I handed the package of photographs to him. "They didn't come out very well," I explained. My voice sounded thick; I hadn't spoken to another person since the funeral. "I was wondering if you could fix them. Reprint them."
"Let's take a look-see." His voice was gruff, with a heavy accent I couldn't place. He opened the envelope and spread the prints on the counter. Then he smiled oddly, and I saw for an instant the photographs through his eyes: hairbrush, shoes, sunglasses on a white cloth on top of a green shag rug. Except it wasn't green but a medium shade of gray. He was shaking his head, still smirking.
"Not sure what you are wanting such pictures for," he said finally. Quizzically.
There was no reason to tell him, but I did. "They were my mother's."
"Ah." Nodded his speckled head. Then he opened up the envelope again and held the negatives against a board that was lit up. He clipped each strip to the board and studied it.
"There was a light," I started to explain.
"Not enough light, that's the problem, missy." He didn't understand. "But I can work on these for you. Get them a bit sharper. Bit of dodging do the trick."
When I came in the next week to pick them up, the photos were sharper, clearer. But still no glow. He sensed my disappointment. "Best we could do, I'm afraid. Of course, there's always more tricks we could try, if you're willing to pay for it."
I nodded; he took me by the arm. "Come on back, I'll show you some things we can try. Ever been in a darkroom?"
I shook my head and followed him through a curtain down a hallway. "This door here," he said, is called a light trap. Does just what it says. Go through it like a revolving door. Keeps the light from leaking in."
In the darkroom there was only one red light on. Everything seemed to glow. The air was close and stank like vinegar, and worse. Klaus made me pick one of the prints for him to work on. I chose the one of the shoes. The shoes had glowed the most. I watched while he fitted the negative in the machine, set a timer, flicked a switch, and in the brief seconds of exposure fluttered a piece of paper over the negative with the delicacy of a butterfly in flight. Ding. The light went out; the exposed paper he dropped into a tray. And there while I watched emerged my mother's shoe. It didn't matter, then, that the glow was gone. It was enough to see Mama's shoe come out of the darkness like that. I wanted to do it. To give some image its watery birth.
"Can I try?" I asked, surprising myself.
"Don't see why not. No business now anyway. Lemme just put up the CLOSED sign."
He left me alone in the darkroom. I stared at the print of my mother's shoe, which now hung by metal clips to dry. I walked across the room to the red light. It had the kind of switch that's set into the cord, a small nubby wheel you slide with your thumb. I pushed it and it clicked and for a moment I stood alone in the darkness. Absolute. I took a deep whiff of vinegarair into my lungs and held it there. Not breathing. Still.
I never tried to explain to Klaus about the glow, even after he took me on as an unpaid intern, then a lowly apprentice, then after three years a fullfledged printer. Certain things can't be photographed as seen. You get as close as you can.
I sold Mama's house, but there wasn't much money left over-she'd mortgaged it to pay for my college-and I used up the proceeds subsidizing my apprenticeship. A few blocks of day are all I see on either side of my subway ride, East Side to West Side on the L train. Then I drop down two floors on a rickety freight elevator to the Sub. Such is my life, if you'll grant me that. A sub-life. All of it I considered temporary. When I was good and ready I'd emerge from my lair, hungry for world again. I was just calling time out, getting my bearings.
Meanwhile, the earth circled the sun. Then again. Years passed. Eight, to be exact. I continue taking my own photographs, seeking to animate objects. A bit of the pagan, I suppose. I have boyfriends here and there, most less than a year, one for nearly three. All make the same complaint: Ice Queen. A conspiracy of exes. For friendship I rely mostly on my darkroom compatriot, Frank, who is gay and nearly as reclusive as I am. Each in our own lightsealed cell, we listen to the same talk radio shows, chat on the intercom, and ally ourselves against Klaus and his rages.
Before my mother died, before I dropped out of college, I'd imagined that forging an adult life involved setting goals, making decisions, taking actions. Not so! My underground existence simply formed itself, untethered to any grand plan.
And that, Cousin, is how I got from there to here. Abbreviated, yes. But this is not supposed to be my story, exactly. Or only partly. This is the story of how I knew your mother, and then, how I came to find out about your existence. I have to stay focused. I may find you soon, and I want this letter to be finished when I do.
22
This past August a thick cream-colored envelope arrived in my mailbox, an invitation to the one hundredth birthday celebration of my one and only grandmother Sigga. And what did I do with it? Nothing. I took no action, I let it pend.
Living without light, the fish of caves became not only blind but eyeless. A month later, I lay sprawled on my futon on the floor watching a nature special about evolution. Pale lumpy fish swam across the screen. It took a few millennia of living in caves, the voice-over explained, for the fish to lose their eyeballs completely. The narrator had a crisp, almost British clip to his voice. Their eyes outlived their usefulness. Now all that remain are vestigial bumps.
Then the phone rang, and the proper male voice on the other end sounded so strangely like the narrator's I became confused.
"Stefan who?" I demanded.
"Your uncle Stefan, that's who!"
Can you blame me? I hadn't spoken to him since Mama's funeral eight years earlier. Since then our only contact had been cards exchanged at Christmas. I knew he disapproved of me, of my refusal to visit Sigga in Gimli. And now here he was on the phone, with his old-fashioned Icelandic Canadian accent. It sounded foreign to me, it had been so long since I'd heard those faintly rolling r's. He wanted to know if I had received the invitation to Sigga's birthday celebration.
I had.
And would I be attending?
A long international silence. I could hear the coins clicking in my head. Then Stefan cleared his throat, the sound traveling across the phone line as a pillowy harumph.
"I can't get away from work. It's impossibly busy."
"Then just come for the weekend. The party is on a Saturday night."
He had me there.
"Freya, Sigga's not going to live much longer."
"Is she ill?"
"Quite healthy actually. Physically, anyway. But not many live beyond a hundred. Though there was Runa Black, she made it to a hundred and eight." He paused, and I heard the spark of a match, then the thin draw he took from his pipe. He used to let me climb on his lap and hold the flame over the bowl, then blow it out. "The point is, Freya, you never know what can happen."
"Believe me," I said. I took out a cigarette, lit a match of my own. "It's not that I don't want to see her. It's just that ... well, honestly, I can't afford it. The airfare and all."
Liar. I wanted him to say it. But he was silent. Sucking his pipe. "All right then, Freya. I thought that might be it." He didn't sound angry, or even disappointed. Just relieved. As if he hadn't really wanted me to come but promised Sigga he'd try. He hung up. Happy birthday, Amma, I whispered into the dial tone.
And that was the end of it-until a round-trip ticket to Winnipeg arrived in my mailbox a week later. The fish dreams began that same night. Even awake, in the darkroom with the safelight turned off, they swam through my mind, blind and eyeless.
What, you ask, did I so fear? A host of ghosts awaiting me in Gimli: Birdie, Mama, and my long-lost phantom self, worst of all. How could I face that girl who had devoted her childhood summers to the writing, reading, memorizing of poetry? Who had promised her auntie she would be the next poet in a line that skated all the way back to Iceland, to the Viking poet Egil Skallagrimsson? How could I tell that girl I'd turned
my back on words?
And there would be the living to contend with: Sigga, Stefan, Vera. Even if they'd managed to forgive me the crimes of my past (sending my mother into a coma and ruining her for light, and life; absconding to Iceland with Birdie and allowing her to climb, then plummet from the brink of madness; dropping out of college after my mother's sudden death, and never returning; and finally, and still, turning my back on my grandmother, my only living relative)what would they think of my life now? My grimy, chemicalinfused existence seemed hardly worthy of the granddaughter of the Great Olafur, Skald Nyja Islands.
But my worst fear of returning to Gimli was of coming unglued. My bones could turn to origami wings again.
The plane ticket Stefan sent rendered all my excuses moot. If I didn't go now, I could never look myself in the mirror again. I would go. I steeled myself, icier than ever. And then one morning the day before departure it occurred to me as I rode the lurching, screeching subway to work, gripping the pole for balance though it would have been impossible to fall, wedged as I was on all sides by the anonymous press of strangers, that maybe it was the not-going back that was holding me back. The darkroom job, the basement apartment: those were supposed to have been temporary measures, a way to step off the spinning globe after my mother died and regain my footing. Instead the temporary holding pattern had gradually shifted into permanent status, a rock-solid inertia.
Maybe I needed to be shaken up, loosen my grip on that underground pole. Maybe the visit to Gimli would not so much derail my life as re-rail it in a new direction.
Of course, I didn't know about you yet, Cousin, you who have become my confidant, inquisitor, and holy grail. My conceit.
But I had an inkling of something, an obsolete eye.
23
And so Freya returned to Gimli.
The goddess Freyja? Lusty mistress of fertility and birth, sage adviser to the lovelorn, deity of crops and wombs? She who cruised the heavens in her cat-drawn chariot, flew to other worlds wrapped in a cloak of enchanted feathers? Freyja the mother of all seers who instructed Odin himself in the divine art of divination? Back in Gimli? The same Gimli the gods built as their new home after the coming of Ragnarok, when the Fenris Wolf swallowed the sun, and the serpent Garmr that circles the earth, tail in mouth, rose up from the ocean in a tidal wave of terror? And the earth sank in the sea, and cast down from heaven were the hot stars, and the sky itself was scorched with fire? And then the earth rose up from the waters, fair and green, and the gods built a new home brighter than sunlight, thatched with pure gold, and named this shining palace Gimli? That Gimli?
No, not that Gimli, and not that Freyja either. Merely me, a lowly mortal in a rental car slinking into town under cover of night after a sixteenyear, self-imposed exile. Stefan had called before I left and offered to pick me up at the airport, sounded miffed when I'd refused. I couldn't bear to trouble him, I explained, and for once I spoke the truth. I felt undeserving of that Gimli-sweet kindness. Underneath it, I believed that Stefan, like Sigga, like my mother, like Vera and anyone else who held an opinion on the matter, blamed me for Birdie's suicide.
No, no one had ever said as much. They didn't have to. It was obvious. True, the Iceland escapade had been Birdie's idea, her master plan, but I'd gone along every step of the way. If I had been a different kind of child more timid, more responsible, less impulsive-I might have dug my heels in when Birdie intercepted me in the midst of that Islendingadagurinn parade, insisted on a proper send-off by my mother. But Birdie knew me, knew that I was prone to fancy and enthusiasm, that I would fly without thinking at the first invitation.
I also declined Stefan's offer of a place to stay for the weekend. "You've already been far too generous," I told him. I meant not only the plane ticket but the care he'd given Sigga over the years. Care I should have given her myself.
Instead I reserved a cheap car, booked a room at the Viking Lakeside Motel. A hideout and a getaway vehicle, should I need to escape on short notice. The rental office at the airport was out of economy cars when I arrived and "upgraded" me to a luxury van, a ten-seater, same price. Black no less, a rented hearse, plenty of room for all my ghosts if they could manage to sit upright. I headed north on Highway 9 at dusk, hands trembling. Smoked five cigarettes. Hands trembling still. It was the prairie, unnervingly flat. In the city I'm propped up, secure in my thicket of buildings and bodies. Out there, there was nothing vertical to hold me. Just the black stripe of the road ahead. Flattened fields to the left, shimmery glimpses of Lake Winnipeg to the right. My old lake!
The sun dropped and it became truly dark. Not the muted city darkness I've become accustomed to-dim subway tunnels, basement apartment but the deep black of a starless country night on a road without streetlights and only the rare brief shine of an oncoming car. As I neared the turnoff for Gimli, twin strands of longing and dread wound inside me: speed on, turn back. On. Back. Or maybe ... out, into the lake. No one would ever know. I hadn't told my darkroom pal, Frank, about the trip, or our boss, Klaus. I'd left on a Friday afternoon, would be back to work on Monday morning. That way I could erase, if I needed to, the entire trip. Like the rest of my life, before I'd reinvented myself in New York, it might simply never have happened.
It was the sunrise that woke me my first day back in Gimli. Not the early, gentling light I remembered from Birdie's lakeside sunrise but the balled yellow fist of the thing itself. Smack in the eye. I'd forgotten to pull the shades the night before, or change out of my plane-rumpled clothes. I'd just checked directly into the Viking Lakeside Motel, plunked on the bed without turning back the skimpy covers, and crashed into a sleep black and flat as the night I'd driven through. And then I was suddenly, brutally, wide awake, blinking and squinting, burrowing under the covers and yanking the musty motel pillow over my face, defending myself like any subterranean creature from rude solar assault. Of course, it was only our ordinary star, making its daily rounds. I'd forgotten how bright the sun can get: even after I squeezed my eyes shut its brassy imprint remained, a penny-size hole persisting in my mind as I dozed back to sleep. A pretty sight I must have made, all six feet of me sprawled diagonally across the single bed, arms flopped off one side, feet dangling off the other, torso tangled in the dingy top sheet. A hard knot crunched between my brows.
I did not want to go back there; I had a long day ahead of me. We'll let me sleep.
And while I sleep, will you allow me to tell you, dear Cousin, about The Tricking of Gylfi? It's one of the old Norse myths documented by our esteemed ancestor Snorri Sturluson and recounted to me as a bedtime story by our very own Birdie.
King Gylfi was the ruler of what is now called Sweden. During Gylfi's rule, a new race of people came wandering into the northern lands. The Norse called them the Aesir, believing them to be of Asian origin, and they were awed by the Aesir's gifts and prowess. But after being badly tricked by one of the Aesir-likely the goddess Freyja in disguise-Gylfi decided to travel to Asgard, the Aesir's legendary headquarters, to discover for himself the source of their great powers.
Before departing on his quest Gylfi prepared himself a disguise, because a people as clever as the Aesir would never reveal their most prized secrets to a king as powerful as Gylfi. So Gylfi shed his royal robes and donned the cloak of a vagrant, calling himself Gangleri, which is just another name for wanderer.
Were the Aesir fooled by Gylfi's disguise, even for a moment? They were not. Well skilled in the art of prophecy, they saw Gylfi coming a long way off. When "Gangleri" arrived in Asgard, the Aesir were ready for him. In place of their ordinary dwellings they conjured out of thin air a vast hall, brilliantly shingled with the shields of warriors. The hall was higher than any Gylfi had ever seen, so high he could scarcely see the top of it.
Awaiting Gylfi inside was none other than Odin himself, disguised as not one but three rulers seated in a three-tiered throne, calling themselves High, Just-as-High, and Third. High wasted no time. He told Gylfi he was welcome to food and dri
nk, like anyone else in the great hall. But had he further business there?
Gylfi did: he wished to find out if there was anyone learned in the hall.
The three kings stared at him a moment in shocked silence. Learned, indeed! Gylfi knew full well that any ruler would take such a request as a challenge to his honor, and these three proved no exception. High was especially offended by Gylfi's comment and warned him that he would not escape the hall alive unless he could prove himself the more learned. "Stand out in front while you ask: he who tells shall sit."
And so began their famous contest of wits. Through it Gylfi hoped to learn all the secrets of the Aesir-and as long as he won in the end, he would be able to return home a more powerful man himself. If not, well then, he would die. Such were the rules of the game.
Gylfi took his place standing in front of the throne and started with an easy enough question. If the Aesir did not know the answer to this then surely they knew nothing at all.
"Who is the highest and most ancient of all gods?"
"All-Father," answered Third, not missing a beat.
Gylfi decided to try a harder line of questioning. "But what was the beginning? How did things start? And what was there before?"
High spoke down to Gylfi from the highest throne, recounting the beginning of the world, the great nothing of Ginnungagap, the cluelessness of sun and moon, the homeless stars.
All three kings nodded in satisfaction, then stared down in royal condescension to await Gylfi's next question. Oh, they were a pack of know-italls, this royal trinity. Whatever question Gylfi asked, they had an answer, however bizarre and improbable. The questioning went on for hours, and Gylfi began to fear for his life. He could not stump them. They knew how Bor's sons killed the frost giant Ymir and out of Ymir's carcass made the earth, from his blood the sea, rocks from his bones, trees from his hair, from his skull the sky, and out of his brains nothing less than the cruelest clouds.
The Tricking of Freya Page 22