Steinunn Sigurdardottir - Place of the Heart

You forget how similar you and your dad are, in your mannerisms and ways of speaking.

Anything else would be a pure miracle. I was raised by the man, and we’ve always been very close.

Harpa dear, does it matter at all? Even if you weren’t his daughter, would that change anything? He’s the best dad in the world, as you yourself say. What more do you want?

You can’t understand something like this unless you’ve experienced it. Everyone wants to know where they come from. It’s a law of nature. It’s a psychological necessity.

There must be plenty of children whose paternity is wrongly attributed who never suspect anything.

The suspicion is the key, Heiður. That’s what it’s all about. As soon as you start having suspicions, you can never go back. Still, if Dýrfinna tells me I’m totally on the wrong track, then I might be able to drop it. She wouldn’t lie to me. It’s good to be sure of that.

Just ask her then, Harpa. Although I think it’s a waste of time. Absolutely nothing will come of it. So be prepared.

No need for us to quarrel. In twenty-four hours I’ll get some answers.

And what if you don’t like the answers you get? Wouldn’t you be worse off?

I’d just have to accept it.

Do you want to go to sleep, Harpa?

I was almost asleep when you came up, dear.

Sorry.

No. I’m glad you came. I had a secret desire for more wine, anyway.

Cheers.

Thanks for coming. Sleep tight.

You too.

I listen to Heiður’s footsteps sounding in the silence as I lie down again on the mattress beneath the moon wading in clouds.

It’s gloomy in my sleep-tower now. Both solace and terror lurk in the gloom.

The soft net of sleep is closing around me, hovering just above the tower floor.

But the merciless earth draws me in once more. This time I’m forced to drag myself downstairs to go to the bathroom, giddy and half-blind in the darkness. I’m fortunate not to stumble and fall like Edda.

Yves is still up, reading by flashlight.

I act as if I don’t see him. As if he doesn’t exist.

I bump into one thing and another before I find the flashlight in the bathroom. My panties are still on the hook. Best to leave them there.

On the way back, I head straight for the spiral staircase, but I change my mind, walk over to the man from Bordeaux, and ask if he can’t sleep.

I can hardly bring myself to sleep, he says, it’s so incredible here. And you?

I was talking to Heiður.

Did you solve the mystery of life? he asks, smiling his beaming-wide boyish smile.

No, we made the mystery of life more complicated than ever, and now my greatest wish is that I’d never been born, I say with a laugh, as a precaution.

I know it’s difficult for you, says Yves.

He closes his book and moves closer to the wall to make room. I feel it’s going a bit too far to sit down on the bed next to him, and instead pull a folding chair over to the couch. Yves is wearing a white T-shirt. His skin is dark brown, and he has enormously developed arm muscles.

Do you still live in Bordeaux?

I’m at the university in Lyon, but I go home when I can.

What was it like growing up in Bordeaux?

How so?

I want to know how it was to be a kid there, because it seems so different from everything I’ve experienced.

My father is a manager at a vineyard. I got to be with him out in the fields when he was working and supervising, and in autumn I always took part in the grape harvests when I could — mostly on weekends, because I was in school.

And the weather was always good?

Almost always. I’m not surprised you ask, living in this atrocious climate. I don’t think I’d have come hitchhiking here if I’d known just how abominably windy it is.

Yves laughs an infectious laugh, which seems oddly crude in contrast to the rest of his demeanor.

You came a bit late. It’s much better in July than at the end of August.

You mean the beginning of September, says Yves, looking at his watch.

Were you allowed to eat as many grapes as you liked off the vines?

Yes, of course. Yves laughs again.

Grapes were a luxury when I was growing up.

Without grapes there’s no life, says Yves, earnestly.

Is that a saying?

No, it’s just the way it is, he says, almost sternly.

What did you do on your summer vacations?

We went to the beach quite often — there are long sandy beaches close-by — and we made frequent trips to the forest. Sometimes we drove down to Spain or Portugal and stayed for several weeks. Once we went down to Morocco. Two summers we were in Corsica, and we spent one in northern Italy, in Tuscany. It’s my favorite place in the world.

You never went north, to England?

We only went there once. We thought it was hopeless. The food was bad, the weather awful, and we could hardly make ourselves intelligible to the natives.

Really? I found it wonderful the one and only time I went there.

It’s better than here, of course, he blurts out, before hurriedly asking, in order to cover up his mistake: What did you do for summer vacation when you were a kid?

I spent most of my time in the Eastfjords. My mother comes from there. It’s like a foreign country in Iceland, with different weather, different people. In fact that’s where I’m going now, with my girl.

But this trip is completely different than usual. This is the first time I’ve ever gone to the Eastfjords in autumn. Before, I always went in the spring, and I always looked forward to it so much. Now I’m running away, because my daughter’s been keeping such bad company. It’s as if everything has turned inside out. My dream place has become a place for nightmares.

Please don’t think like that. Don’t forget how curious life is — a simple step like moving can change everything. It doesn’t mean that I believe absolutely in a new life, either in this lifetime or another. But I do believe in finding yourself. I know that it’s possible to lose yourself, and also that it’s possible to find yourself.

How old are you?

Twenty-five.

Do you really think you’re old enough to talk about this?

I wouldn’t say such things if I didn’t think them.

Why don’t you ask how old I am?

Yves smiles, sits up straight, swings his legs over the edge of the bed, and looks straight at me.

I don’t need to ask. I can see you’re not old.

He’s wearing silk boxer shorts, incredibly gaudy, with wild orchids and all sorts of tropical birds and endangered fish that flit between jungle flowers with flicks of their tails. It’s logical for his large and imposing thighs to be wrapped in such material, and his supple legs appear as if they’re about to swing themselves up into a tree in the rain forest or dive in a gorgeous arc off a coral reef in the Pacific. It’s a shame that this total beach-hunk, as Heiður and I might have called him in our youthful exuberance, shouldn’t have been sauntering in the right environment instead of being bundled up in the wind on an Icelandic highway.

Upon closer examination, I notice that Yves looks Asian, probably Japanese. It’s subtle, but there’s something not entirely French about his eyes and cheekbones, his straight dark hair, even his olive skin. Nor is his manner entirely French, come to think of it. Yet another one with a false paternity?

Yves gets up and bends down to me on my folding chair. I’m given an innocent but on-target kiss on the mouth. Yves sits back down on his bed.

I want to tease him and tell him that I didn’t manage to sleep with a Frenchman when I was in Perpignan, and now would be the ideal opportunity to make up for it. Chances are, though, that he wouldn’t be able to take it, so I say instead: Have you seen the stars from my sky chamber?