Steinunn Sigurdardottir - Place of the Heart

Mom had never bothered to be overly consistent except in matters of eternity. There she stuck to her guns, even to the point of shocking us. Mom at the end. My least favorite memory of her. Sticking to her guns even though she was going to die, and facing that fact directly.

Mom, who was the most masterful deceiver and ran away from facts faster than anyone, never deceived herself about her illness. It was she who turned out to be completely realistic as the end drew near. Perhaps it was hyperrealism she suffered from, not unrealism.

The mountains of the Eastfjords rise slantwise in an orange hue. A heavenly smoke-machine pumps fog systematically but submissively along their base, allowing sunlight access to a green field surrounded by reddish-yellow pastures. Mottled cows and perky calves chew their cuds, superintelligent according to the latest research. They’re an unsurpassed comfort to the eyes of the traveler. It isn’t possible to feel more inclined toward any animal than a cow. In my mind I’m more spiritually related to the cow than any other animal I know of, even physically. I have the forbearance of a cow, its moist eyes, slightly protruding, and a tongue that reaches up to my nose, though I rarely direct it there. I’m as clumsy in spirit as a cow is on the outside, and I feel as if I’m as stupid as a cow, which is what cows must feel as well.

The countryside here is rough and gentle, a rocky beach on one side, a sea of cotton grass on the other. At some point, all children think that cotton grass is cotton, until they find out it was used for wicks to illuminate dark and tattered turf farms throughout the entire country. It was one of the countless lessons of youth — that nothing, nothing , is as it seems. What looks like cotton is in fact a source of light. It was like that with everything. More or less. And it isn’t getting any better.

The image of Mom isn’t getting any better. Unpredictable Mom. There’s no way to get a grasp on her way of thinking. I hear her in spirit praying for us, fervently, the irreligious woman herself, with greater conviction than Dad the believer. Mom’s hoarse, jabbering voice:

The Lord my soul to keep.

Uff, this piffle about life after death is just wishful thinking, she said obdurately, a week before she died. People just can’t accept the idea of disappearing once and for all because they’re so terribly fond of themselves. That’s all there is to it.

We should be careful with what we say, Sollí, said Dad, his lips quivering and his chin trembling. His eyes blinked rapidly, repeatedly.

I’m not a sucker for extra lives, said Mom. We don’t need them. There are enough lives in this life.

Do you think that disabled children and people who are ill from birth would say the same?

There’s no such thing as justice, said Mom. Injustice begins at conception. But that’s an entirely different matter. It has nothing to do with new lives.

Justice exists if we’re granted life after death, said Dad.

We’re just not granted it, my dear. It’s all unjust, and we can’t do anything about it. To me it’s unjust that I’m ill. But others have had to endure the same thing. I’m not worthy of any more pity than they are, and I’m not going to add insult to injury by saying to myself: It’s not for real; now for the next life on a pink cloud.

Mom’s death would have been easier for us to bear if she’d borne it worse. In any case, she didn’t even bear it well. She simply didn’t bear it. She just wasted away and, with her eyes, prohibited us from pitying her, even though she was quite far gone. It took far less time than the doctors thought. She’d even deceived them. Since then, I’ve seen many men and women die, but I haven’t seen anyone go about it like she did. It was as if she remained outside of her illness. I still don’t understand it. Even this part of my relationship with my mother is a mystery to me.

The night before she died, Mom, the master deceiver, put on her robe and was waiting for Dad and me in the sitting room when we arrived. She was even smoking. We sat with her for twenty minutes, and she lit another cigarette and kept the conversation going. She spoke only in brief spurts. That was all she could manage. I remember that she was amusing, but I can’t recall a word of what she said.

Dad had to go to a meeting at school, and it would have been convenient for me to go with him in the car. Instead, I stayed with Mom in her hospital room. Dad helped me walk her to her bed. Or rather, we held her up between us as she tiptoed. She, who looked stylish sitting on her chair with her cigarette, so stylish that no one would have thought this smoking woman could no longer stand on her own two feet, so far gone that she couldn’t live for more than another twelve hours. When I turned around to say good-bye to Dad in the doorway, he gave me a strange look, but I didn’t know what he was getting at with that glance. I understood it the day after, when Mom was dead. He’d comprehended that she had little time left.

That night, the last night that my mother lived, I was on the brink of asking the question that had preoccupied my mind for so long — especially since I’d experienced personally what little it takes to get pregnant.

Mom, is Dad really my dad?

We were alone in the world, alone in the room. It was my chance. A perfect opportunity for opening up. I remember thinking, I’ve got no more than a few months, maybe six months at most. I never thought then that I’d have only that one hour. Actually, I didn’t even have that, because Mom fell asleep soon after I tucked her in, and I sat and held her sleeping hand. Before she dropped off, I searched for a way to bring up the subject. To hint somehow at my unreasonable appearance, which simply didn’t hold up in comparison to those of my parents and closest relatives. I wanted to try to sneak my way to the point, give her the chance to tell me everything, without my asking directly. I was going to say, Mom, do you remember when the boys attacked me in Dock Wood, thinking I wasn’t a girl but a Wild One? It was probably no surprise, considering how small and dark I am. The “M” in “Mom” was on the tip of my tongue, but it was impossible to continue, because some sort of gleam in her eye warned me against taking even the slyest of detours to the matter. Then she closed her eyes and said: It’s good that you hold my hand as I doze off, Harpa baby.

I was frightened when she started coughing in her sleep, because it was so hard on her. I was going to call a nurse, but then she stopped and a smile played on her lips. I stayed at her bedside a long time, hoping that she would wake, at which point I would inch my way toward the question. When she finally stirred, her eyes were more open to the big question, but then the words got stuck in my throat. I couldn’t even say: Do you remember, Mom? I’ll never forget when the boys thought I was a Wild Child and tried to kill me. It would have been easy for me to slip in this greatly rehearsed opening, because Mom was silent for a few moments after she woke. But it was I who couldn’t utter a peep. Mom started talking, as per habit, going full blast into the nomadic peoples of the high plateaus of Tibet, who lived at a higher elevation than any other ethnic group. We would vomit in the thin air if we went to those parts. We wouldn’t be able to survive the winter. She was so short of breath that I wanted to say to her: Don’t exhaust yourself talking; let me tell you something funny instead. I’d heard this lecture many times before, in detail, but it was no longer possible to make nasty comments, so I said: You would have made a good natural scientist.

Everyone who lives and actively participates in life is a kind of natural scientist, said Mom. And that was the last thing I heard her say in this life.