I Remember You

Chapter 33

Either the stench inside had gone or they’d become so impervious to it that they no longer smelled it; at least, none of them pinched their nostrils or wrinkled their noses any more. They’d been too busy searching for the other two people who were supposed to be in the house and looking after Líf to let the disgusting smell bother them; the group grew increasingly dismayed at each empty room they checked. The couple seemed to have vanished, and Veigar and Dagný’s trip to the doctor’s house in search of them had revealed nothing.

The old sea dog, now installed on a kitchen stool, let out frequent gusty sighs, shaking his head and muttering that he tried to warn people but no one ever listened, not even now. Freyr wasn’t certain how well Dagný and Veigar could hear him, since they’d gone into the crawl space through the hole in the floor. Veigar had taken a look in there first, stuck his head down to follow his torch beam but raised it again immediately, his face pale, delivering the news that down in the crawl space was a skeleton. Probably a child’s. Freyr had stood up from attending to Líf, whose condition was worsening slowly but steadily, and said that he was going down there, but Dagný had grabbed his arm and stopped him. She’d then followed Veigar down herself and soon afterwards stuck her head out to tell Freyr that it wasn’t his son. Then they’d both come up and gone to the kitchen to have a word in private. As they moved out of sight, Freyr had positioned Líf’s head carefully on his rolled-up jacket and gone over to the hole to see with his own eyes whether it was Benni. The barbed wire surrounding his heart tightened, and until he looked down into the dark, low space he felt as if he couldn’t breathe for grief. But Dagný hadn’t been lying – this couldn’t be Benni; the body had clearly been lying there for too long.

When Dagný and Veigar returned, he was still lying on the floor with his head in the hole, transfixed by this sad sight. There was a tired-looking, dusty schoolbag next to the pile of bones that had once breathed, laughed and played without the slightest suspicion of where he or she would later die. Only the skull and delicate bones of parts of the fingers of one hand were visible, the remainder of the skeleton hidden beneath the clothing that the child had been wearing the day it had died. Shells were scattered over the earthen floor, covered with fine dust like everything else down there. Freyr had the sudden feeling that this must be Bernódus, who had vanished all those years ago. The boy to whom life had shown little mercy, and death even less. But this would no doubt be confirmed later. Freyr decided not to voice his thoughts to Dagný when she got him up off the floor by saying he mustn’t disturb the area. She was most likely thinking the same as he was.

‘Do you have much left to do?’ Freyr turned his head and shouted the question at the hole, to which Dagný and Veigar had returned, and which looked very much like an entrance to hell. Yellow light from their torches illuminated the stream of dust that was rising from the hole, as if a fire was burning beneath their feet. Now and then there were powerful flashes as they photographed the scene. ‘She’s got to get to the hospital as quickly as possible.’ It was hard to say what was afflicting Líf apart from the cuts on her face; those were hardly life-threatening, though they would change her life completely and permanently. As well as being boiling hot with a weak pulse, she was also coughing up blood regularly but weakly. She was probably suffering internal injuries and if nothing were done about it they could gradually lead to her death. And that wasn’t out of the question even if they did get her to a hospital immediately.

Dagný and Veigar wriggled dustily up through the hole, looking tired and not dissimilar to the little dog that was still curled up in the skipper’s arms. Dagný was holding the schoolbag and laid it gently on the kitchen table as if she were worried the leather might fall apart. ‘We’re ready. What’s the best way to take her to the boat?’

Freyr looked from the bag into Dagný’s eyes. ‘We’ve got to make some sort of stretcher. The best thing would be to call a helicopter, but I think we’ll be quicker going by boat; her condition is critical.’ He cleared his throat. ‘If you could take care of that I’d like to walk around the house and look for the septic tank. I can’t leave here without knowing whether I’m right or not.’

Dagný stared at him but then made her decision. ‘Come on then. No one’s going out alone here.’ Then she turned to Veigar and the skipper. ‘Can you two handle the stretcher?’ They nodded and Dagný and Freyr went out into the night, each armed with a torch. The feeling that Freyr had had before of someone following them returned as soon as he stepped out of the door, but then faded as they set off. Perhaps it was because he was focused on the surroundings and gave no thought to anything else; he found he actually didn’t remotely care what or whether anything was sharing the night with them. He had other things on his mind. Dagný, on the other hand, seemed tense, as if they’d changed roles from when they arrived at the house. She constantly jerked her torch to and fro as if searching for a lost cat. ‘Do you think we’ll find the other two?’ Freyr wanted to say something, had to say something to calm her nerves. He felt as if he were riding a giant rollercoaster that climbed steadily higher and higher until it reached its peak, then plunged down from there. ‘I was able to get Líf to tell me that the man, Garðar, went missing yesterday or the day before. She didn’t know what day it was or how long she’d been lying in the kitchen. I actually think it hasn’t been that long since she was injured. A few hours at most.’

Dagný seemed relieved by his chatter; the jerky movements of the beam from her torch slowed a little. ‘Did you ask her what happened, who attacked her?’

‘I’m not certain she knew what she was saying but she mentioned a boy. I couldn’t get a name from her or any more details. She said that he took Katrín; killed her and dragged her out. The cuts have severed the nerves that control facial movement, on both sides. Her face is paralysed so it’s difficult for her to speak.’ He decided not to mention the questions he’d asked Líf about the insulin when she came round. Because of the uncertainty of her condition this was his only chance to clear this up, and although it actually didn’t matter, it was still churning up his insides. Otherwise, if the worst were to happen, she would take the answer with her to the grave. When Freyr witnessed her like this, deprived of her beauty, he finally saw through her. Of course he also bore the blame for their having been together, but he still felt hatred fasten its claws into him. If he hadn’t met up with her after fetching the drug, Benni wouldn’t have died. Not in that way. His hatred was primitive, like that which Adam and Eve must have felt for the serpent after they’d been driven from paradise. For this reason Freyr didn’t feel sorry for Líf, however unfair that sounded. His heart and soul had hardened against her. So he didn’t shield her from difficult questions, as he should have, but instead pressured her until she tried to answer weakly. The answers had been vague, yet she said that Einar, which he recalled was the name of her husband, had deserved it. Freyr had then stopped his questioning immediately; he suddenly didn’t want to have his suspicions confirmed. Her questions about insulin, after finding out that it didn’t cause intoxication, had been far too specific, and probably hadn’t been asked just to fill the silence as he’d thought at the time.

They rounded the corner of the house to the gable end, facing away from the village. Freyr stopped as his torch beam revealed signs of an excavation. In the darkness he could make out the upper part of what had to be the septic tank, along with the little riser on top of it. Freyr walked slowly over to it, having to remind himself to breathe. The closer he got, the more the green colour stung his eyes, the colour that had plagued him both awake and asleep. When he reached the edge of the dug-up area he saw the tank in its entirety, though the lower part of it was covered in snow. A submarine. A green submarine. If he squinted, he had no trouble seeing the resemblance. A broad, cylindrical body with a little house on top; the only thing missing was the periscope. ‘Hold on a second, Freyr. I’ll have a look inside.’ Dagný pushed him back from the edge. ‘Don’t fall in. You could twist your ankle or something even worse.’ It wasn’t a long fall, but Freyr knew she was right. He wouldn’t even raise his hands to stop his fall in the condition he was in now. So he watched her step into the hole, clamber up onto the tank and inch her way towards the opening through which Benni must have entered. She easily unhitched the latch holding the lid tight and once again Freyr felt a sting in his heart; in all likelihood, the man whose car Freyr had hit had noticed that it wasn’t fastened before he drove off, and secured it. Yet another ‘what if’ to add to the list. What if he hadn’t done that? Would Benni have managed to open the lid from the inside and stick his head out? Would other drivers have seen him and stopped the car?

Dagný put the lid down and shone her torch into the little tank. At that, the empty space inside became like a lantern; the green light not unlike the borealis. Inside the tank a shadow appeared. The pain was worse than he could ever have imagined; it was like standing near to a huge fire, except that it burned inside him and it was useless to turn away. To Freyr it looked as if a tiny, skeletal hand formed part of the outline. Benni.

The sea did what it could to make Freyr’s trip home even more unbearable. His stomach moved in tandem with every dip and rise of the boat, but his body was unable to relieve his discomfort by vomiting. He sat on a bench in the little passenger area behind the pilothouse and stared out. Although his eyes could see what was in front of him, his brain wasn’t able to put together the information; he would have had trouble describing what he saw. Líf was dead; she’d passed away shortly after they sailed out into the Ísafjörður Deep; she’d asked for a cigarette, sighed softly, and then her head sank slowly to the side. His attempts to resuscitate her had been useless. Feeling her lips against his once more under these circumstances, lifeless as they were, had been almost too much for him.

‘Freyr.’ Dagný sat crouched in front of him. ‘We’re just about there. How do you feel?’

‘All right.’ This was a lie, clear to both of them.

‘Your son will be brought back first thing in the morning. I’ll see to it.’ He didn’t reply, since it wasn’t necessary. ‘I looked in the bag. It belonged to Bernódus.’ A large, powerful wave nearly toppled her over, but Dagný managed to keep her balance by grasping Freyr’s knees. ‘The contents are practically undamaged and I found a notebook that he wrote in after he went missing.’ He didn’t react, and she continued: ‘In it he describes what happened to him. It’s pretty shocking. I’ll have it photocopied for you later if you want.’

Freyr nodded. Maybe he would read it, maybe not. At the moment he just wanted to be alone. Completely alone. He no longer felt Benni’s presence and he was fairly certain that the boy would no longer appear in Sara’s dreams. He couldn’t avoid the thought that in the end she would miss it. Just as he did already.

Úrsúla wept silently. The salty tears flowed over the wounds beneath her eyes, still unhealed. It must have hurt, but she didn’t show it. ‘He’s gone.’ She rubbed her veiny hands. ‘He isn’t here any longer.’

‘Is this an accurate description of what happened, Úrsúla? Do you remember it?’ Freyr put down the paper from which he’d been reading aloud. He’d got it from Dagný the day after they’d returned from Hesteyri, having contacted her first thing the next morning after a sleepless night. He’d wanted to read it before she returned to Hesteyri with back-up to search for the missing couple and transport the physical remains of both Benni and Bernódus back to town. Unfortunately the search had been postponed by a day because of bad weather and so the group was there now, probably working diligently to complete their mission before darkness fell. He hoped they would show his son respect and handle his little white bones gently; he would have preferred to be able to deal with them himself and had tried to go with them, had done everything but fall to his knees and beg Dagný, but to no avail.

‘They didn’t want to be my friends; they just pretended to be. After Bernódus disappeared they treated me as they had before. Cruelly.’ She twisted her hands together more fervently, as if trying to plait her fingers. ‘He was my only friend and they made me betray him – tricked me into thinking I could be part of their group. The popular ones. The pretty ones.’ Her hands stopped moving. ‘They didn’t mean it; they lied. When he was gone everything went back to the way it had been.’

Freyr didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t read the complete text to her; he’d left out the final statement, where the boy vowed revenge, asking whoever found the text to see to it that they all, but particularly Úrsúla, got their just reward. It had certainly come true; all the kids that he’d named had suffered as adults, and the teacher who had turned a blind eye to his problems was the first to suffer. The father was the only one the boy had spared, which was typical of a child’s loyalty to his parents. But apart from the avenging spirit and the fury of a dying child, which the handwritten text described, the resemblances to Benni’s fate were striking. So striking that Freyr couldn’t bring himself to think about them, not immediately. Perhaps he would do it later, after reconciling himself to his life again, which at the moment seemed like a distant dream. ‘Kids can be so ruthless, Úrsúla. But they grow out of it. Who knows, maybe you would have become friends again if you hadn’t got ill and moved to Reykjavík.’

‘I should have told someone about it. I just didn’t dare. They threatened to beat me up, tell the police that I was responsible for it, not them. Who would have believed me against all of them?’

Freyr prepared to leave, folding the paper and tucking it into Úrsúla’s medical history file, which he had with him. The story of Bernódus, kept with ECG readouts and descriptions of drug dosages for an old woman who had long since lost her grasp on what was considered reality – perhaps not surprisingly. Undoubtedly her disturbed mind had had trouble coping with what had happened. Watching her new companions bully and tease a boy who had given her his friendship, calling him awful names, saying that he was ugly and dirty, the insult they chose for him because he never wanted to have a shower after P.E. But now they’d found something new to tease him with. They mocked him for being so poor that his dad couldn’t afford crosses for the graves of his mother and brother, and had to carve them on his son’s back. When he tried to flee their taunts they followed him, chasing him down to the harbour where he found himself at a dead end, with his best option for getting out of it to clamber on board a boat that was releasing its moorings. The group of kids had stood at the end of the pier and watched the boat sail away, while the boy hid beneath a sailcloth and tangled mess of netting for fear that the sailor would see him, return to the pier and leave him there. From his description, what had hurt him the most was looking out from his hiding place at Úrsúla standing among his tormentors, and having to face the fact that she was a willing participant in their teasing and wasn’t going to do anything to help him.

The boat had ended up in Hesteyri and when the man left it to do whatever it was he needed to do there, which was never clear to the boy, he decided to sneak ashore and fetch the crosses from the grave of his mother and brother, show those bastard kids that they were wrong. While he was busy pulling them out, the boat had sailed away and left him behind, alone in the abandoned village where he used to live. In the winter, in a place almost no one ever came to.

For a long time he held out hope that someone would come and get him; that one of the kids who’d watched him sail away would let someone know and that the police would find out where the boat had sailed and come to find him. He lived on the contents of shells from the beach, since he had no fishing gear and didn’t know how to make any. He’d gone to stay in his old home, not daring to break into any other house for fear of getting into trouble when they came to fetch him. As the cold got more and more severe he was forced to seek shelter in the crawl space, where it was warmest, but it was all for nothing. The cold found him and didn’t let go until he was dead. Naturally, there was no description of this, but his description of the fingers of his left hand turning black indicated that the boy had suffered from frostbite; without medical assistance, septicaemia and death generally followed shortly afterwards, as the empty pages following the description strongly suggested.

‘Why wasn’t he found sooner?’ Úrsúla’s voice was broken and hoarse; it had been a long time since she’d spoken for so long or so much to another person. It was as if a heavy burden had been lifted from her shoulders. Perhaps she meant: What if he’d been found thirty years ago? Or forty? Would I have had a more normal life then?

‘The house was empty, no one stepped through its door for the next few decades. From what I understand, some people who came there one autumn to secure their own houses for the winter decided to board up its windows and doors, but it wasn’t until three years ago that anyone lived in it even for a short time. The man who went there to renovate it probably couldn’t see very well since he laid a parquet floor over the hatch, nearly ensuring that the boy would be hidden from the world for much, much longer.’

‘He broke into the school the night that he died. Revenge from beyond the grave. Then I knew he was dead, because that’s when he appeared to me for the first time. Ever since then I’ve been seeing him. And hearing him.’ She looked into Freyr’s eyes and seemed surprised not to find in them the same disbelief she must often have met with over the years. ‘But now he’s gone and he won’t be back. Maybe he wanted to be found.’

‘Maybe.’ For the first time since he’d started treating her, Freyr didn’t feel like interrupting the woman’s story, which was finally making sense. If, and only if, this extraordinary explanation for the first break-in were true, was it the same dead boy who had gone berserk in the preschool? And why? If Freyr gave his imagination free rein for a second, he might conclude that the break-in was connected to the arrival of the trio at the house in Hesteyri, but there was no point pondering this. The mystery would probably never be solved. Neither would the question of whether Bernódus had pushed to have Benni found in the hope that his own remains would be discovered in the search, and that he would gain the peace he had so long desired. In any case, it was a satisfactory ending to a great tragedy. With the exception of Úrsúla, everyone who had hurt Bernódus was now dead and there were no longer any ties binding the boy to this world. Freyr allowed himself the faint hope that this dark night was now at an end.

‘I’m tired.’ Úrsúla closed her eyes. ‘I think I’ll sleep well tonight.’ She rested her head on her pillow, facing away from Freyr. ‘Won’t that be strange?’

Like so many things. Freyr said goodbye and left. He was too tired, sad and distracted to pay any attention to the low giggle that came from the room after he shut the door.

Freyr drove away from the nursing home, his window wide open. The cold winter air invigorated him a little. He knew the boat bringing Benni home was expected shortly, and he wanted to be waiting for it on the pier. He might very well have to hang around in the car, but that was all right; nothing was more important to him just then. He drove down to the harbour and angled his seat back to make himself comfortable. Then he looked out over the sea and hoped that the black spot against the sky at the horizon was the boat, even though it was bringing him final confirmation that all hope was gone. Once all the formalities had been taken care of, there wouldn’t be too much to think about. Work, eat and sleep were the only things he could come up with, apart from possibly taking care of the dog, who no one seemed to want to claim and whose name might be either Patti or Hvutti. It seemed to respond to both.

Maybe he would go on a long holiday; take some unpaid leave and settle down far from everything, both people and civilization. He thought of the house in Hesteyri, watched by all the people who’d drowned in the nearby fjord over the years. Maybe he could acquire it cheaply. The owners were either dead or gone and it would give him something to think about; he could try to get it back into a decent state and maybe then the negative aura that seemed to surround it would disperse.

He watched the boat as it approached. Surprisingly, the sea was mirror-smooth, as if in honour of Benni. A warm tear ran down his cheek. With it, the sharpest of the pain seemed to leave his soul, and he felt a bit better. He resolved to make it happen, this thing with the house. He could bring the dog with him and even invite Dagný to come along; her or the nurse who resembled Líf, though only in appearance. Maybe Sara would also like to see the place eventually, and could make her peace with it and with life. Her tears when he had told her the news had sounded like the right kind; the healthy grieving process had finally begun. Although they would never be married again, it was possible that they might become friends once more, and perhaps Hesteyri was the perfect place for him to go for a more peaceful, happier life. Maybe that could be the one good thing that came out of all this. They had beautiful, bittersweet memories of Benni that could never be taken from them and if Sara visited him there they could remember him together, calmly, in between arguing and resurrecting all their old issues. One thing was certain, it would do them both some good.

He decided to buy the house and get it back into shape.

Katrín had watched the waves rock the boat out in the fjord as she stood at the top of the beach, unnoticed by anyone. She felt a bit odd, as if she were drunk – not very drunk, just a bit light-headed, and as though everything was suddenly very simple. Water dripped from her clothing onto the snow-covered ground, its trail following her past the doctor’s residence, over the bridge and in the direction of the house, her house. There was a rustling sound and the dry, yellowed undergrowth cracked behind her, but she ignored it. Nothing else mattered now except the anger that boiled deep inside her. This was her home and nothing would disturb her here again. She would make sure of it.