The Tricking of Freya (49 page)

"En flott," I said. How fancy.

"Business loan," Saemundur explained. "Debt on wheels." Saemundur
was wearing a cable-knit, cream-colored sweater. Cream against black hair,
green eyes. Is he deliberately handsome, I asked myself, or accidentally so?

I climbed inside and found myself perched high off the ground. Like the
goddess Freyja, I thought, in her cat-drawn chariot. It was raining, of
course, but ever so lightly. Misting. Ethereal. I was ready to soar.

But first we had to wave good-bye to Ulfur, who stood on the step and
appraised us skeptically through foggy glasses. Then we had to wait for Johanna to come down with the two girls, and then the girls had to climb inside the van and bounce on the seats and ask if they could come, please
please, Uncle Saemundur. Girls got shooed out, bags got loaded, waves and
more waves.

"Be careful!" Johanna called out.

Too late for that.

"She thinks you're crazy," Saemundur said. "Riding with me when you
could just as easily fly."

He used the word vitlaus. The same word he'd used for Birdie, long ago,
on the ice cave day. A word that can mean either crazy or stupid. I took out
my red-and-blue notebook and wrote: witless is to witfull.

I can read that entry because Saemundur hadn't started the engine yet.
Mostly I wrote with the vehicle in motion. Manic scrambled car sprawl. Of
course it was all clear to me at the time. The only problem as I saw it was
that my mind was accelerating and my pen couldn't keep up. Brain is to
hand as millisecond is to eon. I started writing in a slapdash shorthand, a mix
of English and Icelandic, abbreviating words that maybe weren't even
words to begin with. I figured I'd explicate it all later. Transcribe it for youknow-who. But as I mentioned, that has become unnecessary. And besides,
most of it I can't untangle and what I can may not bear untangling. I remember thinking that embedded in each word I wrote were countless
branching thoughts and echoing emotions. Mind faster pen, I wrote. Hand
dawdler. For what it's worth, here are some of the more legible entries:

Birdie's child not only one with mysterious origins why is your hair
black I ask him it's not very Icelandic of you

I'm the contrary one the black sheep

But where does it come from?

3,000 Barbary pirates raided the East Fjords in 1627

So you're the black-haired descendant of a Barbary pirate is it
true

About my hair or the pirates?

Either both

Teasing grin What about your hair, Freya?

What about it

You cut it short

So did you cut yours I mean it's not the 70s anymore

But it was so beautiful-

-it's easier this way

I want him to-

Fluency increasing exponentially word gobbling S says I'm
brilliant at Icelandic but I'm talking too much I know I can't
stop look he says look instead I start taking photos out window
casual roadside waterfalls sheep massive clouds rainbow
more waterfalls the usual odd splendor again again again
then he says quit it, quit hiding behind the camera look with your eyes
Freya I'll hide if I want to but I put the camera away
superfluous gadget my brain registers images now I can file
away retrieve at will

or against my will Birdie in her salmon pink coat draped in
dead mink and sealskins bearing reindeer antler aloft to Askja's snowy
caldera I thought I was going to die out there I tell Saemundur
sucking licorice for dear life Birdie believing she was the volva and
maybe she was a prophet but me she called a traitor thoughtful
birthday gift keeps on giving I'm telling him too much can't stop
myself tell him everything dump secrets in Iceland return to New York hollow new orphans balk at the future if my parents
weren't dead then what what then falling in love with a blackhaired Icelander

-touch me

S shows me view after breathtaking view S takes me to Vik
dark storm clouds brew offshore tall pointed rocks like witches' hats
rise from roiling surf sand is black volcanic dust S takes me to
the original Oddi I tell him Sigga's house in Gimli was called Oddi
Saemundur's namesake lived here at Oddi in the old days, Saemundur
the Learned a wizard who attend Black Arts school in Paris
who had no shadow who returned to Iceland on the back of the
devil disguised as a seal S took me on a boat on the glacial lagoon
weaving among icebergs floating in pure turquoise water so cold you die
nearly instantly upon plunging in up there is the glacier underneath it a volcano erupted two years ago strewed chunks of glacier and a torrential muddy icemelt mess that washed out the bridge and
sections of the Ring Road I drove out here to see it Saemundur said
of course you did Saemundur says he can make inc fall in love with
Iceland he has a shadow I know but at the moment I can't see
it molten glacier indeed

He took my hand on the beach at Vik that roiling coven

He says I remind him of her

Can that be good she had her good days and her bad days
her moods turned on a dime shifted like lake weather she said I
strode the lakeshore like an egret she made the sun rise from an ember she called it a day-star I called her a star I had no name for

White fox on riverbank swiping duck eggs

Ain I getting talky

Mama!

Ratio of dead to living? I fear there are more of them than us

Moss here there and everywhere Cetreria icelandica Icelandic
moss according to Saemundur up to 70 percent starch and can be
eaten as food in emergency situations Saemundur says Saemundur says this Saemundur says that Simon says Simon didn't
say

Night one we sleep at his friend's fishing cabin near the harbor
town of Hofn

There's only one bed

and fox-pelt soft kisses

ice cave meltdown

After I don't sleep can't blasted light is this all diversion a Saemundur-shaped tangent from you from finding you
you think maybe I've forgotten you maybe I have or are you him
and Fin consorting with my cousin? the goddess Freyja it was rumored
consorted with her brother, Freyr and what if Ulfur's list is nothing
but a dozen red ha-ha-herrings I'd rather spin a cartwheel into the
glacial lagoon than return to New York knowing nothing more of you than
when I left ant I returning to New York maybe I'll just circle Iceland on the Ring Road endlessly round and round and round and round

5 a. in. sun hot in sky

Saemundur silent this morning wondering what he's gotten himself into

Nothing

What?

Nothing

Dare I trust him Son of the Wolf or Birdie's Child
or both?

Loki said the goddess Freyja was her brother's lover am I a
cousin-lover?

Saernundur says he used to dream about me after I left Iceland

I said I tried not to dream after I left Iceland

If this is sex I don't think I've ever had it before if this is sex I can
see what all the fuss is about if this is sex why does anybody ever get
out of bed Saemundur is in the shower we're staying at yet another
summerhouse of yet another friend of his somewhere between the port
of Seydisfjordur and Egilsstadir we're getting close to the end
we'll reach Thorunn's in a couple of hours he says once we leave here
I don't want to leave here please let's never

It's noon now Saemundur came back to bed and we still haven't left
here his eyes his long arms how he lopes

So you think this Thorunn may know something about Birdie's
child?

I shake my head maybe yes maybe no it doesn't matter
Birdie's child led me here took me by the hand and brought me to
this ice land this green land this elf and ghost land this molten
lava land this moss-encrusted sun-drenched avalancheprone ancestor-worshiping rain-drenched wind-whipped
earthquake-ripped island

thank you Birdie's child

Saemundur dropped me off at Thorunn's farm and it began to snow. Thorunn and I stood in the doorway waving at the back of Saemundur's van as it
bounced along the dirt track back to the Ring Road, when the first flakes
fluttered down on us.

It was the longest day of the year when that blizzard struck. Freakish even
for Iceland. Happy solstice! In my mania I failed to recognize a bad omen
when it snowed me in the face. Foreshadowing of the most obvious kind. Instead I interpreted it as one more sign of magic, snow falling in late June on
the farm and the river and even the distant mountains, what you could see of
them. Everything rapidly disappearing in white flurry. I ran from the doorway
and began spinning like a two-year-old on a lawn with my tongue extended
for flakes, laughing. Thorunn stood in the doorway watching me, smiling.

"It's unusual," she agreed, once we were seated in her living room. "In
fact, it's the latest snow I can remember."

But she didn't seem fazed by it. After a lifetime of living in the Icelandic
countryside, even the weather must cease to amaze.

I was struck by how much Thorunn reminded me of Sigga, just as she
had when I'd run into her in the Gimli bakery. She had Sigga's keen grayblue eyes and small thin lips. A spare woman who lived in a spare manner,
occupying only three rooms of the old farmhouse. The rest was blocked off.
"Why heat rooms for people who are dead or gone?"

I could think of no reason. I knew about shutting off one's life to the
dead and gone, or trying to.

The living room was small with a low ceiling, crowded with books and
family photographs. The first thing Thorunn did after serving me coffee was
to take out a family tree and show me how she was the oldest child of
Sigga's sister, and how she and Sigga were both related to Pall the farmerpoet and, more distantly and circuitously, to Olafur, Skald Nyja Islands, by
marriage.

"Now that's settled," she said, "we can begin our visit. I'm so glad you're
here, Freya! When I met you in Winnipeg last year, it was only a dream to me
that you would come. Birdie came here several times, you know. And now
you!" She took my hand and squeezed it. I squeezed back. I felt a tremor of
excitement at the mention of Birdie's name. Sigga had told me Thorunn was
very fond of Birdie, and I couldn't stop a glimmer of hope from rising up in
me: maybe Thorunn knows something. I would have to be careful though. I
could see that. No jumping the gun. I willed myself to take it slow. I asked
her to tell me about her farm.

It was called Gislastadir, and was situated near the edge of the Lagarfljot
River. "Not too near, though!" She laughed. Water rises. At the moment, she
explained, the river was only filled with snowmelt, but by the end of the
summer it would have glacial melt as well. The old bridge had been washed
out several times, but this one, she told me, this one seemed solid. I asked
how long she had lived there.

"Fifty-one years," she answered, a bit indignantly. I found out she was the
oldest of fifteen children, which is why she had only had one child herself, a
boy, grown now and living in Reykjavik. "I had two at the breast at once," she
said. "My own baby and my youngest brother. My mother's milk had finally
given out, after fifteen children." She took out some photographs. An old
black-and-white of a scattering of dusty kids in ragged clothes by the fence
of a farm. And then a color portrait of those same kids, all fifteen of them,
grown up and standing on the deck of a restaurant in Akureyri. Older, well
dressed, looking prosperous.

"Iceland's changed a lot," Thorunn said. "It's easier now, that's certain.
Everyone's gone to Reykjavik, abandoned the farms. Like my son, Kjartan.
They say there's no making a living here. I say it's just hard. You can manage, but it's hard. Who said life wouldn't be hard? Kjartan wants to move me to
Reykjavik, into one of those old-age homes made of concrete. I'd rather die
here. Even though I have nothing left."

"You've got this farm."

"It's nothing."

"But I saw sheep, driving in."

"I lease the land. I have to keep something coming in. Arni wouldn't
have wanted me to sell it." Arni was her husband, who had died over a decade earlier. We sat in silence for a moment, and I looked around the room.
Most of the wall space was taken by bookshelves. On top of the bookshelves were photographs of Thorunn and Arni, of their son, Kjartan, and
his wife, and other relatives whose names I didn't know and didn't want to
know. Over the mantel two more photographs, both of which I recognized:
Pall the farmer-poet and Olafur, Skald Nyja Islands. It was the one of Olafur
smoking his pipe that had been displayed on my own mantel back in Connecticut. Out the window the snow continued its silent descent, a thin layering of white through which blades of green grass poked through.

"Enough of that depressing subject!" Thorunn went into the kitchen and
came back with a plate of ponnukokur. "Now it's your turn to do the talk„
ing.

That was not a problem. I told her about my drive east with Saemundur.
I went on about the rocks at Vik like witches' caps poking up from the surf,
sand that was black instead of yellow, floating among the icebergs, visiting
Oddi and how our house in Gimli was called Oddi, Sigga had named it
that. And Saemundur this and Saemundur that. I could hear how fast I was
talking but there was nothing I could do to stop it. I forced myself to take a
sip of coffee and a bite of ponnukokur. It was delicious, stuffed with berries
and cream. In that moment Thorunn managed to get a word in edgewise.
"You remind me of your mother," she said. She was smiling again.