Most meals were basic—stewed prunes, porridge—but there was meat stew on Wednesdays, with bread and sometimes bananas. They didn’t go hungry. The dining room sat twelve hundred people. On Sundays there was ice cream for dessert. On Mondays there was corn on the cob. In the evening the children were given warm milk and cookies. At night three hundred dreams roamed in their dormitory.
They had been on Ellis Island for two weeks when Hans Thorstensen came to fetch them. He tried to pass as a local, though in fact he had never been to the big city before. He wore a dark suit and a hat, and in his right hand he carried a leather case with the monogram JTH. It had been his father’s. He reached inside the case for a fountain pen to sign the papers he was handed. He read them first, then put on his glasses and frowned as he removed the top from the pen, nodding to himself as if to show that he agreed to what he was signing and would therefore make no objections. His manner was dignified during this procedure, even commanding, though he knew that in this place he had no choice. Then he hugged his cousin and patted the children on the head. Einar thought he looked like the photograph of his grandfather in the living room at home in Reykjavik.
It’s strange how some people carry an aura of security with them wherever they go; it’s as if it travels a few paces ahead of them and announces their arrival. The children sensed it the moment their cousin approached them across the waiting room. Their hearts lifted. Maria slipped her hand into his.
Before they left the island, Hans changed Elisabet’s Danish kroner into dollars and bought her a ticket for the ferry to the Battery on the southern tip of Manhattan. However, he changed only a fraction of her money, as he knew the rates would be better in the banks in the city. He had reserved a room for her at a cheap but clean guesthouse and written directions for her in a notebook which he put in her hand. Translations of words and phrases, the price of necessities, a description of the big city which he had found at the library in Grand Forks.
The breeze was blowing from the south when she boarded the ferry. In a few minutes the children would take another ferry with their cousin to the railroad station in Jersey City. He was going to take them to a place where the yellow fields rippled like a calm sea at sunset.
They saw the wind stirring her hair, then she vanished as the boat headed for the city.
As his cousin led them up the quay, Einar was ashamed at how easy he had found it to say goodbye to his mother.
56
The Waldorf-Astoria.
She knew he used to stay here. She could sense that he had been there as soon as she walked into the lobby and looked down the long, blue carpet which flowed along the wide hall like a river. The marble walls gave off a chill; it was hot outside and she stopped to get her breath, wiping pearls of sweat from her brow. She looked down: he had walked here, perhaps she was treading in his footsteps.
The man in reception didn’t understand at first when she said his name, then finally realized that the name obscured by her pronunciation was familiar to him. He asked her to wait, went out through a door behind, then returned with his superior, a man of around forty, she guessed, short with a mustache and wet-combed hair.
“Assistant Manager” was printed on the card he handed her.
She repeated the name. “Kristjan Benediktsson. Is he staying here?”
The man smiled. He explained that Mr. Benediktsson had stayed here more than once, to their great pleasure, the last time for six weeks.
“But that was almost a year ago, madam, and we haven’t heard from him since. Exactly ten months. Strange,” he added, “because he forgot to settle his bill with us before he left.”
She showed him a photo of Kristjan to be sure that they were talking about the same man.
He nodded.
“Six weeks is a long time at this hotel,” he said. “It was most unlike Mr. Benediktsson to forget to settle up. We’re worried about him. So we made inquiries at most of the other hotels in the city. Without success,” he added after a moment’s silence. “Unfortunately.”
She thanked him for his help.
“Are you related?” he asked then.
She put the picture back in her bag.
“This is a beautiful hotel,” she said and took her leave.
The church bell tolled twelve, her mind echoing the lazy strokes. To the south a skyscraper split the blue haze in two. People moved slowly, looking for shelter in the shade, wilting on benches under the trees. The odd person whistled a tune under his breath, with long pauses between the notes. Elisabet walked from one hotel to the next, along Fifth Avenue and down the side streets until she reached Central Park with its brilliantly colored flower beds. She made no progress.
After a week she finally swallowed her pride and went to see the Icelandic commercial attaché, Jon Sivertsen. It was one thing to ask unknown foreigners about her husband’s whereabouts, another to ask a countryman. But she was desperate. It was hot. And the walls of the buildings were closing in on her.
He received her kindly. He simply nodded when she said: “My husband is lost.” There was an Icelandic painting above the sofa where he sat. Horses in a snowstorm. He spoke quietly.
He said her husband had never had much to do with his countrymen in New York. He was unusual in this respect, because Icelanders generally stuck together. No doubt Kristjan had made friends in the city. He was, of course, popular wherever he went.
“That’s not to say we didn’t get on. Quite the contrary. He sometimes invited me to lunch and never let me pay. However hard I tried. A generous man, your husband, everyone knows that. But he goes his own way and doesn’t need us.”
He grew uncomfortable when she asked whether he thought Kristjan’s agent could help her. She had a piece of paper with his name on it. “Andrew B. Jones,” it said. She had rung his office but was told that he was away on business. Jon Sivertsen knew the name, nodded, fiddled with the ashtray on the table in front of him, moving it an inch away, then pulling it back towards him.
“It’s a while since they stopped doing business together,” he said eventually. “I don’t know what happened, but business is business, you know.” He smiled. “All sorts of things can happen in that game, as you can imagine. And on top of that, there’s far less going on here for us since the war ended. I expect your husband has turned his attention back to Europe.”
Horses in a snowstorm. The snow had drifted over their hoof-prints but in the distance the faint shapes of mountains could be seen looming over them. The wind seemed to be picking up.
She stood and thanked him.
“I’m sorry not to have been able to help you,” he said.
She smiled. “It was nice to see the horses,” she said. “And the mountains, too.”
He was confused for a moment, then realized she had been looking at the picture behind him.
As they walked to the door he vacillated, wondering whether he should mention the rumors. He took the door handle and stood still while he pondered, not opening the door until he had concluded that it would be doing her no favors. He himself had never seen Kristjan with the woman and for all he knew it might have been a brief fling. Two men said they had seen Kristjan with a woman at a nightclub, but from their description it was unclear whether it had been the same woman both times. And one of them had always been unreliable.
He opened the door. She left. He realized he felt almost like a servant in her presence. And still she couldn’t have been more unassuming.
“If there is anything I can do . . .”
She stood still on the sidewalk outside. The avenue vanished into the haze, shimmering in the heat. She looked to the right, then the left.
Remained where she stood.
57
The plains behind, yellow fields and paddocks in the distance. She woke as the train was crossing a river; cattle wallowed in the channels, while farther down the current was stronger and the sand was red on the banks.
The sky was a long way off and the swallows which
flew downstream seemed to float beneath it; her gaze followed them until her lids drooped again and she slept.
Cousin Hans met her at Grand Forks station. Maria was with him; she ran to her mother and wouldn’t leave her side. Einar had stayed behind at the farm with Hans’s wife. Their own children were grown up, except for one teenage girl. There was a white church in the field. Beyond it cows were grazing.
Einar was out in the meadow when they arrived. He came up to her and she stroked his cheek.
“My boy,” she said. “You’re so brown.”
The wind sent ripples over the field, the sky arched impossibly high over the farm, the church tower stretched humbly towards it, a long way from the Almighty.
At night the stars hung like cheerful lanterns in the sky. The meadows were blue in the moonlight, the stars mirrored in the pond below the farm. The mornings were long and white, but in the evenings the brightness dimmed imperceptibly, and suddenly it was dark.
Nobody asked about her trip to New York. They didn’t need to. Even Maria was quiet.
“There’s enough food for everyone,” said her cousin. “Stay as long as you like.”
“Perhaps a few weeks,” she said. “In case . . .”
He dropped his eyes.
“Just in case we hear anything.”
She played the organ in church. On Sundays there was a service at eleven. The congregation numbered between fifty and sixty; Hans preached in English but sometimes read aloud from the Icelandic Hymns of Passion. There was a great deal of singing and afterwards people drank coffee. The dogs fought outside in the yard, then sprawled in the sunshine.
As fall turned to winter, the goldenrod and cattail withered, the sunflower disappeared and the meadows turned a pale dun. The children went to school. They had both begun to speak English, but it was difficult to get Maria to leave her mother in the mornings. The first few days she cried, then she stopped but said in parting: “You won’t be gone when I get home from school, will you?”
Einar refused to speak Icelandic unless forced to. His English got better by the day.
Elisabet knitted and embroidered; her cushions and panels were sold down at Grand Forks, along with her sweaters, woolen hats, and scarves. The money went towards the household expenses.
She sat at the window as she worked. Sometimes when she looked out and glimpsed the pond she thought she was back at Eyrarbakki. She even imagined she could hear the pounding of the surf on the shore and see ships entering the bay. If she closed her eyes, she could see a gull.
She received a letter from Uncle Tomas. He told her news of Katrin and the twins, and asked what was keeping her. He hinted that the man who bought the company had not paid on time and was claiming that the business was even more rocky than he had been told when he signed the contract.
“I don’t know if you’ll ever see another krona from this man,” wrote Tomas. “Unfortunately, I suspect he is in the right. But I will still provide Katrin with the little allowance she needs to look after the house and the twins,” he added. “When you come home you ought to consider reducing your expenses. It’s a big house.”
The goldenrod’s baskets found their way into the panel she was embroidering, and the pale blue of the sky was also there. At the top stood the year: 1920. In the evenings Hans read aloud and the family sat and listened. Einar was drawn to Hans and stayed close to him. He woke at the same time as Hans in the mornings and went out with him at daybreak, down the slope to the barn. When they opened the doors, the warm smell of the animals greeted them.
Late in January she rose from a half-knitted sweater and went into the room she shared with Maria. She was alone in the house. She took out the bag in which she kept what was left of their money, counted it, then closed the bag again. Outside there was frost on the ground. Here and there a blade of grass poked through. There was ice on the pond, in some places pale with snow.
She was standing by the window when her cousin came in. He was alone.
“I’ve never been very good at arithmetic, cousin, but it seems to me that I can only afford to take one of the children home to Iceland with me.”
He looked down at the sweater, which she had left on the chair by the window. The needles lay on top of it.
“Now?”
“On the next ship. I’ve already stayed too long. The twins . . .”
“You know I’d lend you the money if I could.”
“Einar is happy with you. Happier than with me. I hope I’ll be able to send for him soon. Unless . . .”
She hesitated, turning away from him. When she started shaking he took her in his arms.
“Forgive me,” she said.
He held her gently, in silence.
“I don’t dare part with Maria.”
In the afternoon she walked down to the pond with Einar. The ice was like a mirror. They came to a stop on the bank; she pointed out to him some flowers frozen in the ice. Their petals had not lost their color, they looked as if they were stretching towards them, happily, as if towards a great source of light.
“My boy,” she said, “how you’ve grown.”
She took his hand.
“Let’s go in, Mother,” he said. “You’re cold.”
The train whistled as it set off. Hans waved with his left arm until it was gone, his right laid around Einar’s shoulders. The column of steam left behind by the train rose straight up into the cold winter air and slowly dispersed.
Then there was silence.
58
This is how I see you in my mind’s eye—
You’re sitting at the piano in the living room, it’s sunny outside. Einar comes in, you look up to greet him. How old would he be now, I ask myself from habit. Twenty-eight, if I’m not mistaken. Twenty-eight years old, imagine! The years run together in a single thread and I forget what came first and what happened later. He looks like me—yes, in fact I see myself as a young man as he puts down his briefcase in the hall and takes off his light-colored coat. Why should he be carrying a briefcase? I can’t explain it. But I’m always relieved by the sight of it.
You, on the other hand, have not changed. You’re always the same. It’s strange when I see Einar go over to you: you as you were when we first met, he a full-grown man. In earlier versions you are playing Mozart on the piano, but now I’ve managed to break free of him. I succeeded in the end. It wasn’t easy. Now I see your fingers gently stroking the keys (I remember it always seemed as if you hardly needed to touch them), but all I can hear is the sound of a bird singing in the garden. “Tschik, tschik.” A wagtail, I guess.
I expect the twins are upstairs. There’s no way I can conjure up a picture of them and I no longer look at the photo in the drawer as often as I used to. It confuses me. Puts time out of joint.
Maria is wearing a red summer dress. I see her cheek, faintly, as if in a mirror. She is fair, with shoulder-length hair. Delicately built like you, but taller. She is on her way downstairs when Einar comes in. The light streams towards her when he opens the door. She vanishes in the brightness and I lose sight of her.
That’s how I picture you for myself. Sometimes while I’m awake. Sometimes in a dream.
Always the same.
59
Mack came riding up the slope, reined in at the top of the drive, then turned and looked out to sea. The afternoon sun shimmered above the waves, the horse’s sweating flanks seeming to catch fire in its rays.
I watched him for a moment, then went inside, through the cool rooms, glancing briefly into the kitchen before going upstairs. Mack was still in the same place when I left, his reins hanging slack, his horse bowing its head.
In the kitchen the staff’s evening meal of soup and veal was being prepared. They had begun to ladle the soup into bowls. It was green, the bowls blue. But I continued on up the stairs because Mack had invited me to dine with him. He had little to say when he arrived just after midday, seeming more serious than usual, even preoccupied. When I said jokingly: “I expec
t you’d like to stay in the golden suite again,” he did smile slightly but made no reply. I hoped that whatever was troubling him would be dispelled by his ride over the hills.
The picture of the wheatear was lying on the desk in my room where I’d left it, half-finished. I’d completed the white rump and ochre breast, but its back, tail, and head still remained. However, there were no birds to be seen when I sat down in my chair on the balcony; at this time of day they seem to disappear in the endless sky, but when the blue twilight falls they return, perching on trees and bushes, silent as if contemplating the things they’ve witnessed on their journey through the sky.
At six the boy arrived and began to wash down the stones of the terrace. The trickling sound of the water soothed me and before I knew it my eyelids drooped and I fell into a doze. Yet I didn’t completely lose awareness; I heard him finish the job and turn off the water. His movements were gentle and unhurried, his footsteps died away slowly as he dragged the hose round the corner. Then dusk fell and the sky descended to earth once more.
The Chief and Miss Davies are due next week. It’s three months since they were here last. Unfortunately, Miss Davies’ latest film received no better reviews than her previous effort, so I doubt they will be in high spirits when they arrive. I’ll make sure that there is no alcohol concealed anywhere in the house.
I sat up in my chair when I heard footsteps on the path below. The lanterns had been lit. I must have dropped off; at least I wasn’t sure where I was when I opened my eyes. It was Mack coming in through the back door, still in his riding boots, taking off his hat and rubbing his hand over his head. Lights shone from the kitchen windows, accompanied by the aroma of woodsmoke and roasting meat; I heard him greet someone as the door banged shut behind him. He was well liked by the people in the house.
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