Steinunn Sigurdardottir - Place of the Heart

Toes out, toes in.

I run my finger along the old gold chain and the recently twice-discovered scarab.

There’s something that I need to ask you, my father and friend in Perpignan, the next time we meet, and I imagine that it won’t be many months until then.

Do you recognize this gold chain?

Might you have old photos of a curly-haired girl in shorts, with an orange in her hand, up against Sæmundur the Learned on the seal, next to the sculptor’s domed studio?

The man was standing not far from the domed building, tall and slim and very dark, in light-colored clothing, a camera around his neck. I was on my way to Dock Wood on the warm day about which the stories were spun. I’d planned to go straight over the plank bridging the little ditch, but I had a feeling that the man with the camera wanted to talk to me, so I walked toward him. Then he came over to me and smiled a radiant, sad smile that’s haunted me ever since.

He wanted to take my photo by the statue. As I approached it, I looked up and saw that one tear was about to fall from the tip of his nose. I blamed it on the breeze.

He said that I was beautiful. That word I understood: bea-u-ti-ful .

I remember the three clicks from the camera. Three photos of Harpa Eir, Axelsdóttir, of course, eight years old with an orange, half an hour before she was nearly finished off in Dock Wood.

The tall man in the light-colored suit sat at the base of the statue of Sæmundur on the seal and indicated that I should sit down next to him. He stroked my hair so gently that in my mind I called his hand angel hand . How I wanted to reply in kind and pat him on the head, on his curly raven-black hair that reached below his ears, but I was uncomfortable about doing so, because the man was not Icelandic in any way.

To me he seemed most like a gypsy. Dad had just shown me pictures of gypsies in National Geographic . From his appearance, it would have fit if he played wild songs on the violin well into warm nights. Yet that seemed a bit off, because he was wearing a suit.

After we stood up, I got the idea that he was a photographer from a foreign country who’d heard of the Wild Children and happened now to be searching for them, just as I was. I pointed at myself and him and Dock Wood to let him know that I could show him the way. He looked at me and smiled and shook his head.

He then took the gold chain off his neck and put it around mine. Thank you, I said. He put a finger to his mouth to indicate that this was a secret and said something in a foreign language that I understood to be hush .

The secret that I’ve kept so well that I didn’t even tell it to myself: it was him, the one I’ve always searched for. More than ten years later, in Perpignan, I didn’t recognize him, so discreet was I with myself. His hair had turned gray, and he looked a bit frail.

I can tell my father and benefactor when I meet him that I never got into any trouble because of the chain. That I’ve always just said: I found it in Dock Wood. No one ever made a single comment. Even Mom didn’t ask about it. I was above suspicion of having pilfered it, and it didn’t cross anyone’s mind that it could have been a gift from an unknown traveler.

When I meet the man again, he’ll learn that I told the secret to no one, not even myself.

He won’t be told what happened to me in Dock Wood half an hour after we met, since that would lead to a trail of tears down the left side of his neck, and that wouldn’t do.

How I look forward to meeting you, my sad friend, the man I searched for and found, without knowing what I’d found.

Let’s visit him if it’s so fun at his place, said my delinquent child somewhere along the way. Did I hear her right?

How am I going to break all of this to Edda?

I haven’t come that far. Tomorrow is another day, and tomorrows are for searching for new paths.

Today is the last day, and tomorrow is the first.

All days are the end of something, even if only of themselves, and at the same time they’re a start, if we remember that they’re new.

No longer will my days be nothing but waiting.

How many days did I wait for a man who stopped for a night? For a man who doesn’t want to visit me tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow.

How many days of my life have I waited for an answer that was free for the taking?

Heiður, who knows me better than anyone else, advised me against searching for an answer. It certainly will be fun to tease her now.

I tear myself out from under the down quilt and enter the sweltering heat of the inner room, beneath the lobed leaves of the wonderful monster.

I was right all along, I say loudly. I knew it — he’s foreign.

Gabviel Athel, says Heiður, turning to the wall with a sharp jerk.

What do you mean? How do you know?

I dun-no.

Are you sleeping?

Yeth.

It’s no good wasting very many words on sleeping sibyls, so I just look at her. She certainly knew more than she let on. Of course she knew. Just as I did.

Tonight it’s not to be wondered that everything is as new. That it’s turned out to be as it should, no matter how that is.

A rasping bagpipe-quack from a nasally mallard is heard out in the passing night, a solo piece in the middle of a symphony of snores that increase in volume in three corners of the house. Dýrfinna snores like a fireworks display, to the accompaniment of the short, decisive, cheeky snores of the flutist and Arnbjartur’s traditional pastoral puffing and whistling. I’m not going to sleep well. My clairvoyant aunt must have emphasized sleep well because she knew I wouldn’t, due to the snoring.

What do I care? I don’t feel like sleeping, even though I’m exhausted. A woman with a new paternity has no use for sleep. She who is the only hybrid of her sort in the entire world has every right to remain awake. I’m very proud of my heritage, though it’s by no means my doing. This well-fabricated new person sits down in the square chair where her recently aged mom sat before, pulls on the lamp string, and there is light.

Maybe I’ll sit in this chair until the future begins, until the early-rising cat makes his rounds. In the morning I’ll follow my Sæmundur down to the beach and watch him stretch by the sea, the same as his father Þangbrandur did before him, as preserved in my childhood memory. I can hardly wait for tomorrow to dawn, for a tomorrow to come in which Sæmundur and I can lie there and meditate.

Nearly horizontal sunbeams will stretch diagonally across the entire fjord, baking Sæmundur’s gleaming fur as he dozes stretched out on a board by the old overturned boat. When he sees me giving him the eye, he’ll stand up venerably and take several slow and seductive steps toward the sea. He’ll toss himself onto his back in the sand of the beach and stretch, making himself incredibly long and thin. He’ll wipe his head with one foreleg, stretch out his hind legs, and spread his claws. He’ll perform these well-rehearsed morning exercises specifically for me, his cat eyes flashing like undersea suns on the world’s first day.

A car door slams, right outside the house. I didn’t hear a car drive up.

Who is slamming the door of no car?

A rustling noise comes from below. A very light knock on the door. Teddi? Yves? Who knows. I’m not answering. Help.

Again comes a knock, excessively modest yet slightly harder. If I don’t answer, it will wake Dýrfinna.

I hope you sleep well , she said. So she wasn’t talking about the snoring. It was about this visitor, whoever it is.

I put on the kimono, a silken artistic creation, with wide arms covered in cherry blossoms that turn into light-pink expanses of clouds in the spring Japanese sky.