Steinunn Sigurdardottir - Place of the Heart

How is it you remember me? I asked, partly to tease him, because naturally I knew. He blushed — yes, blushed — and said: You stood out because you were so dark, and so precocious .

He checkmated me with his frankness. Then he added: You were also so polite.

I was inhibited.

It came out as decorum.

It was his turn: And how is it that you remember me?

It isn’t hard. The top dog.

In your opinion.

This fellow from the Sogmýri neighborhood, whose name I never knew, was a self-crowned prince. It was always clear at the swimming lessons that he was number one. He was the most handsome, the coolest, the most fun, and, so rumor said, he had the best grades as well. He always appeared to be dressed elegantly, but he was probably just wearing ordinary clothes that looked good on him. All the girls had crushes on him, which could cause big problems. One girl with a massive crush sometimes left chocolate-coconut treats in a brown paper bag on his front steps. He didn’t eat them. It was impossible to imagine that he did nothing to be so admired. He put on no airs and didn’t try to draw more attention to himself than the others. I didn’t know his name, since I never asked and was never interested in knowing, and was one of few who didn’t have a crush on him. I was so ashamed of every last inch of myself that I couldn’t have had a crush on anyone.

He was exactly as I remembered him from the swimming lesson at the sinister fortress of Austurbæjar School in the old days, open and forthright and free from self-aggrandizement. The methods that he uses to force his way into others’ consciousnesses are of such a nature that the others are caught completely unawares. He wrinkles his forehead, especially when he speaks — creating three deep lines crossing lengthwise — and he addresses you with a certain intensity, although he doesn’t come too close and doesn’t intimidate you with a straight-on stare. His eyes have a greenish luster, and there’s a sheen to his darkish hair and skin as well.

After the adventure at the Hagkaup store and the forehead kiss, I christened him THE FOGGY BOY in a poem of the same name, which I tore to pieces as soon as it was finished, sticking the tatters into an empty milk carton and making a special trip to the trash bin with it.

Did you see his russet shoes? Holy crap, the man’s got style, said Heiður as we put on lipstick in the bathroom.

They’re red as wine. Are you color-blind?

He’s awfully cool.

You don’t say, I said.

Where do you suppose he got that jacket?

Isn’t he wearing a sweater?

Is he married? It looks like he’s wearing a ring.

I hope so.

Instead of going back to the bar as I’d planned, I snuck down one flight of stairs, then took the elevator and briskly walked home to Bollagata in the evening sun that painted the mountains purple. Along the way I regretted the fact that I hadn’t taken more than two or three sips of my drink. I also felt bad that Heiður might be searching frantically for me all over Hotel Esja.

Edda was hunkered down on a kitchen stool, eating a shortbread cookie. She gave me a fugitive, hateful glance as if I were an executioner who had tortured her for years with highly advanced techniques, and not the mother who’d scratched her back before she fell asleep, warmed her toes beneath the quilt, and knitted stacks of sweaters and yards of scarves with multicolored patterns. Her mother, who read her Orla Frogsnapper , told the story of the Wild Children from Dock Wood and stories of Andey from when Grandma Sól was a child and a French ship’s doctor cut out her appendix so that she wouldn’t die, sang “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” and called her my little girl.

I knew beforehand that it was no use to try to talk to her, yet I asked all the same if she’d been out. Keep your nose out of what’s none of your business, she said, rolling her eyes. I looked away and down at the shiny kitchen floor and Edda’s bare toes, brown like raisins.

Wouldn’t you like to take a bath, Edda? I said, taking care not to be gruff, but she sprang to her feet like a wild animal and abruptly struck my upper arm with the back of her hand.

Think about scraping off your own shit, you fucking mare.

I did nothing, just stared at the child, straight into her wild eyes. She kicked me in the shin. I stood still and we stared hard at each other. After a few moments I went into my bedroom and locked the door, sat down on the bed, and tried to cry, but my eyes were too dry. I started thinking of the swimming-lesson man with the wine-red shoes.

There are three clouds high in the sky where none were before, two round ones over the sea, and a third a vertical stripe hanging negligently over Sólheimajökull Glacier, shining bright, just like the time when Dad said: The new-fallen snow makes it glisten so.

It snows endlessly on glaciers without us knowing, while it’s summer in town or late summer, and no one thinks of snow except for folks who dread winter. Now it has snowed behind the glacier, even though it’s still summer on our side and August hasn’t passed.

Snow falling softly on a glacier

in my heart a hailstorm.

Big mellow snowflakes my foreign heart would have

far more than cruel hail.

We head south, to the southernmost hayfields in the country. In these parts is the farm that Dad said had the most beautiful name in Iceland: LOFTSALIR — SKY HALLS. The fields here are the first to turn green in the spring, and I remember their color as I beheld it from the other side, from my sea voyages to the east. Hayfields lying near the sea are a different green from those farther inland. Here they contrast with the dark volcanic rock of Dyrhólaey and the beach of polished black pebbles that diminish in size the closer they are to the water’s edge. Sibbi and I went there once with Dad, on our way to see Erika and my uncle Beggi in Vík. It was absolutely special to walk on the clattering pebbles that the sea had fulled, giving the beach the feel of cloth. We looked down at the pebbles, ignoring sea and sky, and filled our pockets with them. The smallest variety went into one pocket, bigger pebbles into the other. Harpa Eir, ever-sorting, ever-arranging, looking forward to creating something out of this haul, threading pebbles together with silver wire and painting them with a slender paintbrush.

Look at the rainbows.

At first I think my ears are playing tricks on me. It couldn’t be Edda speaking, this time in the sweet voice of an innocent girl who’s never known anything bad about the world, let alone taken part in anything you might call bad.

It’s a double rainbow, at the southernmost spot in Iceland. The bows are of blossoming colors that have their roots in a tepid field and grow on wings of pure air. We blaze south beneath the bows, out toward the sea, where I always wanted to go sailing.

What makes a double rainbow? asks Edda.

I can’t even say what makes a single one. It has something to do with electricity in the clouds, but I think that a double rainbow is a sign of good luck.

Wasn’t it also a sign of good luck this morning when I found the creature from the French pervert? You’re terribly superstitious, Mom.

Not really.

Yes, you’re all wrapped up in superstitions. You’d have probably been burned at the stake in the old days.

Yes, if I’d lived back then.

Don’t you think we can live over and over, as some people say?

I’m not sure. At least I don’t think it pays to put faith in the idea.

But it could happen, of course.

I don’t think we can count on a next life. I think we have to live here and now as best we can and not expect any do-overs in the next life. If there should be one.

Some people remember all kinds of things from their previous lives, Edda says.