Had I paid closer attention, I would have noticed the shelves in his attic bedroom were lined with twice as many books as the rest of us owned. Living in Lundi, I did not see how he spent every spare moment cloistered upstairs, door closed, bent over notebooks, writing the stories that swirled in his head. He had aspirations he told no one, dreams of a life different than any we’d imagined.
Now I feel clearly his resignation. That evening he said good-night to everyone, but none of us noticed that his feet were heavier than usual on the stairs. Once in his bedroom, he stands in front of the bookcase, removes two notebooks from the shelf, then sits down at the tiny desk. He lifts his pen but lays it back down. Instead, he begins to read a short story written in his own hand. His face relaxes as he soaks in every word, lingering for a moment, staring off. He carefully closes the notebook, opens another and does the same thing. Heaving a sigh, he stands up, stares at the battered covers for a few moments before placing them in the trunk at the foot of his bed.
They would remain there untouched for the next twenty years.
By the time the effects of the Great Depression were lessening, we’d lived in the aftermath of Pabbi’s heart attack for the better part of a decade. As his heart congested, his overall health began a slow decline. Every morning after waking he shuffled to the chair by the window to sit with the radio. Sometimes Mother grew impatient and intervened when he faltered.
“Ella, I can do it myself,” he’d say.
Strangely, Pabbi looked almost satisfied as he wore down the radio battery, listening as grain prices fell, businesses closed and unemployment lines lengthened. Perhaps he felt vindicated: his predictions had come true. Some immigrants who’d settled the same time as us became discouraged, sold out, packed up and returned to Iceland. He often speculated what it must have been like upon their return; would they be called traitors, weaklings, and cowards for leaving in the first place?
“I am not sure which is worse, to be deemed a traitor once or twice,” he said to J.K. one evening as they sat in our kitchen discussing the Depression.
“Twice,” J.K. said. “We are far better off here in Siglunes than anywhere else. We own our land, have plenty to eat, and there will always be fish.”
That night, when Leifur walked him to the door, J.K. gripped his shoulder, lowered his voice. “Everything will turn out, you will see.”
Leifur never once told Pabbi how incredibly lean those years were. He and Lars simply put their heads down and cleared more land, set more nets, bred more heifers and milked a few extra cows. They were so determined that they didn’t even see the turn-around coming. They simply looked up one day to find that J.K. had been right.
When the Second World War began, the Depression ended. Soon after that, the need for health care became so great that a small hospital was built in Lundi. The doctor moved his office there and I followed.
I still took part in many community events, riding with Solrun’s family to the Hayland hall.
One evening, the band was already set up by the time we arrived. Everyone was there, visiting and dancing as the children ran back and forth across the floor. Once again the war in Europe was on everyone’s mind.
A discussion began at Pabbi’s table so of course J.K. was in the middle of it. I sat directly behind them with Solrun. As usual, J.K. and Asi believed one line of reasoning while a handful of men from the community, including Pabbi, took the opposite view.
Midway through the evening three men we did not recognize came in. “Do you remember me?” one asked Pabbi. Clearly he’d been drinking.
Mother tilted her head for a moment. “Pall, how are you?”
“You,” he said, pointing at Pabbi, “killed my father.”
Pabbi’s expression did not change. “I always tried to get along with your father,” he said.
“Like hell you did. You hated him and everyone knew it.”
“Pall,” Mother said. “Their differences began long before you were born. You remember Pall,” she said to J.K. and Gudrun as they returned to the table, breathless from dancing.
Pabbi pushed himself to his feet. Mother stood as well, taking his arm. Everyone had heard the news years earlier of Bensi’s suicide in the Dakotas.
I waved my hand, trying to get Leifur’s attention, but he was at the far end of the hall, leaning into a conversation, and the music was loud.
Pabbi turned slowly, a wobbly arm reaching for his cane as he began shuffling toward the door.
Amusement spread across Pall’s face.
“Not so fast now,” he snorted. The friends with him laughed.
“There, there,” J.K. said. “No need to—”
“And you, look at you sitting there in your fancy suit,” he said. “Thinking you are smarter than everyone else.”
By then everyone at my table had turned around in their chairs.
“Those sonsabitches burned down our place,” he hollered, pointing at Pabbi. “Do you know what happens to a man after he loses everything? He kills himself, that’s what.”
“We were sorry to hear about your father,” J.K. said. “You know that fire was an—”
“Bullshit,” Pall said, pounding his fist on the table. “They had it in for us from the day they moved here.” Then he swiped his hand across, knocking over J.K.’s drink.
Pabbi and Mother stopped.
J.K. was silent for a few moments, then, to everyone’s surprise, he began chuckling. He leaned back in his chair, placing one foot casually across his knee, and pulled a cotton handkerchief out of his breast pocket, dabbed it in the spilled whiskey and began to wipe the dirt from his shoe.
“What are you laughing at, old man?” Pall spat.
J.K.’s grin grew wider.
Gudrun quickly stood and backed away from the table as a thick hand grasped Pall’s shoulder.
“We are going to finish this little talk outside,” said Olafur.
Pall and his buddies leapt up, knocking their chairs back, ready to fight, but their energy quickly drained when they saw Olafur’s brothers coming across the floor.
“I think you should apologize,” Olafur said quietly.
“Now, now, it was just a friendly discussion, right boys?” J.K.’s merry eyes were taking it all in. He placed his foot on the floor and, dabbing the handkerchief again, began polishing the other shoe.
Olafur’s focus never left Pall, whose confidence by then had withered like a week-old balloon. Olafur grabbed him by the shirt and shoved him towards the door. Pall stumbled backwards and the Thorsteinsson brothers escorted him and his friends outside.
“Thank you,” Pabbi said quietly to Olafur at the door. “But please, Pall has suffered enough.”
“Pall Solmundsson,” J.K. said when Leifur returned. “He is as ridiculous as Bensi. Accused your father of burning down their place.”
Leifur’s lips pressed together and his cheeks flushed. His eyes went to Pabbi. He said very little the rest of the night.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
There is a time for everything.
—Grettir’s Saga
One morning, two years after the incident at the hall, Mother woke up and knew immediately by the stillness in the room that Pabbi was gone. She didn’t fling off the blanket, check to see if he was breathing then run to Leifur for help, even though there was no help to give. Instead, she stayed in bed with Pabbi until she was ready to let him go.
Five years later she sold the farm to Lars and came to live with me. Mother was frail by then and had lost her gleam, and her eyesight was failing, a punishment she didn’t deserve.
“Your Amma would be very proud of your independence,” she said one day.
It was a Saturday afternoon in mid-July. We sat together on the verandah tailing and snapping beans. The heat came from all directions, radiating in through the screens that kept most of the b
ugs out. This is where we’d grown accustomed to preparing our garden bounty, listening to the birds, flanked by potted tomatoes and geraniums you could smell growing in the heat.
The pail of beans was on the floor between us. She reached down for a handful, dropping them in her lap.
“I always hoped that you would marry Bjorn,” she said. “It was not my intention when I gave you Amma’s name that you would spend your life alone.”
“She was content with her choices in the end,” I said.
“Maybe so,” she said, tossing beans in the bowl. “Are you?”
I still speculated. I still thought about Einar now and again. At least I wasn’t angry anymore. For years a notion had nagged at me, crept in during moments of regret. I wondered if I’d clung to Bjorn, never ready to give myself fully to another man, because of what Einar did to me.
“You knew I wouldn’t marry Finn?”
Mother smiled. “It was so obvious you loved Bjorn. Amma said she spoke to you, but you were stubborn, just like her.” Across the table came a playful, sideways glance.
“Sometimes I blamed her,” I said.
“You were different than our other girls,” she said. “You were suspicious of men. That changed with Finn and we were grateful.” A murmur caught in her throat. She picked up the swatter when a fly landed on the wall and, despite her trembling hand, killed it. “Hold nothing against your Amma. She so desperately wanted you girls to have a better life. The stories were her way of lighting a candle along your path to keep you from making the same mistakes she did.”
I waited while she collected her thoughts.
“Freda ran away to escape her father’s tyranny when she was just 14 years old. She lied, stole, and manipulated to stay alive; destroyed a few marriages in her early 20s, then finally settled down with Soli and your father was born. Soli beat her only once, then she kicked him out. He wouldn’t let her keep Bensi.”
“How did she earn a living?” I asked.
“Freda was a kept woman after that,” she said. “Men loved her. She used the only thing she had.”
“The house in Reykjavik?”
“It belonged to a wealthy man who took care of her after your father and I married. He died and she somehow got the title plus his money.”
I went to the kitchen to make a fresh pot of coffee. As the water began to bubble up into the glass perk, I wondered what other questions to ask. I’d never experienced Mother in such a talkative mood.
“We all expect hardship but none of us heartbreak,” Mother said as I handed her a cup.
“Tell me, what did the letter say?” I asked.
“Which letter?”
“From Iceland. When we were children.”
She was still puzzled, thinking back. “From Uncle Ásgeir?”
“Yes. The one you threw in the stove.”
She explained that Ásgeir offered to watch over her sister. He’d arranged for Aunt Freyja to work as a domestic on a farm halfway across Iceland. By the time Pabbi sent the money, Freyja was dead from influenza.
“At least that is what he told me,” she said. “I never believed him.”
“Do you think naming a child after someone dooms them to a similar fate?”
“No harm came to Lars.” She smiled. “I knew it wouldn’t.”
And we relaxed, listening to the buzz of mosquitoes, watching iridescent dragonflies whirr into the yard. Mother said she wanted my sister’s body moved to the cemetery here. She asked if Leifur and I would take care of the arrangements. We’d already moved Amma and baby Lars’s remains to the plots beside Pabbi.
“I always blamed myself for losing both of them,” she said.
Believing this was likely her deathbed confession, I told her that none of us blamed her, hoping it might ease her conscience.
“That piece of lemon pie,” she said. “Is it still in the refrigerator? I would like it right about now.”
Back then, women never spoke about it, not even to their daughters. It began in the breast, spread steadily as the months marched on while the pain kept pace. Eventually, we all knew she didn’t have much time. My sisters and brothers came to see her every week.
What happened in mid-April of 1950 can only be described as an extreme coincidence, or if you believe in the divine, a knowing wink from God.
Mother was sitting on a chair pulled up to the wall directly under the telephone, waiting anxiously, when I arrived home.
“I would have dialed you, but that would have tied up the line,” she said, words spilling out. “A woman called. The connection was bad. I did not get to the phone in time so I missed the first call. I was taking a nap—”
“Slow down,” I said. “Start from the beginning.”
Mother took a deep breath. The brightness that hadn’t been there since Pabbi died had returned to her eyes.
“It was a long distance call,” she said. “The voice sounded familiar.”
I knew that she still hoped for a miracle.
“It was likely Thora,” I said softly. “Calling to say they’ve arrived safely in B.C.”
Thora and her husband had decided to retire in British Columbia and had left a month earlier.
Mother thought hard. When she answered, her tone was resigned. “You are probably right.”
She should have gone to the hospital days earlier, but determination had kept her at home. When she could no longer sleep for more than two hours at a time, she agreed to go. I helped her into the wheeled chair and we bumped down the sidewalk.
“It is a beautiful day,” she said. “Must be near 20 degrees. Spring has definitely arrived. I wonder how life is at Eikheimar.” She turned her face to the sun.
I pulled open the door, wheeling her up to the admitting desk.
“Where did you get that old thing?” the nurse on duty asked.
“Me?” Mother quipped. “Or the chair?”
The nurse laughed.
“It was my Amma’s,” I said, the words catching in my throat. First Amma, then Magnus, Pabbi and now . . .
Being a nurse has been a blessing. As you can probably imagine it is most satisfying to be the person everyone turns to when they need reassurance and comfort. Working at the hospital meant I didn’t have to leave Mother. In fact, I spent all my time there, either on duty or at her bedside. She preferred it to be me to swab her sores. She welcomed the sting of an antiseptic that neutralized the odor of decaying flesh and, so worried she might offend the grandchildren, she insisted on more than a few dabs of perfume. She saved her energy for those visits.
Because I was there daily I didn’t see her decline, only read the looks of shock as they all rotated through, one family at a time.
“Will you have enough hay until pasture?”
Yes.
“How was fishing?”
Not bad.
“Those two March storms, how many calves did you lose?”
Only a few.
“Come closer so I can see you.”
Yes, Amma.
“How is school?”
Good.
“What did you learn yesterday?”
Nothing.
And so it went. I wet her lips with a bit of water. She pretended she wasn’t dying. Everyone acted as though they believed it.
“Be careful with that,” she whispered, eyeing the morphine. “I do not want to die any sooner than God intends.”
I slept most nights on the chair beside her bed, emptied the commode, fed her when she grew too weak, held the straw to her lips.
“Remember when they all came?” she whispered, eyes watery. Her voice had the soft, dreamy quality that comes when death is near. At first I thought she was talking about two days before, when Signy’s tribe all marched in—big, fresh-faced boys, each one reminding me of their father.
&nb
sp; “Your pabbi was so relieved that day. What a community it was. Building our house, the way they did.”
I took Mother’s hand and squeezed. What a privilege it was to offer comfort to the woman who gave me life, through the most difficult transition of all. In that moment, it wasn’t my mother lying there, but a woman no different than myself. One day this would be me.
“I never regretted leaving Iceland,” she said. “Not once.”
Signy arrived late that afternoon.
“I will sit with her now,” she said. She took Mother’s hand in hers. She turned to face me. “You go home and take a bath. Have something to eat. Get a good night’s sleep.”
Had it been anyone else but my sister, I would have declined the offer.
I pulled on my coat, waved good-bye to my work mates, pushed open the door and stepped outside. It already felt late. A storm was blowing in, the temperature had dropped and the skies were swirling blue-black. Buttoning my coat all the way up, I hurried the few blocks home. The house was cool and the dull ache in my stomach reminded me I hadn’t eaten since morning. I lit the coal boiler and it wasn’t long before the radiators started to clang and warm air filled the room. Electricity could be unreliable, so I kept oil lamps on hand just in case. I flipped the switches and the lights came on. The refrigerator hummed quietly beside the stove, a beautiful appliance that Mother had insisted we purchase because it heated with both electricity and coal. Oh how our world had changed.
I ran water in the bathtub, then stripped off my rumpled clothes, slid into it. Sometimes I felt guilty knowing that none of these conveniences had made their way to Eikheimar yet, a scant 30 miles away.
The only sound was the train whistle in the distance. The quiet that consumed the house was not as lonesome as one might imagine. Having something then losing it is much harder than never having had it at all.
I enjoyed my work and volunteer activities with the Lundi Ladies Aid. I walked to church every Sunday and visited regularly with Solrun. There was always a store-bought treat hidden somewhere for her daughters when they came to visit and together we’d go to the Fair. It was something we all looked forward to, the day the Fair came to town.
Be Still the Water Page 48