Steinunn Sigurdardottir - Place of the Heart

Trade! That’s a good one. Where I am in life is stuck. I’ve painted myself into a corner.

The floor will be dry in the spring. Then you can take your quilt and go. Honestly, I’d really want to stay.

Not if you actually had to. My two rooms in the attic aren’t in good condition. They’re also under a sloping roof, which, admittedly, isn’t a problem for a dwarf like me. Look, there it is.

God, is it that Pippi Longstocking house standing on its head in the sea?

Exactly. The third oldest house in the village.

It’s a dream, says Heiður. Yellow, with a red roof, like in a child’s coloring book.

It’s even dreamier the closer you get. Entire beds of living rock in the garden, blooming in all colors, even in the winter. Other things that aren’t so hard on your teeth grow there as well: strawberries, red and black currants.

In the semidarkness of my childhood village, a man is mowing his grass with a scythe. The first of September has come, but the optimistic man believes that the grass will keep growing.

Kids come running up the path alongside the stream, holding dock stems that they whack against the ground. Two women pushing colorful baby carriages take the same path, past the old physician’s residence. An enthusiastic little kid comes zigzagging along the sidewalk toward us on a bike that’s far too big. It reminds me of all the bikes that I rode in my day that were far too big for my short little legs.

On the stone wall around the community center sits a group of tourists who are probably from this place’s sister village in Brittany, which has a name that no one can remember. French and Icelandic flags fly on a flagpole. We’re in a foreign country in Iceland. Where the other country in the country is.

Where can I park?

Just here at this turnout above the house. We can skip bringing in the fridge tonight, unless reinforcements arrive to help carry it. For now, let’s just bring in the vanity cases, the nightgowns, the chocolates, and the hardfish.

Are you expecting someone? Do you think that Yves might have tracked you here?

What are you implying?

I wasn’t born yesterday.

I’d already forgotten about him.

And you say I’m forgetful. You can’t remember who you slept with last night.

We didn’t get much sleep.

No, not from the sound of it.

Sorry if we kept the driver awake.

It’s great that you grabbed the bull by the horns.

Thanks for the moral support, even if it’s a little late.

My old fjord lies tranquil in the growing darkness, accommodating the dusky-blue mountains standing on their heads on the other side. The whimsical Eastfjords fog has unraveled, only to come together at the end of the world and gather strength for the next assault.

Invigorated by the oxygen-saturated air and the scent of the sea, I run down the wooden steps, making them reverberate beneath the spruce trees, and stub my toe on a bucket of bilberries sitting on one of the landings. I munch noisily on a handful of these tempting fruits, not caring if I swallow moss and heather along the way.

The front door is unlocked, but I still ring the bell so as not to surprise my aunt. Then I walk straight in, to the smell of sausage meat and cabbage rolls. Margrét must have called and announced that we were on our way. I recognize this chain of communication from the old days. Alert: Visitors coming. Have coffee and food prepared.

Dýrfinna limps out of the living room in a Sunday dress. When she reaches me, she puts her arm around my neck and strokes my cheek like the most loving mother, and I remember what tonight is all about: getting an answer to the question that’s been gnawing at me since the story of my soul began.

THERE WAS ONCE AN ICELANDIC SOUL IN A VERY SUSPICIOUS BODY.

But I’m not uptight anymore. My soul is placid. Nothing falls or drips from it, any more than from the most well-behaved girl on her confirmation day. If there’s an answer, Dýrfinna knows it. If not, then screw it; I’ll keep living as I’ve done until now. I suppose it’s less of a problem for me than others, though they have the advantage of looking more like average Icelanders.

The Atlas Crystal refrigerator of my youth, which I remember as being full of chocolate tarts and opened jam jars, hums in the little kitchen, and my salivary glands jump into action. I have to swallow to clear my mouth of saliva.

Dad once asked: How do you conjure up your cakes, Dýrfinna? Mom got up and went to the bathroom and stayed a long time, before returning with puckered lips and a red anxiety-blotch on her neck. She was a bit light-headed, having just stepped off the boat, but it was clear to me that she was also angry at her own klutziness at baking, and angry that Dad should dare to praise her sister to the skies.

After lingering outside by the spruce trees and rocks and the giant mirror of the fjord, Heiður has finally come inside.

Welcome, dear, and thank you for driving Harpa and Edda, says Dýrfinna. You deserve a medal.

Dýrfinna’s living room looks exactly as it does in my earliest memories of it, from a quarter century ago. Little Harpa Eir, able to talk in quarter centuries now. While everything else that lives and breathes changes, the flowers in Dýrfinna’s living room remain the same. Is it theoretically possible that they could live so long? Maybe if they were clipped regularly. Maybe these are the scions of scions of the flowers that I can first remember.

The big oleander is in the same spot by the window of the dining room, which faces the sea. As a little girl, I made a game of standing at a reasonable distance from the oleander, peering at the waves between the elongated dark-green leaves and fragrant pink flower clusters, imagining that I was down south at the Mediterranean Sea. I’d seen photos from Costa del Sol of man-sized oleander bushes, the beautiful blue sea sparkling behind them. But the plant was highly toxic. I feared it as if it were a wild beast, because Mom had come up with a clever trick for protecting me, saying: Be careful. Don’t go too close, because if it gets hold of you it will strangle you.

Dýrfinna became so angry when she heard Mom scare me in this way that she reprimanded her in front of me. I was looking at the clock with the glass dome, following the perpetual motion of the carousel of brass balls that turned into chiming bells at fifteen-minute intervals. Hearing Mom being scolded made me feel terribly giddy, but I knew that I couldn’t show it, because then Mom would punish me with an even bigger dose of indifference. Just at that moment the clock struck, and I counted out loud along with it in order to hide the tingling joy inside me over Mom’s failure.

Now the balls have stopped spinning and the hands of the clock stand in place. Not a tick is heard in anything that measures time. What is audible is the rhythm of the sea, how it strikes the land, forward and back, always at the same pace, forever amen, until time comes to an end.

Everyone sends their greetings, Aunt. Dad, Sibbi, Arnbjartur, Erika, and Bettý. The chocolates are from Erika, and the hardfish is from Dad.

Thank you, dear. What’s new?

Well, Arnbjartur really wanted to come with us.

It would probably have done him good.

He has a handyman now, who takes care of everything for him.

Oh?

It’s a Faroese fellow. Liggjas. He doesn’t have anywhere to stay.

Things are bad for our neighbors in the Faroe Islands. I think we should do more for them, set up refugee camps if necessary, says Dýrfinna. How’s Bettý?

I really don’t know. But she was awfully nice and served us such wonderful coffee, and the amazing thing is that she and Edda clicked.