The Fish Can Sing (53 page)

“It is considered unwise to whisper one’s secrets to the wind,” I said.

She looked at me after long reflection and asked sombrely, “Are you the wind?”

“Part of it,” I said.

The cathedral clock struck one; or perhaps it struck two. There was nothing more to say for a while. At least there was nothing I could say, I who had sat on a stone dyke in pouring rain one night the previous winter waiting for a shadow on a curtain, and had lost this shadow for ever.

“It’s getting late,” I said.

“Late?” she said. “What do you mean, late?”

I said, “It’s well into the night.”

“I don’t call that late,” she said.

She stared stiffly into the blue, as people do who are recovering from sorrow. “It’s only a new day,” she added.

Her red gloves with the tassels lay on the table.

She sat huddled on the sofa, with her hands dangling over her knees; she looked bigger when she was sitting down than when standing upright in a long gown. She had one characteristic that distinguished her from most women of her age and class, in that she never tried to be smart in her movements and did not
know any affected poses. Only her red gloves contradicted the impression that she was the reincarnation of that Gretchen who brought Faust so close to damnation that things would have gone badly for him if some angels had not arrived and rewarded his interest in ditch-digging and swamp-draining.

For some reason or other the world has never really taken the tears of plump women very seriously, and a fat martyr has always been considered contrary to the laws of reason – and quite unthinkable in a portrait, moreover. In any cultural concept, the only valid salt water is that which a thin and haggard person pours out in Christendom. Yet the kind of story that the girl was telling me is much more natural if it is served up with a salt water dressing. But now I had the impression that the story was at an end, and with it the tears.

“Don’t you think it’s time to be going?” I asked.

She woke up from her trance and answered curtly and angrily, “Go yourself! I decide where I’m going to be. This is my home. It is I who provided this apartment; and it is I who pay for it.”

“So sorry,” I said. “All the more reason for me to be getting off.”

I began to look for my cap.

“What’s all the hurry?” she said. “That’s something new, if you have become the part of the wind that blows quickly past.”

I went on looking for my cap until I found it.

“Aren’t you going to sit with me a little to comfort me while I wait?” she asked.

“If you’re going to wait, I’m afraid you will have to wait until morning,” I said.

“Should we wake up the staff and have them bring us some refreshments?” she said.

“Refreshments?” I said. “After that dinner tonight?”

“I haven’t had anything to eat or drink all day,” she said. “Do you think that the dinner tonight was held so that people could eat and drink?”

“I ate my fill,” I said.

“Yes, but you have no soul,” she said.

“If you’re hungry,” I said, “I seem to remember that there are some five
-aurar
cakes on a shelf in the cupboard.”

“Bring them over,” she said, and dried the last traces of her tears from her nose with her handkerchief. “They’re my cakes, anyway.”

Without a word I brought her the remains of the cream cakes from earlier in the day.

“It’s as if you were throwing food to a dog, you don’t even say so much as ‘Help yourself,” she said.

“Didn’t I put out that knife, fork and spoon for you there?” I said.

“You’re surely not going to leave me behind like a rat among his cream cakes? Presumably you’re gentleman enough to keep me company and eat with me. Go on, have a seat.”

“No thanks,” I said. “I’ve come to the wrong place. And I’m not more of a gentleman than that. Goodbye.”

She reacted to this farewell like a leaky vessel that has been abruptly filled with water and weeps through every seam.

“Dear Jesus, you’re the beastliest pig of a person I have ever heard of in my whole life!” she said through the torrent of tears. “I never dreamt that such a foul person could exist. And you stink of soot and fulmar’s feathers.”

It had never actually occurred to me that I was so wicked; and the result of it was that I sat down beside the girl and began to try to comfort her. And as always happens when a child has to be consoled or a misdeed forgiven, reason goes into abeyance and other laws take over; perhaps even life itself, as it is.

And the few, brief nocturnal hours passed in the Hotel d’Islande.

At first light, just about the time when the harbour-workers were getting up, Gar
ar Hólm found little Miss Gú
múnsen and myself in his apartment. He greeted us with a handshake and smiled his inscrutable mathematician’s smile at us. The night’s revelry had left no mark on him, there was no blemish or wrinkle to be seen on him except perhaps a tiny wisp of hay on his back; and he was a little pale. He pulled out of his pocket a few copies of the world newspaper, the London
Times
, and laid them on the table. When he had greeted us he walked over to the mirror, studied his face, and stroked his chin.

“How very nice of you to wait for me here,” he said while he
was inspecting himself in the mirror. He bared his teeth and inspected them carefully as well. “I hope you slept well, children. The party I was at lasted all night. Hmm. I need a shave. Then we’ll have some coffee.”

“I’m rather afraid we’ve finished all your cream cakes,” I said.

The girl had not spoken a word; she was just finishing making her hair tidy, and finally she said as if from afar, “Where’s my other shoe, Álfgrímur?”

I searched the room for a while until I found the shoe under the sofa on which she had been sitting the previous evening. Gar
ar Hólm had taken off his jacket and was putting soap on his face in front of the mirror.

“I dropped into Paradise on the way from the party,” said Gar
ar Hólm.

“Indeed – the place where the angels took Dr Faust?” I said, because I somehow could never get the Barbers’ Bill out of my head.

“It’s a very pleasant place,” said Gar
ar Hólm. “The only place here in Reykjavík that smells more like a chemist’s shop than a chemist’s shop itself. My good friend sits there in the mornings at his open hatchway and looks out over the sea. And all the gulls in the North Sea fly past him.”

“I suppose only famous people talk like that,” said little Miss Gú
múnsen. “Isn’t that right?”

“Don’t bother to make my bed, dear,” he said. “There are plenty of servants in the place.”

“I must talk to you, Gar
ar,” she said. “In private. As soon as possible.”

“I’ll go,” I said.

“No, that’s one thing I know you won’t do, my friend,” said Gar
ar, and went on soaping his face. “To leave little Miss Gú
múnsen and myself just when we’re going to have morning coffee! I didn’t think we three had any secrets from one another. By the way, aren’t there enough cream cakes?”