Auður Ólafsdóttir - Butterflies in November

“I’ve collected some clippings for you.”

“Mom, I’m still in Iceland, they get all the papers here too, you know.”

“You don’t read them.”

“They speak Icelandic here, if it weren’t for the flooding I could be at your place for coffee this evening.”

“I’ve given up coffee; I’ve made some changes in my life.”

“Anyway, I’ve got plenty to read and do with Tumi. He’s learning how to dance and embroider.”

“Is that what you’re teaching that fatherless boy? To dance and embroider? I’ve no recollection of ever seeing you embroider, neither as a child nor an adult.”

“It’s just simple cross-stitching. I let him try whatever he feels like. We bought a pattern with the picture of a horse; he wanted to embroider a blind horse.”

“A blind horse?

“Yes, we altered the pattern slightly and closed the horse’s eyes with the same colour as the crest, we’ve only changed it by four stitches altogether.”

I don’t tell her that he also swaps the colours, that he’s made its tail bright red and used the green yarn that was supposed to be applied to the grass on the mane, and that he then wanders with the yarn between different parts of the horse’s body, jumping from the unfinished head to the withers to do some stitching there and then skips to its flanks, which he chooses to stitch in sun-yellow.

“We’re mainly learning ballroom dancing and free style.”

“Don’t you need some food?”

“They have shops here just like anywhere else on the island, we get plenty.”

There is a long silence at the other end of the line. Tumi is getting restless in the play corner of the post office, having assembled the twelve remaining building cubes in every possible combination and being eager to move on to the promised visit to the bakery next door, where there are round tables and chairs and they serve hot bagels with cream cheese and cocoa.

“Anyway, Mom, I’ll talk to you again soon. Tumi is waving at you as we speak, we’re at the post office, I’m at a payphone.”

There’s a silence at the other end of the line. Finally, she speaks again:

“I heard from Thorsteinn yesterday, he was pretty down and didn’t look too good. He’s not a happy man.”

“I thought you said you’d heard from him, not that you’d seen him.”

“Well, he just popped by. We’re worried about you, you just vanished.”

“I’ve stopped thinking about Thorsteinn; right now I’m just thinking about me and Tumi.”

“He’s stuck in a predicament he has no say in. That woman seems to have him under her thumb.”

The boy wants to learn how to knit to be able to make socks for his unborn sisters. I’ve found a woman who can teach him garter stitching. She lives in the house next door to my sign language teacher’s, is eighty-six years old and every month delivers a hand-knit Icelandic woollen sweater with a reindeer pattern to the co-op. But I still feel I need to get Auður’s approval before buying the yarn and number three knitting needles. She thinks it’s the best plan she’s heard in a long time.

“I think he’s growing and getting taller,” I tell her, “the clothes I bought for him last month are getting too small; I think he’s stretched by about two centimetres.”

“New clothes often shrink in the wash. And what about you,” she asks, “have you met some fun people? Have you revived any old memories, done any long-line fishing on the pier?”

“I’m not sure I want to be taken care of,” I say.

“What do you mean taken care of?”

“The men here are so considerate; they want to fuss over me.”

The boy chooses a yellow ball of wool and a green one. So that the babies won’t be confused with each other when they lie side by side on the bed, he explains to me in sign language.

The old woman receives us in a spotted dralon apron and hunched back. She’s quite a lady, her neighbour tells me, a well of knowledge on premonitions and guiding spirits. We walk into a roasting living room; all the radiators have clearly been turned up to the hilt and the windows are closed. There are four woollen rugs on the floor. On the dining table there is a pile of thick-buttered skonsur pancakes with pâté and a plate of cookies. She’s done her Christmas baking, and I recognize some of Granny’s specialties: spesíur cookies, half-moons, vanilla rings, Jewish pastries and raisin buns. There are also marble cakes and twisted kleinur doughnuts, as well as bottles of soft malt and orange. Our contribution is a large box of chocolates with a picture of the Dettifoss waterfall on the lid. She takes it and says there was no need, before swiftly slipping it into a cupboard. I seem to catch a glimpse of other Dettifoss waterfalls beside the neatly folded bedclothes.

The boy knows how to behave and immediately sits at the laid table, after greeting the old lady, and spreads the napkin on his lap. The woman sits opposite him with the knitting needles and a ball of light green wool. They’re both wearing hearing aids and glasses. It transpires that she’s recently had a hip replacement, feels totally reborn, and has enrolled for a country line-dancing course. She asks me if we’re cold and if we can feel the draught; she’s had problems with her heating, apparently. By the time I leave them to go into the next house for my sign language class, Tumi is placing his third slice of cake on his plate and has downed half a bottle of malt, while the old lady has already knitted the first row of a light green sock.

The neighbour’s quilt smells of mild laundry detergent; I think he’s only been able to sleep there once since the bedclothes were last changed.

A balloon flies into the air, as a child releases the piercing shriek of a throttled pig. I think those are rabbit ears I see gliding over the highlands.

“The Winter Festival is held during Advent, and we organize all kinds of happenings and events around it that are designed to encourage those who have left to return,” explains a woman as she wraps cotton candy around a stick for the boy.

A giant crane that has been set up to deepen and enlarge the harbour is going to be used for bungee-jumping. It’s ten degrees and drizzly, which doesn’t stop the girls from wearing open high-heeled shoes, heavy make-up and their best clothes. They move in invincible groups of six or seven, giggling wildly. The neon lights of the classroom have been covered with crepe paper and the blackboard has been adorned with a multi-coloured chalk drawing of Mary, Joseph, a cow and several sheep with short tails, but no sign of Jesus. Tumi wants to play an angel, like the girls, and to pluck a cardboard harp. Baked ginger cookie fingers lie waiting on paper plates on the table. The local dentist will be livening up the ball on his synthesizer this evening.

The guests of honour of the festival will have to travel here by sea or air. The ministers for industry and the environment were both supposed to be coming to visit the freezing-plant and examine the new candling table that is being used for spotting ringworm, and take a day trip up to the lagoon, where there are plans to store amphibious boats in the future. But the Minister for Industry has a nasty bout of flu and the Minister for the Environment never takes domestic flights — too much turbulence in the air, according to the local paper, too much claustrophobia. According to other sources, though, he’s on holiday in the Canary Islands, and it is precisely these contradictory alibis that awakened the locals’ suspicions. The leading parliamentary representative of the constituency has agreed to come in his place, however. After all, his grandmother originally came from this region, a detail that has won him some precious votes and a seat in parliament.