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Authors: Olaf Olafsson
Tags: Fiction
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where he had started selling fish, and had been impressed by the country and its people. Later on, when I had taken over the company and went there on my first trip, I was surprised he hadn’t sold more, as he had formed good contacts. But that’s another story . . .
Now he greeted me politely but had less to say for himself than in Copenhagen. He had a cold and kept blowing his nose into a red handkerchief.
I was pretty sure that you were happy to see me. But your thoughts seemed miles away at times, even during those first steps up the jetty, as I was getting used to having land under my feet again. Your hand grew limp in mine, a mist passed across your eyes, and your mouth smiled its half-smile—you were gone. Where, I never knew. Neither then nor later.
I felt as if I were holding hands with a woman in a fairy tale, until you leaned against me and whispered in my ear:
“I’m so happy you’re home.”
I walked up the jetty with my head held high and the sun at my side.
I didn’t know in advance that I would be staying with your uncle and aunt in Reykjavik until the wedding. They lived down by the lake in the center of town and I had the basement to myself. My mother and father slept in the room next to mine when they came south. The house had thin walls.
I don’t know who felt more uncomfortable, your relatives being stuck with us or us being stuck with them. On the first day, our hostess probably felt she couldn’t avoid inviting us to join them at tea, when their friends came for a visit, but during the following days I suspect she postponed any such gatherings until we had left so she wouldn’t have to repeat the offer.
I had bought new outfits for my parents in Copenhagen but neither Mother’s black dress with its white collar nor my father’s gray suit could prevent them from looking out of place among the family and their visitors in that red, mahogany parlor. I couldn’t help noticing their discomfort; father rocked to and fro, as was his habit when nervous, while mother looked alternately down at her hands or at me in the hope of support.
The arrogance of those people. The silent contempt. I could tell your aunt thought she could see right through me; she did nothing to hide her opinion that I wasn’t good enough for you. But she said nothing to my face; she didn’t need to.
Why did your father arrange for us to stay with them rather than some other relatives in town? I still wonder what motivated him; he must have had his reasons.
The suit I’d bought my father was a size too big. I hadn’t expected him to have shrunk like that. While I puffed at the cigar that your uncle had offered me and listened to my father’s awkward attempts at conversation with him and his wife, I suddenly recalled a midwinter afternoon at home when Mother and I were waiting for Father’s boat to appear out on the fjord. The dusk swiftly deepened to pitch blackness, a squall of snow battering the windowpanes. But no one came round the spit of land and she held me and comforted me until I fell asleep, exhausted in her arms.
When a work-calloused hand stroked my cheek in the middle of the night, cold and hard from the sea, I half-woke, feeling such profound relief that I wept in my sleep.
And now there he sat, opposite me in that red mahogany parlor. Cigar smoke between us, the lake smooth as a mirror outside the window, no danger anywhere. I looked at his hands and remembered feeling them wet on my cheek, smelled the oars they had gripped and tasted salt on my lips. Thought about the danger he risked. For a bucket of fish? No, for me.
I concentrated on such thoughts to deflect the arrogant contempt which hung over me thicker than the cigar smoke, but it didn’t work. I was ashamed of my parents and hated myself for it.
When my father died he was buried in the suit I’d bought him. He outlived my mother by only six months. I looked at him in his coffin and thought about those days before our wedding.
He
Now he greeted me politely but had less to say for himself than in Copenhagen. He had a cold and kept blowing his nose into a red handkerchief.
I was pretty sure that you were happy to see me. But your thoughts seemed miles away at times, even during those first steps up the jetty, as I was getting used to having land under my feet again. Your hand grew limp in mine, a mist passed across your eyes, and your mouth smiled its half-smile—you were gone. Where, I never knew. Neither then nor later.
I felt as if I were holding hands with a woman in a fairy tale, until you leaned against me and whispered in my ear:
“I’m so happy you’re home.”
I walked up the jetty with my head held high and the sun at my side.
I didn’t know in advance that I would be staying with your uncle and aunt in Reykjavik until the wedding. They lived down by the lake in the center of town and I had the basement to myself. My mother and father slept in the room next to mine when they came south. The house had thin walls.
I don’t know who felt more uncomfortable, your relatives being stuck with us or us being stuck with them. On the first day, our hostess probably felt she couldn’t avoid inviting us to join them at tea, when their friends came for a visit, but during the following days I suspect she postponed any such gatherings until we had left so she wouldn’t have to repeat the offer.
I had bought new outfits for my parents in Copenhagen but neither Mother’s black dress with its white collar nor my father’s gray suit could prevent them from looking out of place among the family and their visitors in that red, mahogany parlor. I couldn’t help noticing their discomfort; father rocked to and fro, as was his habit when nervous, while mother looked alternately down at her hands or at me in the hope of support.
The arrogance of those people. The silent contempt. I could tell your aunt thought she could see right through me; she did nothing to hide her opinion that I wasn’t good enough for you. But she said nothing to my face; she didn’t need to.
Why did your father arrange for us to stay with them rather than some other relatives in town? I still wonder what motivated him; he must have had his reasons.
The suit I’d bought my father was a size too big. I hadn’t expected him to have shrunk like that. While I puffed at the cigar that your uncle had offered me and listened to my father’s awkward attempts at conversation with him and his wife, I suddenly recalled a midwinter afternoon at home when Mother and I were waiting for Father’s boat to appear out on the fjord. The dusk swiftly deepened to pitch blackness, a squall of snow battering the windowpanes. But no one came round the spit of land and she held me and comforted me until I fell asleep, exhausted in her arms.
When a work-calloused hand stroked my cheek in the middle of the night, cold and hard from the sea, I half-woke, feeling such profound relief that I wept in my sleep.
And now there he sat, opposite me in that red mahogany parlor. Cigar smoke between us, the lake smooth as a mirror outside the window, no danger anywhere. I looked at his hands and remembered feeling them wet on my cheek, smelled the oars they had gripped and tasted salt on my lips. Thought about the danger he risked. For a bucket of fish? No, for me.
I concentrated on such thoughts to deflect the arrogant contempt which hung over me thicker than the cigar smoke, but it didn’t work. I was ashamed of my parents and hated myself for it.
When my father died he was buried in the suit I’d bought him. He outlived my mother by only six months. I looked at him in his coffin and thought about those days before our wedding.
He
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