The Perfect Landscape (12 page)

The man fumbles in his pocket, but there is nothing there; the vial has either fallen out or Steinn has put it down. He looks at Edda and Agusta. “Did you know that he had glaucoma?”

Edda shakes her head and looks at Hanna in surprise. “He was at the optometrist, I know that much. But he never mentioned glaucoma.” She looks at Baldur, who has also come down, and he shakes his head. Nobody is aware that Steinn has glaucoma.

Having lifted Steinn onto the stretcher, the EMTs now stand up, every movement quick and well practiced. Hanna and the others shrink to one side and watch them carry the stretcher up the stairs.

“Just call the hospital,” one of the men says to Hanna as they disappear up the steps. Hanna would really have liked to go with them, but she doesn’t. She is only a work colleague, and naturally Helga will be going up there straightaway. But supposing Steinn hasn’t mentioned to her about the glaucoma? Hanna is not sure that he has. Glaucoma is a serious condition, and Steinn is not likely to want to give Helga cause for concern.

When the EMTs have gone, they are all left standing there worried. Edda goes to make coffee, her automatic response to any difficulty. Hanna is concerned that she may be the only one who knows that Steinn might have glaucoma. She doesn’t want to call Helga. That would be odd. And maybe Helga saw how she looked at Steinn. She isn’t even sure herself how she looked at him. But it’s vital that the hospital staff give him the right treatment.

Hanna hesitates briefly then goes out into the reception area, where no one can hear her, calls the hospital, and asks for Laufey. She is busy. Hanna tells the receptionist that this is an emergency. She is advised to call the emergency room and give them the relevant information. Hanna calls and the receptionist there says she will pass her message on. Hanna tells her that Steinn could go blind if he doesn’t get the right treatment straightaway. The receptionist agrees and repeats that she will ensure the information gets to the right person. Hanna hangs up, worried that this won’t be enough. She fears that Steinn might lose his sight because of a doctor’s mistake. She tries to get through to Laufey again but fails. She calls her cell, but Laufey doesn’t pick up. Eventually she gives up calling. Mentally she moves into the neutral position to calm her mind before setting off for the hospital.

Hanna fears bumping into Helga in the emergency room, but she has already gone in with Steinn. Hanna learns that he is merely under investigation. An optometrist has not been sent for. Hanna goes out again and into the main entrance to look for Laufey. She must get a hold of someone in the hospital who will listen to her. Eventually she finds the physical rehabilitation department, where Laufey is doctor-in-charge.

Hanna enters the corridor, glances around, peeps into the ward, and sees Laufey talking to a patient in one of the rooms. Hanna waits outside, and when Laufey walks back out, she is startled to see Hanna there, out of breath and looking uneasy. Hanna briefly tells her the whole story, and Laufey takes her by the hand, leads her into the visitors’ room, and tells her to take a seat and wait. Then she goes back into the department, leaving Hanna there on her own.

She sits restlessly and sees again and again the image of Steinn putting his hand up to his right eye, red and bloodshot. She sees the painting against the wall,
Composition in Blue
. She can picture it, the half-moon, cut through with straight lines, the interplay of blue and yellow colors, and at last it occurs to her where she has seen these lines before.

It was when she and Steinn were looking at images of
The Birches
on the computer. When Steinn showed her the infrared image. The drawing underneath the painting, curved lines cut through with straight lines. She’d thought maybe they were a bridge or a boat. But now she is absolutely certain. They are the same shapes. There can be no doubt about it.

Hanna has a photographic memory. Her memories are stored as pictures; her brain is a database of hundreds of paintings that she can recall whenever, their colors, light, shapes, and lines. She is never mistaken.

Underneath
The Birches
lies a drawing that is based on similar lines and shapes as
Composition in Blue
by Sigfus Gunnarsson. For whatever reason. She does not try to understand it now; her mind is too taken up with Steinn.

Laufey comes back in after a while. “He’s going for tests in the ophthalmology unit. He is on his way there now.” She smiles encouragingly at Hanna. “It’ll be all right. He’ll get all the help available. It was just as well this thing about his acute glaucoma came out. His wife is with him,” she adds with a mischievous look. Hanna pretends not to hear the tone in her voice or see the amusement in her eye and just thanks her for her help.

Laufey goes back to work, but Hanna remains on the sofa in the visitors’ room for a moment. She thinks about paintings. About the ones she is most fond of and goes back to again
and again. She pictures the wide expanse of the sky in Jacob van Ruisdael’s paintings, the tranquil landscape paintings of Camille Corot, the soft light in paintings by Claude Lorainn, and the pinkish-red hues of the mountainsides from home. She thinks about Heba.

Kari has his dad’s brown eyes; he has just turned thirteen and looks like an angel. Dark hair, fashionably long, and girlish good-looks. His eyes are furtive and also innocent, giving him the air of a defenseless animal. Looking at him you cannot avoid feeling some sort of sympathy, a desire to give him a helping hand, to do something for him. His sisters are different. Saerun, the younger one, is a tough cookie and cheeky with it, and she uses foul language comically at odds with her five years. At fifteen, Soffia is the eldest. She looks after them and is just waiting for tenth grade to finish so she can start working. None of them has the same father; this home has never known a dad.

They live in a two-room basement flat on Njalsgata, just behind Snorrabraut. Their mom sleeps in the living room when she is home, the sisters share the lower bunk in the bedroom, and Kari has the top bunk. They have a desk in the bedroom, no wardrobe, and their clothes lie in scattered heaps on the floor.

The children fend for themselves, and their mother is proud of the way they manage. There is no way of knowing whether
there will be food in the house, and they never have a packed lunch for school. The social workers have paid them more than one visit, and up until now they have deemed it better for the children to stay together than be put in foster care with separate families. Then there are long periods when things run smoothly, more or less. Now is not one of those times, and Kari wakes feeling tired. He has a headache and his tummy aches; he is late for school, and Soffia and Saerun have already left.

He gets up and goes through to the kitchen. There are dirty dishes and glasses, empty yogurt cups, and a liter of milk in the fridge that has gone sour. He has a drink of water, searches for his clothes and his backpack in the bedroom, then gives up halfway through—he sees no point in turning up late for school only to be told off and he is too tired anyway. He was out with his crew the night before. The oldest boys are already seventeen and eighteen, and they often have cigarettes and even share a joint, sometimes a beer. They were doing a piece on an inside wall in Hverfisgata and they gave him free rein—him, the youngest. He is proud because in the end he did the wall almost all by himself, in his own style. The others haven’t quite got what it takes, the right touch. He decides to go and look at the wall again. If he could just get a hold of a cell phone somewhere he could take a picture. Maybe he will find a phone in a cafe. People are often so careless with their phones; they leave them lying on the table and don’t notice when they disappear.

Kari puts on the same jeans he wore yesterday and the week before and a black hoodie. Neither is clean, but he’s not concerned. He glances out of the window. It’s not raining so he doesn’t bother with his coat, which he cannot stand—he would rather be cold than walk around in that crummy garment.
He pulls his cap down to his eyes and goes out, slamming the door behind him. He doesn’t bother locking it—there’s nothing worth taking anyway.

He starts at Subway, but the man behind the cash register kicks him straight out again. He knows Kari and he knows that he does not have any money, but he hands him a buttered roll as he shows him the door. Chewing on the bread, Kari tries another cafe around the corner. He walks around slowly as though looking for someone, as though expecting someone. The girl behind the counter looks at him with suspicion in her eyes—a youngster in town during school hours is suspicious.

Kari moves out of her line of sight. He finds his victim toward the back of the room near the toilets. A middle-aged man is sitting down reading the papers, and his cell phone is lying on the table. Kari steals a look around. There are not many people in the cafe; it doesn’t look as if anyone will ruin his plans, no one at the counter that he needs to run past, no one at the entrance. Quick as a flash he grabs the phone and makes a run for it, out, over the street, and across the square by the art gallery, where he is far too visible. From there he shoots down a side alley, behind the Thai restaurant, where he crouches down behind the garbage cans, waiting.

He is sweating and out of breath. He doesn’t feel good; his heart is thumping. It’s been a while since he has eaten properly. Soffia doesn’t know how to cook and often buys sweets for Saerun to keep her happy rather than buying a meal. Soffia looks after Saerun as best she can—as well as any child can look after another child, when she doesn’t know what it is to be looked after herself. She doesn’t know how to, doesn’t think about cleanliness or healthy food or sleeping patterns, but she
gives Saerun hugs and lets her fall asleep in her lap. Soffia can’t leave, Kari thinks to himself. Much as they fight, he cannot even begin to think about it. He couldn’t look after Saerun. He doesn’t even know if he likes her. Most of the time he finds her a pain.

Kari does not dwell on these thoughts. What matters to him most is his crew, graffitiing—he feels good when he is bombing, which is all too rarely. He can’t afford cannons. He cannot hear anyone chasing him and opens his clammy fist to examine the phone; yesss, it’s got a camera and the battery is charged. Shoving the phone into his pocket he heads up a side street rather than the main shopping street, because there are fewer people around. He feels like everyone is looking at him, a boy who isn’t at school; he wants to be left in peace. He doesn’t care that he’s skipped classes; he’s done it often and there have been no repercussions. They threaten to expel him, tell him off, but none of that bothers him because these people don’t matter to him. I don’t matter to them either, he thinks to himself.

At last he reaches the derelict house where he and his friends spent the previous evening. He crawls in through a broken basement window and holds his breath against the smell of excrement and urine. In the half dark he fumbles his way toward the stairs up to the ground floor and then on up a wooden staircase to the second floor once he has made sure there is no one around. He is frightened of bumping into one of the old winos or crazed drug addicts who crash out there, but luck is on his side—the building is empty. He goes straight into a large room on the second floor, gets the cell phone out, and photographs the wall. This will go straight onto the Internet; he is proud of this wall. The whole expanse is awash in color,
covered uncontrollably in white, gray, and violet, shadows of something he feels inside but does not know exactly what, something that draws him back again and again and allows him to forget.

The moment he has finished taking his photos, he hears men’s loud voices and noisy footsteps on the stairs. It’s the police! He is about to shove the phone in his pocket when one of the police officers whips it from him and holds Kari in a firm but gentle grip. Kari doesn’t answer their questions. They mean nothing to him; they cannot touch him—all they can do is take a statement from him down at the police station and drive him home.

This is the second time that he has been arrested recently. The duty sergeant recognizes him. He is friendly, asks Kari if he’s hungry or cold. But Kari doesn’t fall for these friendly overtures; he just shakes his head and gives the policemen monosyllabic answers. Virtually the whole group was arrested last time; they were all picked up by their parents, except Kari, who was driven home, as he is again this time.

He is sullen and angry at himself for being caught, and when he sees his mother sleeping in the living room, his feelings overwhelm him. It is more peaceful when she is not home. She wakes up when the policemen come in, and Kari sees her turn on the charm, making out that she is just fine while she talks to them. She claims to be surprised; she doesn’t understand this at all—it must be a new phase that will pass. Kari’s mom is still young, and despite her dissolute life she is still beautiful. Kari can tell she’s been drinking, but probably not since the previous evening; she isn’t drunk. He waits till the policemen have left before asking her for money.

The opening of the fine arts exhibition is being held at the Icelandic–Danish Cultural Association in the newly renovated docklands area, and the building is bursting at the seams. Crowds of people are standing or sitting at tables on the white paving stones in front of the glass building on a sunny afternoon in May. The sun reflects off the water and mirrors through the glass; the white pavement intensifies the brightness.

Inside is a plentiful supply of food. Trays piled with national gourmet cuisine with a modern twist glide around on the arms of courteous waiters: minute blood sausage tartlets, salted meat in aspic served in little aluminum dishes, croutons of rye bread with lamb pate on sticks. A band is due to start shortly, to appeal to the young people who perhaps don’t have an awful lot of interest in Icelandic painters who studied in Copenhagen in the middle of the last century. There are paintings by Thorarin B. Thorlaksson, Kristin Jonsdottir, Sigfus Gunnarsson, Thorvald Skulason, and Gudrun Johannsdottir
among others. All paintings are from the earlier parts of their careers, landscape, a touch of cubism, a hint of romanticism, and some expressionism. Still life paintings, scenes through a window, harbor views, street scenes, and landscapes. Sigfus was one of the most ambitious. Both his sketchbooks and his cubist face paintings are on display, and his semiabstract paintings stand out with their vivid colors.