Silence of the Grave (10 page)

The monster in Simon's dreams was called Grímur. It was never his father or Dad, just Grímur.

Simon was awake when Grímur tracked them down in the fish factory dormitory in Siglufjördur, and heard when he whispered to their mother how he was going to take Mikkelína up to the mountain and kill her. He saw his mother's terror, and he saw when she suddenly seemed to lose all control, slammed herself against the bed head and knocked herself out. Grímur slowed down then. He saw when Grímur brought her round by repeatedly slapping her face. The boy could smell Grímur's acrid stench and he buried his face in the mattress, so afraid that he asked Jesus to take him up to heaven, there and then.

He did not hear any more of what Grímur whispered to her. Just her whimpering. Repressed, like the sound of a wounded animal, and mingling with Grímur's curses. Through a crack in his eyes he saw Mikkelína staring through the darkness in indescribable terror.

Simon had stopped praying to his God and stopped talking to his "good brother Jesus", even though his mother said never to lose faith in him. Although convinced otherwise, Simon had stopped talking to his mother about it because he could tell from her expression that what he said displeased her. He knew that no one, least of all God, would help his mother to overcome Grímur. For all he had been told, God was the omnipotent and omniscient creator of heaven and earth, God had created Grímur like everyone else, God kept the monster alive and God made it attack his mother, drag her across the kitchen floor by the hair and spit on her. And sometimes Grímur attacked Mikkelína, "that fucking moron", as he called her, beating her and mocking her, and sometimes he attacked Simon and kicked him or punched him, one time with such force that the boy lost one of his upper teeth and spat blood.

"My good brother Jesus, the friend of every child . . ."

Grímur was wrong about Mikkelína being retarded. Simon had a feeling that she was more intelligent than the rest of them put together. But she never said a word. He was certain she could talk but did not want to. Certain she had chosen silence, from the way she was just as scared of Grímur as the others were, perhaps more so because Grímur sometimes talked about how they ought to throw her on the rubbish dump with that pushchair contraption of hers, she was useless anyway and he was fed up with watching her eat his food without doing anything around the house except be a burden. He said she made them a laughing stock, the whole family and him too, because she was a moron.

Grímur made sure that Mikkelína could hear when he talked like this, and he laughed at her mother's feeble attempts to curtail the abuse. Mikkelína didn't mind him ranting at her and calling her names, but she didn't want her mother to suffer for her sake. Simon could tell that when he looked at her. Mikkelína's relationship with him had always been close, much closer than with little Tómas, who was more of a puzzle, more of a loner.

Their mother knew that Mikkelína was not retarded. She did regular exercises with her, but only when Grímur was not there to see it. Helped her to limber up her legs. Lifted her withered arm, which was twisted inwards and stiff, and rubbed her paralysed side with an ointment that she made from wild herbs from the hill. She even thought that Mikkelína would be able to walk one day. She put her arm around her and tottered with her back and forth across the floor, urging her on and encouraging her.

She always spoke to Mikkelína like any other normal, healthy child, and told Simon and Tómas to do the same. She included her in everything they did together when Grímur was not at home. The mother and daughter understood each other. And her brothers understood her too. Every movement, every expression on her face. Words were superfluous, even if Mikkelína knew the words but never used them. Her mother had taught her to read and the one thing she enjoyed more than being carried out to lie in the sun was reading, or being read to.

And then one day the words started to come out, the summer after the world went to war and the British army set up camp on the hill. When Simon was carrying Mikkelína back indoors out of the sun. She had been exceptionally lively during the day, wiggling her ears and opening her mouth and poking out her tongue. Simon was about to put her back on the divan in the kitchen, because evening was falling and the weather was cooling, when Mikkelína suddenly made a noise that startled her mother into dropping a plate into the washing-up bowl, where it broke. Forgetting for an instant the terror that would usually fill her after such clumsiness, she spun round and stared at Mikkelína.

"EMAAEMAAA," Mikkelína repeated.

"Mikkelína!" their mother gasped.

"EMAAEMAAA," Mikkelína shouted, rolling her head around in wild rejoicing at her achievement.

Their mother walked slowly towards her as if unable to believe her own ears, then looked, open mouthed, at her daughter, and Simon thought he could see tears filling her eyes.

"Maammmmaa," Mikkelína said, and her mother took her out of Símon's arms and laid her slowly and gently onto her bed, stroking her head. Símon had never seen their mother cry before. No matter what Grímur did to her, she never cried. She shrieked in pain, called for help, pleaded with him to stop or otherwise suffered his blows in silence, but Símon had never seen her cry. Thinking that she must be upset, he put his arm around her, but she told him not to worry. This was the best thing that could ever have happened in her life. He could tell that she was crying not only about Mikkelína's condition, but about her achievement as well, which had made her happier than she had ever before allowed herself to feel.

That was two years ago, and Mikkelína had steadily added to her vocabulary since then and could now say whole sentences, her face like a beetroot from the strain, poking out her tongue and dangling her head back and forth in such furious spasms from the effort that they thought it would drop off her withered body. Grímur did not know that she could talk. Mikkelína refused to say anything within his hearing and their mother concealed it from him, because she never tried to draw his attention to the girl, not even such triumphs. They pretended that nothing had happened or changed. A few times Simon heard his mother very guardedly mention to Grímur whether they ought to try to find help for Mikkelína. That she could become more mobile and stronger with age, and seemed to be able to learn. She could read and was learning to write with her good hand.

"She's a moron," Grímur said. "Don't ever think she's anything more than a moron. And stop talking to me about her."

So she stopped, because she obeyed Grímur's every word; the only help that Mikkelína ever received was from their mother, and what Simon and Tómas did for her by carrying her out into the sunshine and playing with her.

Símon avoided his father as far as possible, but from time to time he was forced to go out with him. When Simon grew up he proved more useful to Grímur, who took him to Reykjavik and made him carry provisions back to the hill. The trip to town took two hours, down to Grafarvogur, crossing the bridge over Ellidaár and skirting the Sund and Laugarnes districts. Sometimes they took the route up the slope to Háaleiti and across Sogamýri. Símon kept four or five of his little steps behind Grímur, who never spoke to him or paid him any attention until he loaded him with supplies and ordered him to carry them home. The return journey could take three or four hours, depending upon how much Simon had to carry. Sometimes Grímur would stay in town and not return to the hill for days.

When that happened, a certain joy reigned in the household.

On his trips to Reykjavik, Simon discovered an aspect of Grímur that he took a while to assimilate and never wholly understood. At home, Grímur was surly and violent. Hated being spoken to. Foul-mouthed if he did speak, and coarse in the way he belittled his children and their mother; he made them serve his every need and woe betide any shirker. But in dealing with everyone else, the monster seemed to shed its skin and become almost human. On Simon's first trips to town he expected Grímur to act the way he always behaved at home, snarling abuse or swinging punches. He feared this, but it never happened. On the contrary. All of a sudden Grímur wanted to please everyone. He chattered away merrily to the merchant and bowed and scraped to people who entered the shop. He addressed them formally, even smiled. Shook their hands. Sometimes when Grímur bumped into people he knew he would break into guffaws – not the strange, dry and raucous laugh that he occasionally let out when he was vilifying his wife. When people pointed to Símon, Grímur put his hand on the boy's head and said yes, he was his son, grown so big. Simon ducked at first as if expecting a blow, and Grímur joked about it.

It took Simon a long time to grasp this incomprehensible duplicity on Grímur's part. His father's new countenance was unrecognisable. He could not understand how Grímur could be one person at home and a completely different man the moment he left the house. Simon could not fathom how he could be sycophantic and subservient and bow politely, when at home he ruled as the ultimate dispenser of life and death. When Simon discussed this with his mother she shook her head wearily and told him, as always, to be wary of Grímur. Be wary of provoking him. No matter whether it was Simon, Tómas or Mikkelína who sparked him off, or whether it was something that had happened when Grímur was away and which threw him into a rage, he almost invariably attacked their mother.

Months would sometimes pass between assaults, even a whole year, but they never stopped altogether and were sometimes quite frequent. A matter of weeks. The intensity of his fury varied. Sometimes a single punch out of the blue, sometimes he would fly into an uncontrollable rage, knock their mother to the ground and kick her mercilessly.

And it was not only physical violence that weighed down upon the family and home. The language he used was like a lash across the face. Denigrating remarks about Mikkelína, that crippled moron. The sarcastic tirade that Tómas suffered for not being able to stop wetting the bed at night. When Simon acted like a lazy bastard. And all that their mother was forced to hear and they tried to close their ears to.

Grímur didn't care if his children saw him beating up their mother or humiliating her with words that stabbed like stilettos.

The rest of the time, he paid them virtually no attention. Normally acted as though they did not exist. Very occasionally he played cards with the boys and even allowed Tómas to win. Sometimes, on Sundays, they all walked to Reykjavik and he would buy sweets for the boys. Very seldom Mikkelína was allowed to go with them and Grímur arranged a ride in the coal lorry so they did not need to carry her down from the hill. On these trips – which were few and far between – Simon felt his father was almost human. Almost like a father.

On the rare occasions when Simon saw his father as something other than a tyrant, he was mysterious and unfathomable. He sat at the kitchen table once, drinking coffee and watching Tómas playing on the floor, and he stroked the surface of the table with the flat of his hand and asked Simon, who was about to sneak out through the kitchen, to bring him another cup. And while Simon poured the coffee for him, he said:

"It makes me furious thinking about it."

Simon stopped, holding the coffee jug in both hands, and stood still beside him.

"Makes me furious," he said, still stroking the surface of the table.

Simon backed slowly away and put the jug down on the stove plate.

Looking at Tómas playing on the floor, Grímur said: "It makes me furious to think I couldn't have been much older than him."

Simon had never imagined his father as ever being any younger than he was then, or that he had ever been different. Now, suddenly, he became a child like Tómas, and a completely new side to his father's character was revealed.

"You and Tómas are friends, aren't you?"

Simon nodded.

"Aren't you?" he repeated, and Simon said yes.

His father went on stroking the table.

"We were friends too."

Then he fell silent.

"That woman," Grímur said eventually. "I was sent there. The same age as Tómas. Spent years there."

He fell silent again.

"And her husband."

He stopped rubbing the table with his hand and clenched his fist.

"That fucking bastard. That bloody fucking bastard."

Simon slowly retreated. Then his father seemed to regain his calm.

"I don't understand it myself," he said. "And I can't control it."

He finished his coffee, stood up, went into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. On his way, he picked up Tómas from the floor and took him with him.

Simon sensed a change in his mother as the years went by and as he grew up, matured and acquired a sense of responsibility. It was not as fast a change as when Grímur was suddenly transformed and became almost human; on the contrary, his mother changed gradually and subtly, over a long period, many years, and he realised the meaning behind it, with a sensitivity denied to most. He had a growing sense that this change in her was dangerous, no less dangerous than Grímur, and that inexplicably it would be his responsibility to intervene before it was too late. Mikkelína was too weak and Tómas was too small. He alone could help her.