Analysing my existence from a purely statistical point of view, this works out as one man for every 160-kilometre stretch, which should be considered a fairly high level of activity in a country in which each inhabitant shares one square kilometre with his fellow man. According to my estimates, calculated on the basis of the length of the national Ring Road, which is 1,420 kilometres long, that should amount to 17.7 men before the journey is over. In terms of square kilometres, this corresponds to vast expanses of lava fields per person, extensive stretches of desert, reservoir basins, eroded land and withering lupin fields, as well as countless bridges, squawking seabirds and hamburger joints as one approaches the coast.
And then, I also ponder on the following: if I were expecting a child, there would be three possible fathers, or 17.7, considering the journey as a whole. This is slightly above the national average, on the basis of the total number of lovers a woman can expect to have in the course of her life. At the end of the day, one can always console oneself with the genetic fact that there can only ever be one father per child. I am fully aware of the fact that in many countries of the world I would have been executed many times over for less.
However, when I look into the rear-view mirror, I see a young woman with short dark hair, green eyes, pale skin and a loose lock dangling over her forehead—there’s nothing sluttish about her, no make-up streaming down her cheek; an outsider might even describe her as innocent, pure and chaste. I see her looking at the world with sharp eyes, through the lock of hair, which she then confidently brushes away from her face, as if she imagined she was finally on top of things, as if she believed she was on the right path, as if she had a premonition of what she wanted, as if she somehow knew who she was. She turns on her indicator and sways into the parking lot of a petrol station. After swiftly rummaging through the fridges of the store, she dumps cartons of blueberry buttermilk yogurt and a smoked meat and Italian bean salad sandwich on the counter by the cashier. The boy is still sleeping.
FORTY-THREE
The mountain road is normally impassable at this time of year because of the snow, but nothing is as it should be any more.
As soon as I reach the outskirts of the town, I see that the summer bungalow has been delivered to its destination. Even though I haven’t set foot here for seventeen years, it all looks familiar to me. The town is a tidy cluster of houses, with no actual centre or square, but a series of four or five parallel roads, one on top of the other, stretching out to the coastline, a bit like the grooves left by a gardening fork across the freshly turned soil of a virgin potato patch. In the furthest groove, closest to the shore, one can make out the colourful rooftops of the oldest corrugated iron houses, as well as the mini-market, co-op and savings bank, behind which are two streets of bungalows, and beyond which again are patches of brown gravel, with a little bit of heather in the summer, and the ravine, as well as the reservoir on top of the mountain road. Most of the inhabitants have tried to build sheltering garden walls to shield themselves from the blasts of the sea on their windows. Nothing grows in the vicinity of the open ocean, no shrubs or flowers, not outdoors at any rate. Indoors, on the other hand, the window views of the menacing blackness of the sea have been obscured by forests of window-sill plants. At this time of the year, every window also carries a shining Christmas star and seven-armed candlestick.
I can see the house from the chalet. It was built in the forties, maybe earlier. It all comes back to me. A group of people has gathered inside. It’s as if everything were filtered through a veil of white silk or film, giving it a soft and blurred appearance, like the fading pages of an old psalm book or an over-exposed photograph. I think I’m in a white knitted woollen sweater. My cousins are also dressed in white, strange as it may sound, white tuxedos, so removed from reality, so close to the memory. Granny is enveloped in light, Granny is actually the sun. There is a large crowd at the funeral reception and everyone is in white, different shades of white, some fabrics are thinner and finer than others, others thicker: wool, cotton, silk, cloth, linen, tweed, polyester, polyviscose, crepe, chiffon, organza, veil, khakis—everything white.
I can only see blurred, slowly moving outlines. Granny is the most out of focus of them all. I watch her fade.
They’ve placed the mobile chalet on the outskirts of the village, just as I’d requested, on a plot of barren land on the edge of the ravine. It stands there aloofly in the dark, segregated from all town planning. Some people may not see it as the ideal setting for a sunny summer holiday, up there on the rocks, and even I wouldn’t walk up there in high heels or in my bare feet after a Christmas ball; but still, it’s better than living down there on the shore, where there was a constant flow of visitors and the constant risk of a knock on the door, at any time of day or night, from one of those strangers who had vanished at sea and left a puddle of water in the hall. The chalet stands solitarily on the western edge of the village, and the church stands equally solitarily to the east, on the other side of the valley, with a Securitas sign on its door.
The village seems deserted at this hour of night. Apart from the screeching of seabirds, everything is steeped in a deadly silence, like the siesta hour of a Mediterranean village. There is no sound of footsteps behind me and yet I know I’m not alone. Here and there, inquisitive eyes peep at me through seven-armed candelabra in the salt-beaten windows. One shouldn’t be fooled by appearances. Even though the streets may be deserted, most of the life of this village takes place behind these walls, where people come to the door just as they are, dressed in soft, baggy garments.
It’s the 25th of November and, as we approach the village from over the mountain road, out of the darkness and rain, it shines like a celestial jewel adorned with precious stones in the middle of the sandy desert. It wouldn’t surprise me if this village were visible from outer space. Every window is decked with multi-coloured Christmas lights, as are the railings of the balconies, porches and steps, even the anchors in the gardens. The boy wakes up when I kill the engine.
“We brighten these dark winter days,” says the man in the mini-market, who sells me milk, bread, cheese and candles, just before closing for the night. Most people add a new set of lights every year, so you can normally tell how long people have been married by the number of sets they have. Just like you can determine the age of a reindeer according to the number of its horns. I ask him if he has any Christmas lights that run on batteries.
“Afraid not, but you can get them at the co-op tomorrow.”
He then asks me if I’m the owner of the summer chalet.
“And you intend to spend your Christmas there alone with a child and no electricity, is that right? We heard rumours that you’d done a runner on some bankrupt company and left your husband to pick up the pieces, that kind of thing. It’ll be a little bit dark and spooky up there on the ravine. We were expecting you three days ago.”
I tell him we took our time to do some sightseeing around the country. “We’re on holiday,” I say, and then add:
“My grandmother and grandfather used to live here.”
Their names don’t ring a bell with him.
“There was no need to bring a house with you,” says the man, “there are plenty of houses for sale in this village. I could have found at least four for you, you could have had a bungalow with a newly tiled bathroom.”
“I wanted to be slightly on the outskirts. I’m not going to settle here.”
The boy points at a handwritten notice, advertising the sale of wooden toys at the old people’s home, which includes an amateurish drawing of a blue van with rubber wheels. I ask the man where I can find them.
“This might not look like the most eventful of towns to an outsider,” says the man, leaning on the counter with both elbows, “but that doesn’t mean that nothing ever happens. Couples split up, have their affairs and make a mess of their lives just as much here as anywhere else, no matter
how stunning the nature may be. And occasionally, there are family tragedies that can never be fully explained. Those two brothers who lived on their own, for example. The one who survived was released on parole because the circumstances of the case were unclear, according to the police report. They said it was a case of accidental manslaughter, but the neighbours, who saw the scene of the crime, said it wasn’t a pretty sight and that they’d heard at least seven shots being fired. Those wooden toys are made by the brother who survived, at the old people’s home, or the Geriatric Health Centre, as they call it. That’s where he lives. You can buy one of those vans from him there.”
The man escorts me to the door as I slip on my hood and step out into the rain. I see through the rear-view mirror that he is standing in the yard by the petrol pumps, watching the jeep on its ascent towards the chalet. I think he’s talking into a mobile phone.
I carry the boy in my arms into the chalet. Before going to bed, we clamber down the ravine to brush our teeth in the stream. We stand there in the ice-cold water with our mouths full of foam and then spit it out and watch the white trail as it floats away.
FORTY-FOUR
So much needs to be bought. We need two duvets and bed linens. The boy chooses the duvet covers, a jungle with wild animals for himself and a pink flowery one for me, so that fields of nocturnal violets will expand in my arms in the mornings and spread across my tummy and breasts, as I stroke the quilt and ponder on how we should start the day, by going for a swim or paying a visit to the school library.
We also buy some new rain gear, thick sweaters and two pairs of leggings for the boy, a Barbie and Ken set with a caravan, cat food and rubber toys for the kitten, a football, colouring book and colours, a jigsaw, crossword magazine, several women’s magazines, some towels and swimming trunks and a set of red Christmas lights that work on batteries to put on the deck. I get Tumi to try on a pair of blue hiking boots with laces and he is allowed to walk around the store in them. I also buy him a new pair of boots, which are only available in size 26, so they should last him a good while.
I gently throw him the ball in the toy section, aiming for his arms. He creates a hollow for the ball to fall into by pressing his elbows against his stomach and holding out his hands, as I try to gauge the distance and amount of force required for him to catch it before tossing the ball, which draws a small arch in the air, like a film in slow motion. But he misses the ball, which rolls into the underwear and socks department. I’ll do it better next time and crouch down on my knees. I can manage playing with a child now, but he can’t manage playing with an adult.
I ask them if they have any bicycles with training wheels and am informed that there might be a red one in the warehouse left over from the summer.
“Because it’s winter here now,” the man at the warehouse explains to me, as if I were mentally challenged. I use the opportunity to order three gas heaters for the chalet.
Tumi is mesmerized by the sight of a small Santa Claus costume in the clothes corner and asks me questions I don’t quite know how to answer. It seems to be more or less the right size so we throw it into the basket.
“You can be Santa Claus’s assistant,” I say, although I’m not sure he understands me.
The Christmas books are in and I chuck them into the basket, practically buying all of them, with the exception of autobiographies, self-help books and a study on the genealogy of Icelandic horses. I place a novel that is set in the rain on top of the pile. It has a nice cover, but I’m not familiar with the author, nor, needless to say, is the shop manager, because only two copies of it have been ordered and it lay at the back of two towers of expected best-sellers. I also buy a book about the volcanic eruption of Mount Laki in the eighteenth century, some crime pulp fiction in English and a load of easy-to-read children’s books for the boy, as well as some copybooks for him to write his foggy window words in.
With the help of the store manager, I find a book on the rearing of boys. I merely need to skim through the book and browse through the headings, captions and blurb on the jacket to realize that what the boy needs, above all else, is a strong male role model. I might be able to teach him how to catch a ball and cycle, and to fry pancakes, tie his shoelaces and read, if he hasn’t taught himself already, and even to count up to five in Hungarian, but I can’t teach him the value of words, how to be strong in spite of oneself or how to fight an enemy army.
We’ve almost filled two carts by now; he pushes one, I the other. He shows a lot of responsibility towards the home and is very attentive, pointing at the things we need here and there and fetching raisins, rice, spaghetti, yogurt, eggs, marinated herring, cottage cheese, caviar, stone-baked flat bread, smoked meat, olives, brawn, eggs, smoked salmon and cod liver oil—he’s got quite a broad palate for a four-year-old. He also finds jars of vitamin tablets and helps me to find vegetables to make meat soup. There are four types: red cabbage, carrots, turnips and potatoes. The turnips are 1,000 percent more expensive here than in Krakow. Then he returns with some perfume to give me and puts it in the trolley. I allow him to and take my place in the queue in front of the meat counter.
People prolong their shopping to observe us, not least the boy, the pair of us. Tumi looks at me apprehensively, signalling with his eyes that I’m not allowed to stare back at them, not to make an issue of it. Three people ask me if I’m the woman with the mobile summer chalet. Most of them are quite friendly and nudge their children to encourage them to offer Tumi some sweets. Digging into the green cellophane bags they’re clutching in their hands, they hesitantly choose something that might have accidentally fallen into the mix, either too strong or too bitter, before formally handing it over to him with their sticky fingers.
Just as I’m about to reach the top of the queue, something rolls on the floor and the shoppers shift their gazes off the new arrivals to form a semicircle and look down at something glistening on the floor. It’s a brown button.
The shop assistant is trying to hand a woman a parcel of weighed meat over the counter, but she’s been distracted. Who lost that button?
Concerned and solicitous looks flash across people’s faces and inquisitive glances are exchanged, before all eyes settle on me. Virtually no one is dressed in clothes that have buttons; everyone is wearing comfortable and loose-fitting garments with elastic around the waist and ankles. Many of these villagers are related, but it is somehow deemed unseemly to behave in an overly familiar manner in the local co-op. It takes considerable practice to be able to pretend to be strangers to each other for five minutes, to keep one’s kin at bay for a moment, and feign not to have the faintest idea that the person standing in front of them in the queue took a solitary walk down to the pier last night and, at exactly ten-thirty on that same evening, kicked an empty beer can into the ocean. At any rate, they feel no need to run up and throw their arms around their childhood friends and cousins every time they bump into them.
The man serving at the meat counter appoints himself as group spokesman and asks if I’m the woman with the summer chalet.
“He’s a straight talker,” a woman whispers to me, acts in the local amateur dramatics society apparently and practically knows Jóhann Sigurjónsson’s entire repertoire inside out. But his most memorable performance was in the role of Lennie in Of Mice and Men. His female customers have hardly been the same since and obviously entertain fantasies of him stroking their smooth hair and touching them all over.
He asks me if it’s true that I’m going to be staying in the chalet with the child in these awful conditions over Christmas, without even having any electricity? He wants to know what kind of company it was that went bust, was it an import-export business?
I’m about to point out to him that all the top chefs in the world cook their Christmas meals over gas when, for a brief moment, I seem to catch a glimpse of the man I met up on the landslide. As we’re talking, people seem to lose track of
their errands and begin to eavesdrop, with more voices gradually chipping into the conversation. I’m told that people normally go elsewhere to make big purchases of this kind. It’s not done to buy duvets, clothes and children’s bikes in the local co-op.
“Tomorrow,” says a woman, “several mothers and a father will be meeting in the community centre to bake cookies with the children, everyone brings their own ginger nut dough. Your son is welcome.”
“In any case, you’ll be stuck here until the water level of the river starts to drop,” the actor says finally, handing me the meat for the soup.
Our shopping list is long, as is our cash supply.
Finally, I pull the cloves, yeast, syrup and ginger out of the trolley onto the conveyor belt at the checkout. I mustn’t neglect my maternal duties.
“That way I can make ginger nut dough tonight,” I say to the adolescent at the counter. I reckon he’s about seventeen. He’s got a lot of gel in his hair, long sideburns and a meticulously combed parting—a hairstyle that seems to be shared by a lot of the youngsters in the village.
“The women around here try to entertain themselves at night as best they can.”
He doesn’t lack nerve for such a young man.
I count some thousand-krónur notes at the cashier and then dash out to the glove compartment of the jeep to get some more. It is only then that I remember I left the boy’s old boots in the shoe section and rush back in to get them. By the time I return, Tumi has vanished.
“He went out to his dad,” the youth at the cashier informs me.
Butterflies in November Page 17