Auður Ólafsdóttir - Butterflies in November

There is actually no need to drive around the whole country, half a circle is more than plenty.

“Three men,” says the boy.

“Three men what?”

“Around the table.”

He points at a drawing he is completing. In the middle of the table there is a woman who clearly has green eyes and short dark hair.

“My hair has grown,” I laugh, I’ve changed. Now I look at the world through long bangs.

Santa Claus turns up at midday, dressed in civvies. The dog has been found, unhurt but a nervous wreck. He is carrying an accordion that he asks me to take to the city to be repaired. He’ll pick it up fairly soon, he says. I tell him of my plans to travel abroad.

“I don’t know for how long,” I say.

“I don’t want to lose you,” he says. “I certainly don’t.”

“I’ll be a bit busy to begin with, then I’ll certainly be in touch and look you up.”

There’s no hurry, plenty of time ahead and vast expanses of sand. Then I add, clearly feeling my heart beat as I say it:

“I need to go on my own first, then we can go somewhere together, if we still want to.”

As we drive down the side road, I see the whale has been cut open and that her calf is lying there in the car park beside her, all in one piece, two metres long and black just like its mother.

Before setting off, I ask the kid at the petrol station to take a picture of us and, as he carefully hands the camera back to me, he says:

“Did you know that the heartbeat of a whale can be heard from a distance of five kilometres?”

I say I didn’t know that.

“Then you probably also didn’t know that a whale’s heartbeat can disrupt a submarine’s communications and prevent a war?”

The turn behind the blind hill comes as a surprise. I’m not driving very fast, but still almost swerve off the road. The car runs on loose gravel and the bay opens up ahead, a long stretch of black, sandy shoreline strewn with seals. The sand is covered with their warm, glistening bodies, flipper rubbing against flipper. They move sluggishly, dozens at a time, as if they had overgrown the straitjackets of their own skin. I pull the handbrake on the side of the road and we get out.

The boy wants to take his shoes off and find a wish stone, whereas I wouldn’t mind hugging one of those seals and stroking its earless head.

There is plenty to choose from on the beach, thousands of stones to test one’s wishes on, every one you touch, one after another. We sit down. I arrange my stones in a small circle; Tumi assembles his in a small, vertical mound, one on top of the other, making a cairn, erecting a monument.

I have almost completed my circle and dash over to the car one moment to grab my camera. When I come back I see that he has pulled everything off: his hoodie, trousers, leggings, T-shirt and underpants. Stark naked in his snow-white skin, he abandons his clothes in a small bundle in the middle of the sand and charges towards the seals on the black shoreline, heading straight for the surf and sea. He is so white that his torso is almost phosphorescent and fuses with the white of the ocean and the heavens above. His approach triggers a clumsy stampede of seals into the water. I run after him in my bare feet, feeling the sharp shells and cold seaweed under my soles, sludge squishing between my toes and salty water reaching my ankles. I catch up with him in a pool of floating algae, throw my sweater around him and lift his cold little body onto my shoulders. There is black sand between his toes. He strokes my earlobes. I glance swiftly at the ocean before running back again.

“Lots of sea,” says the boy in a clear voice.

14:14, says my watch.

West , says the compass in the car.

He is dressed again and sits silently in the back seat, his chin buried in his overalls and the tip of his balaclava barely reaching the window. I fasten his belt.

After slipping an Astor Piazzolla bandoneon disc into the player, I turn on the heater full blast. Then I hand Tumi a sandwich and chocolate milk over my shoulder and pierce the hole with a straw for him. In return he stretches out his clenched hand with a bleeding smile. I unclasp his small fingers, one by one, and finally see his little front milk tooth in the palm of his hand.

COOKING RECIPES AND ONE KNITTING RECIPE

A WORD OF CAUTION

The following are forty-seven recipes or descriptions of dishes/beverages and one knitting recipe that are connected to the narrative of Butterflies in November . The recipes more or less follow the same order in which they appear in the book. Some of them may make excellent meals, but it should be noted, however, that certain of these dishes may work better on the page than on a plate. Readers are warned that these recipes are, to some extent, fictitious and there is therefore always the risk that they may not be accurate down to the last gram or millilitre. The story also includes references to food that did not go down particularly well with the characters or to dishes that simply failed. No words can be categorical enough to exclude any possibility of misinterpretation and it is therefore up to the reader to find his or her own way. In this context, it is barely worth mentioning that the stuffing of the goose was made up of more than just the words on the page. Similarly, some of the descriptions of the dishes may be too elusive to be interpreted with absolute precision or for any usable recipe to be drawn from them. An example of this is “Not another of those spicy city recipes with beans” (Chapter Thirty-five).

Most of the recipes are conceived for one woman and a child.

The dishes are normally easy to make, and intended to enable the woman to spend as much time as possible with the child. The child can also lend a hand in the cooking. The portions are more often than not designed to leave ample leftovers. In the event of any doubts regarding the recipes or questions on these dishes, the reader is welcome to contact the narrator. It should be pointed out, however, that the narrator is not always responsible for the recipe herself. Examples of this include the snow buntings grilled by foreigners in the highlands and whale steaks. There are many more recipes to be found in the story than those listed here and the narrator will be happy to provide them upon request (e.g. lemon chicken with olives).

It is impossible to determine the exact source of these recipes; some may even have come straight out of the narrator’s neighbour’s cook book.

Two of the recipes are designed for funeral receptions, others are conceived for a man and a woman. When a woman cooks for a man or a man for a woman, they generally put more effort into it. In these cases the recipes are also more elaborate. The amount of leftovers will be determined by the state of development of their relationship. FRIED FISH IN BREADCRUMBS AND ONIONS

Fried haddock in breadcrumbs and onions is a classic Monday dish. However, fish is often fresher in shops on a Tuesday. Naturally, there are a number of alternatives to the traditional halibut and a welcome variation can be pan-fried catfish or brown trout. Catfish is related to wolf-fish but is a darker, savoury fish that reminds some of monkfish. Catfish never fails to catch the eye as it lies on display on the fishmonger’s iced steel tray. As most people know, it has beautiful leopard skin which has been used in, among other things, the design of handbags and skirts. Instead of the famous Paxo Golden Crumb pack, you can use home-made breadcrumbs, which are thicker and give the fish a crispier crust. That is because the fish itself does not touch the pan and the fat goes into the breadcrumbs. Fry the onion in a dab of butter in the pan and a splash of olive oil. Remove the onion from the pan when it turns golden brown. Fry both sides of the wolf-fish fillet for a few minutes. The fish should be fried over high heat in a mixture of olive oil and butter until it acquires the colour of a sunny golden shore. Season. Serve with white or barley rice and fresh green salad with tomatoes and cucumber. Make a dressing for the salad with honey, Dijon mustard and olive oil. It is good to mix brown and white rice. Brown rice is a lot slower to cook than normal rice, however, and normally needs to boil for an hour. THICK WILD GAME SAUCE (WITH GOOSE)