South of Forgiveness

by Thordis Elva

  Peering through the sliding doors of our lives, I can’t help but wonder who I would be today if Tom had gone to Jamaica or Russia. Who would have been my first love? Who would I have grown up to be?

  He interrupts my thoughts. ‘I received a letter from my Icelandic host family — that’s what we called them. My host sister and I started a correspondence, exchanging pictures. When I got to Iceland, I had to spend a few days at an orientation camp before I met my host family, whom I was very excited to see. The last day of camp, I went swimming in Reykjavík. And guess who was sitting in the pool? My host sister. I didn’t believe my own eyes, I mean, what are the odds of me going to a public swimming pool and bumping into my future host sister?’

  ‘They’re quite good, actually,’ I say with patriotic sarcasm. ‘We’re talking about Iceland, here. In a nation of three hundred thousand, you’re bound to bump into someone you know at the pool, whether you like it or not.’

  ‘Anyway, I mustered the courage to talk to her. We laughed at the coincidence and chatted a little before she said goodbye and left for the showers. I was a bit nervous about the showers, considering I wasn’t at all used to being butt-naked around strange men. Given that I didn’t understand the signs on the doors, and I was nervous as hell about stripping off again, I walked straight into the women’s showers and the first thing I saw was my sister-to-be. Naked.’

  I gasp in horror. ‘Nooooo!’

  ‘Luckily, she didn’t notice me so I didn’t have to worry about having humiliated her. But how do you think I felt the next day? Meeting my host parents and shaking their hands, all “Hi, I’m Tom, the exchange student who hasn’t even moved in yet but has already seen your daughter naked”.’

  We share a giggle at the awkward scenario.

  ‘My host family was truly amazing. I was incredibly lucky to be placed with such a caring family; there was a lot of love there. They went out of their way to take me on camping and hiking trips, and I was welcomed in by the whole extended family. They helped me get a grasp on basic Icelandic, to the point where English was banned in the house, as I think I’ve told you. I still have a picture of them on my wall, and yeah, I miss them a lot.’

  ‘Cheers to good families,’ I say, raising my glass.

  ‘Cheers,’ he replies. ‘And then I met you, in school,’ he says over the edge of his glass. ‘I’ll never forget when I signed up for the school play and first saw you. You were jumping down from the stage, wearing that red sweater I liked so much …’

  ‘… that belonged to my dad,’ I tell him.

  He stares at me and I can see the sweater losing much of the charm it held in his mind. ‘That belonged to your dad?’

  ‘It shrank in the washing machine.’ I can’t help but grin.

  He shrugs. ‘Your turn.’

  I resume my life story at the time when I moved back to Iceland from Sweden. ‘My self-imposed assignment of making up for the wrongs around me was quite the formula for perfectionism, unsurprisingly. When I was eleven, my 19-year-old sister fell pregnant, doubling everyone’s worries about her addiction. She gave birth to a son whom my parents ended up raising and loving just as dearly as they did my siblings and me. However great it was to get another family member, the added responsibility only strengthened my resolve to “get it right”.’

  Tom shakes his head and lets out a soft whistle. ‘Quite the responsibility you took on …’

  ‘I tried my best to stay out of people’s way and obsessed over my grades in school. Never breaking the rules, never taking risks; being absolutely crushed if I made even the smallest of mistakes. Heaven forbid that I’d do stuff normal teenagers do, such as being out past my curfew or sneaking off to smoke cigarettes during lunch breaks. For this and various other reasons, my classmates left me out. I spent most of my time alone, reading books and developing an interest in things that were either plain weird or well beyond my age. As a testament to what a nerd I was, I even taught myself how to write in runes. So, you can maybe imagine how uncharacteristic it was for me to get drunk like I did that night at the Christmas dance. The guilt afterwards for having “strayed” like that was huge, laying the groundwork for the self-blame I carried for years and years afterwards.’

  Tom’s eyes say it all when he gives me an empathetic look, and I’m glad that he doesn’t try to complement my story with sympathy or wit. Sometimes, being heard is more than enough, I think. Grinning at the memory, I add: ‘Being a nerd had its upsides, as I could make my diary incomprehensible to my younger brother. Come to think of it, I wrote about my crush on you in runes.’

  When we exit the restaurant, darkness is upon us and Cape Town dons a shining evening gown.

  ‘My villa is just over there,’ Tom says. ‘Would you be comfortable coming in for a bit?’

  I hesitate. Do I want to be alone with him in such a personal setting? Is it inappropriate, even?

  As if he read my thoughts, Tom adds: ‘Or we can sit in the garden. I can lend you a jacket if you need one.’

  My teeth are already chattering, now that the sun has set. Shoving my doubts aside, I accept Tom’s offer.

  The guesthouse is located half a kilometer from the Ritz. A white wall with an electric fence encloses the house. Inside, the furniture is made of hardwood and bamboo. An old-fashioned fireplace lends a cozy atmosphere to the sitting room. ‘When I get back here at night, there are always some words of African wisdom lying on my pillow. A quote, you know?’ he says, pleased.

  I gratefully accept his jacket, only to be filled with mixed emotions when I slip it on and catch a whiff of the first man I fell in love with. How hard I worked on forgetting this scent.

  The chairs in the villa’s yard are colorless under the dark skies. Astounded, I watch the wind grab massive palm trees and bang them against the bamboo fence as if they were rag dolls. A pool is located in the middle of the garden, water gushing over the sides. Clouds eclipse the moon as we sit down on wooden lawn chairs. The garden is surprisingly sheltered from the weather. I’m amazed at the sight of a large cluster of bananas swinging from a nearby tree.

  ‘Wow,’ he says, following my line of sight. ‘It just seems surreal. All of this. And the fact that we’re sitting here together.’

  I nod.

  ‘I admit that I’m surprised how physically comfortable you are around me,’ he says, looking away.

  My mind goes to the precipice within and how I’ve found myself on the edge without warning. With no need to pretend or play hero, I say: ‘There have been moments in the last two days where I haven’t even been able to look at you. They pass by quickly. But I still have them.’

  Selecting his words carefully, he asks: ‘Next time it happens, will you tell me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thanks. I’d like that.’

  Somewhere nearby, a frightened animal wails in the wind.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about “the now”, a lot,’ I tell him. ‘Of allowing myself to just be. I’ve come to realize that one of the most destructive effects of trauma is that it chains you to a certain point in time and demands that you constantly revisit it. That fateful night, that particular moment. I know this is true for both of us, strange as it sounds. We can’t erase what happened, of course. But we can find ways to gain control of our time travels, becoming willing travelers who go on short trips to the past to make a conclusion or a discovery, instead of being involuntary victims who are dragged back there kicking and screaming every time something in our environment triggers a painful memory.’

  ‘I agree,’ he says, resting his eyes on the churning surface of the pool. ‘And on that note, there’s something I’d like to discuss, Thordis. I want to talk about the night you celebrated your birthday, during the Westman Islands weekend in 2000. Will you help me recall it?’

  My mind goes to the trip I took with a group of friends to a renowned music festival in
the Westman Islands. Tom spent the summer of 2000 in Iceland, and as he knew some of my friends who were going, he came along to experience the festival. It was the week I turned twenty, which is the legal drinking age in Iceland. ‘It doesn’t get much cooler than celebrating your twentieth with thousands of other partygoers at the Westman Islands festival,’ I say with a faint smile. Little did I know about the agony we were in for.

  His face has gone a strange shade of pale. ‘I remember how excited we all were — you, your friends, and me. I’d even brought my fire stick—’

  I repeat in disbelief: ‘Your fire stick? That was your fire stick that you set alight and swung around over the heads of innocents and mortals sitting on the grass? I always thought that was a branch you’d picked up from the ground somewhere!’

  ‘It’s an Australian festival thing,’ he answers, shamefaced. ‘You’d see people doing it at music festivals and I’d made my own before … and thought I was kind of decent at it. Trying to impress you, I’m guessing. Drinking horrible amounts of straight vodka from somebody else’s bottle probably didn’t help the situation.’

  A joyless laugh escapes my throat. ‘Well, you sure made it something to remember. I spent half an hour trying to talk the police out of arresting you. I told them you were just a drunken foreigner who didn’t know any better and that we’d make sure you’d stay out of trouble for the rest of the evening.’

  He looks away. ‘I remember I wasted no time breaking that promise. As soon as I got a chance, I sprinted away from you. There are empty blanks in there. I’m not sure of the order of events but I remember running down a slope, falling, and hitting my head.’

  ‘You were out cold.’

  ‘I was?’ He shakes his head. ‘Shit …’

  ‘That’s when we took you to the medical tent. You couldn’t walk, so my friend and I had to hold you up between us. The whole ordeal took an hour and a half: the wait for the doctor, the time it took to stitch your head up. My friend gave up and took off, but I stayed with you, sick to my stomach, watching the needle go in and out of your scalp while squeezing your hand. I begged you to behave so I could enjoy the remainder of the concert.’

  I pause in frustration and take a deep breath. Tom sits still and stares into the stormy night.

  ‘Can you tell me what happened next?’ he whispers.

  ‘As soon as we got out of the medical tent, you tore away from me and prepared to disappear into the night, bleeding and drunk. Once again, I’d be forced to chase after you, ruining my chances at having even the slightest bit of fun on what was supposed to be my birthday trip. So I lost it, simply. That was the first time I’d ever said it out loud: “How dare you treat me this way? After raping me!”’

  He nods, transfixed. ‘And I broke down crying and rambling about how I wanted to … bleed for you. God, that gives me such a sick feeling in my stomach,’ he adds with dismay.

  ‘You just looked at me with this bewildered expression on your face, and a moment later, you were gone, without responding in any way whatsoever to my colossal charge. I didn’t have the energy to chase after you this time. But I notified the coast guard. They found you on the beach later that night, soaking wet and passed out.’

  The wrath and bottomless disappointment that marked the start of my twenties comes washing back over me with surprising intensity. In hindsight, I know my anger served a vital purpose. Had I not been so furious with Tom, I doubt I would’ve worked up the nerve to put the violence he subjected me to into words.

  I turn to Tom, who is squirming over this bleak recollection — treading the murky waters of shame with me watching him from the shore. It’s a pattern I know all too well from our correspondence, and I’m not having any more of it. Yes, he needs to own up to the fact that he raped me, but there’s nothing to be gained from dwelling on the drunken dramas that followed. The only purpose it serves is to feed Tom’s self-pity, for which I have zero patience, and to tilt the power balance between us by placing him in the dirt and me up on a pedestal I’ve repeatedly tried to climb down from. And I think I know just the right story to break the cycle.

  ‘So what?’ I ask in a harsher voice than I’d intended. ‘You think you’re the only one who’s ever had a bad night out?’

  He looks at me in surprise. ‘Well, I’m pretty sure it’s hard to find a bigger asshole than I was that night in the Westman Islands. One of the blackest times of my life.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure of that,’ I tell him dryly. ‘I once ditched a prestigious peace conference, stole eight liters of hard liquor, and went skinny dipping in the pool.’

  He stares at me for a second. ‘You did what?’

  ‘Because I had graduated top of my high school in Iceland, I was offered a scholarship to study in the States along with ninety other gifted students from all over the world. A few months into our studies, we were invited to a peace conference in a fancy hotel in Florida. I was twenty-one years old and naive enough to think that the conference would actually be about peace. So I read everything I could about the current state of affairs in the conflict zones of the Middle East and Africa. Much to my disappointment, the hot shots who showed up, including Bush’s brother and a Nigerian prince, were only there to strengthen their business ties. The only thing I remember being remotely linked to peace was when we foreign students were made to dress up in our national costumes and sing Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Love Changes Everything’ while the moguls feasted on steak. I was young, rebellious, and outraged by the whole thing. So I rallied a few students, let them into the drinks suite, and emptied the bar, taking all the liquor to the poolside.’

  ‘How come you ended up naked in the pool?’

  ‘Well, we had no mixer and nothing to pour the stuff in. The other kids didn’t feel so good about drinking vodka straight out of the bottle because they were, after all, honor students who didn’t normally engage in risky behavior, right? So I tried to show them how it’s done by taking a few big gulps, Icelandic style. That wasn’t such a good idea, considering I hadn’t eaten anything. A little while later I was so revved up, I decided it was time for a pool party. Conveniently, I was wearing my bikini under my clothes after a sunbathing session earlier that day. When in Florida, right? Well, in an attempt to boost the morale, I started telling jokes while I was undressing. However, I was so consumed with my own wit — not to mention drunk — that I accidentally took all my clothes off including the bikini. Then I announced that the pool party was on, jumped butt-naked in the pool, and wondered why nobody would join me.’

  He shakes his head and lets out a chuckle.

  ‘The best part is that I have no idea how I dried off. I sincerely hope I didn’t walk stark naked into the conference room and ask a random world leader for a towel. Or use the nearest table cloth.’

  This time, he laughs out loud. It’s the sound of relief.

  ‘So don’t you dare think you’re the only person who’s had a bad night of drinking and lost face. Strangers from every continent have seen me naked,’ I say, sipping my wine. ‘It’s a matter of finding a way to laugh about it and carrying on with your life.’

  He nods. ‘Thank you, Thordis.’

  ‘No need to thank me, I didn’t do it for you. I’m fully able to get into trouble of my own accord, you know.’ I raise my glass. ‘Now cheers to never being young and stupid again.’

  ‘Cheers,’ he says with a grateful smile. ‘From now on, we’ll just be stupid.’

  We sip from our glasses, and I wrap the jacket tighter around me. ‘Now that you mention it, the day after I celebrated my birthday in the Westman Islands I was walking around the festival, furious with you. I ran into a girl I knew, who told me she’d spent the last two hours listening to some wasted Australian complain to anybody who would listen about this girl and how he’d fucked things up with her. He even had the poor girl’s initial tattooed on his ankle, she told me.’


  Taken aback, he stares at me. ‘You’re kidding?’ He bursts out laughing. ‘So all these years you’ve thought I’d tattooed myself with your initial?’

  Suddenly, it’s my turn to be sheepish. ‘Well, I don’t know, I’m just telling you what she said …’

  He shakes his head. ‘First, I don’t doubt I was that drunk rambling asshole your friend ran into. What a horrendous coincidence! Second, I have the protective rune Thurisaz tattooed on my ankle. The uncle of my host family gave me a necklace with a Thurisaz pendant as a goodbye present when I moved back to Australia in ’97. Once I got back home, I wanted a tattoo and that symbol happened to have meaning for me.’

  I’m confused. ‘But …’ I begin, only to have the sentence die on my lips.

  ‘Being absolutely wasted and dramatic in the Westman Islands, I probably found it very fitting that Thurisaz looks like your Icelandic initial, and I can imagine myself going on about it in a drunken ramble. But I swear that originally, the tattoo had nothing to do with you.’

  Having reclaimed my cool, I exclaim: ‘To think that all these years I believed that somewhere out there, an ankle was dedicated to me,’ in a curt voice that makes him laugh again, and I chuckle along myself.

  ‘I’ve never discussed this with anyone, let alone laughed at it,’ he confesses. ‘The shame was too overwhelming, I suppose. Yet hardly a day has passed where I haven’t held my breath for fear of being discovered. I imagined that someone had overheard us in the Westman Islands. Or that someone saw me at the Christmas dance and put two and two together when you went public with the events of that night in your book, though you didn’t name me. My worst fear was that my host parents in Iceland would find out what I did while living under their roof.’ He shudders and I know it has nothing to do with the weather.