Silence Of The Grave

by Arnaldur Indridason

  She told Simon and Mikkelína to have clean sheets and hot water ready to wash the baby. After having three children, she knew the procedures.

  It was still winter and dark, but the weather had unexpectedly turned warmer and it had rained during the day; spring would soon arrive. Their mother had been outdoors that day clearing the beds around the redcurrant bushes and pruning dead branches. She said the berries would be good when she made jam that autumn. Simon did not let her out of his sight and went to the bushes with her. She tried to calm him down by saying that everything would be all right.

  "Nothing will be all right," Simon said, and repeated it: "Nothing will be all right. You mustn't have that baby. You mustn't. That's what he says, and he'll kill it. He says so. When's the baby due?"

  "Don't you worry," his mother said. "When the baby's born I'll take it to town and he'll never see it. He's ill and helpless. He lies in bed all day and can't do anything."

  "But when's the baby due?"

  "It could be at any time," his mother said soothingly. "Maybe sometime soon, then it's over and done with. Don't be afraid, Simon. You must be strong. For my sake, Simon."

  "Why don't you go to hospital? Why don't you leave here to have the baby?"

  "He won't let me," she said. "He'd fetch me and order me to give birth at home. He doesn't want anyone to find out. We'll say we found it. Entrust it to the care of good people. That's the way he wants it. Everything will be all right."

  "But he says he'll kill it."

  "He won't do that."

  "I'm so scared," Simon said. "Why does it have to be like this? I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do," he repeated, and she could tell he was plagued by anxiety.

  Now he stood looking down at his mother, who was lying on the mattresses in the kitchen. Apart from the double bedroom, that was the only place in the house large enough, and she began to strain in absolute silence. Tómas was in Grímur's room. Símon had crept to the door and closed it.

  Mikkelína lay by the side of her mother, who tried to make no noise at all. The door to the double bedroom opened, Tómas came out into the passage and went to the kitchen. Grímur was sitting on the edge of the bed, moaning. He had sent Tómas to the kitchen to fetch a bowl of porridge which he had not touched. Told him to help himself to it as well.

  When Tómas walked past his mother, Simon and Mikkelína, he noticed that the baby's head had appeared. Their mother pushed with all her might until the shoulders emerged as well.

  Tómas took the bowl of porridge and a spoon, and suddenly his mother saw out of the corner of her eye that he was about to take a mouthful.

  "Tómas! For God's sake don't touch that porridge!" she shouted in desperation.

  A deathly silence descended upon the house and the children stared at their mother, who was sitting with the newborn baby in her arms and staring at Tómas, and he was so surprised that he dropped the bowl to the floor where it smashed to pieces.

  The bed creaked.

  Grímur came out into the passage and into the kitchen. He looked down at their mother and the newborn baby in her arms, a look of disgust on his face. He looked over to Tómas, then at the porridge on the floor.

  "Can it be?" Grímur said in a low, astonished voice, as if he had suddenly found the answer to a riddle that had long been puzzling him. He looked back down at the children's mother.

  "Are you poisoning me?" he shouted.

  The mother looked up at Grímur. Mikkelína and Simon did not dare look up. Tómas stood motionless over the porridge that had splashed across the floor.

  "Didn't I fucking suspect as much! All that lethargy. That pain. Sickness . . ."

  Grímur looked around the kitchen. Then he jumped at the cupboards and jerked open the drawers. He went berserk. He swept the contents of the cupboards onto the floor. Picked up an old bag of cornmeal and hurled it at the wall. When it burst, he heard a glass jar drop out of it.

  "Is this it?" he shouted, picking up the jar. "How long have you been doing this?" he hissed.

  The children's mother stared into his eyes. A candle was burning on the floor beside her. While he was searching for the poison she had hurriedly picked up a large pair of scissors that she had kept by her side to heat in the flame, then cut the umbilical cord and knotted it with shaking hands.

  "Answer me!" Grímur screamed.

  She did not need to answer. He could tell from her eyes. Her expression. Her obstinacy. How she had always, deep down inside, defied him, unflinching, no matter how often he thrashed her, he saw it in her silent dissent, the challenge glaring back at him with the soldier's bloodstained bastard in her arms.

  Saw it in the baby she hugged to her breast.

  "Leave Mum alone," Símon said in a low voice.

  "Give it to me!" Grímur screamed. "Give me the baby, you fucking serpent!"

  "Leave Mum alone," Simon said, more loudly.

  "Give it here!" Grímur screamed, "or I'll kill you both. I'll kill you all! Kill you! All!"

  He foamed at the mouth with rage.

  "You fucking whore! Are you trying to kill me? Do you reckon you can kill me?"

  "Stop it!" Simon shouted.

  The children's mother clutched the baby tight with one arm, and groped for the scissors with the other, but she could not find them. She glanced away from Grímur and looked around for them in a frenzy, but they were gone.

  *

  Erlendur looked at Mikkelína.

  "Who took the scissors?" he asked.

  Mikkelína was standing by the window now. Erlendur and Elínborg exchanged glances. They were both thinking the same thing.

  "Are you the only one left to tell what happened?" Erlendur asked.

  "Yes," Mikkelína said. "There's no one else."

  "Who took the scissors?" Elínborg asked.

  28

  "Do you want to meet Símon?" Mikkelína asked. Her eyes were moist with tears.

  "Simon?" Erlendur said, not knowing what she meant. Then he remembered. The man who had collected her from the hill. "You mean your son?"

  "No, not my son, my brother," Mikkelína said. "My brother Simon."

  "Is he alive?"

  "Yes, he's alive."

  "Then we have to talk to him," Erlendur said.

  "You won't get much out of him," Mikkelína smiled. "But let's go and see him anyway. He enjoys visits."

  "Aren't you going to finish your story?" Elínborg asked. "What kind of a beast was that man? I don't believe it. Someone behaving that way."

  Erlendur looked towards her.

  "I'll tell you on the way," Mikkelína said. "Let's go and see Simon."

  *

  "Simon!" their mother shouted.

  "Leave Mum alone," Simon screamed in a quavering voice, and before they knew it he had plunged the scissors into Grímur's chest.

  Simon pulled back his hand and saw that the scissors had gone in up to the handle. He looked in disbelief at his son, as if he did not fully realise what had happened. He looked down at the scissors, but seemed incapable of moving. He looked again at Simon.

  "Are you killing me?" Grímur groaned and fell to his knees. Blood pumped out from the scissor-wound onto the floor, and slowly he slumped backwards and slammed against the wall.

  Their mother clutched the baby in silent terror. Mikkelína lay motionless by her side. Tómas was still standing where he had dropped the porridge. Simon began shivering, standing beside his mother. Grímur did not move.

  Everything went silent.

  Until their mother let out a piercing, anguished howl.

  *

  Mikkelína paused.

  "I don't know whether the baby was stillborn or whether Mum squeezed it so hard that it suffocated in her arms. It was quite premature. She was expecting the baby in the spring, but it was still late winter when it was born. We never heard it make a sound. Mum didn't clear its throat and she held it with its face buried in her clothes, for fear of him. For fear that he would take it from h
er."

  At Mikkelína's instruction, Erlendur pulled over near a plain-looking detached house.

  "Would he have died that spring?" Erlendur asked. "Her husband? Was she counting on that?"

  "I don't think so," Mikkelína said. "She'd been poisoning him for three months. It wasn't enough."

  Erlendur stopped in the drive and switched off the engine.

  "Have you heard of hebephrenia?" she asked, opening the car door.

  *

  Their mother stared at the dead baby in her arms, rocked it frantically back and forth and sobbed and cried out.

  Seemingly impervious to her, Simon stared at his father's body as if he could not believe what he saw. A puddle of blood was beginning to form under him. Simon was shaking like a leaf.

  Mikkelína tried to console her mother, but it was impossible. Tómas walked past them into the bedroom and closed the door without saying a word. Without any change of expression.

  A good while passed.

  Eventually Mikkelína managed to calm her mother. When she came to her senses and stopped crying, she took a good look around. She saw Grímur lying in his own blood, saw Simon trembling beside her, saw the look of anguish on Mikkelína's face. Then she started to wash her baby in the hot water that Simon had brought her, cleaning it meticulously with slow, careful movements. She seemed to know what to do without thinking about the details. She put the baby down, stood up and hugged Símon, who was rooted to the spot, and he stopped trembling and broke instead into heavy sobs. She led him to a chair and made him sit down, facing away from the body. Then went over to Grímur, pulled the scissors out of the wound and threw them in the sink.

  Then she sat down on a chair, exhausted after the birth.

  She talked to Simon about what they needed to do and she gave instructions to Mikkelína too. They rolled Grímur onto a blanket and pulled his body to the front door. She went outside with Simon and they walked a good way from the house, where he started to dig a hole. The rain, which had stopped during the day, began again – cold, heavy winter rain. The ground was only partially frozen. Símon loosened the soil with a pickaxe, and after he had dug for two hours, they fetched the body and lugged it to the grave. They dragged the blanket over the hole, the body fell in and they tugged the blanket back up from under it. The corpse lodged in the grave with the left hand sticking up in the air, but neither Simon nor his mother could bring themselves to move it.

  Their mother plodded back to the house and fetched the baby, carried it out into the cold rain and laid it down with Grímur's body.

  She was about to make the sign of the cross over the grave, but stopped.

  "He doesn't exist," she said.

  Then she started shovelling earth over the bodies. Simon stood by the grave watching the wet, dark soil slam down onto the corpses and saw how they gradually disappeared beneath it. Mikkelína had begun to tidy up in the kitchen. Tómas was nowhere to be seen.

  A thick layer of mud was in the grave when Simon suddenly had the impression that Grímur twitched. With a shudder he looked at his mother, who had not noticed anything, then he stared down into the grave and to his horror he saw the face, half-covered with dirt, move.

  The eyes opened.

  Simon froze.

  Grímur stared up at him from the grave.

  Simon let out a mighty scream and his mother stopped shovelling. She looked at Simon, then down into the grave, and saw that Grímur was still alive. She stood on the edge of the grave. As the rain beat down on them it cleared the mud from Grímur's face. For a moment they looked each other in the eye, then Grímur's lips moved.

  "Please!"

  His eyes closed again.

  She looked at Símon. Down into the grave. Back at Simon. Then took the shovel and went on filling the hole as if nothing had happened. Grímur disappeared from sight, buried beneath the soil.

  "Mum," Simon wailed.

  "Go to the house, Simon," she said. "It's over. Go to the house and help Mikkelína. Please, Simon. Go to the house."

  Simon looked at his mother, who was bent over, holding the shovel, drenched by the cold rain, as she finished filling the hole. Then he walked away without saying another word.

  *

  "Tómas possibly thought that it was all his fault," Mikkelína said. "He never mentioned it and refused to talk to us. Went completely into his shell. When Mum shouted and he dropped the bowl on the floor, it set off a sequence of events that changed our lives and led to his father's death."

  They were in a tidy sitting room waiting for Simon. He had gone out for a stroll around the neighbourhood, they were told, but would be back any minute.

  "Really nice people here," Mikkelína said. "No one could treat him better."

  "Did nobody ever miss Grímur, or . . . ?" Elínborg said.

  "Mum cleaned the house from top to bottom and four days later she reported that her husband had set off on foot over Hellisheidi moor for Selfoss, but that she had not heard from him since. No one knew she had been pregnant, or at least she was never asked about it. Search parties were sent out onto the moor, but of course his body was never found."

  "What business was he supposed to have in Selfoss?"

  "Mum never needed to go into that," Mikkelína said. "She was never asked for an explanation of his travels. He was an ex-convict. A thief. What did they care about what he was doing in Selfoss? He didn't matter to them. Not in the least. There was plenty else to think about. The day that Mum reported him missing, some American soldiers shot an Icelander dead."

  Mikkelína half-smiled.

  "Several days went by. They turned into weeks. He never showed up. Written off. Lost. Just your ordinary Icelandic missing person."

  She sighed.

  "It was Simon that Mum wept for the most."

  *

  When it was all over, the house seemed eerily silent.

  Their mother sat at the kitchen table, still soaking from the downpour, staring into space with her dirty hands on the table and paying no attention to her children. Mikkelína sat beside her, stroking her hands. Tómas was still in the bedroom and did not come out. Simon stood in the kitchen and looked out at the rain, tears running down his cheeks. He looked at his mother and Mikkelína and back out of the window where the outlines of the redcurrant bushes could be seen. Then he went out.

  He was wet, cold and shivering from the rain when he walked over to the bushes, stopped by them and stroked the bare branches. He looked up into the sky, his face towards the rain. The sky was black and rolls of thunder rumbled in the distance.

  "I know," Simon said. "There was nothing else to be done." He paused and bowed his head, the rain pounding down on him. "It's been so hard. It's been so hard and so bad for so long. I don't know why he was like that. I don't know why I had to kill him."

  "Who are you talking to, Símon?" his mother asked. She had followed him outside, and she put her arm around him.