Steinunn Sigurdardottir - Place of the Heart

Neither can I.

I’ve never had any such place out in the countryside, says Heiður. Except for the place of yours that you gave me.

This year, the start of September in Iceland’s eastern depths has the blue color of May. There’s a spring hue to the sea itself, a blue-powdered sky, the grass brilliantly green at the side of the road, and the fields succulent. The snow here hasn’t quite melted away as it normally would. Streaks of snow cut the light-blue mountains between white troughs in the hollows. Everything conspires to distort time, making it seem to a female traveler in the land of her winter quarters as if it might be spring or early summer.

How good the land is to me. It puts its transformation on hold, so I can thrive as I did when I was a young traveler of the spring. Autumn lingers respectfully at the far horizon of the sea. Kind seasons, please take my side. Making it possible for many things to follow.

Every last inch of my soul is filled with eager anticipation. Soon she’ll reach her destination, little old Harpa, a remote fjord whither she sailed. Her body is woken from a foggy slumber, as the countryside rapidly comes into view. It’s my greatest lover, and I am its mistress. It will be a joyous delight to come to my place, to the fjord that’s equivalent to young love. My young love was no man, but a farm within a fjord where foreign sails return from the beyond each May, the cruelly sweet month in which birds multiply while thick snowdrifts continue to rest in the hollows.

The greenest grass in Iceland grows in this elongated fjord, glowing at the edge of the fog this first of September. This fluorescent grass is for sheep to find even in the dark of night. Wouldn’t it be typical of them, to allow themselves no break from eating while the rest of the universe sleeps?

Tiny peaks like avant-garde antennae stick out of a mountain that juts out over the fog river across the fjord. The peaks are lava splotches that froze on their way up into the sky.

Sloping mountain massifs north and south of the fjord fall together landward and rise in long lines toward the sea.

THE SEA IS MY LAND, skerries and breakers. The wave is my land. The waves.

A progressive traveler is camping at the bottom of the fjord, as close to the sea as it’s possible to get without being washed away. He wants to be aboard a smack with sails but is modest and makes do with camping by the sea. This single man, American, I think, or Swiss, sits on a perfect chair at the water’s edge.

A snow-white stream takes a twisted course down an elongated, rocky slope, helpless, with no soil into which to dig itself.

The mysterious island in the fog, Papey, takes its name from Irish hermits who came to Iceland before its history was written and left things behind — bells and crosiers, according to old books. There’s nothing to find on Papey now, though; it’s been rooted around on for decades.

What a specialized sort, this fog. How quickly it passes by. How slowly it passes by. Like the life we live, which passes and doesn’t pass.

Tell me about Ditti, I say.

Ditti sang in Elijah in Bergen earlier this week, to rave reviews as always.

And where’s he going next?

It’s Don Giovanni in Berlin, answers Heiður.

How can this purehearted man be convincing as the immoral Don Giovanni?

He isn’t particularly convincing in the role. But he sings like an angel. That’s what matters.

So true. I envy you.

How could you not?

You’re just so terribly different. I don’t understand your relationship.

Music connects us.

What about birds of a feather and so on?

We complement each other. He’s the gentle one, and I’m the one who makes the fuss.

But how are you going to go about it?

Go about what?

Establishing a home and bringing up children.

It’s not on the agenda.

So you’re just going to live out of suitcases, at hotels?

At hotels I don’t have to clean up. I hate dishcloths, spools of thread, and rubber bands. I want to be left alone with my flute. I have one fixed place to stay, at home with my dad and mom. I don’t need more.

They won’t live forever.

I know.

Then what?

We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

You two can’t meet except now and then, and only for brief periods.

The rarer, the more intense.

I refrain from responding to this, because I don’t want to hear what Heiður has to say about her erotic encounters with Dietrich Bacon. I sometimes call him the Piece of Bacon because of his family name, which he got from his English grandfather and which doesn’t suit him too badly because he’s so terrifically thick. It’s partly out of envy that I don’t want to hear more and partly because I find it embarrassing. It isn’t right to get Heiður going about her sex life and penises. Once she started telling me, unasked, about Dietrich’s beautiful member. An alabaster-white penis, perfectly sculptured and big , she said, adding that for her it makes a real difference how the penis itself is shaped, its texture and feel.

I’m sure I’d have a similar opinion if it came to that. It’s just not something I’d bring up without being asked, especially not sober. What’s more, there’s no need to discuss it. Dietrich gives the distinct impression that there’s little fault to be found with him in this area.

I was with Heiður at the concert at the Old Theater where they met for the first time. Ditti’s one of the remarkable musicians who makes a habit of coming north as a result of friendships with Icelandic musicians. He was a rising star then, twenty-five years old, but he looked thirty-seven.

How to describe Dietrich Bacon in action? He’s big as a mountain, but onstage he’s a breezy, playful mountain, captivating the hall with his charming persona. His soft baritone voice is tinged with wistfulness, which really serves him well when he adopts a lighter tone. Back then his hair was black, whereas now it’s sprinkled with gray, same as his eyebrows, and his appearance is mild, as in divine beings. His hands are artistic, big and fair of form, putting the finishing touch on his stage performances.

I swooned when Dietrich Bacon sang The Dwarf , and again when he sang Leise flehen meine Lieder . I wanted to take the man to a chamber and let him run his blissful hands through my hair and stir it with his baritonal whisper. Were I to look up, I would have seen the blue sky of his eyes, which gleamed with inner sunshine, not entirely human.

I heard Heiður take a deep breath when Dietrich finished the last note of The Organ Grinder , which she’d smugly informed me was the last song in Schubert’s Winter Journey .

At the end of the concert Heiður went straight to Dietrich’s best friend in Iceland, the conductor Holberg Ómarsson, and said: Holbi, no excuses. You introduce me to him.

Holberg is a grave young man from up north in Eyjafjörður; he was educated in Boston. He takes such inordinate pains with his language that those speaking with him confuse their idioms out of downright nervousness and conjugate words incorrectly time and time again.

I can’t see any reason why not, said Holberg, and they rushed off, Heiður in the lead, as usual.

I loitered in the shelter of the cloakroom, intending to wait for my friend, but she looked over her shoulder and screeched out over the packed corridor: You’re coming too, Harpa!

Little Harpa dared do nothing but follow, so that her friend would stop shouting, and little Harpa decided to give Heiður serious competition, seeing that she’d been so stupid as to bring her along.

However, this plan didn’t work, because Heiður had Dietrich pretty much all wrapped up. Even the conductor didn’t get a chance to talk to his man. Holbi swelled with irritation, no doubt regretting that he praised Heiður’s flute-playing upon introducing them. Heiður played her hand like a professional, at first speaking piously about Dietrich’s unusually wide vocal range, which was unique as far as she knew, and then turning to the quality of his voice. She concluded by saying: It would truly be worthwhile knowing German, even if it were only to be able to enjoy the finest nuances of the lieder. This comment stirred Dietrich’s nationalistic and poetic heart so strongly that he immediately went too far and replied: Those souls who love lieder are a step above.