Steinunn Sigurdardottir - Place of the Heart

Oh, hello zere, teer, she says in her accent, which is still very German after forty years in Iceland. She embraces me like the most loving mother.

How are you? I ask.

Ve feel vell, she says, pointing at the box. I vas jahst vinishing changing zis. New papeer und ink in ze recorter.

Erika motions us to sit on her bed, while she picks up a tin decorated with illustrations from paintings by the angel-master Stefan Lochner, her countryman. Under the lid covered with robust-looking angels are cookies, perfectly shaped, colored appropriately, glossy half-moons and plump meringues.

Did you bake these?

Cehrrtahnly. Ich have aczess to ze kitchen.

In Erika’s window, a statue of Christ hides among the flowers. Erika’s a strict Catholic. She was even on the verge of entering a convent before she came to visit a girlfriend of hers who’d married a farmer in Reynishverfi. Instead of becoming a nun, she married my uncle Þorbergur. She called him Beggi and always said he was “compleetlee vunderbar.” And now she spends her life looking after her and her late husband’s seismograph in a newfangled retirement home not far from the roots of a glacier. They had the apparatus in their own home for fifteen years, and understandably didn’t want to leave it behind when they moved to the rest home. Beggi tended it even after he became bedridden.

When he died, people came from Reykjavík to disconnect the seismograph, but Erika had already met with the home’s directors and it was formally agreed that the apparatus would remain there, that new generations of elderly residents would be allowed to adopt this fine device rather than put it in the hands of strangers who have no feeling for the earth’s movements.

I recall that Alexis Papas was so enthusiastic about this plan that he offered to donate money to make it possible to set up a network of seismographs in all the rest homes in the country, but geologists felt such a distribution to be too random, and the billionaire withdrew his offer in a huff.

How tas your vader veel?

Dad has really slowed down, but he’s in good shape mentally.

I can feel the tears start pushing their way from my soft brain, trying to break out into the world. I try rubbing my eyes so this can’t be seen, the so-called daughter devastated at being reminded that she’s abandoned her bereft father.

Are you und Etta plannink bote to be in ze Eastfjords zis vinter?

Yes, I’m having trouble with her. She’s going to be in Andey with Ingólfur, and I’ll stay with Dýrfinna.

Iz ahbsolutely right to leave ze gank. She maybe vill be goot. Und Tjurfinna und Ingólfur, zey ahre one of a kind.

Yes, I’m hoping it’ll work out, my dear Erika. We’ve got to try something.

Iz hohrrible in Iceland vat young people end up in zo much. Zere ist no reahl upbringing here, ahnless ze kid ist goot himself.

This isn’t the first time I think it’s a shame that Erika and Þorbergur had no children. Both so gentle, yet so firm. Then there’s Erika’s exemplary housekeeping; she’s punctilious and meticulous, yet without being nitpicky — an atmosphere in which children and flowers thrive. Such is the world. Those who should have babies don’t, while the scoundrels multiply like rabbits.

Und ist Etta just out in ze car? asks Erika.

She’s so rebellious, I say, feeling terribly ashamed of my worthless excuse for a daughter, who won’t even deign to look in on her old benefactress. She does everything opposite of what I want, I add.

Strange, says Erika. She vas such goot little girl.

Yes, it’s strange.

The old man with the white hair who was at the door when we came in pushes into the room and calls, Mommy, Mommy, hello.

Ja, ich bin here, says Erika.

You’re not my mommy. She doesn’t talk like that.

Heiður takes the man’s hand and leads him back into the hallway.

Ich found him in my bet wahnce. Ich var terribly frightent. He ist cahmpletely baby now, und cahn damage ze rrecortehrr.

She takes out a box of chocolates, puts it in a brown paper bag, stretches a rubber band around it, and says that it should be for “Tjurfinna.”

Vill you alzo stop at Arnbjart’s?

Yes, I promised to look in on him.

Zen ich shall give you here brant-new biodynamische potatoes zat ich gazzered for zahmwahn elze.

She grabs a plastic bag from beneath her bed, and I have no heart to object, though I have no idea where I can fit in this addition to our luggage.

Erika turns every place and everything into a distribution center, even the final institution in life, decrepitude itself.

I give Erika dried strips of wolffish from the Westfjords, from Dad, goods that are sold in secret at his rest home. The staff at Grund have tried hard to disrupt the dried-fish ring, and its consumption is strictly prohibited indoors there. The stuff’s stench is unbearable, and it makes an inordinate number of crumbs. Sometimes I’ve seen old folks standing out by the wall on the Hringbraut side, shivering in their cold slippers as they tear off and eat pieces of the contraband fish. They form a circle and pass around a jam jar filled with butter, for dipping the pieces in. Dad doesn’t want it going around that the dealer in the west is on the village board in Flateyri and either personally brings the goods south or sends them by way of go-betweens, even in the suitcases of children who are coming from the countryside.

Erika says that wolffish is the very best thing she could be given and blesses me for bringing it in airtight packaging, before adding: But ich must go to a bench outsite to eat, zis ist so uncleanable. She brushes imaginary crumbs off her white tracksuit.

Now Herr Doktor Papas will also be happy because he lahfes vell-vuhrked hartfisch.

When we come out of the room, we find Edda in the hallway, in an animated conversation with the angel-hair man. He’s stopped calling out for his mommy and is listening to Edda, who’s telling him that Erika’s husband, Þorbergur, was her great-uncle.

We were confirmed together, says the feebleminded man. Beggi was enormously intelligent, which was proven when he foretold the eruption on Heimaey while all the Icelanders were taught in school that Helgafell was an extinct volcano.

I can tell that Edda is ashamed about not having come with us immediately to see Erika, to whom she owes so many thanks: for kindness, homemade toffee, and angora caps with tassels and visors. Now, like a normal person, she asks how Erika’s doing, starting a lively discussion with her and the man.

Here at the old Greek’s rest home is where Edda should have been left behind. This is clearly the place for her. But who could have known that in advance? A lack of imagination, of course, is what vexes people most.

Erika suddenly announces that she mustn’t hold us up, but first she invites Edda to her room.

As Heiður and I stand on the steps outside, gusts of wind tear at our hair. The swollen potato plants sway in the billowing wind, and far below us the sea is topped with white crests, big and little, which race up onto the sand strip stretching into the distance.

Heiður and I hurry down the gravel path. The damned organic potatoes are quite heavy and do nothing to alleviate the muscle pain of this little assistant nurse.

As soon as we step out through the arched gate of Efri-Hæðir, a cream-yellow Bronco roars up the path at high speed. It’s the same one from the shop in Rangárvellir. The farmer and his alleged mother step out. The woman looks exactly the same as before, but she’s wearing a different overcoat, light gray, all-weather. There’s no sign of any sheep inside the car.

The sheep must be napping, whispers Heiður.

After mother and son have gone through the gate, Heiður and I walk over to their car and peek determinedly through the window. At first it looks to me as if the sheep is in the backseat with the seat belt fastened around it, yet it turns out not to be the sheep, but its fleece, or that of some other sheep, neatly fastened with an old-fashioned lap belt. The backseat also holds a scythe and a sleeping bag, and on the floor next to the seat is a mop bucket covered with a wet rag.