Steinunn Sigurdardottir - Place of the Heart

Shouldn’t we turn back for real, Heiður? Look at the sand cloud. We’re about to drive into it.

The sand can’t possibly be blowing much. I’m sure it needs time to get going for real. The wind’s only just begun to stir itself up.

It certainly was windy up at Efri-Hæðir just before.

The world ahead is a deep-brown cloud. Its limbs reach out to us and scratch the car.

Both blizzards and sandstorms have a brown hue. Every hampered view is like the next, akin to death. Death itself, master at self-consistency.

I’ve never encountered such a thing before, says Heiður.

Me neither. I’m terribly worried about the car.

It’ll all be fine.

Gusts of wind-driven sand slam against the car.

The wind picks up, accelerating the pounding.

Damn, I should have turned back, says Heiður.

This is nothing. It was much worse when I went with Sibbi, says Edda.

The sand’s a punishing rod that flogs the car with immense force, as if trying to tear off pieces of it and turn it into a sand sculpture. We can still become famous: modern-day Reynisdrangar sea stacks on the sands — three fossilized wenches in a pickup truck.

The devious pitch-black grains penetrate the car and settle on the dashboard, where they multiply. Nothing in the world apart from these particular particles could reach us through the battened-down seam of shut windows and locked doors.

There’s a bridge ahead, says Edda. You should stop on it and wait.

What do you mean? Hunker down on the bridge? says Heiður, foul-tempered.

It’s the right procedure if you run into sand, says Edda. I landed in a sandstorm here when I went east with Sibbi. He had the sense to wait and there wasn’t a scratch on our car. But when we got to Kirkjubæjarklaustur, we saw another car that’d been stripped of almost all its paint.

I can stop, no problem.

The world is goddamned blowing sand and nothing else. Sea and shore and our mountains gone. The sand itself is gone. It dissolves into blowing black snow, a substance that seems not to be made of sand.

PRECIPITANCE.

That the earth should take it upon itself to pound on us and block our sight. Even the soil is hostile to this precipitance.

My entrance into this world was due to the precipitant rush of a neurotic mother into the arms of a foreigner. Who is he? Where is he?

MY PATERNITY

is a poem that I haven’t bothered to jot down

not even on a little scrap of paper kept with the dirty laundry.

I’ve compared my looks to the pictures of the nationalities of the world

in a beautifully produced book belonging to my dad.

I could be anything on my father’s side, though hardly Asian.

My face is mainly reminiscent of sculptures of Mayan Indians,

but where could Mom have gotten hold of one of their descendants?

It’s more likely that, by chance,

a Frenchman, Italian, Spaniard came here,

some sort of American, yes, it’s most probable that Mom got together with a soldier,

an aged soldier’s gal.

Why? Because that’s what they did then.

I could also describe myself as gypsy-ish, or Indian-ish.

My dad could therefore be called Lofty Lion, Young Toe.

He could also be called Hernandez, Colombo, Hugenbüttel, Rambo, Root-Renfrew, Nandor, Disney-Smith. There’s no lack of names.

Harpa Disney-Smith. Harpa Hernandezdóttir.

Those who don’t know their own fathers don’t know their own names.

They call themselves whatever they like until the truth is revealed.

If I were in your shoes, says Edda, I’d keep going. It’s better for the time being.

Heiður shakes her head. I don’t know why, maybe in disbelief that the beast had addressed her tactfully, or from frustration at having ended up in such a predicament in her father’s pickup.

What do I mean by this? What do I mean by dragging my busy friend out onto the roads of Iceland, and even into financial loss that I wouldn’t be able to help redress?

Heiður sets off, driving straight. The pitch-black sand hammers the car as if it comes from the jaws of a sand-spewing dragon that can’t be seen through its own dust cloud.

Excuse me, says Edda from the backseat. You can’t drive fast in a sandstorm. The sand hits the car with more speed and is even likelier to damage it.

Heiður rolls her eyes and decelerates, until we crawl along at thirty.

I suppose that’s logical, I say.

A small Jeep with a Z plate number, from the local district, inches toward us.

It must be true, since the locals drive so slowly, I say.

Of course what I say doesn’t matter, complains Edda, insulted.

My unpredictable delinquent child. One moment a boor, using language like the worst street kid in a big-city slum, and the next thing you know, a responsible guide who takes two older ladies to task on the Mýrdalur Sands. You couldn’t even call her a changeling, but rather, a constant-turnaboutling or something — I don’t know. But I get qualms when she behaves herself decently, because she usually regrets it right away and changes back.

A yellow car rushes past us at lightning speed.

That guy knows nothing about driving in sandstorms, since he’s going so fast, I say, flashing Edda a smile. She’s wearing a strange expression as she peers out the windshield. I’m struck with the horrible feeling that the car looks surprisingly similar to Gerti Chicken’s fucking delivery van. If this is the Chicken, then I implore all the forces of evil to scratch each and every particle of paint off his car and sandblast his windshield until not a speck can be seen through it.

Gerti the brainless chicken, who was always present when the worst things happened.

Edda and Gerti’s dance on the basement steps was world-class choreography, a pair lurching apart and together and out and down, the female dancer badly battered. Gerti pretended to be supporting Edda when she was supporting him no less. Gerti Chicken, with dirt-colored greasy hair hanging down to his shoulders, his face russet except for the stone-gray bags under the hollows of his eyes and flourishing clusters of pimples with yellow nibs crowding their way out of the dungheap of his cheeks. His head’s short and square-shaped, lacking a chin, and his deep-set eyes are really like a chicken’s, so vacant that you’re afraid to look into them. It’s no exaggeration to say that in appearance, Gerti Chicken is the greatest wretch of all the damned wretches that Edda Sólveig’s been keeping company with. Emanating from him is a stench that at times perfectly resembles the smell of shit, so strong that you can hardly breathe. When I told Heiður that I used hospital disinfectant on the furniture he’d touched, she burst out laughing and said that it wasn’t hard to understand why the daughter of a woman who was a neat freak had chosen this very friend.

I hadn’t replaced the porch-light bulb and didn’t notice immediately what bad shape Edda was in. All I saw was the masterfully executed, distorted dance of these two young bums at the front door.

Did you know there’s gold in the sand from Katla?

Sand from Katla is in fact what’s hammering us now. A flogging with gold.

A new type of perversion.

The sandstorm picks up again, lashing the car with a frighteningly crunching grumble. Nothing’s visible but a thick cloud. Now apprehension flies at me like the grains of sand, in through invisible chinks in my soul, even though it’s supposed to be armored, like a little tank.

Skua, great skua, and raven. What will happen to these flying creatures of darkness when the sand ascends to their paths? Won’t the black mass pile up on their wings and crush them into the dust? Will they be buried in sand holes, with only their beaks poking out?