Authors: Bernard Scudder

Last Rituals (45 page)

"She was ill, wasn't she?" asked Thóra. "Didn't she have a congenital disease?"

Amelia Guntlieb's smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. "No. She wasn't born like that. She was perfectly healthy. She was the spitting image of me, judging from the photos I had of myself as a toddler. She was wonderful, as all my children have beenslept well and only cried now and again. None of them had stomach trouble or earaches. Lovely babies." Thóra made do with nodding because she was unsure of the appropriate response. She saw a tear appear in the corner of the woman's eye. "Harald" Her voice cracked. She paused to collect herself before proceeding and swept away the tear with a deft movement of her hand. "I haven't discussed this with a soul, apart from my husband and our doctors. My husband mentioned it to his parents but never to anyone else. We're not an open family and we find it difficult to discuss thingsaccepting other people's sympathy isn't our greatest strength. I think that's the reason anyway."

"It can be difficult," said Thóra, who had no idea how it must have been. Fortunately she had not needed much sympathy up to now.

"Harald was extremely fond of his little sister but jealous too. He had been my little baby for more than three years and sometimes found it hard to accept the new member of the family. We didn't take it seriously, expected it to pass." The tears rolled down her cheeks. "He dropped her, threw her on the floor." She stopped talking and went back to watching the birds.

"He dropped the baby on the floor?" asked Thóra, taking care to remain calm. A shiver ran down her spine.

"She was four months old, asleep in a car seat. We'd just come back from shopping. I went to take off my coat, and when I got back, Harald was standing holding her in his arms. Not exactly in his arms, actually. He was holding her by the legs like a rag doll. Of course she woke up and started to whimper. He yelled at her and shook her. I ran over to him but I was too late. He just looked at me and smiled. Then he dropped her. Straight onto the tiled floor." Her tears poured in single file, leaving glittering marks down her face. "I could never erase that memory. Whenever I looked at Harald I saw his expression when he dropped her." The woman paused to gather her strength. "Her skull was fractured," she continued, "she went into a coma at the hospital and developed encephalopathy as a result. She never woke up the same again. My little angel."

"Surely you must have been suspected of child abuse? Here they would have removed the baby from your care while they investigated the circumstances."

Amelia's expression implied that Thóra was rather naďve. "We didn't need to go through all that. The family doctor helped us, and the other doctors who looked after her showed nothing but total understanding. Harald was sent to a psychiatrist, but that had no effect. He showed no signs of psychological disorder. He was just a jealous little child who made a terrible mistake."

Thóra did not reveal her doubts that this incident could be classified as the behavior of a normal child. What would she know about that? "Did Harald remember this or did he forget it over time?" she asked instead.

"I honestly don't know. We didn't talk much together, the two of us. I think he probably knewat least, he was especially kind to Amelia Maria until she finally found peace and died. My impression was that he was constantly trying to make up for what he did."

"So this tainted your relationship all these years?" asked Thóra.

"There was no relationship. I found it hard to look at him, let alone be in his company. I simply avoided my son whenever I could. His father did the same, really. Harald found it difficult to take at first, he didn't understand why his mother didn't want him around any longer. Then he grew accustomed to it." She had stopped weeping and her face had hardened. "Of course I should have forgiven himbut I just couldn't. Perhaps I should have seen a psychiatrist myself, it might all have been different then. Harald would have been something other than what he became."

"Wasn't he a good boy?" Thóra asked, remembering what his surviving sister had said. "Elisa seems to remember him as a good person."

"He was the inquisitive type," the woman said. "Let's put it that way. He was constantly trying to earn his father's affectionwhich he never won. He soon gave up on me. What saved him was how kind his grandfather was to him. But when he died, Harald lost his bearings. He was a student in Berlin and soon began using drugs and playing at cheating death. One of his friends did die. That was how we found out."

"You didn't back down and try to repair your relationship?" Thóra asked, although she knew the answer in advance.

"No," said Amelia curtly. "Subsequently he developed this ghastly interest in black magic; his grandfather had got him into it. When Amelia Maria died he joined the army. We did nothing to stop him. It didn't turn out to be the best decisionI won't go into details, but he was sent home after less than a year. He had plenty of money which he had inherited from his grandfather and we didn't see much of him. But he did contact us when he decided to come here; he phoned to let us know."

Thóra looked at the woman thoughtfully. "If you're asking me to understand, I can't. But I do sympathize. I don't know how I would have reacted myselfperhaps exactly the same. But I hope not."

"I so wish I had been the type of person who could rebuild my relationship with Harald. Now it's too late and I have to come to terms with it."

Thóra found this ironic. Perhaps the revenge curse had worked after all? "Don't think that I want to make your suffering any worse, but I must point out that it has affected other people too. Now, for example, a young man is in prison, a medical student who was a friend of Harald's. He won't have a chance of being reaccepted by society after making friends with your son."

Amelia looked out of the window. "What will happen to him?"

Thóra shrugged. "He'll probably be convicted of failing to report a dead body and mutilating a corpse, and he'll do some time in prison. Presumably they won't let him back into the faculty of medicine at the university. I have a hunch that he'll take the rap to spare his other friends from being implicatedbut you never can tell. In fact I think Harald mentioned him in his will. That's some compensation."

"Did he prove to be a good friend to Harald, in your opinion?" the other woman asked, looking at Thóra.

"Yes, I think so. At least, he kept his promise to Haraldhowever repellent and stupid it may have been. Your son didn't exactly choose his friends on the basis of how normal they were."

"I'll take care of him," whispered Amelia. "That's the least I can do. He can enroll in medicine abroad. We would have no problems arranging that, even if he does get sentenced for what he did." She stretched out her fingers and then clenched her fists as if feeling a twinge of arthritis. "It would make me feel better to be able to do something. It would ease my suffering a little."

"Matthew can arrange that, if the offer's sincere." Thóra got ready to stand up. "I suppose there's nothing else," she said, sincerely hoping that there wasn't. She had had enough.

Amelia took her handbag from the back of the chair and put it over her shoulder. She stood up and buttoned her coat, then shook Thora's hand. "Thank you," she said, and seemed to mean it. "Send us the billit will be paid the moment it arrives." They exchanged farewells and Thóra walked rapidly toward the exit. She could not wait to get out into the fresh air.

On her way she walked past the hall where the map of Iceland was on display. She stopped and watched Matthew and Elisa strolling around the horizontal relief map. When he saw her out of the corner of his eye, Matthew looked up, took Elisa lightly by the arm and pointed at Thóra. They exchanged a few words and Matthew hurried up the steps to her.

"How did it go?" he asked as they walked past the foyer window with the poem etched into the glass.

"Finebadly," replied Thóra. "I honestly don't know."

"You owe me lunch," he said, opening the door for her. "But since I'm a fair person and not at all hungry I'm quite prepared to accept it in kind."

"How do you mean?" Thóra asked, although she was well aware of the scenario that was unfolding.

They walked off in the direction of Hótel Borg.

* * *

Thóra slipped out of the bed two hours later and got dressed. Matthew did not stir. She found paper and a pen on the desk, wrote a brief note to him and placed it on the bedside table.

She left the room without waking him, hurried out to the street and walked toward Skólavördustígur to fetch the car marked "Bibbi's Garage." She deserved the rest of the day off.

Her phone rang in her coat pocket and she answered it.

"Hello, Mom," her son said cheerfully.

"Hello, darling," replied Thóra. "How are you doing? Are you back home?"

"Yes, I'm here with Sigga," he answered awkwardly. "We're discussing names, like you told me to. Is Pepsi a girl's name or a boy's name?"

About the Author

Yrsa Sigurdardóttir
is an award-winning author of five children's novels who is also a leading Icelandic civil engineer directing one of the largest hydro construction projects in European unusual assignment for an Icelandic woman. When she is not working on-site (about six months of every year), she lives with her family in Reykjavík. Her second novel featuring Thóra Gudmundsdóttir,
My Soul to Take
, will be published next year. To learn more about her, please visit www.verold.is/yrsa.asp.

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Credits

Jacket design by Ervin Serrano

Jacket photograph Š by Antony Nagelmann/Getty Images

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

LAST RITUALS. Copyright Š 2007 by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Palm Reader September 2007 ISBN 978-0-06-153865-0

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