Butterflies in November

by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

  Once he is seated, he tells me she’s jealous of me and asks if I’m also jealous of her. I say no. He wants to know why not, am I not fond of him any more? I say to a certain extent, but that he’s starting to turn into a stranger, that I no longer see him behind me, like a mirage in the corner of my eye in the mirror, when I brush my teeth, that he no longer pops up in my mind when I’m thinking or reading, that he has started to fade, vanish, that I find it hard to picture him any more, that I’m starting to confuse him with other men, that other men are starting to supplant him. I tell him that I am, nevertheless, still relatively fond of him, at least fonder of him than I am of the local priest whom I haven’t met yet or the vet whom I have actually met. He takes out his nail clippers as I’m talking, and starts to clean his nails.

  I allow him to digest the information and move away to heat up some cocoa. The boy follows and arranges the cookies on the plate for the guest.

  “You’ve changed somehow,” he says when I return, “I can’t quite figure out what it is, your hair maybe, did you have it cut?”

  “No, I’m growing it.”

  Then he tells me his relationship isn’t working out the way it should:

  “In the beginning she was open and willing to be guided.”

  “Maybe you can teach your daughter something instead.”

  “If things don’t work out between Nína Lind and me, which seems likely, could we give us another go?”

  “I thought you didn’t love me any more.”

  “Love or not love, you haven’t answered my question.”

  “No, we can’t do that.”

  At some stage you have to decide to stop, not necessarily because it’s totally over, but because one decides to put it aside. Then I also tell him that I’ve changed, that I’ve experienced so many things without him.

  “In forty days?”

  “No, over many years.”

  He looks disappointed.

  “We can still meet, though, and go out for dinners together?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Can’t we be friends then?”

  “Isn’t that unnecessary, since we don’t have a child together?”

  “Hang on, who was it that didn’t want children?”

  “Me, I suppose.”

  “God, you’ve changed.”

  He slams the door behind him, but comes back fifteen minutes later and stands there brooding in the doorway with his hands buried in his pockets. He can’t fly back in the dark, he says, and he wants to know if he can stay the night. I tell him that he can, but that the space beside me is occupied.

  “Couldn’t we push the kid over a bit when he’s asleep?”

  “No, that’s out of the question.”

  Tumi looks at me with a triumphant smile, as he puts on his elephant pyjamas.

  FIFTY-NINE

  When I re-emerge the following morning, I find him half out of his sleeping bag, with one arm dangling on the floor, a familiar but alien body. Saliva is dribbling out of the corner of his mouth onto his chin, the same chemical composition as the thousands of waves in the sea, I tell myself, and there’s an entire ocean between us. When he turns over, I catch a good glimpse of the scar on his back. If I run out of topics at the breakfast table, I can always ask him how he got it; but when the moment actually comes, I find I’m not interested enough in the answer.

  A butterfly flutters over him, drawing irregular circles in the air. Then, suddenly losing its force, it falls to one side and tries to stumble to its feet again on his slippery chin. My ex tries to wave the itch away with his hairy arm. I observe the butterfly’s struggle and suddenly feel the irrepressible urge to save it while I still can. I try to scoop it off him with a sheet of paper, without waking the sleeper, but to no avail. Finally, I grab a jar on the table and press it, mouth down, against my ex’s cheek, perhaps a bit brusquely.

  He springs up. There’s a red circle on his cheek.

  “Did you just hit me?”

  “I was saving a butterfly.”

  “The last time you hit me your excuse was two flies in October. This time it’s a butterfly in December.”

  “It’s vanished.”

  “You’re not normal; you hit me every time we meet.”

  He glances swiftly at the clock and has to go out onto the deck to make a private call. Like some marsupial creature, he staggers outside with the sleeping bag still wrapped around him; there’s better network coverage outside. I prepare breakfast, while he is recovering from the assault.

  I can’t remember how he likes his eggs. Softly boiled, medium-boiled or hard-boiled apart from the innermost core of the yolk? Fried? How did it ever occur to me to offer a man such a complex breakfast? The boy stands beside me so that he can time the boiling of the egg with the divorce watch, which he’s wearing on his wrist with a new strap. My ex believes hen’s eggs require seven minutes. The boy toddles around the guest, occasionally glancing at the watch.

  “Hang on, isn’t that the watch I gave you? Why is he wearing it?”

  “Yes, he’s got the watch now.”

  “Did you take off the golden bracelet with the inscription on it and replace it with a strap instead?”

  “Was there an inscription on the bracelet?”

  “Yes, there was an inscription on the bracelet. Are you going to tell me you didn’t even read the inscription?”

  Sometime later, I notice him peeping at my diary, rapidly skimming through it. I think he might be saying something in the living room, but the whistle of the kettle prevents me from hearing what. When I return he is sitting in white socks and underpants on the sofa bed and has rolled up the sleeping bag. I get the feeling he might have been crying.

  “The good thing about you is that you never placed any demands on me.”

  Then I sit down beside him, pat him on the arm and, after a moment, say: “Yes, I can well understand you, but sometimes people have to make decisions, go home to Nína Lind now.”

  “I might be pathetic, but I’m not a bastard.”

  He has stood up and walks towards the living room window where he pauses a long moment, his back turned to me, peering into the morning darkness.

  “It sure is incredibly dark here.”

  When he is about to leave, he can’t find his scarf.

  “If you ever find it, it’s purple with yellow stripes and a brown fringe, Nína Lind knitted it.”

  Before leaving, he asks me if there’s another man in the picture. I don’t answer.

  “You’re a quick operator,” he says. “I take my eyes off you for one second and you’re already hitched up with someone.”

  “That’s a bit of an overstatement.”

  “We could have such a good time together, travel and do lots of things.”

  Stepping out onto the deck, he abruptly swivels on his feet to pull me into a tight embrace. I can tell it’s a quality impermeable anorak that he’s wearing, it insulates well.

  “I just wanted to tell you that I just texted Nína Lind to ask her to marry me.” He then moves away a few steps before turning one final time to ask:

  “Have you any idea where the box with the Christmas decorations got to?”

  “Wasn’t it in the garage?”

  “Wait a minute, did you leave all the stuff in the garage?”

  “I forgot it, didn’t you take it? The sleeping bags were there.”

  “Jesus Christ, did you give the new owners a year’s supply of toilet paper, the bag of walrus teeth from Greenland and all the Christmas decorations, including the blinking singing reindeer?”

  When I walk back into the house, I see that he has left a handwritten note for me on the table.

  SIXTY

  Tumi is knitting and I tell him I’m popping ou
t to the shop to buy some prunes to make halibut soup, and that I’m not taking the car, just running down the hill. I say it to him in three different ways:

  “I’m just running down to the shop, you just stay put in the meantime and carry on knitting.”

  He nods and sticks his needle into the stitch, with some yellow yarn double-wrapped around his middle finger.

  This is the first time I leave him alone so I hurry. The prunes are carefully hidden away in the shop, so I have to ask the girl at the cashier to help me find them, but she needs to finish serving two other women first.

  When I come running back up the hill I see him rushing towards me, soaking wet in his socks, with outstretched arms. I lift his feather-light body into the air. His face is twisted with worry, all wrinkled like an old man, and I can’t see his eyes through the lenses of his glasses, which are all fogged up with tears. His heart pounds furiously like a little bird’s. Auður’s descriptions of him as a premature baby in the incubator spring to mind—almost transparent in colour, his skin so thin that one could see his underlying organs.

  “I could have died”, he says. “I thought you’d left me.” He wraps his wet arms around my neck.

  I show him the bag of prunes. “Come on,” I say, “let’s go make some silver tea. Then we’ll make some soup the way your mommy does and, after that, we’ll go to the cinema. Have you ever been to a cinema?” I don’t tell him I’ve been invited out to a film and that I’d been thinking of getting a babysitter for him.

  There’s an Italian film festival in the village, three Italian movies are being screened on three consecutive Thursdays, at eight. That means we’ll be back in the house at about ten, which is a bit late for a four-year-old child.

  We take the car. The youth in the box office assures me that, even though the film isn’t advertised as a kid’s movie, there’s nothing in it that would disturb a child. We join the queue by the door behind eight other spectators, with Tumi clutching the tickets in his outstretched hand. Everyone is staring at us.

  My friend appears, kisses me on the cheek and shakes the boy’s hand, greeting each other as equals, man to man. The viewers are watching us. I ask Tumi if it’s OK if our friend sits with us. It’s OK. We lead him into the cinema and he chooses the third row in the middle and wants to sit between us. It’s a bit too close for comfort, but I’m not sure how well he sees the screen, with his eyesight. It’s bad enough that he can’t hear the words or the music properly. The other guests spread out in the back rows, leaving a gap of about half the cinema between us. We’re segregated from them, just like our chalet. La Vita è bella begins.

  The boy is no bother in the cinema and sits perfectly still throughout the film, watching events unfold on the screen. He’s not interested in any of the pastilles because he’s too busy watching the movie. I frequently glance at him and don’t know how much he is taking in, or whether he wants me to interpret it for him, tell him the story. He does, however, seem to be reading the subtitles. Then I notice that he sometimes stares at me at length, that they both sometimes look at me, the two men, together. I smile at them.

  During the break Tumi eats a pastille and gives one to me and one to my friend. Then he closes the box. It’s a drag for him not to be able to lip-read the actors on screen and follow their mouth movements. He sees nodding heads, people squinting their eyes and laughing, but he can’t grasp the words.

  His eyes barely reach the top of the seats, so I lift him up and sit him on my lap after the intermission. He’s no taller than a three-year-old child; I can see the screen over his head. Our friend slips into the boy’s seat.

  “Was that for pretend?” Tumi asks when the lights come back on.

  Should I tell him that it’s all for pretend? That you can see the reflection of spotlights in those make-believe tears?

  “No, the things that we experience and imagine are also real,” I say, and he knows exactly what I mean.

  “You don’t need a man,” he says from the back seat as I’m fastening his safety belt in the car, “you have me.”

  “Who says I’m looking for a man?”

  “You look at him.”

  “Really?”

  “And he looks at you.”

  I don’t tell him I’m expecting a guest when he falls asleep.

  SIXTY-ONE

  Everyone gets a nocturnal visit at some stage. There are no curtains in the windows, no point in locking out the darkness when there’s nothing but brown lyme grass and heather in front of them, and nothing behind us but the brown moors. Everything is still in the darkness outside. Five degrees, and for the first time in ages there is a ray of moonlight, which filters down diagonally from the top left-hand corner of the window, like a subtle reading lamp. Despite the day’s rainfall, some clothes are still hanging on the sheltered line on the deck. Inside the scene is as follows: I’ve finished reading a story to Tumi, who is now sleeping with the kitten. I limit myself to the candlelight in the living room, coupled with the glow of the moon, that spotlight provided by the Almighty above. On the window sill there is a blue boot with a yellow rim, size 26, and our pet butterfly is up and about. How much longer can it live for? The time is 00:17 and I hear the gravel crunching under his feet. Not only am I connected to the moon and stars above, but I’m also in close intimate contact with the Santa Claus, who comes to visit me every night. Not down the chimney, but over the railing on the deck in his black boots. He swiftly tackles the hill, with the moon at his back and a pink halo hovering around his head. He slips out of the darkness over the glittering Christmas lights into the candlelight, like a true professional. First his feet, clad in black leather boots, and then his red coat with its white fur trim and black belt.

  He’s holding my washing from the line in his arms and knocks gently on the window. Then he takes off his hood. The parcel is too big to fit into the boy’s boot.

  “I have enough time to tell you a long story,” he says.

  I loosely brush my fingertips against his black trousers, almost imperceptibly at first, but then stroke him hard enough for him to feel me and then harder again. Next I tackle the white cotton hair, tangling it around my finger to make a skein.

  I loosen the buckle of his black belt, slide my hand inside, and pause. His skin is warm; I linger on every pause, concentrating on every detail, and then go searching for a warm mouth and eyes. The nocturnal guest’s imagination knows no limits, although I feel no need to divulge any of that here.

  I suddenly hear what sounds like a faint swish and, at the same moment, the candle on the table extinguishes itself, leaving a lingering spiral of smoke. And, as if that wasn’t enough, I see from the total darkness in front of me that the Christmas lights have gone out on the deck. I feel compelled to break the silence and put my visitor’s technical expertise to the test:

  “Could you help me with the Christmas lights afterwards?”

  He’s quick to solve the problem; they only needed to be switched back on. And he also relights the candle.

  “You probably need some earthing,” he says.

  “Really?”

  “I have to go,” he says, “but I’ll be back.”

  As I’m sweeping up the soot from the chimney, along with the other remains of the night, and pick up the clothes scattered around the living room, I look for evidence of his visit and find a tiny stain—sufficient proof to incriminate the right man.

  SIXTY-TWO

  It seems that no one knows exactly where the flooding came from, but understandably it’s the only thing people can talk about in the shop. The village is covered in sand and black sludge, basements are full of puddles, most of the Christmas lights have been smashed to smithereens and garden decorations have been destroyed. Everywhere one goes there are men in orange overalls mopping up, clearing the streets and scooping water out of cellars. The water seems to have flow
ed down the slope on the eastern side and taken the church with it, although the village itself has been mostly spared.

  “We were planning on building a new church anyway,” say the men in a positive spirit; “the old one was just a heap of mouldy trash that we’re happy to get rid of.”

  The situation is analogous in the two neighbouring villages. Everyone is flabbergasted; nothing is as it should be. It appears that several rivers in the highlands suddenly broke their banks and started to forge new and unpredictable courses in all directions. The area where the locals used to pick blueberries is now completely inundated. The only thing that doesn’t seem to have changed is that rivers still flow into the sea, albeit not in the places where they are expected to. People are totally puzzled by the freakish behaviour of their watercourses, which cannot solely be attributed to the incessant rainfall of the past forty days and nights.

  The greatest mystery of all is the whale. The most likely scenario seems to be that it was beached and then somehow carried to the car park in front of the savings bank, although it might look as if it had been carried there by the water over the highlands.

  Its giant black mass is visible all the way from the chalet, a fully grown whale, probably fifteen metres long. And pregnant, it would later transpire.

  “It doesn’t matter where she came from,” says the man, “we’ll carve her up this afternoon and share the meat around.”

  Other sea animals have been thrown up on dry land here and there: cod, catfish and redfish. The main thing is that the people were spared.

  I give Mom a call to tell her to have no worries; we’re preparing our return to the city.

  “Good job it wasn’t worse and no one was hurt.”

  “Well three dogs are still missing.”

  “Is it raining?”

  “No, Mom, it’s cleared up, just like it has in the city, and the whole country it seems, if the weather forecast on the radio is anything to go by.”

  “Have you sorted out your affairs?”