The Promise of Iceland

by Kári Gíslason

  ‘Are you back for good?’ he asked.

  When I told him that I was leaving in a few weeks, he again chastised me for not calling earlier. I felt a petty impulse to ask Pétur why he hadn’t called us during the last twenty-seven years, but thankfully didn’t say anything of the kind. He was as much an outsider to me as I was to him; he had probably thought it best not to ring.

  ‘You know, I was always happy for your mother to say you were mine. It would’ve made things much easier for her.’

  ‘Yes, Mum’s told me that you wanted to help,’ I replied.

  ‘But she was too proud for that. Too proud to really accept help.’ I wasn’t so sure.

  ‘I don’t think Mum was ever proud. She has said that she was, but I think it just felt easier on her own. Easier to cope with the disappointments.’

  ‘But she shouldn’t have denied herself the help. If only she’d told social services. No-one else needed to know.’

  But I agreed with Mum on this one: the whole town would’ve known in a week if she had.

  ‘Never mind,’ continued Pétur, ‘Let’s go inside. I want to show you some things.’

  So we went inside. Pétur, it seemed to me now, had just liked being outside when the weather was fine. It wasn’t complicated at all, and I had no reason to think otherwise. He brought out a book-length genealogy of the family.

  ‘Have a look through that while I make us lunch.’ It was my family tree, but of course it was pointedly not mine as well. It contained no record of me. And yet as I leafed through it, I also recognised that with the help of relatives like Pétur, it would be easy enough to work out my ancestry and, in my own mind at least, insert myself into the record. Perhaps that was enough. Did anyone else need to know that there was a name missing, or that one of the missing names was mine? I’m sure there were hundreds like me, other illegitimate children who had miraculously evaded the totality of the Icelandic records system. Did they also think endlessly about who they were, and what was missing? Did they relate parenthood and home in the way I did?

  Pétur asked what I’d be doing during the final weeks of my stay, and I confessed that what I wanted most was to meet my sisters and my brother. That was understandable, he said.

  ‘They are your family. You should know them.’

  ‘I hope it’s not too late. It will be hard for them to suddenly meet a new brother,’ I said. He then proceeded to give me a short history of each of my siblings.

  Fríða Kristín was the oldest, and had just returned from many years in Spain. She was expecting her second child, due any day. She’d run away from home when she was sixteen to study art, and after that had gone into modelling. Anna, the second eldest, lived in the nearby village of Hveragerði, and from Pétur’s description seemed to run half its businesses: the travel agency, the pizza shop and, yes, even a hot springs amusement park. Bryndís, the youngest of the girls, was living in Paris, had also worked as a model, and was now also expecting a second child, due any day. My two brothers, he continued, were called Björn and Ólafur. Yes, it was true, Ólafur had died young. But Björn was well and had just had his first child, Kristín, the middle name of both my eldest sister and grandmother.

  Pétur said that each generation replicated something from the past, but of all the children only Björn was the settled type—he had gone into my father’s business importing hardware and industrial equipment. The rest, he said, were wanderers, with Fríða and Bryndís being particularly stricken with the curse.

  It was also true that Gísli’s business had gone broke, and that he was unwell, just as we’d heard.

  ‘Can you help me get in touch with them?’ I asked.

  ‘That wouldn’t be quite right,’ he answered.

  ‘I’m not sure that I can do it on my own.’

  ‘It is that kind of job, though. I don’t see them very often. I can’t really say that Gísli’s family is very close to mine.’ I watched him as he cooked. He must have felt my eyes on his back and turned around.

  ‘I couldn’t do it to your father. It would hurt him too much. I can’t do that to my brother.’

  There it was, I thought. We’d reached the point where the secret had started. That it was always about doing something to Gísli.

  ‘I should take you for a drive,’ said Pétur after lunch. Was this all anyone ever did, I thought, go for drives?

  ‘I want to show you your Uncle Björn’s latest project. He still does a lot of projects in Reykjavík.’ I wasn’t sure of his motives; I wondered if he was trying to get me out of the house before Bára, his wife, came home. We drove to a small, dark beach.

  ‘You must remember this place from when you were a boy. You must have come down here from time to time.’ In fact, it wasn’t far from where Gunnar had kept his fishing tug during the winters. Across the water stood a cluster of apartment blocks on a thin strip of land. These, said Pétur, were his brother Björn’s designs.

  ‘And that’s where your father lives,’ he added, pointing across the water. So now I understood why we were here.

  ‘You know,’ he went on, ‘if you wanted to, you could adopt the family name. It is Ólafs. A good, strong name! No-one would know whose you were, but you’d still be part of the family.’

  He meant well. But without knowing it Pétur was replicating my own way, and looking for a solution that didn’t really change anything, just so that Gísli would remain protected. Pétur wanted me in, and at the same time he was as careful as I had been in saving his brother. Was a half-declaration of paternity going to be enough for me now? Was I to spend the rest of my life satisfied with this, a slightly better lie than the one I’d had before?

  ‘Kári Ólafs,’ he said. ‘That has a good sound to it. You can even say that you’re mine.’

  ‘Kári Gíslason,’ I replied. ‘Pétur, I am Kári Gíslason. I am not anyone else’s son.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s true.’ He looked at me hard once more, as though to confirm that it was time to stop, and said, ‘Let’s go for coffee, then.’

  We went to Café Paris, where rather publicly he embraced and kissed me, and demanded that we be friends on our own terms, no matter what happened with Gísli. He asked if I felt like coming for a family dinner on Sunday?

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I replied. And with that, he kissed me again and let me on my way.

  14

  LETTERS TO ICELAND

  There were no horses in Reykjavík that September, or at least none to throw me and bring on a decision, to shake me out of my rigidity and slowness. Perhaps you needed to be more like Gunnar of Hlíðarendi for that to happen, to be able to jump as far backwards as you could forwards, yet he too had doubts. He once asked his brother why he found it more difficult to kill than other men did. Even Gunnar, who was all action, occasionally permitted himself a moment of reflection—not a typically Viking thing to do.

  I was the other way around, all reflection and not enough action. And so instead of leaping over an axe, I made myself a deal, one that I could manage without any horses, hard women, or even a thirst for vengeance. I would simply do what I had always done; I would write. Words ran parallel and, to some extent, removed from the real world; often they were just shapes on a page, as I had discovered at Mostyn House and in the sagas, when Egil locked himself away to die. They are another room for you to occupy. I would write a letter to my father and my siblings, and reach them that way.

  In deference to the situation, I would write to Gísli first. He might want a chance to speak to Ólöf, his wife, before I contacted my siblings, and even though returning to Iceland wasn’t about him anymore, I couldn’t leave him out completely. It wouldn’t be fair, especially as I was about to go back on a promise I had made, that he still had every reason to rely on. I wrote him a short note.

  September 6, 1999

 
Gísli,

  I arrived in Iceland on August 8. I would like you to know that I am going to be open about the fact that you are my father. This is a secret that should never have been created. It was very wrong of you to keep me hidden, and I will not live in secret anymore.

  Kári

  His apartment was so new that it didn’t have a proper postal address yet, and I figured it would be better to deliver the letter in person. This rather undid the fantasy of my words carrying themselves and me, as I would have to carry them. What if I bumped into Gísli, or, worse still, his wife?

  I had been slow to call Anna, Gunnar and Lilja’s daughter, and her husband, Hreinn. I suddenly felt the oversight and phoned her on the day I wrote Gísli a letter. They invited me to see Gunnar and Lilja’s graves, and I decided the best thing would be to see them first, and then catch a bus to somewhere near Gísli’s place. If I still felt like delivering the letter after visiting Gunnar and Lilja, I would pop it under his door.

  We agreed to meet for coffee first, and then drive up to see Gunnar and Lilja.

  ‘They were so happy that they knew you both,’ said Anna. ‘They hadn’t known any foreigners before they met your mother. You and Susan were very important to them.’

  I didn’t doubt what Anna was saying—we had always felt the same way about Gunnar and Lilja—but I found myself wondering, yet again, why people had always been drawn to my mother and me in this way? Why did she bring out this generosity in others, and such willingness on their part to take us into their families? That was where our conversation drifted, and so it didn’t seem altogether strange to tell Anna and Hreinn what I was planning to do that day, about the letter in my pocket.

  ‘You must contact your siblings,’ said Hreinn. ‘You have to know your family. Your father and his wife will come around, I’m sure.’ Anna was less certain. She looked worried, whether for me or Ólöf I’m not sure.

  ‘Well, in any case, let’s go visit Mum and Dad,’ she said. ‘They might well have the answers.’

  They did, in fact, because they had never judged us. It wouldn’t even have occurred to them to think less of us, or my circumstances, or our wanderings, or for us not insisting on help from Gísli. They were too happy with each other to even begin finding fault in others; it was a way of being that I wanted as my own. They were the only people I have ever known who hadn’t wanted to make an impression on others, who hadn’t sought to be noticed. But how were you to remain unnoticed when it felt so close to being unknown?

  As I stood before their graves their response came to me: ‘Try not to judge your mother and father. Try to work out what you want, Kári. It isn’t about finding someone to blame.’

  ‘I just want to be home,’ I replied.

  ‘Þú ert heima, Kári minn,’ Gunnar said. ‘You are home, dear Kári.’

  I caught the bus to near Gísli’s apartment and walked the last bit down a long hill. Inside the apartment block stood a large pot, presumably to be used for plants one day, but now it was filled with odd bits of decorator’s rubbish and quite a few letters, the strays of a new apartment block. None were addressed to Gísli and for a moment I wondered whether I was in the right place. But I didn’t want to linger and look. I couldn’t shake the unpleasant vision of the door opening, and of finding myself delivering the letter in person. I slipped it under his door, and almost ran down the stairs and out of the block.

  It was a beautiful Icelandic afternoon, raining quite heavily and very windy—classic early autumn weather. I could barely hear myself yelling above the sound of the wind and the traffic coming down the hill. But I was yelling, euphorically in fact, and it was because I had finally done what I had been rehearsing for since I was seventeen. I was at last free of that drive to the president’s lodge, when I had last been this close to my father.

  That night, I wrote to my siblings. I had decided that I would post these letters the following day, so that they would reach my siblings two days after I had hand delivered the letter to Gísli. I feared that he might spoil things for me in the meantime if I didn’t act quickly, but I was still glad I had at least allowed him some time. He had never told me to keep his secret—he had only ever asked—and giving him these two days was, I reasoned, my acknowledgment of the choice he had given me; now it was his chance to choose. I wrote a longer letter to my half-sister, Fríða, and similar ones to my other brother and sisters.

  September 7, 1999

  Dear Fríða,

  I’m not sure if Gísli has ever told you about me, but I am Gísli’s son and your half-brother. I was born in Reykjavík in 1972, my mother’s name is Susan Reid, and since 1982 I have lived overseas; in England until 1986 and in Australia until today.

  I am now visiting Iceland to do some research for my doctoral thesis. While I am here, I would very much like to meet my relatives, especially my sisters and brother, and my grandmother Fríða.

  I met with my Uncle Pétur on Friday, and I had a lovely dinner with Pétur, Bára, Ásdís and Kristján on Sunday night. I have also written to your brother and sisters—the same letter as this one to you.

  I would like you to know that I have not written to you in order to cause any pain for you or your family. My reason for writing is simply that it would give me a great deal of pleasure to meet and know you.

  I have already written to Gísli and told him that I don’t want to live as a secret anymore.

  If you would like to meet, perhaps you could call the number above after six pm and we can organise something. You are most welcome to meet me at Skildinganes, or we can meet at Pétur’s house, or I can visit you.

  I hope to hear from you soon.

  All my best,

  Kári

  Reading these letters today brings back all of the excitement and apprehension of those three days, now more than ten years ago, when I waited to receive a reply. Today, I am embarrassed by the melodrama of my letter to Gísli. But it reminds me, as it should, that I was still very angry, and that my letter to him was more than just a hint for him to talk to his family. I judged him, and in retrospect I think I judged him too harshly.

  Nine years before, he had told me that he loved my mother, and at the time that seemed enough. Between then and my letter to him, I had somehow come to think that it wasn’t, and that I was entitled to blame him for a promise that my mother and I had made. My siblings, who at last come into this story in their own right, have since helped me move closer to my seventeen-year-old self. But partly that’s because I had finally given up on Gísli acknowledging me.

  At the time I wrote my letters, it seemed impossible that the response of my siblings would be altogether good, and their first contact still strikes me as a kind of miracle. How they managed such openness and warmth, which from the very beginning was their answer to the fact of my existence, I cannot imagine. Quite simply, they astounded me.

  Fríða, the oldest, rang me on the very day their letters arrived. She introduced herself, and thanked me for writing, and then said that she’d just called Bryndís in Paris to tell her about me. Bryndís, she added, had just given birth to her second daughter, Opal.

  ‘I’ve sent Bryndís a letter as well,’ I replied, hastily. ‘She’ll get it soon, I expect.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. That’s fine, of course. And I’ve talked to Pétur as well. He has said that it’s true. But Pabbi, our father, won’t admit it. We have asked him, and he says he doesn’t know you. He denies it completely.’

  ‘I can understand Gísli saying that. I thought he might. It’s been a secret a long time,’ I said, pleased that Pétur had come through for me again.

  ‘A very long time. You are twenty-six? A grown man?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘She is English. She worked with Gísli at G. Thorsteinsson & Jónsson.’

  �
��Okay. We can talk more about that later. I’ve spoken to the others, and we all think it would be a good idea to meet. We really need to meet you for ourselves.’ So we agreed that Agi, Anna’s husband, would fetch me in an hour.

  For a long time, I had felt myself suspended above the secret of my own identity. But when I came down I found that I had a lot to like about the world around me. Suddenly, I had a whole family that had in a way always been there. That night I even began to like my story, because it was obvious that it had led to this moment.

  ‘How are they coping with the news?’ I asked Agi, as we drove along the sea.

  ‘I won’t say they’re not surprised, Kári. They can’t quite believe that it’s been kept a secret all these years. I mean, how did he do it? But I think they’re fine. Or, will be. They’ve talked. They’re very strong, very close. Your father raised beautiful children.’ He smiled at me, and added, ‘With some help, of course.’

  ‘But he hasn’t admitted it?’

  ‘No, not yet. But he will have to. It’s ridiculous.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Has no-one ever mentioned the resemblance to you before?’

  ‘Well, my mother—quite a few times. She often says that I’m my father’s son.’

  ‘Yes, it’s astonishing.’ Agi smiled again and then turned off Suðurgata and began the descent to downtown. He had the most welcoming smile I’d ever seen, and behind it the mysterious warmth of regret. ‘It’ll be alright,’ he continued. ‘My family’s just gone through something like this. I met a brother I’d never known. He died just after we met, actually.’

  ‘Oh, dear. That’s terrible.’

  ‘No, no, it wasn’t. The great thing was that we all got to meet.’ Yes, I could see that, but I didn’t want to repeat the sad outcome of Agi’s half-brother; it would be nicer to survive well beyond the meeting, to have time to get to know them.