Steinunn Sigurdardottir - Place of the Heart

We walk light as feathers from this cosmic store, framed by crossroads and the sky, with a Norwegian tankard and an Egyptian picture in our hands. A cream-yellow Bronco pulls quick as a flash into the parking area. An old model resembling a soapbox car, waxed beautifully and not a single dent to be seen. At the wheel is a rosy-cheeked bald man of around sixty, his face so smooth that it’s nearly taut. Next to him in the front seat is a finely dressed woman in her eighties. She steps out, nimble and straight-backed, with fresh waves in her blue hair, and goes straight into the shop, the man behind her in crackling new overalls.

A sheep’s bleat is heard, as unexpected as from the fog of the sea on my boat trips to the east. I look around and see a sheep sitting up in the backseat of the jeep.

I’d best put a belt around it, Mom, says the son, turning back.

Where do you think they’re heading? asks Heiður.

They’re taking the boy to mass.

From the high seat of the pickup truck, I have a good view of the farmer tussling with the sheep in the back. He tries to shove the creature into an older-style seat belt, a so-called lap belt.

I’m hungry, grunts Edda as soon as she’s back in the car. I want a Coke.

Can’t you wait? We’ll have our lunch soon.

Not too stingy to buy useless things, but too stingy to buy a Coke.

Do you want an apple?

She says nothing. I root up an apple from the bottom of a bag and hand it back to her. She frowns, yet takes this forbidden fruit and munches it loudly.

Farmers have rolled hay into white plastic bales that are spread out across the fields. At a row of leaning trees, leafless on the leeward side, a bay horse grazes peacefully this Sunday morning.

A sheep, her bottom clotted with dung, walks slowly along the wire fence with her two lambs. Her tidy-looking offspring attack her teats and jostle their mother so much that her gait is undulating, while the lambs’ stub-tails spin like tops. The sheep is impatient, doesn’t want to wait, hurries onward as her lambs get tangled underfoot.

That’s how you would have behaved if I’d been a lamb, Mom, I say. You didn’t want to have me at your breast. At just two weeks old I was on the bottle. You turned me into a stray from the beginning, and what’s more, I’m the scamp daughter of an unknown sluggard. Shame, shame, shame. It’s awful.

There was no milk in my breasts. Was I to blame? says Mom.

You didn’t want to breast-feed me. You were a lousy mother — that’s why there was no milk.

You definitely need to get yourself out of this blame game, my dear. You’re old enough now to understand that it’s no use blaming others for your mistakes. It doesn’t lead to anything. You can’t change a single movable thing in your life if you’re always barking up the same tree.

It’s new for Mom to resort to social-counseling tactics. It would be best if she got a dose of her own Change Your Tune, Inc.

I saw a documentary from Australia the other day, Mom. It showed the shell beach that you talked about sometimes. But you’ve probably never seen it for real. Wave after wave, nothing but light-colored little shells as far as the eye can see, rough at the edge of the sea in eternal sunshine. And not a soul to be seen anywhere.

That’s what’s nice about Australia, says Mom drily. There’s no one there.

Oh, right — there’s a terrible pile of people where you are? It’s no wonder, of course. All those pitiful people who’ve died ever since the dawn of history.

Naturally, we don’t live in the same luxury as in Australia, where you can drive around the wide expanses for days on end and meet nothing but marsupials and Aborigines until the most beautiful place on earth appears before your eyes in perfect simplicity.

But it isn’t possible to waltz around on Shell Beach without damaging it. You take one step and grind up hundreds of shells. I’m rather afraid that a shell beach is much more for looking at than walking on.

You could say that about the entire earth, says Mom.

Is that how you experience the earth when you’re free from it?

It doesn’t change the fact that I longed for such a beach. I saw so little, always bound to Iceland.

You’re not a prisoner anymore, Mom.

What do you know about that?

You don’t have anything resembling a shell beach where you are?

God forbid, Eisa.

Oh?

Here there’s nothing.

Maybe no one, either, I say, hoping to scare Mom away.

Mount Þríhyrningur has changed from a triangle to a wide-open tulip.

To what could Gunnar and Njál compare their mountain when they rode about the plain? They’d never seen tulips.

The sea is a pond and the Westmann Islands blue dream-blocks that a child puts out to float on the pond.

When are you going to Copenhagen? I ask Heiður.

In a week.

Are you nervous?

Yes.

But you’re so used to it.

I never really get used to performing. It always makes me nervous. It’s a complicated solo piece, for computer and flute. I don’t understand the composer’s intention. It’s unplayable, but not so bad otherwise.

Is this your sixth or seventh trip abroad this year?

Something like that.

Will you see Dietrich?

Yes, he was singing in Bergen earlier in the week, and he’s planning to take it easy at home in Stuttgart before he sings in Berlin and Venice. We can have two days in Venice, during the regatta.

Oh, don’t say that. I’ll turn green with envy.

I’m quite happy with my Ditti — I’ll admit it.

You’re so lucky to travel everywhere free as a bird and have people admire you.

It’s not just a pleasure; it’s also a damned hassle.

Yet you’re using the talents that God gave you.

Let’s hope so.

I won’t ever make much of mine, but maybe there were never enough to make anything out of.

You’ve been learning languages, Harpa, and reading all kinds of books.

Yes, but it’s of no use to me.

Yes, it is of use. You can be sure of it.

Heiður looks in the rearview mirror to check whether the monster is awake, before saying: Ever since Edda was little, and especially now with all of her nonsense, your hands have been full. No one who has a small child or a problem teenager is free to go anywhere.

There were a few years in between, I say. What did I do then?

You studied to become an assistant nurse.

Yes, don’t you think I aimed high?

People don’t always take a straight path to their goal.

If I’d only had a goal.

Your goal may still come into view. First sort out the girl, then get down to business.

It takes money to get down to business. Everything gets stuck. There’s no money.

What isn’t there can come. Who knows, maybe you can scrape some together starting this winter.

Of course it’s economical staying with relatives. Ingólfur and Margrét don’t want to take anything for having Edda, and Dýrfinna refuses to let me pay rent.

Will the health center pay you reasonably?

Better than in Reykjavík. There’s a living allowance. I might have a bit left over after the winter, even after I pay my bills. On the other hand, my savings, if there are any, won’t be enough to get me much more than some crappy rental.

The basement in Dad’s house on Hraunteigur Street will actually be available in the spring or fall, says Heiður. You could probably rent it for next to nothing, and you wouldn’t need to pay a deposit.

FROM BASEMENT TO BASEMENT. That’s what I’ll call my autobiography.

Hey, it’s not a basement as such. It isn’t belowground. It’s more ground-level.