Steinunn Sigurdardottir - Place of the Heart

Into the frame of this heavenly image, in which marigolds blossom by the house wall at the lower left, runs a red-haired teenage girl, hindered by her leather-jacket armor, with three fawning dogs at her heels. She greets the Madonna with a handshake and receives a kiss in return. She then kisses the child animatedly on its suntanned cheeks and the child shrieks with pleasure, instead of letting out a surprised and fearful howl.

Edda holds out her hand toward the little boy and asks in a childish voice: Wanna co-ome?

He’s all for it, and he leans immediately from the fragrant linen embrace toward the sour-smelling black leather arms. And what does the child do but sneeze in Edda’s arms? Prompting the Madonna to say in a gentle voice: God bless you.

Her child imitates her: Gah bessu.

He’s started to talk? I ask, flabbergasted.

He’s an early talker, says his mother modestly, with secret pride.

When we enter the kitchen, Edda takes a seat and holds her little cousin, clicking her tongue at him and making faces with her mouth and ears. His attention is focused one-hundred percent on the amazing delivery from Reykjavík. They’re in their own world on the chair. The rest of us don’t exist.

Now Guðrún and Rósa make their entrance, ten and six years old respectively, with white hair and dark brows, striking and attentive. They’re wearing matching summer dresses, embroidered with bunches of little yellow flowers. They’ve decorated themselves to honor the arrival of visitors, Guðrún with sparkling barrettes in her hair, and Rósa with a ponytail and pink bow. They start by coming over to Heiður and me, initially not daring to approach Edda, though it would have made sense to greet her first. In truth, Edda doesn’t take well to the angelic sisters, responding unenthusiastically to them, avoiding their handshakes, and muttering something that’s impossible to make out.

You certainly have grown, Rósa, I say, to make up for Edda Sólveig’s lovely behavior.

Yes, that’s what everyone says, she declares in a bright, thin voice.

I think you’re taller than I am, I say.

That doesn’t mean much. You’re so small.

No one laughs. Why should they? It isn’t funny.

Margrét invites Heiður and me to have a seat at the kitchen table. I take my old seat facing the window and look out into the patchy fog that reaches almost all the way down to the Andá River of my youth.

In the area below the farm, I recognize all the curves of the Andá, every pool and depression, every little sandspit. It’s wonderfully enriching to know a particular part of a stream or river by heart. It takes nothing more than mere acquaintance with a remote stream to feel infallible happiness upon coming to it and simply strolling alongside it, listening to it murmur. Wading bare-legged in it if it’s sunny out and drinking from it with the palms of your hands. TO SPEND TIME ALONE WITH A STREAM IS THE EPITOME OF BLISS. Especially on a Sunday afternoon. It doesn’t even have to be sunny.

Coming into this white-and-light-blue-paneled kitchen is like having climbed halfway up the stairway to heaven. The residents are prim and peaceful, as beautiful of color as Bible illustrations. And this paradise offers the aroma of oven-baking blended with a mild smell of the barn.

The sisters volunteer to set the table with cups and saucers, answering questions about farming and their school. Unnar, now restless, frees himself from Edda’s arms. She turns her back to the company and stares out the window as if she were all by herself. The youngest girl peeks sideways, looking somewhat scared, at Edda’s formidable back. I can’t blame her. She scares me too, all the time, though I try not to show it.

Unnar is quite agile, considering his age, slipping between the chair legs and the table. There’s nothing more remarkable on the planet than a two-year-old child. It has just turned into a person who is completely new, but waddles and babbles and sputters like an old person. It’s still a little bundle that needs to be looked after very carefully, being unaware of cause and effect, and quite capable of killing itself as soon as it can walk. It creates its own language that we don’t always understand, but the child understands us better than we think and better than we would care to have it do. This being is tragicomic, toiling and clumsy. It’s very clever in many respects, and already quite sly though it comes across as simple and innocent.

Edda gets up and goes out, slamming the kitchen door behind her. I fear she’ll wreak havoc in paradise. The children in this household will be the worse off because of her, and the adults as well, though in a different way. Somehow I don’t think I would have agreed to this arrangement if I were a good person. It’s best not to think right now about what I am. Best to think about it as little as possible.

I’d like to take a walk up to the grove, I say. Anyone want to come along?

No, thank you, say the sisters in unison. Heiður says she feels lazy after the trip and is just going to wait for me here.

It’s drizzling. Are you sure you want to go? says Margrét. Don’t you want to wait for the cake?

It’ll be waiting for me when I come back, I say.

I recall that Margrét’s always been excessively cautious when it comes to trips, even if they’re no longer than up to the grove or out to the springs.

Don’t you want boots and rain gear? she asks worriedly, as if I’m going to sea without oars.

Boots would be good, thanks, I say. But I don’t need the rain gear. This isn’t what I’d call serious precipitation.

It can be quick to change, says Margrét with a grave look.

If it does, I can jump back here in no time.

Margrét sees that this battle is lost, and asks me if I would please pick some rhubarb on my way. There’s so much that she’s hard-pressed to use it all.

Edda comes into the kitchen just as I’m going out. I ask her perfunctorily whether she would like to take a stroll with me to Grandma’s Grove. She looks at me as if I’m nuts and says not a word.

Bye for now, I say, in such a hurry to get away that I stick my feet into the first pair of boots I find in the hallway. They’re only one size too big; they could be Guðrún’s, for that matter.

The boots of a ten-year-old child were too big for her at thirty would be a most outstanding line in my obituary.

I open the front door, and the water symphony plays around me: the brooks trickle, the streams skip, the rivers murmur. From three sides comes the rush of waterfalls, and it all echoes in the dream valley.

The fog is a lake whose bottom is at the middle of the slopes and whose surface is just below the mountaintops. Bubbling rills flow down out of the fog, and up from it jut peaks like the islands in Þingvellir Lake.

What do I care if I can only see a short distance? I know what’s there, and I’ll get to see my valley and its side valley tomorrow or the next day or the next. I can wait. The fog is no problem for me. It’s a lukewarm vapor shrouding me and my easygoing land.

I’m in no hurry going up to the grove. Time doesn’t exist, never has. Nothing exists but me and an old dog that slinks after me in silence. Poor old Lubbi, who was a puppy ten years ago. The last summer that my mother lived and just managed to make it east to say good-bye to her grove.

Anyone who leaves behind a tree hasn’t lived in vain, Mom said not too long after it became clear where she was headed.

I bend down to pet Lubbi. Are you still alive, you poor devil? I ask, feeling sorry for him. His fur is tattered, and his eyes are dull, with black sties in the corners nearest his snout. He’s russet-colored, like a lamb, and his bark resembles a bleat, meh-ehrff . He taps me with his paw, in a way that feels distracted, not at all like the energetic, affectionate dog he used to be.