Butterflies in November

by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

  “That’s the only time I was grateful that you were wearing trousers and not a skirt. The amount of times I’ve prayed to God to ask him to make you buy a skirt suit.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been simpler to just ask me?”

  “And would you have done that for me?”

  “I’m not sure, I thought you were just happy to know that I was well.”

  “There, you see?”

  “I realize I can be impulsive sometimes.”

  “Impulsive, yeah, you always have the right word for things.”

  He rushes into the living room and returns with two volumes of the Icelandic dictionary in his arms, frantically skimming through the first tome.

  “Words, words, words, exactly, your entire life revolves around the definition of words. Well, here you go, impulsive: abrupt, hasty, headlong and impetuous. Wouldn’t you like to tell me how they say it in Hungarian?”

  His anger seems way out of proportion to the argument. Still sitting on the stool by the table, I notice a butterfly hovering close to the toaster, which is unusual for this time of the year. It is settling on the wall now, close to me, and perches there motionless, without flapping its silver wings. If you gently blow some warm air on it, it is clearly still alive. I swallow twice and remain silent.

  “Those were my colleagues and Nína Lind was there too, she remembers it vividly. How do you suppose I felt?”

  “Who’s Nína Lind?”

  “Your hair is shorter than mine,” he says wearily, stroking his thick mane. He has taken one of his hands out of his pocket.

  “And?”

  “And then there are those friends of yours.”

  “What about them?”

  “Like that Auður girl, fun in some ways but a total crackpot. And with another fatherless child on the way.”

  “That’s her business.”

  “Yes and no, it’s been one year since we moved in here and we haven’t emptied all your boxes yet. I get the impression this home doesn’t really mean that much to you.”

  “We need to find time to do that together.”

  “You have a pretty weird idea of marriage, to say the least, you go out jogging in the middle of the night, dinner is never at the same time. Who else—apart from Sicilians—do you think would eat Wiener Schnitzel at eleven? Then when I get home on Tuesday you’ve cooked a four-course meal on a total whim, a Christmas dinner in October. And there’s me clambering over your sneakers in the hall holding a pizza with some awful topping in my arms, just to have something to eat. And who did the shopping again this evening? There’s no organization in your life, you can’t be sure of anything. It’s very difficult to live with these endless fluctuations and extremes.”

  “You yourself often work nights or are abroad, you’ve only been at home for four nights this month.”

  “I mean you speak eleven languages that you practically learnt in your sleep, if your mother is to be believed, and what do you do with your talents?”

  “Use them in my work.”

  “Having a child might have changed you, smoothed your edges a bit. But still, what kind of a mother would behave the way you do?”

  It was bound to reach this point, the baby issue. But I’m a realist so I agree with him, I wasn’t made to be a mother, to bring up new humans, I haven’t the faintest clue about children, nor the skills required to rear them. The sight of a small child doesn’t trigger a wave of soft maternal feelings in me. All I get is that sour smell, imagining their endless tantrums, swollen gums, wet bibs, sticky cheeks, red chins, the cold dribble on their chins. Anyway, it isn’t motherly warmth that men come looking for in me and they’re not particularly drawn to my breasts either. Besides, there are plenty of children in the world, our national highway is full of cars crammed with children, I should know. Three or four pre-school toddlers escaping from their young parents’ cars to raid every petrol station shop along the way. They need hot dogs and ice creams, after which they’re packed into the cars again, reeking of mustard, their faces plastered in chocolate. The parents look tired and don’t even talk to each other, don’t communicate, don’t notice the dwarf fireweed or glacier because of their carsick children. Your kids vanish into the bushes of camping sites, without ever giving you a chance to browse through a thesaurus in peace by the entrance to the tent, because you’re always on watch duty, I imagine. Some of our friends haven’t had a full night’s sleep for years and no longer make love, except for the very occasional little quickie. These are people who don’t even kiss any more, when they collect each other from work they just turn their heads and gaze out of the windows of their cars. I know that much, I’ve seen it. The relationships that survive having children are few and far between.

  “You should at least organize yourself better, otherwise you’ll never be able to cope with having a child,” I hear him say to the broom cupboard.

  If one really put one’s mind to it, it might be possible to develop the ability to read two pages of a book in a row. The child has grown suspiciously silent, the cookie is probably stuck in its throat, which is why you have to check on it every four lines, you’re always either putting a child into a sweater or pulling it out of one, shoving Barbie into her stockings and high heels, groping for your keys outside the front door with a sleeping child in your arms. No, it’s not my style. I try to regurgitate an entire paragraph from a manuscript I once proof-read:

  “One of the things that characterizes a bad relationship is when people start feeling an obligation to have a child together.”

  I have to confess that’s something I read somewhere, because we can’t experience everything in the first person. Nevertheless, I throw in an extra bit of my own.

  “But maybe we could adopt, in a few years’ time, a girl from China, for example, there are millions of surplus baby girls in China.”

  “That’s exactly it, when you’re not talking like a self-help manual, you behave as if you were living in a novel, as if you weren’t even speaking for yourself, as if you weren’t there.”

  “At least I’m not Anna Karenina in a railway station.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t necessarily absorb the content of all the text that I proof-read, you know, nor do I emulate it.”

  “But just remember this: not all men are bright and chirpy in the morning, and you can’t expect them to appreciate the nuances of linguistics over their morning porridge.”

  He has straightened his back and randomly presses his thumb against the window pane, just beside one of the butterfly’s wings.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It isn’t always easy to figure out what you’re on about. Other people just chat when the bread pops out of the toaster. Maybe, for example, they say things like: the toast is ready, would you like me to pass it to you? Would you like jam or cheese? They talk about cosy, homely things like laundry detergent, for example, things that mean something in a relationship. Have you ever asked yourself if I might like to talk about laundry detergent? Somehow you’re never willing to talk about laundry detergent. Last time you washed my shirts it was with your red underwear. It’s true that I was the one who gave it to you, but I don’t remember ever seeing you wear it. And that’s not the only thing.”

  “No?”

  “No, I just want to let you know that I’ve spoken to a marriage counsellor and he agrees with me.”

  “About what?”

  “About you. He had a similar experience. With his first wife.”

  As I’m calmly sitting there on the stool and sip on the glass of water, I realize that he is now about to say something that I’ve somehow sensed he would say, something that has crossed my mind before. And the thought is accompanied by a feeling that I’ve also experienced before, although I cannot for the moment remember where it
will lead, to something good or bad. I know what he’s going to say next.

  “And then there’s Nína Lind.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “She works at the office, handles the switchboard and takes care of the photocopying for now. She’s planning on studying law.”

  His voice vanishes into the collar of his shirt. Some hairs protrude through his buttonholes.

  “She’s actually expecting… a baby.”

  “And?”

  “Yeah, and so am I, with her.”

  “Isn’t she the one you said was coming on to all the guys at that Christmas punch party in your office last year?”

  “Not any more. You should also know, with all your vaster knowledge,” he says with a touch of sarcasm, “that when a man is unjustifiably critical of someone, it’s often to conceal a secret admiration. Men quite like women to have a bit of experience. I have to confess I’ve sometimes wished you had vaster experience in that area yourself.”

  I note that he’s using the word vaster for the second time. If I were proof-reading this, I would instinctively cross out the second occurrence, without necessarily pondering too much on the substance of the text.

  “You don’t even know how to flirt, don’t even notice when men are looking at you. It’s not much fun when the signal that a man’s wife gives out to the world is that she is completely indifferent to the attention the world gives her.”

  I can’t control myself and note that this is the second time he has called upon the world as his witness in a single sentence.

  “Besides, she’s changed, pregnancy changes a woman.”

  “When is the baby due?”

  He hawks twice.

  “In about eight weeks’ time.”

  “Isn’t that a rather short pregnancy, like a guinea pig?”

  “This is something that has evolved between us over a period of time, not just an accident. I just want you to know that this wasn’t a decision on the spur of the moment, or just a whim, even if you think it is.”

  His face has turned crimson, with his hands dug deep into his pockets.

  “How did you get to know each other?”

  “In the photocopy room or around there.”

  “When?”

  “You could say the relationship turned serious sometime after the Christmas party.”

  He fumbles around the refrigerator, takes out a carton of milk and pours himself a full glass. I didn’t know he drank milk.

  “Christ, how old is this milk? It’s the 25th of October today and this is from September.”

  “What does she have that I don’t have?”

  “It’s not necessarily that she has something you don’t have, although in many ways she’s more feminine, has breasts and stuff.”

  “Don’t I have breasts?”

  “It’s not that you don’t have breasts, but she’d never been to Copenhagen, for example, I had the feeling I could teach her something.”

  “Did she go to Copenhagen with you the other day?”

  “Yes, she did, as it happens. Like I said, it’s been evolving.”

  “And Boston too?”

  “She was visiting a cousin there as well.”

  He has started to nurse the plant on the window sill, and fetches a glass to water it, and then massages the soil around the stem with his fingers. I’ve never seen him care so much for a plant.

  “Do you love her?”

  He gives himself plenty of time to readjust the plant and wash his hands in the kitchen sink, after his labour in the soil, before answering.

  “Yeah. She says she loves me and can’t live without me.”

  In retrospect there had been a number of signs in the air. He had suddenly started to plant clues in various parts of the apartment and wrote “I will never forget you” on the back of an unpaid electricity bill, knowing that I was the only person in the house who ever does chores like paying bills. I actually didn’t notice the inscription until I got to the bank and the cashier blushed and double-stamped the bill. And then there were the home-made crosswords he left by the phone: love, nine down, longing six across, coward seven down. Affection, desire and chicken.

  “I want you to know I’m very disappointed things didn’t work out between us,” he says.

  I’ve shovelled down two mouthfuls of the spinach lasagne and am preparing to stab the third morsel with my fork. Once I’ve swallowed it, I adjust my garter-stitch scarf, wrapping it around my throat.

  “Thanks for the dinner. When are you leaving?”

  “Nína and I are looking for an apartment and we’re going to see one tomorrow. In the meanwhile I’ll stay at Mom’s.”

  In light of all the things that can happen in a day, coincidences clearly have a tendency to come in bunches. Two men have given me my marching orders today, dumped me. I feel like a prisoner who has helped a cellmate escape by lending him my back. But I’m still capable of surprising myself. I can do better.

  “I was going to cook some goose this weekend.”

  “Goose, where did you get goose?”

  “In my mother’s freezer.”

  “Unfortunately I’m really busy.”

  “Come on, everyone has to eat, it’s not as if I was asking you to tidy up the garage or something.”

  It would be OK to eat together. We can make it our last supper, our Christmas feast.

  He is unable to resist.

  “I’ll come for the dinner at any rate, no point in letting a goose go to waste.”

  SEVEN

  I can’t say that I particularly enjoy cooking, but anyone who can read can cook. That’s all there is to it. You can even browse through recipe books in their original language alone in bed at night. I find a tolerable radio station, have the music quite loud, fetch the bird from the balcony and roll up my sleeves.

  I got the soul of every rapper in me, love me or hate me.

  A post-pubescent rapper starts to curse his mother. This is the kind of ingratitude you can expect from an offspring.

  Fuck your mother.

  I’m increasingly starting to feel the enormous benefits of not having a child. Kids of his age have bad skin, you have to book appointments for them at the dermatologist’s half a year in advance, and buy them steroid creams that will only make them more hostile towards you. They grow too fast, just one segment of the body at a time, wake up in foul moods, never open the window and, if they make their beds, they feel like they’ve done enough housework for a whole month. They sit at birthday parties in their anoraks and refuse to take down the blinking Christmas lights that were put up in their rooms, even after Easter has passed, and collect dirty socks under their beds.

  I just found out my mom does more dope than I do.

  Cooking is educating yourself through reading. I never commit recipes to memory, but conscientiously follow the written instructions, thus managing to produce the most laborious and time-consuming dishes with music in my ears. When I cook lemon chicken with olives it is to the accompaniment of my Khaled Sahra CD, when I make pumpkin soup it’s Pinetop Perkins, for grilled corn on the cob it’s Rubén González, and when I make Osso buco or Baccalà alla livornese it’s Gianmaria Testa. Dvořák or Liszt are in my ears when I make Diós palacsinta pancakes with a nut filling and, even though I’m not a big Strauss fan, I put up with him when I make Pustertaler Kassuppe. When it comes to Icelandic meat soup, it’s got to be something out of the Bjarni Thorsteinsson collection and with Borsch or Moscow beetroot soup it has to be Prokofiev’s orchestral suites. It may not be particularly original, but I’m not the first person in the world to make meat-stuffed cabbage rolls.

  If anyone asks me how I did it, I answer: I looked up goose in the index, read the recipe and followed it. It even had photos of secure, well-manicured ma
le hands demonstrating the whole procedure, step by step. There is no connection between culinary talents and other talents in life. People don’t need to, for example, be child-friendly or of a particularly benevolent nature to be able to cook good food.

  I’ve just plonked the bird on the draining board when the doorbell rings. It’s my neighbour from downstairs with a cat in her arms.

  “I know how you feel,” she says, “that makes two divorcees in the building now.”

  I ask her how she heard the news, since I’ve barely heard it myself and I haven’t told anyone about it.

  “I’ve known about it since the spring,” she says, fondling her cat, stroking and scratching it all over so that its fur soon looks like it has been blasted by a hairdryer.

  “It’s a good job it’s out in the open now,” she says, holding out her empty sherry glass to me for the fourth time.

  “Apart from anything else, she’s pretty plain-looking. So what if men find her beautiful?”

  The liquid level of the bottle has dropped considerably by the time she takes her leave and I can fully devote myself to the bird on the draining board again. You obviously need to start at the right end, the book says, and to pluck the bird’s feathers from the outer layer in. How are you supposed to do that? I call Mom, who tells me she was just about to call me, had the phone in her hand, because she has just found my old skates.

  “They’ll be as good as new,” she says, “once I’ve finished polishing them.”

  As for the plucking of the goose, her conclusion is that the method used is just a matter of personal taste, feather by feather or by the handful, it all comes to the same, the main thing is to ensure that once it has been plucked its skin has a greyish-blue colour, with a pretty diamond pattern. Then run a blowtorch over the rest, the remaining down, to make it presentable. Mom sends her regards to Thorsteinn.

  “I got him to move a cupboard for me the other day and he seems to have lost weight lately,” she says as she hangs up.