Steinunn Sigurdardottir - Place of the Heart

No, suicide for a person like me is not something that can be rushed. It demands preparation — careful, systematic planning. Everything must be arranged so that nothing can go wrong, that no one can come before the mission is accomplished to ensure eternal sleep. Yet you shouldn’t contemplate ending it at isolated areas near the sea or in open countryside, because then a search for your body would have to be conducted. To make those who remain uncertain of what happened is not the point.

The lengthy sands are akin to death, made of the world’s darkest material, eternal granules. I imagine them as deceased souls in the deserts beyond. Rock-hard, cunning, compacted, pushing their way into a perfectly secure vehicle. Not like the vanished souls in Australia, an expanse of shiny shells that vie with each other in gleaming at the sun and sky in multiple waves by the sea, on the shell beach that Mom spoke endlessly about.

Poor you, Mom, to be a little black grain on the ugly Icelandic sands and not a shiny shell on the beach in eternal summer on the other side of the globe. You didn’t deserve your fate.

You ought to remember that more often, Harpa baby.

I don’t even know what happened to you, Mom.

If you look in the mirror, you’ll come a bit closer to knowing.

I’ve often looked in the mirror, but I’m not there.

Whether the sand’s blowing or not, it’s pretty frightening, says Heiður.

This is one big field of destruction.

Field of destruction.

Yet volcanic eruptions and floods haven’t managed to rip up everything and tear it all down. They’ve always left an inhabitable strip of land at one corner of the sands framed by the Kúðafljót River to the east: a tiny oasis, called Álftaver, where swans and sheep sing in chorus and take strolls in the gloaming by little ponds. It even has a few farms, which have been there a long time, and at one time it had a monastery, where some say Njál’s Saga was written, on the plain in among jagged knobs of lava filed by water and wind and frost. From the plain there’s an extensive view of the glacier and the sky. The people who live there are as little of this world as the oasis that they were allotted. Their faces are as scored as trolls’, and they’re better natured than the best elves. Descendants of monks? Who knows.

Shouldn’t we pile some rocks as a waymarker? asks Heiður.

No, those who cross the sands for the first time are supposed to add to the cairn at Laufskálar.

Laufskálar — Arbors — changes into desert.

That’s the way many lives end.

The farm Laufskálar was located here, in this waste of sand. Funny, isn’t it?

There was never anything funny about this desert, I say. It used to take people at least one day to cross it by foot, with everyone scared shitless that a flood caused by Katla might come and take them. Dad crossed the sands first when he was twelve and still recovering from pneumonia. He got caught in bad weather and made it to the other side haunted and bedraggled.

Poor folks have endured and struggled in this country, and with it. All those wet footprints of children and adults in tattered shoes over moors and heaths, scree and stone. All those journeys over trackless mountains and rivers. All those who drowned, died of exposure.

Some made it to their destinations wet, exhausted, and cold, and then died. Made it back only to die.

Like my Edda, maybe.

Somewhere around here, so it’s said, was the settlement with the beautiful name Dynskógar, Clattering Woods, which was destroyed in volcanic fire many hundreds of years ago.

When you say it, Dynskógar, Dynskógar, you can hear hooves clattering long, long ago in bright late-June midday sunlight when the glacier glows its whitest, between brand-new birch leaves, and a bird throws itself down from the clouds and lands sure-winged on a branch.

Those who lived long enough hundreds of years ago witnessed the transformation of the fertile plain into wasteland following eruptions and glacial floods. Those who live long enough, at all times, see their friends fall, their faithful friends, their children. None of my relatives have died apart from Mom, and Jói, though I can hardly count him. The sad thing was that I never got to miss my mom wholeheartedly because I was more or less relieved when she stopped getting in the way of all of our lives: Dad’s, Sibbi’s, even her grandchild’s. She could have been a better sort, this one parent from whom I’m certain to have come. She who only allows me to miss her halfheartedly.

I’m allowed to miss my friend Jói with all my heart, he who helped me exist, though deathly ill himself. He suggested that I flee to the east. But even missing him is a polluted feeling, because I’m ashamed of myself for mourning him but not Mom. I’m ashamed of myself for feeling as if he died and left me, he who was so young and died and left others so much more than he left me. I was neither family nor an old friend, nor a lover. I was merely a simple assistant nurse.

Jói was already very ill by the time I first met him. Every time I walked past his bed when he was sleeping it was a reminder of how ill he was and how he couldn’t live. But as soon as I talked to him and saw his face light up, especially his soft brown eyes, I forgot that there was anything wrong with him, and it didn’t occur to me at the moment that very soon I would have to be without him entirely.

It was selfish. It was about my loss of a friend, not his loss of life. The egocentric side of love reveals a part of our inner being that is hardly beautiful. Even young people who are going to die are entwined in the selfish love of those who fear most being left behind. The heart of the matter is overshadowed. A young person is taking leave of the world: life and colors and smells and sounds and touch.

In my experience, death is generally overshadowed by something that has nothing to do with it. Maybe because no one can bear to face pure death, the ultimate finale.

Except for Mom, the greatest daydreamer I’ve ever known.

Jói was my very special friend, and I will never have such a friend again.

I found it nice to be able to tell this friend how I was doing every time he asked, though I had a hard time understanding how a twenty-three-year-old man could be so wise and such a good conversationalist.

As I sat by Jói’s bedside, this young man wasting away from disease seemed almost relieved to listen to my troubles. I felt as if I were doing him a favor by describing my troubles to him. I never really understood how it helped him.

The next time I was on duty after Edda attacked me, Jói noticed that I was limping and had a bruised cheek, though I’d tried to cover it with makeup. Jói asked what was wrong, and I said that it was such a long story that it would take me an extra shift to tell it. He laughed and asked whether it would be possible to make that happen. When my shift ended, I sat down beside him and told him everything, concluding with Dýrfinna’s visit. At first he had to drag it out of me, and then the words came out in one big messy gush. By the time I left, Jói had grown so tired listening to my confessional flood that I was terribly concerned I’d exhausted a patient who was supposed to be in my care.

Go east, he said. I believe in it. Your aunt Dýrfinna knows the score. Why do you think she came in your greatest hour of need?

It just seems so hasty, like running away.

Many a man has saved himself by running away.

This is running away from myself, and Edda, and it can’t work. Both of us would be making the trip.

Don’t give up, Harpa. It’s not a mathematical equation. You’ll go east because your gut tells you to go.

My gut tells me nothing, Jói. I have no feeling about it.