Steinunn Sigurdardottir - Place of the Heart

My aunt gives me a crafty look and says: Yet you are Axel’s daughter.

It can’t be.

Yes, it can more than be. It is.

Don’t you lie to me, too. I’m sorry, Aunt, this has been bothering me for so long. I should go to bed.

There’s more than one Axel in the world, my dear.

Don’t talk to me like the oracle at Delphi. I’m so tired from the trip — from everything — that I can’t do this now.

You’re asking me about your true father. But you know him, Harpa. You know who he is.

You’re not going to start telling cheap jokes now, not when I finally find the nerve to ask.

I get up in slow motion from this limitlessly soft chair with broken springs. I feel like grabbing Dýrfinna by the neck and calling her a witch of a midwife.

Witch of a midwife, I repeat to myself, careful not to release these bastards into the world of sound.

Think it over, Harpa. How many Axels do you know?

I only know Dad.

I’m sure you know another Axel.

That’s true. The one who doesn’t live here.

Well, I’ll just sit back down in this deep chair, which could be the star of a nightmare, a bottomless hell into which one sinks and sinks, no solid ground beneath. Then I’ll dip my face into the creamy foam of my hot chocolate, and shovel it up shamelessly with my tongue. Such a respectable woman, not giving a thought to using a teaspoon when the truth comes out, belatedly, after suffering and pondering morning, afternoon, and evening. Something that doesn’t add up. Harpa Eir isn’t who she’s said to be.

Who am I, then, since I’m not me?

So the truth of it is a joke when it’s finally told, and has always been plain to see. Axel Óðinsson, shop teacher, is my dad , though a foreign Axel, an acquaintance of mine, might have accidentally conceived me.

He lives in Perpignan, in France, I say.

He does, says my aunt.

It’s not far from the Spanish border.

I finish my hot chocolate and immediately pour myself another cup, top it off with a big pile of whipped cream, and pat and shape it with a teaspoon. I’ll have to down a lot of this drink before fully swallowing this joke.

How do you know this, if it’s so? I ask my aunt.

Of course it’s so. Your mother told me the whole story soon after you were born. She suffered in silence while she was pregnant with you. Then you were born, and your appearance wasn’t normal, but no one said anything, as you might expect, and your mother volunteered nothing. I asked her straight-out when you were several months old. Then she told me how it was. Otherwise, she probably would have kept silent about it forever.

Good thing you asked.

It was the only option.

Did Mom know immediately which of them was my dad?

She knew, because she and your father were no longer intimate.

I just stare at my aunt.

That’s how it was, my dear. Your mother became involved in a completely unexpected passionate affair. She said she’d stopped thinking of such things.

She was lying.

Who knows, my dear.

Why was I always lied to? It was of absolutely no use. I’ve known for so long that it doesn’t add up. Why wasn’t I just told?

It isn’t so simple, my dear. Consideration had to be shown to your father.

How can you possibly think that Dad hasn’t known about this the whole time?

Your father is like other people in how he prefers not to face the facts. How would it have been better for him if your mother had hit him with the truth? Your father lives in the blissful illusion that you’re his daughter. We don’t tamper with it. That would be cruel.

Dad isn’t stupid. He knows this.

It has nothing to do with stupidity, dearest. Maybe your father keeps the truth locked in some compartment. But he isn’t aware of it. He can’t reach this knowledge; there’s a locked door in the way. He knows virtually nothing.

And my childless friend in Perpignan doesn’t know that he has a child, who happened to present herself in the form of an Icelandic au pair.

You’re wrong, my dear. He knows.

How?

Your mother wrote to him when you were a child.

Why?

I felt it was the right thing to do on her part, and I encouraged her to do so. It’s better for people to know if they have a child somewhere. Even though it was clear to the poor man that he couldn’t contact you. But he could do so under false pretenses, so to speak, after you’d found him. He could send you gifts as a neutral party, but not as a father.

So he knew who I was when we met that summer in Perpignan.

The blessed man. Compelled to say nothing to you. You can imagine how much he wanted to talk. The burden of silence can be so very heavy.

But how was it between Mom and Gabriel Axel, really? Were they in love?

Something like that.

Strange, the way Mom was.

Your mother was an incredibly beautiful woman in her time. She could be very amusing, and charming.

I’ve seen the photographs. She was beautiful, but it’s hard for me to imagine her being amusing, or charming.

It’s to be expected, perhaps, that you don’t have many good memories of her. Once you started growing up, she left you to your father an awful lot. It was right for her to do so. She hardly had anything to spare. I think she always pined for the man in Perpignan. She spoke to me about him not long before she died. It was a very long love on her part.

Long love. So there’s a measure. A length of love.

He’s really great, I say. But he’s nothing like me.

I’ve seen photos, but they were all taken when he was older. Judging by them, it’s true — you don’t look alike. But you could, of course, look like him when he was younger.

I suppose.

If the photos suggest anything, it’s that he’s a real charmer.

He is a real charmer. But damn, Mom’s really lousy for doing this to Dad. With all the attitude she gave him, he scarcely lived a single happy day. How can two sisters be so different?

There are three sisters. Who does Bettý resemble? Dýrfinna says, before bursting into laughter. Then she pours hot chocolate into my cup, the third one for me, and tops up her own, adding more whipped cream to both.

Your mother was always a bit mentally unstable, and no one knew where it came from, she continues. She was tremendously obstinate when she was a child. She lived a great deal in her own world. She pretended to be French and called herself Mademoiselle Martin. She acted as if Martin, the ship’s doctor who operated on her when she got appendicitis, was her father, even though Dad was alive and was tremendously good to her. She called the doctor “Dad,” bade him a tearful farewell in autumn, waited for him all winter long, and chattered endlessly about him. It wasn’t normal. The spring that he didn’t come, she was inconsolable. We should have lied to her that he would come later, but she knew better. She cried and spent her time alone with Cosette.

I should have slaughtered that thing. If I’d only had the guts.

It would have changed little.

Was Mom just born crazy like that?

We shouldn’t use such words. She was always quite odd, your mother. Her behavior was hard to understand. I didn’t see her shed a tear when Dad died. But, as I said, she was inconsolable a few years earlier when Martin didn’t return.

As if I didn’t know how terribly contradictory she was all the time, I say.

Maybe. Also in the sense that she wasn’t as she appeared. She was yapping away all the time and seemed to be so open, but in reality she was introverted. In retrospect, we knew little of how she really felt.

She sat all the time in the grove, Dýrfinna continues, looking out over the fjord as the fishing boats arrived and anchored. She wanted to go abroad ever since she was tiny. I’ve never seen that in such a small child.