Butterflies in November

by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

  “Yes, we’re clearing things up. We only have the Christmas presents to pack now.”

  “How’s it going with the boy, does he eat well?”

  “Yes, he eats well.”

  “How are you managing to talk to him?”

  “Well, it’s a world beyond words.”

  “How are you?”

  “Fine, we’re going to celebrate Christmas in the city and then I’m going abroad for a few months.”

  “What, on a job?”

  “I can work from anywhere I want, Tumi is coming with me. I’ve spoken to Auður about it and she approves. She’ll be so busy with the baby twins, she’s afraid he might be neglected.”

  “But doesn’t he miss his mommy?”

  “Probably, but he also wants to see what the world looks like, he wants to visit ruins.”

  “Are you taking the child to some Arabic country?”

  “No, he wants to see the ruins of castles and temples and churches, we’re reading some guidebooks at the moment. He wants to see a pear tree, giraffes and golden sand. I can teach him a few things. He’s started to read and he knows how to make Icelandic pancakes.”

  “And to embroider and knit?”

  “Yeah, that too.”

  She sounds happy to hear me and there’s a new softness in her voice. She speaks in a low tone with plenty of gaps between her words as she continues:

  “I think that relationship was a bit rash. He’s not a bad man, but he’s not the man for you.” She no longer refers to Thorsteinn by name.

  There’s a silence.

  “Well then, Mom, I think I’ll say goodbye then.”

  Another silence.

  “Provided you have no objections, I was thinking of leaving some money to charity when I’m gone. I was reading about a school in Bosnia for women badly affected by the war. Of course, you don’t read the papers?”

  “No, I have no objections.”

  “No, I didn’t think you would. You’ll survive, never expected anything less of you. Your brother is the same; he says he has enough too. The triplets just started kindergarten the other day.”

  “Well then, Mum, we have to tidy up here now. Tumi has just finished knitting socks for his sisters, so we’ve got to deliver them. We should be in town by tomorrow evening, barring any mishaps.”

  She suddenly remembers some good news:

  “You’ll never believe this, some light green shoots have grown out of that plant of yours that I thought was made of silk.”

  “Right then, Mom, we’ll say goodbye for now.”

  “I won’t decorate the tree until you’ve arrived then.”

  SIXTY-THREE

  This is how the darkest day of the year begins: a new light has filtered through the pallid, rainy sky of the past weeks, and a cloud resembling a crown has formed.

  “Like a tooth,” says the boy pointing at his gaping mouth.

  It must be a sign to herald in the wonderful beginning of the shortest day of the year. Just before noon, the heavens raise their black blanket and the sun horizontally pierces through the window in a narrow pink streak, like the thin line between the drooping eyelids of a sleeping woman. I contemplate myself and the home in the reflection of the window. The Christmas gifts from the co-op are ready and wrapped on the table, and the cards have been decorated and adorned with glitter. Little overlapping handprints are visible on the window, a slew of sticky fingers stamped on the glass. Soon, everything will revert back to normal again: snow drifts, ice, closed mountain roads—once more the country will be as white and odourless as it should be. We sit out on the deck with hot chocolate and our faces tilted towards the first ray of sunshine in two months.

  There is actually no need to drive around the whole country, half a circle is more than plenty.

  “Three men,” says the boy.

  “Three men what?”

  “Around the table.”

  He points at a drawing he is completing. In the middle of the table there is a woman who clearly has green eyes and short dark hair.

  “My hair has grown,” I laugh, I’ve changed. Now I look at the world through long bangs.

  Santa Claus turns up at midday, dressed in civvies. The dog has been found, unhurt but a nervous wreck. He is carrying an accordion that he asks me to take to the city to be repaired. He’ll pick it up fairly soon, he says. I tell him of my plans to travel abroad.

  “I don’t know for how long,” I say.

  “I don’t want to lose you,” he says. “I certainly don’t.”

  “I’ll be a bit busy to begin with, then I’ll certainly be in touch and look you up.”

  There’s no hurry, plenty of time ahead and vast expanses of sand. Then I add, clearly feeling my heart beat as I say it:

  “I need to go on my own first, then we can go somewhere together, if we still want to.”

  SIXTY-FOUR

  As we drive down the side road, I see the whale has been cut open and that her calf is lying there in the car park beside her, all in one piece, two metres long and black just like its mother.

  Before setting off, I ask the kid at the petrol station to take a picture of us and, as he carefully hands the camera back to me, he says:

  “Did you know that the heartbeat of a whale can be heard from a distance of five kilometres?”

  I say I didn’t know that.

  “Then you probably also didn’t know that a whale’s heartbeat can disrupt a submarine’s communications and prevent a war?”

  The turn behind the blind hill comes as a surprise. I’m not driving very fast, but still almost swerve off the road. The car runs on loose gravel and the bay opens up ahead, a long stretch of black, sandy shoreline strewn with seals. The sand is covered with their warm, glistening bodies, flipper rubbing against flipper. They move sluggishly, dozens at a time, as if they had overgrown the straitjackets of their own skin. I pull the handbrake on the side of the road and we get out.

  The boy wants to take his shoes off and find a wish stone, whereas I wouldn’t mind hugging one of those seals and stroking its earless head.

  There is plenty to choose from on the beach, thousands of stones to test one’s wishes on, every one you touch, one after another. We sit down. I arrange my stones in a small circle; Tumi assembles his in a small, vertical mound, one on top of the other, making a cairn, erecting a monument.

  I have almost completed my circle and dash over to the car one moment to grab my camera. When I come back I see that he has pulled everything off: his hoodie, trousers, leggings, T-shirt and underpants. Stark naked in his snow-white skin, he abandons his clothes in a small bundle in the middle of the sand and charges towards the seals on the black shoreline, heading straight for the surf and sea. He is so white that his torso is almost phosphorescent and fuses with the white of the ocean and the heavens above. His approach triggers a clumsy stampede of seals into the water. I run after him in my bare feet, feeling the sharp shells and cold seaweed under my soles, sludge squishing between my toes and salty water reaching my ankles. I catch up with him in a pool of floating algae, throw my sweater around him and lift his cold little body onto my shoulders. There is black sand between his toes. He strokes my earlobes. I glance swiftly at the ocean before running back again.

  “Lots of sea,” says the boy in a clear voice.

  14:14, says my watch.

  West, says the compass in the car.

  He is dressed again and sits silently in the back seat, his chin buried in his overalls and the tip of his balaclava barely reaching the window. I fasten his belt.

  After slipping an Astor Piazzolla bandoneon disc into the player, I turn on the heater full blast. Then I hand Tumi a sandwich and chocolate milk over my shoulder and pierce the hole with a straw for him. In return he stretches out his cle
nched hand with a bleeding smile. I unclasp his small fingers, one by one, and finally see his little front milk tooth in the palm of his hand.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  COOKING RECIPES AND ONE KNITTING RECIPE

  A WORD OF CAUTION

  The following are forty-seven recipes or descriptions of dishes/beverages and one knitting recipe that are connected to the narrative of Butterflies in November. The recipes more or less follow the same order in which they appear in the book. Some of them may make excellent meals, but it should be noted, however, that certain of these dishes may work better on the page than on a plate. Readers are warned that these recipes are, to some extent, fictitious and there is therefore always the risk that they may not be accurate down to the last gram or millilitre. The story also includes references to food that did not go down particularly well with the characters or to dishes that simply failed. No words can be categorical enough to exclude any possibility of misinterpretation and it is therefore up to the reader to find his or her own way. In this context, it is barely worth mentioning that the stuffing of the goose was made up of more than just the words on the page. Similarly, some of the descriptions of the dishes may be too elusive to be interpreted with absolute precision or for any usable recipe to be drawn from them. An example of this is “Not another of those spicy city recipes with beans” (Chapter Thirty-five).

  Most of the recipes are conceived for one woman and a child.

  The dishes are normally easy to make, and intended to enable the woman to spend as much time as possible with the child. The child can also lend a hand in the cooking. The portions are more often than not designed to leave ample leftovers. In the event of any doubts regarding the recipes or questions on these dishes, the reader is welcome to contact the narrator. It should be pointed out, however, that the narrator is not always responsible for the recipe herself. Examples of this include the snow buntings grilled by foreigners in the highlands and whale steaks. There are many more recipes to be found in the story than those listed here and the narrator will be happy to provide them upon request (e.g. lemon chicken with olives).

  It is impossible to determine the exact source of these recipes; some may even have come straight out of the narrator’s neighbour’s cook book.

  Two of the recipes are designed for funeral receptions, others are conceived for a man and a woman. When a woman cooks for a man or a man for a woman, they generally put more effort into it. In these cases the recipes are also more elaborate. The amount of leftovers will be determined by the state of development of their relationship.

  FRIED FISH IN BREADCRUMBS AND ONIONS

  Fried haddock in breadcrumbs and onions is a classic Monday dish. However, fish is often fresher in shops on a Tuesday. Naturally, there are a number of alternatives to the traditional halibut and a welcome variation can be pan-fried catfish or brown trout. Catfish is related to wolf-fish but is a darker, savoury fish that reminds some of monkfish. Catfish never fails to catch the eye as it lies on display on the fishmonger’s iced steel tray. As most people know, it has beautiful leopard skin which has been used in, among other things, the design of handbags and skirts. Instead of the famous Paxo Golden Crumb pack, you can use home-made breadcrumbs, which are thicker and give the fish a crispier crust. That is because the fish itself does not touch the pan and the fat goes into the breadcrumbs. Fry the onion in a dab of butter in the pan and a splash of olive oil. Remove the onion from the pan when it turns golden brown. Fry both sides of the wolf-fish fillet for a few minutes. The fish should be fried over high heat in a mixture of olive oil and butter until it acquires the colour of a sunny golden shore. Season. Serve with white or barley rice and fresh green salad with tomatoes and cucumber. Make a dressing for the salad with honey, Dijon mustard and olive oil. It is good to mix brown and white rice. Brown rice is a lot slower to cook than normal rice, however, and normally needs to boil for an hour.

  THICK WILD GAME SAUCE (WITH GOOSE)

  Goose broth, ½ litre of water, salt, pepper, 1 tablespoon of redcurrant jelly, cream. Pour the goose broth into a dripping-pan that will siphon the liquefied fat. Season the sauce according to taste. Since the sauce has to be thick enough to conceal the tread marks of the car tires left on the run-over bird, it is probably best to use old-fashioned flour to thicken it. Mix a tablespoon of flour with several tablespoons of water and blend it into the broth. Add one tablespoon of redcurrant jelly into the sauce, whip the cream and mix it with the rest before the sauce is presented. The sauce should be the last dish placed on the dining table adorned with candles.

  TEA AND BREAD WITH SMOKED SALMON

  Tea and bread with smoked salmon is the ideal afternoon snack when someone pops in to see you on the way home from work, for example. Trout is also a perfectly acceptable alternative. Many types of trout can be used: lightly smoked, dung-smoked, birch-smoked, hot-smoked. Many trout breeders have started to do their own smoking at home and you can therefore choose fish from various parts of the country. To add variety, trim some cress over the smoked fish, since cress can be grown in soil or wet cotton on the kitchen window sill all year round.

  TEA

  Tea can never be praised enough as an afternoon refreshment. All research indicates that green tea is the healthiest beverage one can drink. In some places in the Far East one can spend the whole day in tea houses, while a waiter wanders between guests with a pot of boiling water balanced on a bamboo shoot over his shoulder. People who have lived in Britain generally like to have cream biscuits with a yellow or pink filling with their afternoon tea. In Iceland one can use Frón kremkex, which have a white cream inside. For anyone suffering from insomnia, herbal tea with two to three slices of toast would be preferable.

  Green tea: 2 tablespoons of tea leaves, 1 litre of boiled water. The teapot is heated by rinsing its interior with boiling water. Place the tea leaves in the pot and pour boiling water over them. Steep for 4 minutes. Pour into cups through a tea-strainer.

  Herbal tea: August is the best month for gathering herbs. Pick thyme, white dryas, cinquefoil, mint leaves, yarrow and lady’s mantle. Dry the herbs. It is a good idea to pre-dry them inside a clean pillow case before placing them on a tray to fully dry them. Boil 1 litre of water in a pot, remove it from the heat and put a fistful of the dried herbs into it (2 tablespoons if the herbs have been finely chopped). Close the lid and allow to brew for 15 minutes. Herbal tea can be reheated several times but not reboiled. It is advisable to read up on the healing properties of the various herbs (e.g. their effect on sore throats, stomach problems and ailing hearts) and experiment with dosages.

  SPINACH LASAGNE

  Lasagne is generally on the table on Wednesdays. The recipes on the Barilla packet are fairly easy to follow in themselves. Finding the right size of baking pan can be tricky, though. The following is a vegetarian alternative to the traditional minced meat recipe. Pour the oil from a packet of feta cheese into the pan. Fill the pan with spinach and maybe onion and mushrooms, if there happen to be some in the fridge and it tickles your fancy. Cover abundantly with cream and allow to simmer until the spinach leaves have softened. Arrange a base layer of pasta sheets at the bottom of a baking pan and then pour the spinach mix over it, followed by bits of feta cheese. Then repeat this, layer after layer, according to the size of the baking pan and the number of people eating. Finally, sprinkle grated mozzarella over the top layer. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes. Eat with good bread and green salad. This is a very nourishing and relatively simple dish which most people can do, and can be just as appealing to the young as the old.

  WILD GOOSE WITH TRIMMINGS AND A RICH, THICK WILD GAME SAUCE

  Wild goose can be cooked in a variety of ways with a vast choice of trimmings. The chef cannot always choose the size of the goose, as the case of the run-over goose clearly demonstrates, but ideally the goose should be neither too big nor too fat. It should preferably be rather young, and young geese are generally recognizable fro
m the reddish-pink colour of their feet and beaks, as well as the softness of their bills. The average goose weighs between three and six kilos and feeds between five and ten people. Since part of the goose’s fat melts away during cooking, it diminishes by a corresponding volume. This recipe is intended for one man and one woman and one can therefore expect ample leftovers. It is best to leave the goose hanging outside for several days after it has been shot or killed by other means. Collect the goose from your balcony and pluck it without tearing its flesh. Once the goose’s feathers have been removed, the beige colour of its skin is revealed with an interesting argyle pattern. It is best to skim over the bird with a Primus blowtorch, e.g. out in the garage where the primus is kept, or alternatively by using the flame of a candle. Grab one of the goose’s legs and wings, hold it at a comfortable distance from the flame and then swing it to and fro. When you have finished torching it, cut its neck, wings and legs. Then cut into the bird just above its sternum to scrape out the gizzard and remove the gall, heart and liver. Take the goose’s heart, slice it with a sharp knife, rinse out the blood and put it aside for another occasion. The heart can be both roasted with the bird to sharpen the taste of its juice or can be used as part of the stuffing. Then rinse the goose in cold water and wipe it. Once this has been done, you have to decide how to cook it:

  1. Icelandic wild goose with apples and prunes roasted in the old-fashioned way. Wild goose, salt, pepper, apples, prunes, parsley. Massage the washed goose and season it with salt and pepper, both inside and out, before placing it on the draining board and preparing the stuffing. The stuffing is made with apple wedges, soft, pitted prunes and chopped parsley. Shove the stuffing into the goose and close the opening with a skewer or by sewing it. Ensure you also close off other holes the stuffing could leak out of, such as the neck cavity. Then place the goose, breast side up, on a roasting pan and fry it for several minutes at high heat. Pour boiling water over the goose and carry on roasting it at a low temperature for 2–3 hours, depending on the bird’s age and size. The bird can be turned over while it is being roasted, although it is not necessary. It is customary during roasting to wet the bird with its juices at 15-minute intervals to prevent it from shrivelling or burning. The goose should be eaten in good company and with baked potato wedges, home-cooked red cabbage, green peas, carrot purée, apple and walnut salad with crème fraîche, a rich, thick sauce and redcurrant jelly.