The Journey Home: A Novel (17 page)

I awaited the reply with trepidation. The postman usually came in the late morning and I waited in the hall on those days when I expected a letter. Our staff had begun to notice this behavior, since it was as if I had become a fixture in the hall. They started to put their heads together and try to guess what was going on. But as the weeks passed without sign of an envelope bearing her elegant handwriting, I became filled with weary despair and stopped waiting for the kitchen clock to strike eleven as a sign that the time had come for the arrival of the post. I regretted having sent the letter, trying to remember what I had said and what I had omitted, regretting not having memorized it better. Perhaps I should have been more tactful, I told myself, perhaps I shouldn’t have “seized the bull by the horn,” as I had persuaded myself was most honest. Had I behaved badly? Opened a wound which had perhaps begun to heal, been guilty of prying yet again?

So I wallowed in doubt and tortured myself with endless speculation until at last her letter came late in October. It was the day after the first night frost and I remember that the grass was still rimed outside the kitchen window when I sat down by it and summoned the courage to open the envelope.

The explanation for Jorunn’s silence was simple—fortunately, I want to say, though I know it may sound strange. She had been in the hospital for a month.

I’ve had this problem for many years,
she wrote to me,
but during the
last few months it got worse . . . When things began to get in a mess this
autumn, Gunnar took charge and had me admitted. I’m feeling much better
now. The walls of the labyrinth have receded; they don’t menace me any
longer, don’t close in on me as they did before. I’ve stopped being afraid they’re
going to touch me, crush me . . . I’ve started going out again and don’t avoid
the neighbors any more, not even the woman in the basement who I thought was
stalking me, or the man who always stood by the post boxes as if he were waiting for a letter which never came. He’s disappeared now. Perhaps he never
existed except in my head . . .

Disa, sometimes I used to sit in the same chair all day long, staring into
space. I can’t describe how bad I felt. I thought I was worthless, worthless,
couldn’t see any hope in this life. It was as if I didn’t care about anything or
anyone—not even Helga, but you must never tell her that. Whatever happens,
you must never do that, because you know how much I love her, you know she’s
everything to me. But that’s what this illness is like, this nightmare . . .

She didn’t refer to her illness except in the past tense. I was terribly relieved. Anthony mentioned at the supper table that I seemed more cheerful than I had for weeks.

“She’s been given drugs for depression,” I told him. “It’s all over now.”

But no sooner had I crawled into bed toward midnight than I began to doubt the efficacy of the cure. It became apparent that she would never be rid of the illness, never completely and never for long. When she was feeling better she was in high spirits and welcomed each day with interest and sincerity, took to religion—“now I live in God”—went to meetings, even came to visit Anthony and me, staying with us for a fortnight. It was wonderful to see her so contented, though of course she was on drugs and therefore a little more manic than usual. What good times those were!

And so the years passed in fluctuation between light and shadow, hope and despair. So they passed, until the light went out and the darkness, thick as pitch, closed in on her from all sides.

The day Jorunn committed suicide the sun was shining. My bedroom was stuffy after the heat of the night and I had just opened the window which faces the avenue of trees when Gunnar rang. While we were talking I watched Anthony walk over from the tennis court, dressed in white, wiping the sweat from his forehead as he approached the back door. Although it was a calm day, the curtain fluttered every now and then in some faint puff of breeze which carried to me—as if from duty and custom—the smell of omelette and fried bacon from the kitchen. I suddenly remembered that I had been meaning to say something to Anthony before he came in to breakfast, but couldn’t for the life of me recall what it was. I was distracted by this so that I didn’t quite understand some of what Gunnar told me, which must have been why I was startled when he said: “Do you think you’ll be able to?”

“What?”

“Do you think you’ll be able to come to the funeral?”

I can’t remember exactly how I answered, doubt in fact whether I made any sense, as I had begun to tremble violently where I stood by the window. I dropped the receiver on the floor and took a long time to stoop down for it, finally grasping it with both hands and saying a hurried good-bye to Gunnar, promising I would ring him later.

I lay curled up on the floor and shut my eyes. Somewhere in the distance I sensed the lapping of waves and smell of seaweed from the shore at home in Kopasker.

“Disa, we’ll always be friends, won’t we?”

“Yes, always.”

“Even when we’re grown up?”

“We’ll always be friends.”

When I was finally able to stand up, it came to me that I had meant to remind Anthony about the scones I had baked the previous evening. They had turned out well, light and soft, perfect for spreading with blackberry jam to accompany his morning tea.

I went down to the kitchen and fetched the scones from the cupboard. Anthony had already eaten, but had two scones out of politeness. I blamed myself for not having remembered them when I saw him coming in from the tennis court.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Please try at least one scone, will you?”

It wasn’t until that evening that I found strength to tell him of Jorunn’s death.

Old Marshall doesn’t talk much while he sits with me in the kitchen, looking out of the window. He nurses his cup between his hands, sipping the tea slowly and taking a long time to finish it. He has always been taciturn and people who don’t know him sometimes think he’s not quite all there. The other day I saw that he had something on his mind. His eyes looked evasive and he drank his tea faster than usual. Eventually he said: “You’ll have to look after him when I’m gone.”

I knew he meant Anthony.

“You’re not going anywhere, old man. You’re as strong as an ox. We’ll both keep an eye on him together as we always have.”

“There’s been a strange horse down in the meadow these last few nights,” he said after a short silence. “A gray one. I don’t know where it comes from and if I watch it for too long it disappears.”

He stood up, opened the door and looked out.

“It often stops down by the stream and changes color in the moonlight. Turns blue. If it’s come for me, you’ll have to look after Anthony.”

He turned and looked at me.

I wonder if he suspects anything? I asked myself. Can he tell anything from looking at me?

I glanced away. The clock in the hall struck three deep tones. My face appeared pale in the mirror on the wall.

The morning the son of the house returned home aboard the
Esja,
my mistress gave me the little mirror in the kitchen. She was up unusually early that day and came down to the kitchen just after nine o’clock to have her coffee and tell me that I could have “that little mirror.” I don’t know what made her do this as I had never given any hints, though I was fond enough of it. I could lose myself in its reflection, vanish back in time with no commitments, forget my troubles and pretend that all was sunshine and light. Sometimes it reminded me of the sky above Kopasker when I was a girl looking for signs and portents. I had never mentioned to the mistress that I coveted the mirror and so it took me by surprise when she referred to it for the first time that morning. Without preamble, I might add, then never mentioned it again. Perhaps she had seen me dusting it and doubtless noticed the shelf I had put up under it for my bits and pieces, lipstick, comb and a feather, but had never seen me looking in it as far as I knew. I only did that when I was alone.

I accepted the mirror gratefully and although I knew I would never want to move it from its place, it gave me a strange delight to be able to tell myself that it was mine.

At eleven o’clock Dr. Bolli rang from the bank to announce that the
Esja
had anchored in the outer harbor. He said the British authorities still had to check the passengers’ passports but when this was done the ship would dock. The mistress got ready to welcome her son.

But the day wore on without the passengers being allowed ashore. Dr. Bolli came home, obviously anxious. Each passenger had been made to give the names of six people in Reykjavik who could give the military authorities information about them. The mistress took to her bed. My employer paced up and down. I overheard him asking someone on the phone whether the government was going to intervene.

The day passed, then the evening, and during the night, instead of going to bed, Dr. Bolli sat in his office in the darkness. I looked in on him once. He was motionless in his chair. I didn’t know whether he was asleep, so decided not to speak to him.

The following morning the interrogations took place. The mistress didn’t appear but her husband went out before seven. When he rang around midday to let us know that the passengers had finally received permission to go ashore, his voice was so weak that I was shocked. Maria dashed straight upstairs to the mistress and helped her get dressed.

At two o’clock the couple went down to the harbor to meet their son. Maria dusted and finished polishing the silver. I prepared a supper of lobster and goose according to the mistress’s instructions. There was lively music on the radio and my mirror and I were in a good mood from listening to it and exchanged arch glances more than once as I stood by the stove.

It was nearly five o’clock when the front door opened. Maria and I went into the hall to greet them, Maria first, with me a little way behind. Father and son said little, it was the mistress who talked. We introduced ourselves. He nodded when he shook our hands, then immediately looked away.

“Well,” said the mistress, taking off her hat, which was yellow with a red feather. “Home at last. Atli, dear, won’t you . . .”

“I’m going to lie down, Mother.”

“That’s a good idea. That’s a very good idea. It’ll do you good to rest before supper. We’re having a celebratory meal. After the journey . . . It’ll do you good to lie down.”

Atli Bollason was of medium height with a round, pale face and tousled hair. He wore a black cloak with an astrakhan collar, a wide-brimmed felt hat on his head and a white scarf around his neck. He dropped the cloak on to a chair in the front room and left the hat and scarf on top of it. The hat fell to the floor but he didn’t seem to notice, at least he didn’t stop to pick it up but opened the basement door and headed downstairs. I noticed that he had a limp.

“Maria, dear, would you make up a bed for Atli, please.”

“There’s no need,” he said without looking round.

Maria hung up his cloak in the closet and I went into the kitchen. There was a door to the basement from the kitchen pantry and from time to time I heard his footsteps, alternately heavy and light. It surprised me that he hadn’t gone to lie down and I began involuntarily to listen. Heavy, light, heavy, light . . . His footsteps echoed in my head until long after he had gone to sleep.

Supper was kept waiting for him and so were his parents. At seven o’clock the mistress asked her husband to go down and fetch him.

My employer got slowly to his feet.

“He’s stirring,” he said when he came back. “He’ll be along in a minute.”

They drank sherry. The mistress put Bach on the gramophone, which was still down in the drawing room following our Christmas celebration a fortnight earlier. The mistress talked. Her husband said nothing. At half-past seven she came out and called down the stairs to her son but got no answer. Shortly afterward, Dr. Bolli made a second trip down to the basement. She popped into the kitchen to see me.

“I don’t understand this at all, Disa. Won’t the food be ruined?”

I tried to calm her, saying I’d throw the lobster in the pan when they were ready to sit down and assuring her that the goose would be better for resting a little.

“He’s tired,” she said as if to herself. “He’s always been so sensitive . . .”

It was past eight o’clock when they finally sat down at the table. The son smoked nonstop, with an ashtray at his side. His mother tried to maintain a flow of conversation. He held the cigarette between the thumb and index finger of his right hand and picked listlessly at his food with the left, sticking the fork absentmindedly on to the plate so it seemed a matter of chance whether he speared a morsel of food. The mistress had asked me to open a bottle of the best red wine in the house, a Ducru-Beaucaillou from before the Great War, but her son chose to drink brandy instead, even with the goose.

The mistress talked.

“. . . you were only five years old, Atli dear. Do you remember? ‘You can wish for anything you like, Mother,’ you said, ‘because it’s a wishing stone.’ Just five years old . . .”

The son lit another cigarette. Maria emptied the ashtray and wiped it clean.

“You and Kristjan played together so often when you were boys. He’s working for his father’s firm now. I told Mrs. Thorarinsson you were on your way home. She was going to let Kristjan know. You were always such good friends . . . but now he’s started working for his father . . .”

It was a monologue rather than a conversation and my employer was so strangely unlike his usual self. He retired to bed just after ten, forgetting to wish me good night for the first time ever. Mother and son remained sitting in the drawing room.

“Shall we play cards?” I heard her ask.

“Later, Mother, later. I’m tired.”