Auður Ólafsdóttir - Butterflies in November

The man looks both familiar and alien to me, as he stands there with his hands buried deep in his anorak pockets. My memory of him is somehow different. Older or younger? Did he maybe have a beard? That’s the first thing that strikes me, his beardlessness, it sharpens his facial features. Wasn’t he taller than that? He seems to be of average height, standing there by the doorway. Could be the shoes I guess. Not only are they unfamiliar to me, but they’re worn out and part of some new sphere of experience. Even the colour of his eyes surprises me; I could have sworn the eyes of my ex-husband were brown, but now they seem to be grey. He hands me a cardboard box and pecks me on the cheek.

“Your mom sends her love; that needs to go into the fridge.”

The box contains salmon, halibut, scallops and prawns, as well as fried fish balls. At the bottom of the box there’s a wrapped parcel with a blue ribbon for the boy. Through the window I can see the freezing-plant this fish probably all comes from.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

The boy stands by my side in the doorway, holding my hand.

“There’s a button missing.”

Tumi points at a loose thread sticking out of the man’s anorak. Thorsteinn is normally very meticulous about these things. I interpret.

“Biscuit,” says my boy in his resonant, metallic voice, pointing and sniffing at a protrusion from the man’s pocket.

“Can I have a biscuit?” I interpret, and by way of confirmation the boy stretches out his hand with a pleading look.

My ex looks embarrassed and the sparkle in his eyes instantly fades as his gaze moves away from my neck. He pulls half a glistening and crumpled packet of chocolate biscuits out of his anorak pocket. The boy smiles.

It is then that I realize, as if I’d found the missing piece to an old jigsaw, that he has the same taste as a cream biscuit, his skin, his entire being has the exact same taste as the vanilla cream inside those biscuits.

“Doesn’t he play outside with his friends? Can’t you get someone to mind him?”

He continues to empty his pockets as he talks, like a condemned man, guiltily placing all his belongings on the table, or a visitor standing in front of a prison warden, before going in to see an inmate. The boy clutches the packet of biscuits with both hands, trembling with excitement. Finally, my ex pulls out a picture of his daughter to show me. She is small and dark with a red face, like all babies. He pulls off some layers of clothing: his anorak, shoes, sweater and then even his socks — I wonder if he’s going to go to bed.

Once he is seated, he tells me she’s jealous of me and asks if I’m also jealous of her. I say no. He wants to know why not, am I not fond of him any more? I say to a certain extent, but that he’s starting to turn into a stranger, that I no longer see him behind me, like a mirage in the corner of my eye in the mirror, when I brush my teeth, that he no longer pops up in my mind when I’m thinking or reading, that he has started to fade, vanish, that I find it hard to picture him any more, that I’m starting to confuse him with other men, that other men are starting to supplant him. I tell him that I am, nevertheless, still relatively fond of him, at least fonder of him than I am of the local priest whom I haven’t met yet or the vet whom I have actually met. He takes out his nail clippers as I’m talking, and starts to clean his nails.

I allow him to digest the information and move away to heat up some cocoa. The boy follows and arranges the cookies on the plate for the guest.

“You’ve changed somehow,” he says when I return, “I can’t quite figure out what it is, your hair maybe, did you have it cut?”

“No, I’m growing it.”

Then he tells me his relationship isn’t working out the way it should:

“In the beginning she was open and willing to be guided.”

“Maybe you can teach your daughter something instead.”

“If things don’t work out between Nína Lind and me, which seems likely, could we give us another go?”

“I thought you didn’t love me any more.”

“Love or not love, you haven’t answered my question.”

“No, we can’t do that.”

At some stage you have to decide to stop, not necessarily because it’s totally over, but because one decides to put it aside. Then I also tell him that I’ve changed, that I’ve experienced so many things without him.

“In forty days?”

“No, over many years.”

He looks disappointed.

“We can still meet, though, and go out for dinners together?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Can’t we be friends then?”

“Isn’t that unnecessary, since we don’t have a child together?”

“Hang on, who was it that didn’t want children?”

“Me, I suppose.”

“God, you’ve changed.”

He slams the door behind him, but comes back fifteen minutes later and stands there brooding in the doorway with his hands buried in his pockets. He can’t fly back in the dark, he says, and he wants to know if he can stay the night. I tell him that he can, but that the space beside me is occupied.

“Couldn’t we push the kid over a bit when he’s asleep?”

“No, that’s out of the question.”

Tumi looks at me with a triumphant smile, as he puts on his elephant pyjamas.

When I re-emerge the following morning, I find him half out of his sleeping bag, with one arm dangling on the floor, a familiar but alien body. Saliva is dribbling out of the corner of his mouth onto his chin, the same chemical composition as the thousands of waves in the sea, I tell myself, and there’s an entire ocean between us. When he turns over, I catch a good glimpse of the scar on his back. If I run out of topics at the breakfast table, I can always ask him how he got it; but when the moment actually comes, I find I’m not interested enough in the answer.

A butterfly flutters over him, drawing irregular circles in the air. Then, suddenly losing its force, it falls to one side and tries to stumble to its feet again on his slippery chin. My ex tries to wave the itch away with his hairy arm. I observe the butterfly’s struggle and suddenly feel the irrepressible urge to save it while I still can. I try to scoop it off him with a sheet of paper, without waking the sleeper, but to no avail. Finally, I grab a jar on the table and press it, mouth down, against my ex’s cheek, perhaps a bit brusquely.

He springs up. There’s a red circle on his cheek.

“Did you just hit me?”

“I was saving a butterfly.”

“The last time you hit me your excuse was two flies in October. This time it’s a butterfly in December.”

“It’s vanished.”

“You’re not normal; you hit me every time we meet.”

He glances swiftly at the clock and has to go out onto the deck to make a private call. Like some marsupial creature, he staggers outside with the sleeping bag still wrapped around him; there’s better network coverage outside. I prepare breakfast, while he is recovering from the assault.

I can’t remember how he likes his eggs. Softly boiled, medium-boiled or hard-boiled apart from the innermost core of the yolk? Fried? How did it ever occur to me to offer a man such a complex breakfast? The boy stands beside me so that he can time the boiling of the egg with the divorce watch, which he’s wearing on his wrist with a new strap. My ex believes hen’s eggs require seven minutes. The boy toddles around the guest, occasionally glancing at the watch.

“Hang on, isn’t that the watch I gave you? Why is he wearing it?”

“Yes, he’s got the watch now.”

“Did you take off the golden bracelet with the inscription on it and replace it with a strap instead?”