Butterflies in November

by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

  I’m seven years old and my friend Sigurður knocks on the door to tell me that Brandur has been run over, that he’s dead in a cardboard box under the apples in the locked guest toilet and that it will cost me five krónur to see him through the window. I join the queue with five krónur in my hand. The line shortens and I’m wearing new plimsolls because the first day of summer was two days ago. It’s my turn now. I hand Sigurður the coin and climb onto the wooden box outside the window of the guest toilet, where Brandur lies dead. Standing on the tip of my toes in my new plimsolls, it only takes me a second to spot him lying on one side. There’s white froth in his mouth and blood on his stomach. His eyes are open. I bless him with the sign of the Cross in the same way that I’m blessed when I get into a vest after a bath. It’s then that I notice white socks soaking in the sink. When I get down off the box, my friend Sigurður offers me a piece of Wrigley’s spearmint gum. Afterwards, I run into the field by the new building in my new plimsolls. There are puddles of red water, which smell of rust and must, and immediately colour my shoes. That night I soak my white shoe laces in chlorine.

  The weather has cleared when we step into the yard and I notice Christmas lights hanging on the ridge of the barn. The family dog hops on me, but no one answers when I knock on the door. The light blue light of a television set glows in the living room of the bungalow so I knock on the window. A couple inside sit at both extremities of a sofa watching a swaggering police Alsatian in an Austrian cop series.

  The farmer finally comes to the door with a smile that exposes his red gums.

  “That earmark is not mine, it’s my brother’s, who lives on the next farm; let him tend to his own flock. My brother and I haven’t spoken to each other for seven years. A dispute over borders. They’ve recently sent us another threatening letter, just because of the drainage ditches we dug. Now all of a sudden they think they’ve become the spokesmen for wader birds.” Kinship is fatal.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  When I finally come to the end of the track leading to the neighbouring farm, for a moment it seems like we might be welcomed with open arms. The man walks slowly towards us from the yard, followed by his wife. Peering through the web of the cracked windscreen, I see that he has a yellow towel draped over his shoulder and a kitchen stool in his hand. He gives me no sign of acknowledgement, however, having probably just seen me come from a meeting with his wretched brother, which obviously does not bode well. They’re more or less my age and could be cousins—same physique and hairstyle, a similar gait, both leaning heavily on their left feet. The man sits on the stool and, now that I’m out of the car, I see that the woman is holding a black electric razor in her hand. She starts shaving the back of her husband’s neck under the porch in front of the front door.

  “It’s just to avoid any of the hair going on the carpet or sofa inside,” she explains. “It’s bad enough with chips and the dogs.”

  The dog is going berserk and circles the car, barking up towards the window behind which the dead sheep lies, and makes several attempts to knock me over and scratch the paintwork off the car—not that it matters at this point—and finally jumps onto the hood, where he stands slavering on my neck.

  “You’ve run over my favourite sheep,” says the woman. “We had to call a midwife when she came into the world and then a vet. She had a caesarean birth.” They examine the glazed-eyed animal after its shaky journey down two back roads to the farms of the two brothers, who live in this place where kinship is fatal and people haven’t spoken to each other for seven years, although little cousins sometimes secretly play together through the gaps under the barbed-wire fences.

  “Do you want to pay by credit card or cash?”

  It transpires that the animal was four years old, was called Lind, had a truncated right ear and split-tipped left ear, always gave birth to two lambs, full weight: 40.7 kilos, twice the winner of a silver medal at livestock shows. She turns out to be more expensive than she would have cost me in a store, all carved up, spiced and marinated in cognac and vacuum-packed.

  “Milk,” says the boy, who has climbed out of the car and is standing right against me. I summon up the courage to ask if the boy can have a glass of milk. It’s impossible to buy fresh milk in the petrol stations along the Ring Road.

  “It’s my husband’s birthday in a week’s time, a big birthday, so we were planning on slaughtering one anyway, I’ll try to make some stew out of it,” says the wife wearily, “we’re expecting sixty guests.”

  “Not another of those spicy city recipes with beans,” says the husband.

  “We should be used to it,” says the woman, “those animals are always getting run over, last time it was a pedigree horse that the priest reversed into. The irony was that he’d come to the wrong farm, no one had committed suicide here.”

  “Not yet,” interjects the husband.

  “We ate leftovers every single day for three weeks.”

  She leans over to whisper something into my ear:

  “Add cayenne pepper and no one can tell where the meat comes from, whether it was an accident or clandestine slaughtering at the farm, any trace of their breed or origin vanishes in a second,” says the wife. Then, striking a lighter and a more sisterly tone, she chummily adds that they sell quite a few run-over animals to the Sand Hotel.

  I wonder whether I should pass her the Irish goose recipe, which only requires it to be cooked with the stuffing for all signs of the crime to be erased.

  “Go take a look at his paintings,” says the woman suddenly, before lowering her voice to add: “if you buy a picture from him, I’ll give you a good discount on the sheep. No one knows where his talent comes from, he’s only just started, let’s hope it’s passed on to the children.”

  I follow the farmer up to an attic where he’s created a studio for himself in the bedroom of his departed parents-in-law.

  “It just started out of the blue, one day after dinner,” he says, “it was as if I was being guided from the other side.”

  All the animals are in profile, like Roman emperors on those coins of yore. Most of the backgrounds are amber skies and sunsets. The prices on the paintings are quite low.

  “Hawaiian tropical sunset is the heading an art historian used in a small article in the local paper,” he says. “He was travelling around the country and devoted a quarter of a column to this quarter of the country.”

  The farmer hands me the cutting. The boy calmly looks at the paintings and the man alternately.

  “Do you want a portrait of your sheep or just any one?”

  I pay 3,500 krónur for the picture and he throws in an extra two kilos of potatoes, freshly picked in November. Auður will appreciate the pure tones of this picture.

  “If the weather continues like this, we’ll be able to grow crops all year round. Unless I start to paint all year round instead.”

  Blind kittens tumble over each other in the hallway by the shoes as I settle the payment for the sheep and the portrait of the sheep. The girl of the house invites the boy to play with the kittens; they’re going to be drowned soon. The boy crouches over them by the pile of shoes and I fear they might be giving us another extra gift.

  Once the transaction has been completed, the atmosphere lightens and the conversation turns to the weather. They mainly talk to each other.

  “Yes, that’s a lot of rain,” says the woman.

  “Yeah, very mild,” says the husband.

  “Nothing’s the way it should be in the sky any more,” says the woman, “it’s all gone odd.”

  “It’s a sign that the poles will be reversing soon.”

  “We’ve almost reached the winter solstice and potatoes are still sprouting in the fields and we haven’t picked all the summer carrots yet.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t ever remember there being weather like this
at the end of November. We had the highest temperature in Europe here yesterday, even warmer than Rome.”

  “Yeah, imagine, just under the Arctic Circle. The potato plants are still sprouting and a lamb was born here two days ago.”

  “That journalist Ómar Ragnarsson flew over here in his plane today and is going to be doing a report on it in the news.”

  “Yeah, weird.”

  “Yeah, you can only be grateful for every day.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It must be coming to an end now.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, probably with an eruption.”

  “Or a flood,” I finally interject to join in the couple’s conversation.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the rivers seem to have swollen up quite a bit, the water is up to the roadway of the bridges, the roads are wet, the glaciers have turned grey with the rain, not to mention the overflowing lagoons.”

  They look at me with suspicion.

  As a farewell gesture, I apologetically pat the animal lying in the yard. The man tells me about a garage nearby where it will take them half a day to order a new windscreen.

  “They’re always ordering new ones for the machines they’re using up on the dam.”

  As soon as I’m back in the car and have closed the gate behind us, a small little ball of striped hair appears from under the collar of the boy’s hoodie. He looks at me through his glasses with moist, pleading eyes. In fact, four pleading eyes are now staring at me from the back seat. I give him an encouraging, understanding, approving smile, turn on the windscreen wipers and heater, and swerve back onto the highway. I’m back on track.

  The best thing about this island’s road grid is the Ring Road; there’s nothing there to distract you, the back roads are only used to fetch milk and return any sheep one might have run over to the nearest farm. You can stop almost anywhere and pick up the thread again, without having to look at a map. It makes life so much easier not to have to dread new choices at every crossroad.

  I turn off the weather forecast and slip in a CD. Pérez Prado and his band playing a forbidden tango, Taboo.

  My vision of the world may be restricted by a cracked pane of glass, but I feel I’m gradually gaining a better grip on things, and it would actually take very little for me to consider myself a satisfied woman.

  THIRTY-SIX

  We drive over three bridges, one after another, and the water level has risen further.

  While the car is being fixed, we use the time to write the postcard and eat shrimp salad sandwiches. The boy plucks four prawns out of his. It takes an hour and a half of my life to write the card for him. He dictates everything he wants it to contain for me. First, I jot down the words in my notepad, and then he takes a look at them and either nods or shakes his head. There’s no doubt this boy can read.

  Dear Mom,

  We’re on a journey in Iceland. The road isn’t straight. There’s a rear-view mirror in the car. I am well. It is raining. The sheep died and so did the fish. I have a kitten. The others drowned. I am well, but I will still come back to you. We send our regards (the last sentence is from me). All my love. Your darling son, Tumi.

  That evening I call Auður.

  “Guess who I met at my antenatal inspection this morning?”

  “Who?”

  “He looked up from a Norwegian gossip mag, he was peering at two-year-old photos of the royal family. The only man in the waiting room, because it was the middle of a weekday.”

  “How are you doing?”

  “But I only saw the back of her, she was going in to be examined in a fairly anonymous-looking coat, so I wouldn’t recognize her if I saw her on the street again.”

  “That’s because you only saw the back of her. How are you?”

  “She was wearing glasses.”

  “On the back of her head?”

  “I caught a glimpse of her in profile.”

  “How are you?”

  “I was expecting some brainless bimbo, but actually she’s not unlike you, it seemed to me. Except you’re more exciting, of course,” she hastens to add.

  “Because I’m your friend and you only saw her briefly in profile.”

  “Don’t take this personally, but I thought he looked pretty good, new haircut and rested. Actually, he seems to be in great shape.”

  “What are the doctors saying? Have they set a date for the birth yet?”

  “What, mine?”

  “Yeah, your twins.”

  “The 24th of December, provided there are no fuck-ups, they’re sisters.”

  “Is everything else OK otherwise? In the ward?”

  “You can imagine, I’ve never led such a monotonous life. I’m trying not to focus on sex and death too much, my mind is mostly on food these days and I’m reading recipe books between meals. And it’s always the same let-down when the food tray arrives, soggy biscuits and thick, lukewarm, tasteless cocoa soup.”

  Then I ask her if the boy can read. Not as far as she knows, she hasn’t even had the time to teach him letters yet. She’s got enough on her plate with his speech therapy, sign language classes, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, apart from the fact that he has only just turned four.

  “Well, he can certainly write words,” I say, “all kinds of complex words that he writes on the misty windows: MAMMY, FLY, OH, MIRROR, DADDY, WET, LAGOON.”

  “How do you like being with a child?”

  “Tumi is a very special child, a wonderful kid. I’ve started to learn sign language, to read more about it, he’s also teaching me, pointing at things and showing me their symbol.”

  “Is he changing you?”

  “I guess he must be.”

  I can hear from her voice that she is fighting back some tears.

  “Becoming a mother is the most important thing you can do in life. It’s a wonderful experience to have a child. Then all of a sudden you have to decide whether you’re just going to serve coffee or offer food at their confirmation parties and whether you should contact their fathers, or even go to a photographer’s studio together. By law, fathers are obliged to pay for half the costs of confirmations and funerals.”

  “Well, first . . . they have to be born.”

  “I might die giving birth, all three of us might, it’s such a big responsibility.”

  “Don’t give me that, nothing will happen to you this time.”

  “But if anything does happen to me . . . to us, I want you to take care of Tumi. You’re the best person I know. I’ve put it down in writing.”

  “Nothing will happen to you, you’re so sensitive in your current state, they’ll look after you.”

  “Precisely, it’s the exceeding confidence in this ward that scares me, they all love their jobs and record episodes of ER for each other when they’re too busy working.”

  “You’re so vulnerable in your condition, if you like I could have a word with the obstetrician.”

  “I’m such a dreadful friend, blabbing away about myself and asking nothing about you. Have you met any exciting men on your travels?”

  “No, it’s mainly girls who operate the petrol pumps. Besides, I’m quite content to be alone with Tumi. We’re up to 300-piece jigsaws now.”

  “I told you he’d change you.”

  As I linger a moment at the mailbox and search for my car keys in my pocket, a man in an anorak with a fur-trimmed hood and a violin case in his hand turns towards me and speaks to me in Estonian in an amiable voice:

  “Beautiful woman.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  There can be no doubt that some major construction is taking place in the vicinity. Gargantuan machines, the size of three-storey houses, crawl along a strip of gravel road, blocking off both ends and creatin
g an obstruction on the highway. I trudge behind them and it is not until I come across a side road leading to a farm that I have a chance to overtake them.

  The beams of my headlights unexpectedly illuminate two men in blue overalls standing at the foot of a sharp landslide with their backs turned to the road. They stand there motionless, like identical twins, with a few metres between them and no vehicle in sight or nearby farms. They’re looking up at the landslide; two sheep are perched on the summit and standing there perfectly still, looking down at the men. They simultaneously slip the rifles off their shoulders and take aim. I hear two almost concurrent shots and two balls of bloody wool come tumbling down the perpendicular mass of bulky rock. As I drive past the men, they turn to look at me. The white of their eyes appear yellow to me. I turn on the radio.

  Water levels are steeply rising around the country after the uninterrupted rainfall of the past two weeks, says the reader of the lunchtime news. An increasing number of roads are becoming unfit for driving and muddy rivers are engulfing the pillars of bridges, which will soon have to close. A hundred-metre stretch of the Ring Road has already been cut off. Farms, horses and hay bales are surrounded by water, and fields have been inundated, locking people off on their farms, and there have been power cuts in many areas. In the highlands, the build-up of water pressure against the dam has exceeded expectations and rivers are beginning to overflow. The speaker botches his last sentence and repeats the detail about the overflowing rivers. He forecasts southern winds and persistent rainfall.

  In fact I only have to glance through my windscreen to see that the country is half immersed in water; everything is quite literally awash in the sandy desert. The whole purpose of this pleasant journey around the island was to try to sort out my life, but now the thread has been abruptly severed. On a two-dimensional map, the world looks like a clearly delineated place, a fully defined and secure area in which rivers are just harmless blue strokes of the pen. Even though I may not know who I am, I can make out where I am and where I’m heading on this unfolded map.