by Various Orca
The second cop looked me over. Cops are always doing that—sizing people up before they speak to them. It didn’t bother me. I lived with the Major.
“I told her if she made a nuisance of herself again, I’d have a word with her boss. It’s a tough economy these days, and it won’t be easy for a woman her age to find another job.” He spoke even better English that Brynja, with an accent that made me think of New York. Maybe his teacher had been from New York. Or maybe he’d lived there for a while.
Brynja said something in Icelandic.
The first cop scowled his disapproval and spoke angrily.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I told you to get in the car,” Brynja said.
The tall cop grinned. “Sounds like she’s got you on a short leash, son.”
“Shut up, Karl,” Brynja said.
The first cop clucked his disapproval. Brynja growled at him in Icelandic.
“Mind your manners, Brynja,” the first cop said in English, glancing at me.
“At least Karl got her to go away,” Brynja said. “But you, Tryggvi? You’re useless. She only moved here so that she could harass us—and today of all days. But you do nothing.”
“The minute she breaks the law, we’ll deal with her,” Karl said smoothly. Tryggvi shot him an annoyed look. “But she’s crazy, not criminal, and everyone knows it. And being crazy is not against the law.”
Tryggvi broke in. “She’s been warned. If she sets foot on your property again, I’ll arrest her for trespassing. Other than that, there’s nothing I can do.” I noticed he said I, not we. “She’ll eventually give up and accept what happened. She’ll have to.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“That’s none of your business,” Brynja said. She opened the driver’s-side door. “Get in the car, Rennie.” Her tone was warning. She sounded eerily like the Major.
I counted to five before climbing in beside her, so she wouldn’t think I was going to jump every time she yelled at me.
“What was that all about?” I asked as she put the engine in gear.
No answer.
“What’s with those cops?” I asked instead.
“What do you mean?”
Where should I start? “You talk to cops back home the way you did just now, and they’d bust you out of spite.”
“Tryggvi is my uncle.”
“You talk to your uncle like that?”
“It’s more accurate to say he’s my ex-uncle. He used to be married to my father’s sister. If you ask me, he’s an ass, not to mention an arrogant one. My aunt agrees with me.”
“And your dad?”
“You know what men are like. They stick together.”
In other words, the brothers-in-law had remained tight.
“Tryggvi thinks he’s a big deal because he’s a cop and he got his training in America at the FBI.”
“He trained at Quantico?” Not bad. If I’d liked cops, which I didn’t, I might have been impressed.
“He thought he would come back here and be made chief of police in Reykjavik. But instead he’s stuck here. It drives him crazy.”
“And the other one?”
“Karl? Karl drives him even crazier. Tryggvi thinks he doesn’t understand the way things work over here. He’s always competing with Karl. He says the only reason all the bosses like Karl is because they’re so flattered he decided to come back here.”
“Back?”
“His grandfather was Icelandic, but Karl’s father emigrated before Karl was even born.” That explained the American accent. “He spent most of his summers over here when he was a kid. A few years back, he came for a vacation and decided to stay.”
“What did he do in the States?”
“He was a cop.”
And that explained Tryggvi’s annoyance. After his time in Quantico, he probably thought he had it all over Karl. But Americans…well, let’s just say they never seem short on confidence, and I bet Karl didn’t take well to Tryggvi insisting he didn’t understand people over here.
We drove in silence for a few moments. I kept waiting for Brynja to explain what had just happened, but she didn’t, which meant that I had to take the bull by the horns.
“Brynja, what happened to that woman’s husband?”
There was a long pause before she said, “I have no idea. But I sincerely hope he’s dead.”
She refused to look at me again. I guessed there was no point in asking her what was so important about today of all days.
Fifteen minutes later, we turned onto a graveled laneway and drove across a narrow bridge. We passed a tiny church, a barn and a few other smaller buildings, then stopped in front of a white house with red trim.
“Who lives here?” I asked.
“We do.” She spat the words at me. Still angry, I deduced. “My dad, my afi and me.”
I considered asking about her mother but, given her mood, decided not to push my luck.
But there was one question I had to ask.
“Um…” I admit it. She had me walking on eggshells and choosing my words carefully so she wouldn’t give me more attitude. “Could I maybe settle in first?”
“Settle in?” She spoke the words as if she didn’t know what they meant.
“Check into the motel or whatever, take a shower, maybe catch a nap—”
“Motel?” she said. “What motel?” As if she had no idea what I was talking about. See what I mean?
“Hotel, then.”
“The hotel in Reykholt is booked up for a conference.”
“How about in Borgarnes?”
“You’re staying with us until my dad can take you to the interior.”
“Yeah, but I—”
“You Americans are so rude. Someone offers you hospitality—”
“I’m Canadian,” I said.
She didn’t even pause.“—and all you do is complain.”
“Fine. Okay.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and waited.
“Thank you,” I said finally.
“That’s the car you can use,” she said, pointing to an ancient Yaris in the driveway. “The keys are inside. Come on.” She climbed out of the SUV, circled around to the back and was halfway to the front door with my duffel bag before I realized what was happening.
“Hey, I can take that,” I said.
No response. She shoved open the front door and disappeared inside. I scrambled after her.
The main floor of the house was large and the kind of neat the Major would have approved of. To the right was a living room, to the left a dining room and behind that, a kitchen. All the rooms were painted a gleaming white. Paintings and photographs decorated the walls between and above bookcases crammed with books. The Major had told me that Iceland had one of the highest literacy rates in the world, due to a combination of the long dark winters and the state religion, Lutheranism, which required that all children be able to read and write in order to make their confirmation into the church.
“Come on,” she said, still toting my duffel bag as she led me up a flight of stairs and down a hallway to the back of the house. She dropped my bag on the floor of an immaculate room. It, too, was painted white and had a large window that overlooked a meadow and, beyond that, a waterfall that started somewhere in the highlands behind the farm. “This is your room. There’s a toilet and shower across the hall. You have it to yourself. You can get cleaned up if you want. I’ll be downstairs whenever you’re ready to meet my afi.”
“What about your dad?”
“He won’t be back until the day after tomorrow. He’s got a group.”
“Group?”
“Of tourists. That’s what he does.”
“Your dad’s a tour guide?”
“Yes.” She seemed to dare me to say something about it.
I kept my mouth shut, but what I was thinking was, Terrific, I’m stuck here with an old man and a sour girl. This was not at all what I had expected.
I waited until I heard her footsteps going down the stairs. Then I hiked my duffel bag up onto the bed, dug out some clean clothes and changed. Reluctantly, I went back downstairs.
The house was silent.
“Brynja?” I called tentatively.
“Back here.”
I followed her voice and found her standing in the doorway to a room behind the kitchen. A woman came out. She had an enormous handbag over her shoulder. Knitting needles poked out of it. She spoke to Brynja in Icelandic, and Brynja listened intently. The woman nodded at me as she passed. Brynja didn’t introduce us.
“Come on,” she said to me instead.
I followed her into the room.
An old man was lying in a sturdy wood-framed bed that looked enormous in comparison to his shrunken body. But his eyes burned a brilliant and lively blue—Iceland was clearly the land of blue eyes—and his weathered face broke into a nearly toothless smile when he saw Brynja.
“I have a visitor for you, Afi,” Brynja said, in English this time.
The old man’s eyes shifted to me. He squinted at me and struggled to sit up.
“David? Is that really you?” he said in a quivering voice.
David was my grandfather’s name.
Brynja went to the bedside and propped the old man up with pillows.
“No, Afi,” she said. “It’s not David. His name is Rennie. I told you he was coming. David is his grandfather.”
The old man was staring at me the whole time. He said something to Brynja and gestured with a shaky hand to the table under the window beside the bed. Brynja went to it and picked up a silver-framed photograph. She handed it to him, but he waved his hand and said something else.
“He wants you to look at it,” she said. She handed it to me.
There were two young men in the photo, both bundled up against the cold, but both faces clearly visible.
“The one on the left is Afi,” Brynja said. “The one on the right is your grandfather.”
He looked so young. They both did.
The old man said something else.
“He says you look like him,” Brynja translated.
I peered at the picture. If you ask me, I didn’t look anything like him. But then I never do see resemblances. When people coo at a tiny baby and says it looks just like its mother or its father, I don’t get it. Babies all look like little aliens to me with their big heads, their even bigger eyes, and their bizarre language of gurgles and screams that only their mothers ever understand.
Brynja’s grandfather said something else.
“In English, Afi,” Brynja said gently. “Rennie doesn’t understand Icelandic.” To me she said, “Come closer so he can see you and talk to you.”
I moved closer to the bed. The old man gestured again, and Brynja pulled a chair over for me to sit on.
“You are David’s grandson?” he asked.
“I’m one of them.” I was pretty sure that after sixty years of Christmas letters, he knew about the others.
“How is he?” the old man asked.
I glanced at Brynja.
“I told you, Afi. Remember?” she said. The old man looked confused. “He died,” Brynja said softly. Tears welled up in her eyes as the smile faded from old man’s face.
“I visited him a while ago,” I said, mostly because no one else was talking. “I spent nearly a month with him.” The old man perked up again, and I told him as much as I could about my grandfather, which turned out to be more than I had realized. Finally the old man asked me what had brought me to Iceland. “He sent me,” I said. “He wants me to go to the interior and do something for him.”
Naturally, Brynja asked what, and the old man looked at me for an answer.
I wasn’t one-hundred-percent sure—and I had no idea why—but from everything that my grandfather had said, I assumed that part of the reason I’d been sent here now was because my grandfather thought this old man was dead.
But he wasn’t.
I hesitated.
The old man peered at me, waiting.
What the heck. He had saved my grandfather’s life. If anyone had the right to know, he did.
I reached into my pocket, pulled out the little journal and pressed it into his hand.
A phone rang out in the kitchen. Brynja looked over her shoulder in annoyance.
“I’ll be right back,” she said.
“My grandfather wanted me to leave this there,” I said when Brynja had left. “He told me exactly where to go.”
The old man opened the book and squinted at it. He groped for something on his bedside table—eyeglasses. I picked them up and gave them to him. He put them on and flipped through the pages, looking at the sketches. Tears welled up in his eyes. His hands trembled.
“Who did this belong to?”
“My grandfather. He said she—”
The old man looked so sharply at me that I stopped immediately. He snapped the journal shut. What had I done? Something that upset him, that was for sure. I knew then that I was right and that my grandfather had wanted this done now because he thought the old man had died. I wished—not for the first time in my life—that I’d kept my mouth shut.
But that wasn’t why the old man stopped reading the journal. He was looking over my shoulder. I turned and saw that Brynja had returned. She said something in Icelandic.
He shook his head and said, “Brynja, leave us.”
She started to protest, but he spoke to her again. She scowled at me as if it were my fault—which it kind of was—and left the room. He called to her again, and she shut the door behind her. Then he leaned toward me as best he could.
“You know who this is?” he asked, opening the journal again and holding up the sketch of the woman.
“I know a little,” I said.
“You must not say anything to Brynja,” the old man said. “Or her father. You must not let them see that book. Do you understand?”
“Sure, but—”
He grasped my hand and squeezed it tightly.
“You must promise me.”
His grip was far stronger than I’d expected, and I guessed he had once been a powerful man.
“I promise,” I said.
“You must swear it.”
Swear it?
“Swear,” he hissed at me. “Swear.”
I swore I wouldn’t say anything to either Brynja or her father or show them the journal.
He slumped back against his pillows and closed his eyes. I waited, but other than the gentle rise and fall of his chest, I saw no movement. He was asleep.
I crept out of the room.
Brynja was waiting for me in the kitchen, arms crossed over her chest, a scowl on her face.
SEVEN
“He’s asleep,” I said.
Brynja marched out of the kitchen and down the hall to the front of the house.
“What was that about?” she demanded.
“I can’t tell you.”
“He’s my afi.”
“And it’s up to him who he wants to tell things to.”
“Why would he tell you something that he didn’t tell me?” She was so angry that she was shaking.
“I have no idea.” I really didn’t. “But if you have any questions about what your grandfather wants, you should ask him.”
“Okay, then show me that book.”
“I can’t do that either.”
“Why not?” One thing I was noticing about her: the angrier she got, the louder she got.
“Because it’s not up to me. It’s up to him.”
She glared at me for a few more seconds before turning and stomping back into the kitchen. I thought she was going to roust the old man, but instead I heard cupboards opening and pots clanging. I glanced at my watch. It was late. She was probably making supper.
I wasn’t sure what to do. I wasn’t sure either what I had got myself into when I agreed to come here, especially after the old
man reacted the way he did. What was he hiding? Did my grandfather even know?
I went into the kitchen and asked Brynja if she needed help. She ignored me. I said if she was cooking on my account, she shouldn’t bother, that I would take care of myself and didn’t want to put her to any trouble. She still ignored me. I left the house, got into the battered Yaris, found the key and drove over the bridge and out onto the road. I headed for Borgarnes, found a restaurant and ordered a hamburger and fries—just like back home. After that I drove around some more and tried to decide what to do next. I didn’t particularly want to face Brynja again, but I didn’t have much choice. Her father would be back the day after tomorrow. With any luck, he could take me to the interior and I could get my mission over with and be on the plane back home by the end of the week.
I drove back to the house and tried the door. The knob was wrenched out of my hand before I could turn it, and there was Brynja.
“Where were you?” she demanded. “It’s late.”
“Were you worried?”
Her face turned red. I grinned. “You were, weren’t you?” I said.
“I was not! But my father called and—”
“He was worried?”
“He is being paid to make sure you are safe while you’re here,” she said. “You didn’t say where you were going. It’s dark, and you don’t know your way around.”
“I got back safe and sound, didn’t I? So you can tell your dad he doesn’t have to worry. I can take care of myself.” I took a step forward, and she retreated just enough to let me into the house. I started for the stairs.
“Rennie?” For once her voice was soft. “I’m sorry I got angry with you.” “It’s okay.”
“It’s just that my afi and I are very close.”
“Really, it’s okay,” I said. To my surprise, she didn’t argue with me. Maybe she actually was sorry. “Hey, Brynja, you know that woman from the gas station? What’s her story? How come she seems to think you and your dad know where her husband is?” And how come, I thought but didn’t ask, you wish the poor guy was dead?
She smiled sweetly. “I’ll tell you,” she said, “if you show me that book.”
Nice try.
“You know I can’t do that, Brynja.”
The sweet smile vanished.