Blue eyed innate trickyThere’s a slight twitch around Hei?ur’s mouth, in the sensitive flute-nerves adjacent to the base of her powerful nose. She’s in no mood to discuss the vicious circle of my life right now. Your father is like other people in how he prefers not to face the facts. How would it have been better for him if your mother had hit him with the truth? Your father lives in the blissful illusion that you’re his daughter. We don’t tamper with it. That would be cruel. How could you not? “Where did you get it?” the man repeated. Duncan pointed to the road on the map that ran northeast out of Chestertown.“And to get there from where we are going?” “I only ask,” Jude said, “because I gave a bag just like that to Deb only an hour ago. We’re very good friends, you know. Very close.” Roxanne Karinger found her own carpool to join, but every now and then, in a moment of crisis, she’d jog up to the truck in the parking lot after school let out and ask Watts for a last-minute lift home. She’d sit between Watts and Kush, keeping her hands between her knees to take up as little room as possible. Kush dreaded these days for the awkward quiet she brought on. Thankfully, graduation was approaching, and the opportunities for this particular brand of discomfort were quickly fading. The foreigner puts down his backpack and confidently sits between us. Hei?ur offers him bread and coffee, and in strongly accented English he thanks us profusely. Boor that I am, I turn on my side, not bothering to sit upright in the presence of a guest, yet toward him, at least. The sound of the chatter between Hei?ur and the foreigner makes me drowsy. I think I hearhim say he’s studying geology, and last summer went to the South Seas to have a look at volcanic islands, some of which resemble Iceland. But the climate there is better. He laughs, and there’s great brightness in his voice. I think I’m not dreaming that his name is Yves. Hei?ur has also introduced herself and he says “Ei-dur.” This is my friend Harpa Eir, Hei?ur says. He tries to repeat it, “Arba Ire.” He wanted to add that his position left him no choice, but this proved too difficult to translate. He reached for her hands and squeezed them together till she let out a cry. Born in Reykjav?k, Steinunn Sigur?ard?ttir studied philosophy and psychology at University College Dublin. She made a name for herself at the age of nineteen with a volume of poetry entitledContinuances (Sifellur, 1969). Sigur?ard?ttir has since become one of Iceland’s most frequently translated writers, and one of the most lauded, having won the Icelandic Literature Prize (forPlace of the Heart) and the national Bookseller’s Prize in 2011, among many other nominations. Steinunn Sigur?ard?ttir’s extensive body of work includes eleven novels, seven volumes of poetry, two volumes of short stories, radio plays, television plays, and a children’s book. Her novelThe Thief of Time (T?ma?j?furinn, 1986) was adapted to film in France (Voleur de vie, 1998), directed by Yves Angelo and starring Emmanuelle B?art and Sandrine Bonnaire. After an extensive and fruitful career abroad, most notably in Germany and France,Place of the Heart is Steinunn Sigur?ard?ttir’s English-language debut. blue eyed innate tricky Phil’s baggy clothing underlined the gaunt, ghostly look he already had. He would shovel my mother’s cooking so belligerently into his bony face that he reminded me of a character in one of the novels I was reading at the time, a man who had been rescued many days after a shipwreck. As for me, my job was to get a fire going in the fireplace, and I’d kneel on the bricks, stuffing swaths of paper towels or newspaper or catalog pages into the nooks and crags of the logs. I’d strike a few matches until the fire finally caught and the smell of woodsmoke filled the house. I’d brush the soot from my pants and wash my hands. Then I’d collect my payment, a small dish of desserts my mother had baked and arranged for our guests — one or two honey-dripping pieces of rolled baklava, maybe, or a few powdered khurabia cookies — and sit on the hardwood floor, devouring the sweets and watching the fire I’d made consume everything and anything I allowed it to. As Hei?ur and I stand on the steps outside, gusts of wind tear at our hair. The swollen potato plants sway in the billowing wind, and far below us the sea is topped with white crests, big and little, which race up onto the sand strip stretching into the distance. In the cool light, on the stiff cot next to my dead husband, life slowed down to a reasonable pace. The death chamber was cool and sedate. There were no sounds from anywhere. That’s just the way those rocks are. There’s nothing poetic about it. * * *. |