The Perfect Landscape (4 page)

She can’t see the two women on the other side of the partition, but she can hear the tap-tap of the keyboards, and every so often a phone rings; their voices are low and she can’t make out the words. Outside it has finally started to get light, and the familiar outline of Mount Esja is visible, dark against the faint gray morning light.

It’s past midday when Steinn comes over to Hanna and asks whether she’s up for going across to Oskjuhlid.

On their way out to the parking lot at the back of the gallery, Steinn looks questioningly at Hanna and asks hesitantly, “By the way, would you mind driving?” The question takes her by surprise, but Steinn offers no explanation and she doesn’t ask. It’s not that he’s disagreeable, but he doesn’t exactly invite further inquiry. He has a quiet manner, and his responses are measured. Hanna wants to get to know Steinn, and she tries to slow herself down to his rhythm, mentally drawing herself into the preparatory stance. Of course she can drive. What a question! Steinn fishes the car keys out of his pocket and hands them to her. Apart from the file he has tucked under his arm, he reminds her of a farmer on his way out to the cattle shed in his russet-red winter jacket and knitted hat. He has shoved the digital camera, which he’ll use to record the damage, into his
jacket pocket. His silver-colored ski pole taps on the wet tarmac. Hiking fanatic, thinks Hanna. Definitely goes walking in the mountains on the weekends.

He silently points the ski pole diagonally across the parking lot toward an old blue Volvo. The pay of a conservator or whatever it is he really does at the gallery is clearly nothing to write home about. Hanna wonders whether he has a wife and what she does. She can hardly be in a well-paid job judging by this old banger, which could well belong to a farmer. There aren’t any child seats in the back. But if he has children they could be too big for that, she supposes as she gets into the driver’s seat, slides it forward, and adjusts the rearview mirror. Steinn keeps quiet in the passenger seat as she pulls out jerkily and stalls the Volvo—she isn’t used to manual cars. She wonders if he’s on some kind of medication that means he can’t drive; yet he drove to work this morning.

Hanna wants to ask him about the sculpture they’re going to see and when they should have a look at Gudrun’s painting but can’t quite bring herself to, so they drive in silence. After a bit Steinn switches on the radio, and for the few minutes it takes to drive from the gallery to the wooded hillside, they listen to announcements and news bulletins. Hanna pricks up her ears when she hears the name of an old friend, Gudny, who is now the minister for justice, mentioned in connection with legislation on young offenders. Then she remembers who Agusta reminds her of—Gudny when she was young. It’s the ambitiousness. Underlying, continual, hungry ambition, which will never be fully satisfied. Agusta will go far, she thinks to herself, already on edge. This job may not turn out quite as cushy as she’d imagined back home in Amsterdam.

Gudny’s job means she’s often in the news, and Hanna has followed her work on Internet news pages. She’s looking forward to meeting her, and also Laufey and a few others who were all good friends at secondary school; it’s been a long time since the five of them have caught up. She makes up her mind to get in touch with them all as soon as possible. The next news item is about finding funds to build an earthquake museum at Kopasker, a small village in the north of the country. Hanna reaches out and turns the radio off. They’ve arrived.

They park the car at the bottom of the hill, where the conifers appear dark green in the damp air. At the top, the old water tanks, which used to house the city’s hot water supply, now stand empty. On top of them sits an expensive restaurant with a shiny glass roof, whose glistening silver-gray reflects the pewter sky. A footpath of red gravel leads from the parking lot to the edge of the trees. The grass on either side is a yellowy gray after the winter, scattered with puddles. Steinn walks on ahead, his step calm and confident.

When they reach the trees it’s like entering another world, timeless and free from the everyday laws of this gloomy January day. The noise of the city dies away. Steinn swings his ski pole; the red of his jacket and the silver stick stand out among the dark conifers. For a second Hanna sees in her mind’s eye the painting by Renaissance artist Paolo Uccello,
The Hunt in the Forest
. In this picture men are dressed in red and, either on foot or on horseback, are chasing hares in a dark forest. Some hold white spears, slicing the dark background like the white hunting dogs leaping across the canvas. Uccello’s aim in this painting was to demonstrate how convincingly he could portray perspective, which was a novelty at the time. Paolo Uccello
can also be translated as Paul the Bird as
uccello
is Italian for
bird
. He was given this nickname because he was fascinated by animals, and especially birds. Steinn is maybe a bit like that, Hanna muses, an eccentric withdrawn from his surroundings. She pictures him sitting at home poring over chemistry books.

On they go in the half-light, barely able to make out anything before them. Under the trees the ground is covered in dry humus and littered with pine needles and cones; the lowest branches have lost their needles. The walk has a hypnotic effect on Hanna, as if she’s slipped into a dream and is following the rhythmical tapping of Steinn’s stick like a metronome. Then they hear a rustle and she sees something scuttle past in the dusk. Steinn stops suddenly and puts his finger to his lips. For a moment they both stand stock-still, hardly daring to breathe. Out of the gloom two white rabbits stare at them before turning tail, two gray shadows disappearing into the darkness. Unlike the scene in Paul the Bird’s painting, it is peaceful here, no hunters shouting and calling, no dogs barking or hooves pounding. Ahead is a hint of daylight, and the path opens out into a clearing.

Here they are met by a memorial to a Norwegian entrepreneur in forestry, his bronze bust crowning a concrete pillar with an inscription on a metal plaque. But the statue is now unrecognizable. Someone has sprayed it with an array of colored paints so that the bronze can no longer be seen. The same is true of the pillar that, quite apart from damage arising from the damp and from moss, has also been liberally spray-painted; the inscription on the plaque is illegible. Broken glass lies scattered all around, as if some people got together with glass bottles for a smash party. There’s more broken glass on the statue itself.

They stand there lost for words, taking in this excessive and incomprehensible vandalism, which isn’t sloppy and crude but somehow carefully executed. For a moment Steinn covers his eyes with his hand as if in pain.

“We had a call about this this morning,” he says slowly. “We don’t know when it happened—someone who was out walking here over the weekend tipped us off.”

“This is a job for the street-cleaning department,” Hanna says for want of something to say. “The broken glass, I mean.” She is upset. There’s something rather disconcerting about seeing a work of art treated in this way, especially when it’s designed to honor someone’s memory. It’s like a physical assault with no obvious motive.

Steinn walks right up to the pillar and peers at the concrete, running his hand over the rough, soiled surface. Something about his touch catches Hanna’s attention, and for a moment they stand in silence while he carefully feels the surface with his fingertips. She feels the slight drizzle on her face, catches the scent of pine needles in the air. She’s not on her guard with Steinn; on the contrary, his presence gives her strength. He is a good man, quite simply a good guy.

“I know how we can clean this up,” he says slowly but with a smile, as if to reassure her there’s no need to worry. “It’ll take time, but it’s doable. See, the bronze is sealed, the paint won’t seep in. And the concrete on the pillar can be sandblasted and cleaned, with nitromors, for example,” he says more to himself, lowering his voice.

“The bust can be cleaned with a special preprepared mixture,” he adds, loud enough for Hanna to hear. Pulling the camera out of his pocket, he walks around the statue and
photographs what needs to be cleaned and repaired. Hanna also circles the work of art, examining the spray-painting for something legible. At one point she can make out some initials, but they are unclear and she can’t tell whether or not they are part of the overall graffiti on the statue.

“What do they hope to achieve?” says Hanna more into thin air than looking for an answer.

“It’s good to get things fixed,” says Steinn, not responding to her question. “Restores your faith in life. Faith that even though things can go badly, it’s still possible to get them back on track again.”

Hanna looks at him, his trustworthy expression, broad shoulders, and strong hands. She sits down on a bench nearby, in the shadow of the pines. The dark treetops contrast with the leaden sky. The spruces are taller than the pines; some of the tops are bowed or bent over. There are no birds anywhere to be seen. Not a sound can be heard other than Steinn’s footsteps as he treads on the gravel around the sculpture. Hanna senses the closeness of the wood. Is it really possible to get your life back on track when something unfortunate happens, as Steinn was saying? She looks at the tree trunks and the dusk. There is something timeless about a wood, no trace of human intervention. The tiredness washes over her again; she stops mulling things over and relaxes.

Five hundred years ago Leonardo da Vinci wrote about the nuances of light in nature, about sunlight dappling on leaves, on the surface of running water. How smoke rising from a bonfire in a forest clearing has a bluish tinge against the dark background. Such as this forest floor. The smoke is bluest if the timber is dry and if the sun’s rays reach it, Leonardo wrote, and his words capture a fleeting moment from long ago.

Hanna sits there motionless. Suddenly Steinn is standing before her—he has finished taking the photographs. “All done,” he says, and she smiles up at him absentmindedly, because she has managed to forget her troubles for a while. Naturally warmhearted, Steinn smiles back, a smile that lights up his gray eyes. Hanna circles the statue once more, avoiding the broken glass scattered on the ground. They are just about to head back to the gallery when they hear footsteps and a man with a large camera emerges into the clearing. The papers have evidently been informed as well, thinks Hanna as she greets the photographer from the national paper. People don’t just phone the gallery; they also call the press. Hanna and Steinn watch as he photographs the damage.

“Have you seen anything this bad before?” asks Hanna, assuming that a newspaper photographer will keep abreast of what’s happening.

“I saw a wall downtown the other day that reminds me of this,” he replies. “It was similar, a random explosion of paint, not the usual tagging and stuff you get everywhere. This was huge and wild—like this one here.”

The vandalism has a paralyzing effect on them, and they fall silent. It’s beginning to rain again. Steinn makes a move and turns to Hanna.

“Shall we go?”

They say good-bye to the photographer and don’t look back as the camera starts clicking again; maybe the rain will lend the pictures an extra dramatic dimension. Steinn thrusts the folder under his jacket and leads the way back. On reaching the car, Hanna gets in the driver’s side without asking.

One day in late January, Steinn quietly asks Hanna whether she would like to have a look at the painting with him. Just like that, as if it were perfectly normal that he hadn’t mentioned it earlier, quite natural that nearly three weeks had gone by since they first saw it, on the day Hanna first started at the gallery. She hadn’t mentioned it either; she’d realized straightaway that Steinn was not someone to be hassled. When a gallery is given a work like this, it goes without saying that it’s thoroughly scrutinized.

Hanna’s role first and foremost is to examine the painting from the point of view of the art historian. To evaluate the work objectively and decide where it fits chronologically in Gudrun’s career. To compare it with her other works, look for points of connection with paintings carried out at roughly the same time. To analyze its structure, use of color, and brushstrokes to determine whether these are all characteristic of the artist’s style.

Steinn’s focus is on the physical aspect of the painting; he looks at it from a technical perspective. Does it need cleaning?
Does it need a new frame? Is there any damage that needs fixing? Has the ownership history been confirmed?

At the agreed time Hanna goes down the steps to the basement, which houses the gallery’s storage rooms and where conservation is carried out. She knocks on the door cautiously, which Steinn opens sharply, causing Hanna to shrink back before entering.

This is Steinn’s kingdom. A large, bright, well-lit work surface stands in the center; paintings and smaller pictures fill every nook and cranny, standing propped on the floor or leaning up against shelves and cupboards. There is row after row of paintings, drawings, and watercolors. Hanna takes Gudrun’s painting from an easel against a wall—
The Birches
, as they call it. The green color is rich in tone under the even, fluorescent light; the whitish-blue of the sky is sparkling; and the outline of Mount Baula is clearly defined as it rises up like a triangle from the birch tops. She stands still, looking at the painting, at the green light dappling on the birch leaves. The height of summer—it was hot when this picture was sketched, perhaps it was painted in situ.

“I’d like to start by looking at Gudrun’s sketchbooks from this period, her drawings and watercolors and so on,” Hanna says to break the silence. “It would be good to find a sketch of this motif to go with the painting.”

Steinn struggles to pull something out of the small plastic bag in his hands. “Well...” he says, pointing her to some shelves farther into the workspace, where Hanna finds boxes marked “Gudrun” filled with sketchbooks and loose drawings. “We can look at those,” he finishes as Hanna lays the boxes on the table. “But it’ll take time.”