Steinunn Sigurdardottir - Place of the Heart

The first night, I held Edda’s hand until she slept, and then I dozed off with the hope in my heart that things would work out for us, even though I was in absolute shock that little Rúna should have come to such an end.

The second night, Edda ate a quarter of a waffle and said less. She shed no more tears, and the sulkiness and brattiness slowly took over.

The third night, she didn’t touch anything and was testy with me. In dismay, I took the tray back to the kitchen, my appetite gone, and threw away the waffles, knowing in my heart that the game was over, at least this round, and probably forever.

Everything went back to the way it had been, and that’s when I thought that she really was unsalvageable. You couldn’t know it until you’ve tried it, but pulling back a kid who’s being sucked down this road is unbelievably difficult. It’s even more difficult to put girls back on the right track. Their identity is much more fragile than boys’. The kids who do manage to get themselves out — when they look back, they say that they would much rather die than go through such a horror again.

I didn’t notice any change at all in the boys in the gang after Rúna died. They were as determined as ever to drag Edda into the shit.

Well, says Heiður, it’s apparently easier to help kids who’ve had a good emotional relationship with someone. Which gives me hope about Edda. You and your daughter were such a good pair before this misfortune struck.

Yes, we were, kind of.

I always found her to be such a decent kid, a bit precocious. Well behaved, though not too much. I was impressed with how successful you’d been with her, because you were so terribly young and it was all so difficult, you with your mother on your back and that stupid father of hers.

He played such a small part, just barely enough. My dad was our shelter and support. We would simply never have made it if it hadn’t been for him.

I know, Harpa dear. But he would have made no difference if you hadn’t done such a good job.

Oh, shut up. I want to look at the landscape.

Passengers can afford to.

The manifold mountain range, rounded and pointed and everything in between, the terraced green slopes beneath the pitch-black filigree of the cliffs.

The dusky blue of the majestic Lómagnúpur.

The spring-blue-and-white Vatnajökull Glacier sprouting cloud cushions that add to its height.

A bellowing dishwater-gray river between sandbanks in lava tracts without end.

Have we lost those damned pricks? I ask.

Pff, they’re not going to bother us again. I’m sure they’ve turned back.

They can’t turn back, because they can’t cross the sands for now. We’ll have to make sure they’re not still following before we take the turnoff to the cottage.

If they show up at the cottage, I’m taking out the rifle.

Skip the nonsense, Heiður.

I’d just shoot into the air. A little warning shot. They’re complete wusses. They’d take off instantly.

That kind of thinking can lead to accidents. We’ve got a total wacko in the car. She shouldn’t come anywhere close to weapons. You’ve seen how she behaves when she gets riled.

Edda couldn’t do any harm. She doesn’t even know how to work the safety. But I’ll take care not to wave it around unnecessarily.

I’m not dignifying this nonsense with a reply. I’m going to take a nap.

Good night.

My destiny tonight is to cuddle in a soft bed in the house beneath Lómagnúpur and wrap myself in downy quilts, dreaming about what once was, chattering with my lover from the supermarket who went west.

I remember nothing about the house itself, though I visited when it was new. I’ve given it so little thought that it might as well have not existed. Might it be due to jealousy of those who own homes in the glorious tract on the eastern side of the ever-blue mountain? How did Jens Kaaber manage to get hold of a piece of land there anyway? I thought the area was protected.

We approach the glacier slowly but surely, and I can hardly believe that we’re privileged to spend the night alongside it, with a perspective that few have had through the years. APPROACHING A GLACIER, whether by air, sea, or car, or on foot, is a special feeling that’s impossible to describe. Most people in this world have died without having this experience, no matter when they lived.

If only you were here by my side instead of having to tough it out in the Westfjords, where the sun doesn’t show its face for a quarter of the year.

If you were here with me, we could talk about the glacier, and I could tell you how it is at the top, though I haven’t been there. From the glacier you can see other mountains, trifling cone-shaped piles. When a person’s on a glacier, he’s king of the world, especially on Vatnajökull, the biggest glacier in Europe. You don’t want to come down, you want to remain in that icy universe and gaze down at the land. I should point out that an expedition up onto a glacier is one of the most remarkable things you can possibly do in this life. A GLACIAL SUN doesn’t resemble the sun anywhere else on earth.

I would tell you everything about when I was a little child out east, because I know that you long to hear more. I would tell you how it felt to have a child while still a child. I wouldn’t be embarrassed. I would tell you how it is to be an un-poet, a poet in secret, without being ashamed of myself. I would be fun, and I would tell you how it was in Perpignan, and where to find the nicest places in all sorts of foreign countries, because I know where they are though I’ve hardly been anywhere. I’ve read about places and heard about them from Heiður. I would tell you where I’m going next, with you, and I would tell you how it was to have you by me day and night. It’s not love in secret but love in memory , because it was a memory, just a memory. I wouldn’t take the advice of the English verse:

Never seek to tell thy love

Love that never told can be.

I would let it all out. Everything about love, in detail. I would tell you everything about our first time, which was also the last time. Tell you how it was, in as much detail as possible without being rude, or maybe I could be that as well, just for fun — surprise you, catch the opponent off guard.

Reddening clouds are sailing in multiple evening-sun ponds.

If only he could see this with me, he who occupies my mind — the glory of the landscape to the southwest on the final day in August. The man I recall and can’t forget.

He couldn’t stop for long, because then the frozen groceries waiting in his four-by-four would thaw.

He looks at me with his greenish eyes, blue-green, green-blue, which call to mind neither people nor the earth, but rather, cats and oceans.

His green eyes

are not of human kin

but of the kin of cats.

Eyes of the sea, not land.

Cat’s eyes,

sea eyes.

Would they see me in the dark?

Would it be sweet to drown in them?

He says nothing. There’s no need for words now. Yet I’m a little curious about some things. Why bother to hold back?

Have you worked at sea?

I was a deckhand in the summers, because my dad was a helmsman.

One explanation for why he always looked so stylish was that his clothes suited him so well. But it was more than that. He wore clothes that couldn’t be bought in Iceland. Everything fit together to make him the top dog — at swimming lessons, at school, wherever he went.

So you were raised at sea.

During the summers, and in my mind too, he said.

Did you get to travel at an early age?

Yes. I was five years old when I first went overseas. What about you?

Not until later.

I always thought you were foreign. My own name for you was “The Foreign Girl.” I remember how surprised I was to hear you speak Icelandic. I thought you’d simply learned it well, but I had imagined that you spoke with an accent, which of course you didn’t. So you’re not foreign at all?