‘Have you mentioned this question to Hallgrímur?’ Ásta enquires drily, seeing his eyes search out Gudda as he clears his throat to bring the class to attention. She has no enthusiasm for condemning the young man’s ill-disciplined ardour. Hypocrisy is not a crime, else there would scarce be a priest left standing, and he must take his chance with the actual law. Rather it is another emotion that floors Ásta as she observes the couple’s darting smiles. This woman has a son not much older than Jón left behind in the Barbary, a husband at home, a bastard in her belly and a capital charge hanging over both her and her passionate young lover. Yet here she sits in the Church of Our Lady, smiling. She is happier than I am.
Gudda leans close. ‘Let’s say,’ she murmurs out of the corner of her mouth, ‘that he was quick to realise his studies have not prepared him for everything.’
A small flower, white with a tiny yellow heart, has sprung up in the woods beyond the walls of the town. Ásta nearly shouts with gladness to spy this frail promise of spring guzzling the light through the bare trees. Soon a canopy of sticky young leaves is stealing the rays. Warmth is returning to the air and each day lingers a little longer. Sunshine is beginning to split the leaden skies of Copenhagen.
The harbour, too, is returning to life, with much hammering, provisioning and hauling upon sails. The winds and waves of the North Sea are ready to receive ships again and the Icelanders will be sailing soon.
There will, however, be one fewer of them embarking for the Westman Islands. Gudda has learned that her husband is likely to have drowned with tens of other fishermen in a dreadful storm at sea. It happened more than a year ago, but news travels slow when, like everyone, it has to wait a long time for a ship. Eyjólfur’s presumed fate has rescued Gudda from a dangerous situation.
Hallgrímur Pétursson has not shared with the class his view on whether adultery is still adultery if the husband is dead but the lovers were not aware of it at the time, but this delicate theological question is of keen interest to those who must determine the couple’s fate. Ásta is more inclined than ever to fancy a heaving of divine shoulders in the firmament. It is decided that the lovers will be charged with the lesser crime of concubinage. Hallgrímur will not complete his studies, but return to Iceland in disgrace and Gudrídur with him. They are to make for the trading station of Keflavík, and will marry if Eyjólfur’s drowning is confirmed.
At the beginning of May merchant ships begin to depart Copenhagen for the twenty or so Danish trading posts around the coast of Iceland. Gunnhildur is heading back east to Djúpivogur, bursting with stories and gossip. If she stops talking within a week of arriving, she will not be the girl Ásta takes her for.
Ásta’s own wait is also over. She gathers up her skirts and steps into the boat behind the bristling bulk of Einar Loftsson. Then they are rowed out to the ship bound for Heimaey.
33
The first Danish ship of the early summer is always a joyous sight on the island. People whoop and shout to see those big square sails tacking ever nearer, bringing news, letters, animals, nails, grain, perhaps some wood: whatever treasure they have dreamed of the winter long.
The wind chivvying the distant ship is also sweeping across the stony face of Helgafell, from where Ólafur Egilsson is watching the white speck on the horizon growing bigger. The climb took him a good deal longer than it used to, but he would be nowhere else today. There is a possibility – just a possibility – that his family is aboard that ship.
He has found himself a sheltered vantage point below a circle of misshapen rocks: frozen trolls, as Ásta would describe them, with their knees and jutting elbows. Ólafur shakes his head. See what she has done to him. Once he would have seen a volcano’s ancient spewings; now he imagines trolls. Soon, God willing, he’ll tell her, and she will laugh to hear it.
But he must not let himself be carried away. He must not hope too hard. Let him hold only to the facts and what is known for sure. An envoy was sent to Algiers. That much the knitting did accomplish, although the money it raised went twice astray and they had to set to again and again. The latest envoy is reported to have arrived in the Barbary some two years ago. Is that time enough for the ransom to have been paid, the captives released, the journey home completed? Surely it is. That ship inching ever closer really could be carrying his family.
To think that Marta will be twelve by now, a young woman, and the baby nearly as old as Egill was. Ólafur has often wondered what he is like, their little Jón. He has been in the habit of envisaging him as another Egill, imagining Egill’s face under the cap of dark hair that is all he can recall of the baby. He must prepare himself for a surprise, because they are always different, children. Marta is bound to be nothing like Helga – even at two she was her own person. And might Egill, might even Egill come too? He’ll be a man now, surely able to be ransomed like any other. In any event, Ólafur must be a patient father to them all. Iceland will be a foreign land to them, and cold. He can’t expect everything to go smoothly after nearly ten years away. And Ásta, dearest Ásta, is likely to chafe under Thorgerdur’s iron rule. He will have to bring his diplomatic skills out of storage there. Ásta will have suffered. Ólafur has never attempted to put flesh on the ways in which she might have suffered, because if imagining cannot make you feel better there is no point to it that he has ever seen. But he will bend his strength to helping her and he will love her. He will love them all.
The ship, dipping and rising across the sea, is making good progress. It will be here within the hour. Ólafur begins a gingerly scramble down the mountain scree and hurries to the harbour.
Heimaey’s guardian cliffs are busy with summer birds and Ásta’s heart swoops to see them. Funny to think that they too have been all the way to warm climes and back. It’s a relief to feel her spirits lifting a little. The noisy cliffs, the sleepy green island, the blustery sky: they are just as she has always pictured them. It is only she who is not as she was.
A thin young man bends to help her out of the landing boat, grabbing her by the elbow as a gust of wind nearly topples her back in.
She stares, struggling to place him.
‘Magnús Birgisson,’ he says, courteous and excited. Most of the island has gathered around the harbour, craning to see who might step on shore next. ‘Let me help you, Ásta.’
Magnús takes her by the arm and guides her away from the crowd. People are beginning to point and jostle. He tries to steer her in the direction of an old man watching quietly from the side. But Ásta is tired: it has been a long voyage, she was sick the whole way and she needs to get home.
‘Ásta,’ says the old man, ‘do you not recognise me?’
As Magnús is obliged to report later to his mother, who refuses to put broth on the table until every detail of the meeting between husband and wife has been divulged, it was all very uncomfortable. The Reverend Ólafur seemed upset to discover his wife was alone and Ásta was very quiet.
‘What did they say?’ Agnes asks, poised avidly above him with the bowl.
‘Not much.’ Magnús fiddles with his spoon. ‘He wanted to know where the children were and she said she would tell him on the way home, and they stared at each other for a while and then turned to walk.’
‘How did she look?’
‘Not much changed, I suppose.’
Agnes waits for more. ‘Distant,’ he says grudgingly. Magnús had found the couple’s encounter sad in a way he is not going to try and express to anyone. ‘She seemed a bit distant.’
‘And what happened?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Did they embrace?’ his mother persists. Why the Almighty did not see fit to bless the male of the species with an eye for important detail has always been beyond her.
‘Not that I noticed. I think maybe he held her hands for a while. Can’t remember.’
‘And what news of the children?’
‘Couldn’t hear very well. I didn’t like to go too close.’ Tramping across the heath behind t
hem with his arms around a sack of meal for Thorgerdur, Magnús had wished himself miles away.
Agnes keeps a tight hold of the bowl and glares at her son.
‘All right, then. She mentioned that Egill had gone away somewhere and Marta somewhere else and the young one – Jón, they call him – I think she said he was a servant in Algiers. But Mamma, the reverend looked terrible. He stopped walking and every bit of colour went from his face. And before you ask – he didn’t say a word. Just turned away to the sea and bent his head.’
‘Poor man,’ Agnes sighs. ‘And there’ll be more than him in shock tonight with so few returned. And what of Ásta?’
‘Ásta?’
‘Yes, Ásta. What’s wrong with your ears?’
‘She was crying, I think. Is that what you mean? She turned and asked what I was doing standing there and didn’t I have a delivery to make? A bit sharp, you know. And then she seemed to notice the house for the first time – we were nearly at Ofanleiti by then – and she said, “Is that it?” And she made a sort of sobbing noise. Mamma, I’m hungry.’
His mother bangs the broth on the table and stalks to the kitchen. Nothing for it but to waylay the Ofanleiti serving girl tomorrow morning.
34
The morning after the return of the captives, so many fewer than hoped for, a passing fisherman spots Ásta and Ólafur standing outside the Ofanleiti crofthouse. They are staring out to sea and don’t see him. The sky is a soft blue; yesterday’s grey clouds have been chased away and the air is dawn-fresh. The man is struck by how miserable Ólafur looks, his hands hanging by his sides and his eyes registering no interest in the scene that a watcher may discern, only glancing now and then at his wife and then quickly ahead again.
Ásta, on the contrary, is drinking it in. Or rather, the man thinks (he being used of old to noting Ásta’s demeanour with some exactitude), she is less drinking than sucking into herself the sight of the small islands tickled by waves, the faint whiff of seaweed mixed with the smell of the springtime earth, the piping and fluting of birds and the sea rumbling in that contented way that fills everyone with pleasure on such a day.
Her form still appears beautiful to the fisherman, although he will admit he has never been the most detached observer. What surprises him most is the bloom of health about her. Even after what he must suppose was a testing journey home, she looks younger now than Thorgerdur, who is worn so haggard by outdoor work and the struggle to feed the family. Ásta’s hair remains thick, its fairness only slightly darkened and silvered, and her skin appears less gouged by the weather than any woman here who has passed five and forty years in rain and wind and a little sun.
In the days to come it will also occur to the fisherman that she is carrying herself differently. From what he used to observe, Ásta always had nerve, saying out loud what others would not, laughing at what nobody else would dare to find funny. But she was also impractical and dreamy, and drew much of her strength, it seemed to him, from Ólafur. The woman who has come back seems more knowing, less compliant. She has a confidence that holds itself tight and aloof. Thinking it over, it will appear to him extraordinary that someone who was dragged from her home a captive should return with such a sense of owning herself. She has felt much: that he can tell here and now. It is there in her eyes, grave as they always were but without the spark of mischief that used to lighten her face in an instant. Indeed her eyes are furrowed around with such pain that it frightens him a little. Her eyes are at odds with the girlishness of her form and they age her in a different way altogether.
Ólafur must sense it too, this unfathomable suffering, this air that clings to Ásta of being apart and dangerously strong. Perhaps that is why he droops so at her side.
Watching Ásta drench her senses in an Icelandic springtime, it comes to the fisherman that she is unreachable. And it is not his business to reach her, he reminds himself. There must be no more of that.
He adjusts the rope on his shoulder and turns away.
Neither husband nor wife can bring the other succour: they have not the language to share their pain. Ásta has not found a way of telling Ólafur about her life in the white city, for fear of where it might lead and all the different ways in which it would wound him and torture her. And he, struggling to swallow his questions, alert to how difficult he found these himself when he returned, does not know where to start in understanding what she has become or how to bare his own heart.
They have scarcely touched since the first clumsy grasping of hands at the harbour. In the moment of meeting it came to her in a panic that she did not know this man: Ólafur’s nose was never so large, or his neck so thin; his back was not this stooped, or his hair so white. Nor could Ólafur’s joy at catching sight of that dear, familiar face in the approaching boat long withstand the ice in her eyes or the terrible absence of his children. Why am I here? Why have I left my child? Ásta shrieked to herself that night, while he, facing the other way, wept in silent agony for the family he would not see again in this world or the next.
Out of delicacy for feelings he suspects border on revulsion, Ólafur makes no request of Thorgerdur and his son-in-law to surrender the married compartment behind the curtain at the back of the badstofa. Instead, he and Ásta sleep in narrow beds set into the wall on opposite sides of the room, among children who are not theirs. Ásta lies near enough her husband to count the spidery veins in his cheek and the hairs in his nose, but too far to reach a hand to him in the night.
She does have word of Helga. She does have that in which to wrap herself. Their daughter has married a lawman and settled in Skammbeinsstadir in the south of Iceland. She has children. Three already, Ólafur tells her, with another on the way. And for that moment they draw together, smiling to think of their mischievous Helga in a nest of infants. Her husband, Finnur Gudmundsson, writes to say there is no question of her travelling in her condition, but that she sends by his hand her most fond and respectful wishes to her parents and thanks God day and night for the safe return of her beloved mother to Iceland. Ásta stores the news with the rest of her disappointments and tries to rejoice that Helga has made in these ten years a fruitful life that is complete without a mother.
Ólafur spends most of his time ministering to the distressed island. With two hundred and fifty taken and only a handful come back, he encounters hurt behind almost every door. Some of the women have returned to confirmation that husbands or sons were among the fifty fishermen who drowned the previous year, while others were shocked to find another woman in their husband’s bed and nowhere to sleep but alongside them. Families whose loved ones never did emerge from the spring ship have had to bear the final shattering of hope. Ásta cannot conceive of what Ólafur finds to say to them all. She has not asked. Once she would have run to meet him as he plodded home from such a doleful mission, back stooped and eyes on the path, and taken his arm and thought of something to cheer him. Now she makes sure to be busy with an urgent task elsewhere. It is Thorgerdur who is left to pull the shoes from her father’s feet and hang up his socks to dry.
As the summer draws to a close, Thorgerdur chooses her moment. The two women are making skyr in the dairy, a dark, shivery place that Ásta hates with a passion, though she never minded it before.
‘There have been strains on my father that a man half his age might have buckled under,’ Thorgerdur begins, stirring vigorously and not looking at Ásta. ‘He is well past seventy. Nothing else has tied him to life but the hope of your return. Don’t you see that?’
It is so unlike Thorgerdur to start a conversation about anything other than the time the milk and rennet are taking to curdle that Ásta forgets to bridle.
‘I do,’ she replies quietly in the dimness. Why deny it? Of course she sees.
‘Then why are you not warmer with him? We all know you have suffered, but so has he.’
‘I treat him with due respect,’ Ásta says tightly.
‘Pray leave the respect to me,’ Thorgerdur snaps. ‘You�
��re his wife, not his daughter.’
With a visible effort to speak more temperately, she tries again: ‘No marriage is without its trials, as no one need tell me, but you must surely know that you alone can make my father happy.’
Ásta is silent. What is she to say? That a daughter is exactly what she feels herself to be? That happiness is a luxury we are all well used to living without?
Thorgerdur pauses in her stirring. She hesitates a moment, inspects the spoon, then bursts forth with, ‘Look, Ásta, would you like our bed? My father has not requested it, but it ought to be yours.’
‘No.’ The answer comes too fast, and she tries to soften it: ‘Thank you, Thorgerdur. That is a generous offer, but it is not necessary.’
Thorgerdur is not an easy person to talk to. Her stiffness repels intimacy and her eyes, rather than draw you out, tend to dart hither and thither, looking, as Ásta always fancies, for dirt, which is so plentiful they are rarely still. But now she raises her head, looks straight across and speaks almost gently.
‘Ásta, what is wrong?’
Blinking back a rush of tears, Ásta turns away. How is she to answer, when so much, so very much, is wrong? The dark, cramped, smoke-ridden house. The greasy mutton soups, with never a vegetable or a herb for taste. The back-breaking plucking of a thousand feathers. The dresses grey as dried mud. The reek of fish and the cold summer’s damp. Thorgerdur’s children, who sleep in beds where Marta should be lying with a hand tucked under her cheek and Jón bouncing in the puffin-feather duvet she never had the chance to make for him. Ólafur, whose touch she cannot bear, whose sympathy only adds to her furious guilt, whose limp silver hair makes her wish for a head that bore none at all and yearn for the scent of rosewater.
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