Steinunn Sigurdardottir - Place of the Heart

Would you mind making up a bed for Arnbjartur in the sewing room? is what she says.

No problem. I’m a professional bed-maker, after all.

You’ll find quilt covers and sheets in the bedroom closet, says Dýrfinna.

I know.

Everything’s the same in Dýrfinna’s closet as the last time I looked in it I don’t know how many years ago. It could very well have been when I made up the bed for Dad and Mom during the heat wave, early in the morning, before Dýrfinna and I went to pick them up. The same pink-striped bed linens lie ironed and folded on the same shelf. How appropriate to pick up where I left off after all these years to make up Arnbjartur’s bed. I bring the set into the sewing room, and fish a quilt and pillow from a drawer.

I swing the door shut and am alone in my world. The quilt and pillow give off a strong fresh-air scent, as if everything’s just come off the clothesline. The same vibrant smell as when I made up a bed for my dad and mom twenty years ago, on the world’s sweetest summer morning.

Dýrfinna and I took the Willys to go meet them. They were standing at the ship’s rail, looking like the happiest married couple in the world. Mom leaned into Dad’s shoulder, and Dad had his arm around her. It’s a great exception to remember them getting along well together, both happy at once. In general, each was in his or her own particular mood. Happy, sad, whatever.

That day, each of them tried to outdo the other in waving, and Dad took off his cap and bowed. When Mom stepped ashore, she said: My, how you’ve grown, Harpa baby, and I’d swear you’re becoming even more beautiful.

There, you see, I wasn’t always so awful.

I know, Mom. I said that just now.

I heard you.

The hardest thing to forgive is how you behaved toward me when I was pregnant. How could you act like that? You who’d had an accidental child yourself.

Naturally, I was like most people, in the sense that I didn’t know what I was doing.

I’m starting to understand that, Mom.

There’s so much that you don’t remember, Harpa baby. Like the summer in Andey when it was just the two of us.

Most of the good that happened is before I can remember.

Aw.

Were you terribly sad because of that man?

Gabriel? I had a cheeky little girl who was so cute that she caused people on the street to turn and look. It was better than nothing.

Then I stopped making you happy?

Don’t you remember? I was always stitching clothes for you and ordering clothes for you from foreign catalogues.

Yes, I remember.

We also had good times in the grove when there was no haymaking. You know, I planted almost all the trees in the strip highest and farthest to the east, mostly during the summers when you were two and three years old, but of course you don’t remember that.

I think I do remember it, Mom. You had a big shovel, and I had a little blue shovel and a red bucket. You know, I went straight up to Grandma’s Grove today, despite the fog. The pitch pine grew about a foot and a half over the summer. It must be a record. The birch is also healthy-looking and fat, and it’s spreading wildly. I’m going to do the rounds sometime in the next few days and tend to the little birches. The gale the other day nearly blew them from their roots. But first I need to paint my two rooms. It’s impossible for me to feel good in a place where the walls are so patchy.

You’ve been neat and tidy all your life. I won’t delay you any longer, Harpa baby. You need to make up that rascal’s bed. And I hope everything goes well with Edda.

At least I tried. The worst thing is not to try, as Dad said.

You can still end up blessed, Harpa. Just be sure not to make the same mistakes I did.

You didn’t exactly make mistakes, Mom.

Maybe not.

Mom? Where are you? I can’t see you now. Why do I only hear you?

It’s because of something you said earlier, upstairs. I don’t need to bring anything more into the light. Now I’m in the light.

In the same place as Jói?

That’s not what I said.

Out in the dark, an unfamiliar light flashes, with pauses of varying lengths — a malfunctioning lighthouse that I’m unable to place, or a beam from a ship rolling on the waves in the fjord.

The weather must have turned quickly. The sea crashes against the land, bellowing as if it’s going to snatch it all away, flood it, spare nothing, as if it can no longer contain itself in its own spacious compartment that covers over three-quarters of the globe.

Dýrfinna steps into the doorway and says that Arnbjartur’s starting to yawn.

I’m coming, I say as I shake the quilt with the pink-striped cover one more time, to fill my senses with more of that invigorating fresh-air scent.

Did you have an interesting phone conversation earlier?

Yes, it was with a man who called me the foreign girl when I was a child.

There’s something between you two?

The entire country. He moved to Ísafjörður.

Oh?

He’s an accountant. He got a good job offer there.

Right. It takes two years to get over heartache, if it isn’t nourished, that is. It also takes two years for the most passionate love to evaporate, if people are together.

I’ll consider that, if it ever comes down to it. But don’t you need to get some rest, Dýrfinna, after all these ghostly visitations?

Try to get some rest yourself. I hope you sleep well.

There’s a definite undertone to her voice. A peculiar emphasis on sleep well . I suppose she thinks I’m upset. Which is precisely what I’m not. Upset is what I was, before my question was answered.

Good night.

Good night, my dear, she says, wrapping her arms around me like the most caring mother, kissing me on the cheek, stroking my hair.

Thank you for everything, dearest Dýrfinna.

Thank you for wanting to stay.

I call out to Arnbjartur that I’ve finished making up his bed and bid him good night.

Good night yourself, he says, in a strangely slow warble.

I make a vow by the window upstairs, over the continually glittering waves, not to sleep in even if I’m tired. Tomorrow morning I’ll be up and about at the crack of dawn, and the past and future will merge as I change into myself, a girl who was at the water’s edge and still is.

The future has stopped looming like a vicious cat with its claws out. It’s a pet cat with downy paws stretching on the sunbaked sand of the beach tomorrow morning when no one has risen in the Eastfjords but me: HARPA EIR AXELSDÓTTIR.

I take out a kimono, a gift from that rascal of a partner Alli the dwarf, and lay it on a chair by my miserly bed, in case I should need to go downstairs in the night.

My head falls comfortably on the lousy pillow. My body’s wrapped in one of Dýrfinna’s delightful down quilts. I do exercises to stimulate my circulatory system after two days of sitting in the car — curling and straightening my toes, in rhythm with Heiður’s snores.

How curious I am to know more about Mom and Gabriel Axel. What on earth was their story?

Met at the Marine Research Institute. Then what? How did they meet again? Where did they meet? How could they communicate? His English isn’t good, and Mom was never much for languages. Maybe they didn’t need to say anything. But Mom was always so talkative. Where could they have done it? In his hotel room? If he even stayed in a hotel. How often? Was my late mother hot-blooded?

Well, I certainly can’t ask about all of that, but I’m planning to ask Dýrfinna for more details, unless my dad, the one in Perpignan, tells me everything now that this much has been revealed.

I should be grateful that he’s somewhere, that I found him, that there’s still a story about who I am. I hope my father cares enough to tell me the entire story when the time comes.