Steinunn Sigurdardottir: Place of the Heart

You wait here, Heiður. This is for my legs alone, I say, trying to come up with a reasonable method of exiting the pickup truck.

Short people like me have a harder time obeying the laws of gravity when getting down out of high vehicles than resisting them getting in. My friend watches from behind the wheel to see whether I accomplish my two-footed hop.

With the solid ground of the Norðurmýri neighborhood beneath my feet, I grab the black bucket that had been rubbing gently against my calf since leaving Laugarás and, for the last time, hurry to the gate of my yard on Bollagata Street.

What do you know — Hreinn Elías slinks out from the basement door, and my heart skips a beat. It’s been hammering ever since I woke at the thought that we were leaving today. Now , and who could know whether Edda Sólveig would be there, or what condition she might be in. Would I have to start this trip by going to look for her in some sort of dive that until last year I didn’t even know existed in Reykjavík?

Hreinn Elías is living proof that my daughter’s at home, which is why I bless him in my mind as he slithers up the steps like an amoeba, dangling his head so that his bright angel hair billows over his nose.

Good morning, I say, looking into his small glassy eyes.

He returns my greeting in his flaccid way and keeps his eyes fixed on the sidewalk as he steps into the flower bed to avoid me, crushing a marigold beneath his loosely laced sneakers.

I straighten up and brace myself for dealing with the rest of the gang. I peek in through the door, which Hreinn Elli hasn’t bothered to shut. There’s no one but Edda in the empty apartment. No need to work myself up.

I should thank my stars that the girl is home, but I’ve grown so hard-hearted that I’m no longer grateful for anything. As she lies there fully dressed on the living room floor, wearing thick-soled shoes and snoring so loudly that the walls rumble slightly, I view her as an object that has nothing to do with me. Her black leather vest leans upright in one corner, like the seared torso of a bull.

I do the rounds, and my experienced eyes immediately notice the layer of ash covering the room, the residue of beer and soda sticking to the floor and windowsills. The bathroom stinks of urine, and there are yellow splotches on and around the toilet. Edda’s friends are incapable of lifting the seat, and it’s not for me to say if they’ve ever heard of doing so. I wipe it off with toilet paper, and as I flush, the noise resounds throughout the basement. Someone threw up in the sink, and I hope that it isn’t Edda who’s sick. That is the last thing I need on this trip, which has infested my dreams for the past few weeks, and there is no postponing it now.

My eyes smart with smoke and the reek of moonshine. I open the window quietly, terrified of waking Edda, though she should be getting up anyway. Dented beer cans are arranged around her in an orderly circle, and in one corner are vinegar bottles used for moonshine.

Edda’s rasping snores grow louder as I scrub sticky splotches off the soil-brown linoleum floor. She’s lying on her back with her slightly ratty red hair hanging over her face, including a little matted lock wafting in front of her mouth. Her right hand’s clenched on her chest, and her left one is stretched out on the floor. These hands are forlorn, both of them, bony and freckled. The skull ring from her dead friend Rúna underscores their desolation.

I’ve started cleaning the apartment with unnecessary precision because I’m not keen on waking the creature, but this won’t do. I’m just about to say Edda Sólveig in a very low voice when a huge blowfly darts in through the open window, buzzing and popping like a tiny helicopter. In my mind I direct it toward the girl’s ear, and what do you know? She wakes with a start.

Are you ready, dear? We’re leaving.

Huh? Puh.

I rush to the bathroom with my cleaning supplies, wring out the rag, and empty the bucket into the toilet. I carefully spread the rag over the bucket as if I were laying a tablecloth, letting it hang down equally on all sides, perfectly smooth, my practical gift to the next tenants. Then I wash my hands thoroughly, dry them with toilet paper, flush again, and return to the living room with a shivery feeling, as if I’m coming down with something.

Edda Sólveig’s back is turned to me as she stands on a dry island in the damp floor. I look past her, out my arched window, the jewel of this basement apartment, the window that I always keep so clean that you can’t even see the pane. Two white poppies swaying in the breeze could just as well be inside. Sunbeams stream through individual couch-grass blades with joints that bend in various directions, blades so long that they would tickle the armpits of small women. The bay willow in the hedge is midsummer green, and there’s a hint of russet in the leaves of the rowan tree; its berry clusters are no longer red, but rather orange, although it’s still August. Until tomorrow. Then it’ll be September and I’ll have gone halfway east, to what was once my dreamland of spring. Will now be my winter den.

Which hand do you want? asks Edda, turning around sharply, like a ninja. In just a few months she’s become an expert in taking her opponent by surprise, and her opponent’s become an expert in keeping a poker face while expecting anything. Indeed, anything could be in the clenched fist that she holds out. Even a hand grenade.

This one.

She opens her right hand to reveal an Egyptian beetle, my lost scarab.

Where did you find it?

I hug Edda as if by reflex, though well knowing she won’t like it. She pushes me away with her famous left-arm tactic, cupping her palm around the scarab.

It was behind the radiator.

And how did you find it?

I caught a glimpse of something when I stood up.

It’s been missing for a whole year. I wonder how it got behind the radiator.

Isn’t it from the French perv?

His name’s Gabriel Axel, and you shouldn’t call him that, considering how many beautiful things he’s sent you.

The girl hands me the beetle as if she were holding something disgusting between her thumb and index finger and walks out, her shoulders hanging and her steps wavering. She drags the unshapely vest behind her.

I fiddle with threading the scarab onto my old necklace, a gilded beetle with a body of lapis lazuli. There’s something otherworldly about this sky-blue stone flecked with gold. I’ve found myself staring at it and pondering the possibility of its being.

She’s making a run for it, the wee one?

My smirking mother is in a yoga position in front of the radiator, on the damp floor.

When I moved here, Mom, you were already dead, remember? You never came to Bollagata. What are you up to now ?

Just to practice my yoga.

Your behind will get all wet sitting there. Move it. Far from there.

No.

Did you steal the scarab?

You should ask whether I was the one who found it. Those who don’t ask the right questions don’t get the right answers.

Good of you to mention questions, Mom. There’s actually an old one that I could never cough up. I’m going to fix that as soon as I get to your sister Dýrfinna’s out east. She’ll tell me, unless you want to answer me now. Who is my father? You have to admit it’s a good question. And from what I know, the answer should be a doozy.