I Remember You

Chapter 7

The temperature had dropped, yet Katrín’s back was clammy with sweat. The cotton T-shirt felt as if it were glued to her skin and it clung uncomfortably each time she moved. The chill that stung her bare cheeks even though she was burning hot everywhere else was particularly unpleasant. She could endure heat or cold but they didn’t go together at all; it was like eating salted sugar. She stretched, planted her hands on her hips and looked at what she’d accomplished in the last hour or so. When she’d been within a hair’s breadth of getting a thundering headache, she’d given up on the stinking paint smell inside and gone out for fresh air. There she took up where they’d left off in their repairs to the porch the day before. Their progress was nothing to be proud of; so far it had been extremely limited and, if anything, it looked like they had made matters worse. Boards lay strewn about and the irregular edges of the part of the porch that Garðar had decided didn’t need fixing had become even more irregular. In one place Katrín had broken a long plank that reached some way into the undamaged part of the porch. Garðar would be over the moon about that when he turned up again. Líf, on the other hand, would see the funny side. She’d smiled many times during their work today, not least at her own clumsiness. This wasn’t the only example of repairs that had gone haywire. Everywhere inside were half-completed tasks; improvements that they’d begun but quickly given up on or put on hold. No one brought up the topic of when they were planning to complete these difficult projects; Líf had no interest in anything other than what she was doing at any given moment and Katrín and Garðar were both careful not to say a word about their working methods. This wasn’t the first time that they had resorted to denial to try to avoid their problems. Of course they knew that this didn’t work, that it just made things worse; it would probably all come to a chaotic head just before they left and then they’d rush around madly trying to quick-fix everything.

The whole situation just made Katrín want to sigh deeply but she restrained herself, not wanting to break the profound silence to which she was becoming accustomed, and which seemed to be gaining in intensity. Instead she let her hands drop and exhaled silently. Things would sort themselves out one way or the other. The porch spread out beneath her feet, gaping at the world as if it were terribly surprised at all this commotion after being allowed to rot in peace and quiet for decades. Through the large gap she could see the dark soil beneath. Apart from the animal bones that they’d found there, this murky place appeared to be as devoid of vegetation and about as fertile as the moon. Katrín found herself disgusted by the musty odour that arose from beneath the porch, although it wasn’t particularly pungent or even that unpleasant. Perhaps it was the discovery of the bones that still bothered her. In truth she had trouble understanding why the thought of them made her tremble; she wasn’t a vegetarian, so there was no reason why the bones should have awakened any particular emotions in her. Nonetheless she avoided looking under the untouched planks. Perhaps she was afraid of uncovering human bones; the earthly remains of the woman and the boy for whom the crosses had been erected.

‘Ugh.’ Garðar appeared in the doorway, a hideous sight. His face and clothing were covered with splotches of white paint. The dark stubble on his chin no longer looked like a shadow, but instead resembled patchy, poorly groomed feathers. He looked either hung-over or ill and in fact when Katrín squinted, he almost seemed half dead. His bloodshot eyes did nothing to diminish this effect. ‘I was this far from suffocating.’ Garðar showed her a tiny space between his thumb and index finger. ‘I’d forgotten how awful paint thinner is.’ The last time they’d needed to do some decorating at home they’d hired a painter, since money had not been an issue and it had seemed pointless to get their own hands dirty. If someone had suggested that within a few months they’d be on the verge of bankruptcy, they would have smiled sympathetically and reminded that individual to take his medication. ‘I don’t know how long Líf will last. She’s finishing up the door and window frames in the attic.’ Garðar leaned lazily in the doorway. ‘Of course I’ve rarely seen such a poor paint job; in the summer sun it’ll look ridiculous.’ He stepped outside. ‘What happened here?’ Garðar had spotted the damage to the porch. He didn’t sound particularly annoyed.

‘I didn’t know my own strength,’ grinned Katrín. ‘To be honest, I have no idea what I’m doing. I just had to get outside, and this was the obvious task to get on with.’

‘I should have come with you. Too late now; this stink is stuck in my clothes, and probably grafted to my skin, too.’ Garðar ran his hands through his hair and ruffled it to try and get rid of the smell. ‘I was thinking of going for a short hike; I need to air myself out a bit. Do you want to come along?’

‘Absolutely.’ Katrín stood up, relieved not to have to work out the best way to save the porch. She’d prefer to fill in the space beneath the wood with sand or pebbles and then lay new planks over the gap, but something told her that porches weren’t built on frames for nothing. ‘I’m going to get Líf. It’ll do her good to come along.’

‘It’ll also do the house good for her to take a break.’ The porch groaned as Garðar bent down and poked at the edges of the damage. ‘And it looks to me like it’ll do the porch good, too, if we stop for a bit.’ He stood up and followed Katrín inside. ‘Did you go down to the beach earlier?’ he added as he put on his coat in the front entrance and Katrín went upstairs to call Líf. His hand hit a shelf as he pulled on one sleeve and he swore vigorously.

Katrín turned on the stairs and waited until he’d stopped swearing. ‘Down to the beach?’

‘Yes, I saw wet shoeprints and shells on the floor in the living room. I hope you’re not planning on decorating the house with them. I’ve got enough on my hands with the basic renovations, never mind messing about with seashells.’

Katrín smiled quizzically. ‘I didn’t go gathering seashells. I got stuck straight into wrecking the porch.’ She unzipped her jacket. The cold air cooled her, but she soon felt a chill and zipped it back up again. ‘It must just be some rubbish that was here when we came.’

‘I doubt it. I don’t remember seeing it there.’

‘I didn’t bring any shells in here and if you didn’t either, then they must have been here already. Either that or Líf went and got them.’

Garðar looked puzzled. ‘She hasn’t been anywhere. I was working in the room next to hers and I had to listen to her constant racket.’

Katrín shrugged. ‘Well, I hardly think the fox could have brought them in. Or Putti.’

‘No, I suppose not. He’s been lounging around all morning. Anyway, the shells have been lined up to form letters, and to my knowledge dogs aren’t generally fantastic spellers.’

‘What did they spell?’

‘They said “Goodbye”.’ Garðar zipped up his jacket briskly. ‘They must have been there before and I’m just misremembering. Maybe the paint thinner’s going to my head.’

‘Goodbye?’ Katrín frowned. ‘It’ll do you good to get out of the house for a bit.’

The three of them set off, Putti following reluctantly behind them, without discussing where they were headed. None of them wanted to go uphill, and they were all in such a sorry state that they didn’t need to say as much. The sun was as high in the sky as it would get for the time of year, casting long shadows and creating distorted images wherever it shone. The crunching of the pebbles on the path was a familiar sound after they had tramped back and forth along it with the supplies on the first day. Garðar walked unusually slowly, apparently taking each step carefully. He paused at the first house and pretended to be looking at how the downpipes from the roof were set up. Katrín, however, knew that he was stopping to rest his sore heel.

‘Why are all the windows boarded up?’ Líf pressed her face against the panels covering the window beside the front door. The windows of all the houses had been given the same treatment, making them look as if they’d been blinded. Their house was the only exception – its dirty panes had been left unprotected against storms and wind, but luckily they had held.

‘No doubt to prevent interior damage, if the panes should break.’ Garðar took hold of the downpipe from the rain gutter and shook it.

‘Why should a windowpane break? There’s no one here.’ Líf leaned away from the house.

‘I don’t know, maybe they can get damaged in bad storms or something. Or birds could fly into them.’ Garðar seemed pleased to have come up with an answer for Líf; since neither she nor Katrín knew anything about the matter, neither of them could challenge him. He inspected the downpipe even more carefully and now began examining its fastenings.

‘This is so weird.’ Katrín looked out over the village.

‘The pipe?’ asked Garðar in surprise.

‘No, the settlement here. What must it have been like to live in such a small, isolated place? And how do you think the residents felt moving to Reykjavík after being accustomed to this?’ She gazed at the renovated buildings. Having now experienced for herself how much work was involved in restoring a house in such a place, she was finally able to appreciate how the others might have managed. ‘How must the people have felt, leaving their homes for the last time?’

‘Awful, I expect.’ Katrín heard the sadness in Garðar’s voice. Unless a miracle was about to occur, they would be in the same boat as these people in the middle of last century; they would lose their home in Reykjavík and be forced to shut its door behind them for the final time. The only difference was that she and Garðar would have to see their old home when they drove through the area, whereas the people in Hesteyri had moved far away and therefore were seldom reminded of what they had lost. Some time ago Katrín had resolved to avoid her old area when the time came for them to have to leave it. She didn’t want to see another family’s car in the driveway, other curtains in the kitchen windows, other furniture in the garden, and she knew that Garðar felt the same.

Líf came and stood next to Katrín and looked around. ‘But what were they supposed to do? There were no jobs to be had after the factory was closed and then it was pointless to try to go on living here, even though some of them might have been resisted the inevitable for a while.’

Just like her and Garðar. Katrín said nothing, but the words echoed in her mind. The miracle they needed to keep the property wasn’t going to happen; if they were really lucky they’d be able to hold on until the so-called ‘Key Bill’ was passed and they could return their house keys to the bank without any further financial consequences, unless the bank found a loophole in the new bill.

‘What’s that?’ Katrín pointed at the slope south of the settlement. On it was a large rock or pile of stones jutting towards the sky, apparently placed there by human hands.

Garðar turned to look where Katrín was pointing. He shrugged. ‘No idea. Should we wander over there? We can take a look at the houses on the way; maybe we’ll see something that might be useful.’

‘What I’d find useful is a nice spa,’ Líf grumbled. ‘I’d give anything for a massage right about now.’

‘There’s no danger of that.’ Katrín, too, would have given her right arm for just a warm bubble bath. She had long since stopped allowing herself to dream of expensive spas.

They walked gently down the path but had to keep stopping for Garðar either to pull up his sock on his sore foot or fold it over to try to cover the wound on his heel. Neither seemed to help for more than a few steps, and Garðar had started to limp by the time they finally reached the place that had drawn Katrín’s attention. They looked at the houses along the way without picking up any useful tips on how to restore their own house. If it hadn’t been for Garðar’s sore heel they would have gone up to each of them to get a better look, but that would have made the hike too long. The organization of the settlement suggested that it had had sufficient space, with some distance between the houses. On the other hand, it couldn’t have been expanded much before running out of habitable land.

‘We don’t need to go any further if it’s killing you.’ Katrín grimaced as Garðar pulled down his sock to reveal a blood-red blister. He winced when the curious Putti sniffed at the wound. Katrín tried to remember whether they’d packed bandages or analgesic sprays from the car, but could only recall having planned to take such things with her, not actually having done so. ‘Your foot looks awful.’

‘It’ll be all right tomorrow. I have other shoes that don’t come so high up the ankle.’ Garðar pulled his sock all the way down to the middle of his instep as he rested his foot on top of his shoe. ‘It was stupid of me not to have worn them now.’

‘That’s absolutely disgusting.’ Líf made a face, but then smiled. ‘I think amputation is the only cure. It’s a tragedy.’

Garðar didn’t seem amused, though he tried to force a smile. He was going to reply but Katrín beat him to it. ‘Just wait here. Líf and I will head over there and have a look at it. You can rest your leg in the meantime and we’ll take our time coming back.’

Garðar couldn’t hide his relief at a chance to sit down. ‘Good idea. I doubt I’d make it back if I took one more step.’ He plonked himself down on a grassy bank that appeared specially designed to allow people to rest their weary bones. ‘It wouldn’t hurt to cool down my heel a bit.’ He stretched out his leg to allow the wind to soothe his half-bare foot, and it was as if the wind took this as a cue to blow colder.

‘I’m going to wait here too.’ Líf sat down by his side. ‘I’ve actually had enough walking to last me a lifetime.’ She let herself fall backwards and lay staring up at the sky. ‘Don’t be too long.’

On her way up the hollow Katrín had to keep pushing her hair out of her face, since the wind seemed to be trying its best to blow it constantly into her eyes. She automatically stuck her hand into her pocket to see if she had a hair-band before remembering that of course she hadn’t brought any. As a result, she could see little or nothing and couldn’t get a good idea of the area until she’d nearly reached her destination. She stopped, turned back and shouted to Garðar and Líf: ‘It’s a cemetery. Maybe the crosses are from here.’ She wasn’t certain whether they’d heard her over the breeze, but Garðar waved at her. Instead of shouting louder she walked all the way up to a level area containing several rather elegant but weatherworn graves. She could tell them about this on the way back to the house. The man-made structure that had caught Katrín’s attention, a memorial made of stacked-up stones, was located in the centre of the area. Not many people had lived and died around here, judging by the number of graves, which seemed to be only several dozen. Most of them looked as if winter had repeatedly been allowed to run roughshod over them; by the skipper’s account, no one visited the area from the end of August until the spring. It was likely that some of the graves had never been tended. Many of the dead had lost their offspring to the south or to distant places, and then there were those who had lived and died alone. It was clear, at least, that in some places the brush had been allowed to grow undisturbed, and it now lay withered and dry among the graves. Weathered crosses and crooked headstones were the only indication that the previous residents of the village were resting there. Katrín knew she was starting to let her imagination run away with her, but she thought the vegetation looked even more lifeless here than elsewhere in the area, and the stalks and dried-out plants appeared to snap more loudly beneath her feet. The wind also felt colder and seemed to carry a whisper that her ears couldn’t quite make out. She suddenly felt chillier, as though she would never warm up again. After zipping her jacket all the way up she felt slightly better, even if she still wasn’t warm. She took several steps to a fenced-off plot with an impressive iron cross that had broken and now stood with its head tilted. The fence around the area must have been unusually elegant in its time, but its delicate ironwork was now just as rusted as the cross. The effect was tragic.

She turned abruptly to see whether Garðar and Líf were still where she’d left them. They were, of course, and seemed to be in intense discussion. She suddenly longed to turn around and run back to them; let the cemetery wait until they returned with her to have a look at it. But she knew she would be annoyed at herself as soon as she went back down the path if she didn’t investigate whether the crosses were from the cemetery, so she turned and walked quickly over to the first grave. On it was an impressive headstone with the names of a couple who had died in 1949. Neither the date nor the names matched those on the crosses, which Katrín recalled were ‘Hugi’ and ‘Bergdís’, and although she wasn’t entirely certain, she thought that both had died in 1951. She was quite surprised that she should remember this, since she was usually particularly bad with dates and numbers. She turned to the next grave, but the inscription on its headstone was so faded that there was no way of telling what was on it. The same went for the next two headstones. As she stood and wondered whether she should check all the graves, Katrín noticed that a panel of text was affixed to the memorial.

She walked up to the modest but attractive pile of stones. On top of it stood a cross and within a hollow space on its front was a handsome bell, as well as the panel containing the text that Katrín had noticed. When she got closer she was pleased to see that it was a map showing the position of the graves, along with a list of the names of those resting in the cemetery. Also on it was a black and white picture of a little church, with general information stating that a church had stood just inside the village; it had been built in 1899 and was a gift from the Norwegian M.C. Bull, who ran the whaling station Hekla in Stekkseyri. A chapel had served the settlement for several centuries before the church was built. The church had been moved to Súðavík in 1960, but the text explained that the bell in the memorial was from the church, and had been cast in 1691. Katrín found that interesting, particularly given that it hung there unprotected, accessible to everyone. The summary ended with some exceptionally brief information about Hesteyri, considering how many people had lived their lives there, experiencing all the pain, tribulations and joyous moments that fate would have dealt them. Perhaps history didn’t offer any detailed information, so the marker made do with stating that Hesteyri had become a certified commercial town in 1881; around 420 people had resided there permanently at the settlement’s height; it had had a telegram station, then later a telephone exchange, as well as a physician. Concerning the end of the settlement, all that was stated was that around 1940 its population had started to dwindle and the last residents moved away in 1952.

There was more information to be gleaned from the list of names. Two groups were described: those who were known to have been buried there but whose exact location was unknown, and those who rested in marked graves. The unidentified graves were mostly from the turn of the century, 1900. Katrín found herself thinking that at that time the residents hadn’t had the resources or reason to put up hard-wearing markers and the graves had therefore vanished into oblivion when weather and vegetation levelled the mounds or other signs of them. The known graves were more recent, the majority of them dating from the 1920s. It surprised Katrín that the newest graves in the cemetery were made in 1989; there were also three individuals buried here whose nationality was the only information still readable: two Norwegians and one German. It was a sad fate to be buried in a distant land that over time forgot a man’s name, his date of birth, and even date of death, which at least must have been known.

But it wasn’t the foreigners that Katrín was most interested in. The names on the crosses that they’d found turned out to be among those buried in known graves. Hugi Pjetursson and Bergdís Jónsdóttir, both died in 1951, she at thirty-two years old and he at five. Katrín stared at the names while pondering their poignantly short lives. Bergdís was most likely the boy’s mother, and the boy’s surname told her his father was called Pjetur; but no father was to be found in their plot, nor was any Pjetur named in the two lists. She was happy that Líf had decided to wait with Garðar; she would have found it embarrassing and uncomfortable to have her there, considering how recently Einar had died. His death had been easy and silent; he had fallen asleep never to wake up again, while here this mother and her son had probably bid farewell to this world through an accident or disease, since they had died in the same year, if not on the same day. Of the two evils, Einar’s path was surely more desirable, even though it wasn’t in one’s power to decide such a thing. Líf would probably disagree with this, however; she had woken with her husband cold and dead by her side. Katrín felt a deeper chill.

The map of the cemetery pointed her to the grave of Hugi and Bergdís, a fenced-off but unmarked plot. If she hadn’t had the map to rely on, she would have assumed that these were reserved plots that hadn’t been used after the village was abandoned. Unlike other plots, there was no overgrowth present here; instead the ground was covered with black, dusty soil. Oval-shaped white stones lay here and there on the surface but no remains of weeds or grass were to be seen anywhere. The outlines of the graves were marked with a low pile of stones that was falling down. The wind blew harder when Katrín walked over to the plot and the unpleasant whispering grew louder, though she still couldn’t quite hear what it was saying. She had to grab her hair and hold it back tightly in order to see anything properly. Although she didn’t really need to see anything – she knew the crosses were from here. Her confirmation came after she’d got a grip on her hair and could see a bit better: two broken wooden stumps stuck out of the ground at the end of the graves. Bingo. Although there was no clear explanation as to why the crosses had been removed and put next to their house, Katrín was at least very relieved to know where they had come from. Maybe crazy – or drunk? – tourists had vandalized the graves and thrown away the crosses by their house, although that explanation sounded ridiculous as soon as it crossed her mind. Her relief then evaporated completely when she saw that the round white stones weren’t stones at all, but shells.

Katrín picked one of them up and inspected it thoroughly. It was pale and damp and had been scraped out, or the creature that had occupied it had been removed some other way. Katrín looked around in search of more shells that might be hidden in the grass next to the grave. She saw none. It occurred to her that birds might have been responsible, but then the shells should have been lying all over the place. Besides that, it was too much of a coincidence for birds to have arranged the shells in the dirt – they all faced the same way, with the convex side up. The wind blew the soil and the shells were no longer as distinctly white. The next gust went one better and covered some of them completely. Katrín squeezed the shell she was holding, turned on her heel and hurried back to Garðar and Líf. It was inconceivable that the shells had been there since the autumn. They could hardly have been there much longer than since that morning, considering how quickly the wind was blowing dirt over them now. But who had put them there? She would have to investigate whether the shells were similar to the ones Garðar had found in the living room of their house. Maybe there was someone else in the village, trying to avoid making his presence known.

She felt relieved when she finally left the cemetery and spotted Garðar and Líf. At precisely that moment she thought that at last she could hear what the wind had been constantly whispering.

Run, Kata.