"Sorry," Elínborg said, without being completely aware why she was apologising. "We thought he could help us about some old bones. I hope he's not feeling too bad."
Lying flat out now, Róbert suddenly opened his eyes. He looked around as if gradually realising where he was, and took off his oxygen mask despite the nurse's protests.
"Often came," he panted, ". . . later. Green . . . lady . . . bushes . . ."
"Bushes?" Elínborg said. She thought for a moment. "Do you mean the redcurrants?"
The nurse put the mask back on Róbert, but Elínborg thought she detected a nod towards her.
"Who was it? Do you mean yourself? Do you remember the redcurrant bushes? Did you go there? Did you go to the bushes?"
Róbert slowly shook his head.
"Get out and leave him alone," the nurse ordered Elínborg, who had stood up to lean over to Róbert, but not too closely so as not to provoke her more than she already had.
"Can you tell me about it?" Elínborg went on. "Did you know who it was? Who used to go to the redcurrant bushes?"
Róbert had closed his eyes.
"Later?" Elínborg continued. "What do you mean later?"
Róbert opened his eyes and lifted up his old, bony hands to indicate that he wanted a pencil and piece of paper. The nurse shook her head and told him to rest, he had been through enough. He clutched her hand and looked imploringly at her.
"Out of the question," the nurse said. "Would you please get out of here," she said to Elínborg.
"Shouldn't we let him decide? If he dies tonight . . ."
"We?" the nurse said. "Who's we? Have you been looking after these patients for 30 years?" she snorted. "Will you get out before I have you removed."
Elínborg glanced down at Róbert who had closed his eyes again and seemed to be asleep. She looked at the nurse and reluctantly started moving towards the door. The nurse followed her and shut the door behind her the moment Elínborg was out in the corridor. Elínborg thought of calling in Sigurdur Óli to argue with the nurse and inform her how important it was for Róbert to tell them what he wanted to say. She dropped the idea. Sigurdur Óli was certain to enrage her even more.
Elínborg walked down the corridor and could see Sigurdur Óli in the canteen devouring a banana with an apish look on his face. On her way to join him, she stopped. There was an alcove or TV den at the end of the corridor and she retreated into it and hid behind a tree that was planted in a huge pot and stretched all the way up to the ceiling. She waited there, watching the door, like a lioness hiding in the grass.
Before long the nurse came out of Róbert's room, breezed down the corridor and through the canteen for the next ward. She did not notice Sigurdur Óli, nor he her as he chomped on his banana.
Elínborg sneaked out of her hiding place behind the tree and tiptoed back to Róbert's room. He was lying asleep in the bed with the mask over his face just as when she had left him. The curtain was closed, but the dim glow of a lamp shed light into the gloom. She went over to him, hesitated for a moment and looked around furtively before bracing herself to prod the old man.
Róbert did not budge. She tried again but he was sleeping like a log. Elínborg assumed he must be in a very deep sleep, if not simply dead, and she bit her nails while she wondered whether to prod him harder or disappear and forget the whole business. He had not said much. Only that someone had been hanging around the bushes on the hill. A green lady.
She was turning to leave when Róbert suddenly opened his eyes and stared at her. Elínborg was unsure whether he recognised her, but he nodded and she felt sure she detected a grin behind his oxygen mask. He made the same sign as before to ask for a paper and pencil and she searched in her coat for her notebook and pen. She put them in his hands and he started writing in big capitals with a shaky hand. It took him a long time and Elínborg cast a terrified look towards the door, expecting the nurse to enter at any moment and start shouting curses. She wanted to tell Róbert to hurry, but did not dare to pressure him.
When he had finished writing, his pallid hands slumped onto the quilt, and the book and pen with them, and he closed his eyes. Elínborg picked up the book and was about to read what the old man had written when the cardiac monitor that he was connected to suddenly started to beep. The noise was ear-piercing when it broke out in the silent room and Elínborg was so startled that she jumped back. She looked down at Róbert for a moment, unsure of what to do, then rushed straight out of the room, down the corridor and into the canteen where Sigurdur Óli was still sitting, his banana finished. An alarm rang somewhere.
"Did you get anything out of the old sod?" Sigurdur Óli asked Elínborg when she sat down beside him, gasping for breath. "Hey, are you okay?" he added when he noticed her puffing and panting.
"Yes, I'm fine," Elínborg said.
A team of doctors, nurses and paramedics came running through the canteen and into the corridor in the direction of Róbert's room. Soon afterwards a man in a white gown appeared, pushing in front of him a piece of equipment that Elínborg thought was a cardiac massage device, and went down the corridor as well. Sigurdur Óli watched the crowd disappear around the corner.
"What the hell have you been up to now?" Sigurdur Óli said, turning to Elínborg.
"Me?" Elínborg muttered. "Nothing. Me! What do you mean?"
"What are you sweating like that for?" Sigurdur Óli asked.
"I'm not sweating."
"What happened? Why is everyone running?"
"No idea."
"Did you get anything out of him? Is he the one who's dying?"
"Come on, try to show a bit of respect," Elínborg said, looking all around.
"What did you get out of him?"
"I haven't checked yet," Elínborg said. "Shouldn't we get away from here?"
They stood up and walked out of the canteen, left the hospital and sat down in Sigurdur Óli's car. He drove off.
"So, what did you get out of him?" Sigurdur Óli asked impatiently.
"He wrote me a note," Elínborg sighed. "Poor man."
"Wrote you a note?"
She took the book out of her pocket and flicked through it until she found the place Róbert had written in it. A single word was jotted there, in the trembling hand of a dying man, an almost incomprehensible scribble. It took her a while to puzzle out what he had written in the notebook, then she became convinced, although she did not understand the meaning. She stared at Robert's last word in this mortal life: CROOKED.
*
That evening it was the potatoes. He did not think they were boiled well enough. They could equally have been over-boiled, boiled to a pulp, raw, unpeeled, badly peeled, over-peeled, not cut into halves, not in gravy, in gravy, fried, unfried, mashed, sliced too thick, sliced too thin, too sweet, not sweet enough . . .
She could never figure him out.
That was one of his strongest weapons. The attacks always occurred without warning and when she was least expecting them, just as often when everything seemed rosy as when she could sense that something was upsetting him. He was a genius at keeping her on tenterhooks and she could never feel safe. She was always tense in his presence, ready to be at his beck and call. Have the food ready at the right time. Have his clothes ready in the morning. Keep the boys under control. Keep Mikkelína out of his sight. Serve him in every way, even though she knew it was pointless.
She had long ago given up all hope that things would get better. His home was her prison.
After finishing dinner he picked up his plate, surly as ever, and put it in the sink. Then went back to the table as if on his way out of the kitchen, but stopped where she still sat at the table. Not daring to look up, she watched the two boys who were sitting with her and went on eating her meal. Every muscle in her body was on the alert. Perhaps he would leave without touching her. The boys looked at her and slowly put down their forks.
Deathly silence fell in the kitchen.
Suddenly he grabbed her by the head and s
lammed it down on her plate, which broke, then he snatched her up by the hair and threw her backwards, off her chair and onto the floor. He swept the crockery from the table and kicked her chair into the wall. She was dazed by the fall. The whole kitchen seemed to be spinning. She tried to get back to her feet although she knew from experience that it was better to lie motionless, but some perverse spirit within her wanted to provoke him.
"Keep still, you cow," he shouted at her, and when she had struggled to her knees he bowed over her and screamed:
"So you want to stand up, then?" He pulled her by the hair and slammed her face-first into the wall, kicking her thighs until she lost all the strength in her legs, shrieked and dropped back to the floor. Blood spurted from her nose and she could barely hear him shouting for the ringing in her ears.
"Try standing up now, you filthy cunt!" he screeched.
This time she lay still, huddled up with her hands protecting her head, waiting for the kicks to rain down upon her. He raised his foot and slammed it with all his might into her side, and she gasped with the scorching pain in her chest. Bending down, he grabbed her hair, lifted her face up and spat in it before slamming her head back against the floor.
"Dirty cunt," he hissed. Then he stood up and looked at the shambles after his assault. "Look what a mess you always make, you fucker," he blared down at her. "Clear it up this minute or I'll kill you!"
He backed slowly away from her and tried to spit at her again, but his mouth was dry.
"Fucking creep," he said. "You're useless. Can't you ever do anything right, you fucking useless whore? Aren't you going to realise that some day? Aren't you going to realise that?"
He didn't care if she was left marked. He knew there was no one who would interfere. Visitors were rare. Occasional chalets lay scattered around the lowlands, but few people ever went to the hill, even though the main road between Grafarvogur and Grafarholt ran nearby, and no one who had any business called on that family.
The house they lived in was a large chalet that he rented from a man in Reykjavík; it was half built when the owner lost interest in it and agreed to rent it to him cheaply if he would finish it. At first he was enthusiastic about working on the house and had almost completed it, until it turned out that the owner did not care either way, and afterwards it began to fall into disrepair. It was made of timber and consisted of an adjacent sitting room and kitchen with a coal stove for cooking, two rooms with coal stoves for heating and a passage between the rooms. In the mornings they fetched water from a well near the house, two buckets every day that were put up on a table in the kitchen.
They had moved there about a year before. After the British occupation of Iceland people flocked to Reykjavik from the countryside in search of work. The family lost their basement flat. Could not afford it any more. The influx meant housing became expensive and rents soared. When he took charge of the half-built chalet in Grafarholt and the family moved out there he started looking for work that suited his new situation and found a job delivering coal to the farms around Reykjavik. Every morning he walked down to the turning to Grafarholt where the coal lorry would pick him up and drop him off again in the evening. Sometimes she thought his sole reason for moving out of Reykjavik was that no one would hear her screams for help when he attacked her.
One of the first things she did after they moved to the hill was to get the redcurrant bushes. Finding it a barren place, she planted the bushes on the south side of the house. They were supposed to mark one end of the garden that she planned to cultivate. She wanted to plant more bushes, but he thought it was a waste of time and forbade her to do it.
She lay motionless on the floor, waiting for him to calm down or go into town to meet his friends. Sometimes he went to Reykjavik and did not come back until the next morning. Her face was ablaze with pain and she felt the same burning in her chest as when he had broken her ribs two years before. She knew that it was not the potatoes. Any more than the stain he noticed on his freshly washed shirt. Any more than the dress she sewed for herself, but that he thought was tarty and ripped to shreds. Any more than the children crying at night, for which he blamed her. "A hopeless mother! Make them shut up or I'll kill them!" She knew he was capable of that. Knew that he could go that far.
The boys darted out of the kitchen when they saw him attack their mother, but Mikkelína stayed put as usual. She could hardly move unassisted. There was a divan in the kitchen where she slept and spent all the day as well because that was the easiest place to keep an eye on her. Generally she kept still after he came in, and when he started thrashing her mother she would pull the blanket over her head with her good hand, as if trying to make herself disappear.
She did not see what happened. Did not want to see. Through the blanket she heard him shouting and her mother shrieking in pain, and she shuddered when she heard her smash into the wall and slump to the floor. Huddled up under her blanket, she started to recite silently to herself:
They stand up on the box,
in their little socks,
golden are their locks,
the girls in pretty frocks.
When she stopped, it was quiet again in the kitchen. For a long while the girl did not dare to pull the blanket away. She peeped out from beneath it, warily, but could not see him. Down the passage she saw the front door open. He must have gone out. The girl sat up and saw her mother lying on the floor. She threw off her blanket, crawled down from her sleeping place and pulled her way across the floor and under the table to her mother, who was still lying hunched up and motionless.
Mikkelína snuggled up to her mother. The girl was thin as a rake and weak, and found the hard floor difficult to crawl across. Normally, if she needed to move, her brothers or mother carried her. He never did. He had repeatedly threatened to "kill that moron". "Strangle that monster on that disgusting bed! That cripple!"
Her mother did not move. She felt Mikkelína touch her back and then stroke her head. The pain in her ribcage did not let up and her nose was still bleeding. She didn't know whether she had fainted. She had thought he was still in the kitchen, but since Mikkelína was up and about that was out of the question. Mikkelína feared her stepfather more than anything else in her life.
Gingerly her mother straightened herself, moaning with pain and clutching the side he had kicked. He must have broken her ribs. She rolled over onto her back and looked at Mikkelína. The girl had been crying and she wore a terrified expression. Shocked at the sight of her mother's bloody face, she burst into tears again.
"It's all right, Mikkelína," her mother sighed. "We'll be all right."
Slowly and with great difficulty she got to her feet, supporting herself against the table.
"We'll survive."
She stroked her side and felt the pain piercing her like a sword.
"Where are the boys?" she asked, looking down at Mikkelína on the floor. Mikkelína pointed to the door and made a noise that conveyed agitation and terror. Her mother had always treated her like a normal child. Her stepfather never called her anything but "the moron", or worse. Mikkelína had contracted meningitis at the age of three and wasn't expected to live. For days the girl had been at death's door at Landakot hospital, which was run by nuns, and her mother was not allowed to be with her no matter how she pleaded and cried outside the ward. When Mikkelína's fever died down she had lost all power of movement in her right arm and her legs, and also in her facial muscles, which gave her a crooked expression, one eye half-closed and her mouth so twisted that she could not help dribbling.
The boys knew they were incapable of defending their mother: the younger one was seven and the older one twelve. By now they knew their father's state of mind when he attacked her, all the invective he used to work himself up to it and then the rage that seized him when he screamed curses at her. Then they would flee the scene. Simon, the older one, went first. He would grab his brother and snatch him away too, pulling him along like a frightened lamb, petrified that their fathe
r would turn his wrath upon them.
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