The Ice Lands

  THE ICE LANDS

  STEINAR BRAGI

  Translated by Lorenza Garcia

  MACMILLAN

  Contents

  THE DESERT

  1 ICELANDIC FLORA

  2 ON ALL FOURS

  3 THE CARCASS

  4 THE BABY RAM

  5 THE GARDEN

  6 AMONG THE GRAINS

  7 THE PICTURE OF THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE

  8 SKIMMI STOKKUR’S CROWN

  9 ‘DON’T FEED THE TROLLS’

  10 THE FENCE

  11

  12 THE VILLAGE

  IT HAS NO SOUL

  13 ICELANDIC JOURNALISM

  14

  15 THE MAN WITH FEELERS GROWING OUT OF HIS HEAD

  16 ‘DID YOU THINK YOU’D GOT AWAY?’

  17

  18 THE MINOTAUR

  19 MARY POPPINS

  20 THE KITCHEN DOOR

  21 THE OLD MAN DIGS

  22 THE CHILD

  23

  24 NO FUR

  THE HOUSE

  25 IN COMPETITION

  26 ‘ANYONE ELSE?’

  27

  28 DEVELOPMENTS

  29 WHAT APPEARS

  30 ‘IS MY FACE GRUBBY?’

  31 BEAUTY

  32 SACCADES

  33

  34 WHO STUFFED A SHEEP UP THE CHIMNEY?

  35 DIMENSIONS IN THIS WORLD

  NATURE

  36

  TRANSLATOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

  THE DESERT

  1

  ICELANDIC FLORA

  Hrafn

  Over the highlands all was still. The shadows on the horizon darkened, growing sharper against the sky, before dissolving into the night.

  All four of them were silent. The only sound was a low murmur coming from the radio. On the back seat, Vigdís was reading a book, while Anna, awake after a brief nap, had just opened a beer. Between them lay Trigger, Anna’s Icelandic sheepdog, which she had acquired a few months before.

  ‘Let’s play I Spy,’ said Anna, breaking the silence. ‘I think of a thing, inside or outside the jeep, on the road or the sands . . .’

  ‘Yeah, I’d forgotten that one,’ Egill broke in, his voice oozing a childlike eagerness after three beers and a dozen swigs from his hip flask.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Hrafn, ignoring Egill. He glanced at Anna in the rear-view mirror, her dark silhouette and the faint glimmer of her eyes. ‘What do you mean by “thing”? Would it count if I thought of your boyfriend’s integrity, or of blood?’

  ‘Sicko,’ replied Anna mockingly.

  Egill gazed out of the passenger window, and it occurred to Hrafn that he might be looking in the wing mirror, at Vigdís, who was sitting behind him.

  ‘No, blood doesn’t count. Only things you can see around you are allowed.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Vigdís, closing the book she had been immersed in: Icelandic Flora. Anna explained the rules of the game to her and announced that she would start.

  ‘Go for it!’ said Egill, and the game commenced.

  Hrafn kept his eyes on the road, which was becoming increasingly difficult to see as darkness set in. The summer evenings were no longer as light, and the sky grew dim for a few hours now at night. Winter was starting to impinge on his thoughts, rising like a huge wave on the horizon, fuelling the anxiety he had been experiencing in recent days. Since noon, he had felt an overwhelming urge to drive back to town as fast as he could.

  ‘The driver’s eyes?’ asked Vigdís, as the jeep rolled between the marker posts that glowed in the dark.

  Hrafn pressed the button to open his window, poked his head out and saw that the sky was filled with unusually low, thick clouds. But then they were in the highlands.

  ‘Do you think you’ll find the answer up in the clouds?’ Anna’s voice rang out behind him, laughing.

  ‘You’ve got to help me here, guys,’ said Vigdís. ‘I’ve run out of ideas.’

  ‘Marker posts,’ Hrafn suggested, closing the window again. Anna said no. Arctic winter, he thought. Was that a thing? They could see signs of it all around them, at any rate. Rocks cleaved apart by ice, no greenery, no colours, no flora. Only sand and gravel in varying shades of black and grey.

  Soon the clouds sank to the ground, and they drove straight into them. The jeep’s headlights cut two cones in the fog, which turned white but remained dark grey to the sides across the black sands. Visibility was only ten or twenty metres, and Hrafn’s eyes began to smart from staring into the fog. He wouldn’t have minded a rest from driving, but Egill was too drunk to take the wheel, and as for the girls, he scarcely trusted them in town let alone out there on the sands.

  He stopped to take a piss outside and wake himself up, and stared into the thickening fog as its cold moistness settled on his face. None of them had any experience of travelling in the mountains, or the remotest idea what to do if the jeep broke down. Vigdís had pointed that out when they were planning the trip, but he and Egill had reassured her with some nonsense they couldn’t deliver on, and had installed a satnav, which went on the blink soon after they left Askja, although they couldn’t be sure as none of them really knew how it worked.

  Hrafn imagined how long a person might survive out there on the sands. A few days in summer, providing they had access to water and shelter from the wind, but in winter at most a few hours, or even minutes. The fear of being lost would increase blood flow to the skin, cooling the body; they would become disoriented, the tension would be too much for their system and they would basically die of fright.

  He climbed back into the driver’s seat and set off again. The marker posts shone blankly through the fog like deep-sea fish eyes. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Egill light a cigarette then thrust the hip flask into his face yet again, and heard him laugh. They were still absorbed in their game, and it struck him how absurd this was, the four of them gliding across the sands north of Vatnajökull, through darkness and fog, as if nothing were more natural; swigging Mexican beer, dressed in summer clothes in the heat they controlled by turning a knob on the dashboard, to the sound of music; borne along, motionless, across the landscape, oblivious to the crunch and rasp of tyres rolling over gravel, without a care. Not about the trip at any rate, but rather about something completely different: their relationships, what someone said or did to them once, yesterday or twenty years ago, or about their bank balance, as they watched the landscape go by outside . . .

  Emerging from his reverie, Hrafn tried to focus on the road, but sensed instantly that something had changed. He drove on for a few minutes, steering in one direction then the other, before slowing down and finally coming to a halt.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Egill.

  ‘Can you lot see any marker posts?’

  Hrafn tried to remember when he last saw one, but couldn’t. For a while now, they had started to become more spaced out as the fog thickened.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Egill, sitting up in his seat and staring through the window. Anna appeared between the front seats and asked if they were lost.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind if we were,’ she added. ‘Lost in the fog, like in an adventure story.’

  ‘How long is it since we saw a post?’ Hrafn asked, looking at Vigdís in the rear-view mirror. She raised an eyebrow.

  ‘No idea,’ she said. ‘I was busy playing the game.’

  Hrafn gazed ahead into the lights at the pale wisps of fog, stepped on the accelerator and moved off again slowly.

  ‘How did you manage to lose the road?’ asked Egill.

  ‘I’m sure we’ll find it again,’ said Anna, leaning through the seats.

  The smell of alcohol on her breath was pungent, overpowering. They couldn’t have left the road that long ago. Hrafn had the vague impression that he had turned a bit too far to the left, which meant the road had to be on their right.

  He swung the wheel to the right and tried to hold his course. Vigdís asked what he was doing and he explained.

  ‘Then we’ll just have to hope the road doesn’t also bend to the right,’ she said, and Anna giggled.

  Hrafn kept driving until he was sure he had gone too far for the road to be on their right. What’s more, he had doubtless turned the wheel so sharply that they had gone round in a circle, albeit a smallish one – possibly several. The others were too drunk to notice, or they didn’t care.

  He stopped the car again, switching off the radio so that he could concentrate better, and reached for the compass in the glove compartment.

  ‘That’s that, then,’ drawled Egill. ‘No mercy.’

  Hrafn placed the compass in his lap and set off towards the east.

  ‘Why are you doing that?’ asked Anna.

  ‘So that we don’t drive round in circles,’ he said, looking alternately at the compass and at the sands ahead of them.

  ‘But are we driving in the right direction?’ asked Vigdís.

  ‘The road we were on was north–south,’ he said. ‘I know we didn’t veer off to the east. That means we are to the west of the road, and we’re heading east to find it again. Do you agree?’

  Vigdís raised her eyebrows again, and Hrafn had the impression that she was irritated.

  ‘It sounds logical,’ she said. ‘Unless of course we drive back across the road between two marker posts without realizing it . . .’

  ‘Then we’d better keep our eyes peeled, hadn’t we? You two look to the right and we’ll look the other way.’

  His old despair was starting to resurface, his claustro
phobia. He wound his window down and saw the fog continuing to thicken, as the stench of alcohol congealed . . .

  ‘How did you manage to lose the fucking road?’

  Aware of Egill whingeing beside him, Hrafn decided he was fed up with ignoring him.

  ‘Why did you lose it? Aren’t you sitting next to me staring out of the same fucking window?’

  ‘Yeah, but I’m not driving, am I?’

  ‘Now, boys,’ said Vigdís, touching Hrafn’s shoulder, ‘let’s calm down, take a deep breath or something. It’ll all work out, and sooner than we think.’

  They fell silent. The dog was sitting up on its haunches, and occasionally gave a low whimper as the hiss of sand beneath the tyres reached them through the open window. Hrafn scanned the darkness on his side, but saw nothing. After driving east for ten minutes, he no longer knew what to do for the best. Remembering his first instinct, it occurred to him that he hadn’t driven far enough west, and he glanced down at the compass to make sure they were heading in the right direction. Surely if they stayed on course they would end up finding the road again.

  ‘Are there any ravines or crevasses around here?’ said Anna. ‘Shouldn’t you put your seat belt on, Egill?

  ‘Or quicksand,’ said Vigdís.

  ‘Ugh. You mean the ground might swallow us up?’

  ‘Yes. They dug up some horses around here dating back to the Middle Ages, perfectly preserved. And men too.’

  ‘A jeep would be a great haul. With four passengers, a dog, mobile phones, text messages and fillings. A specimen of twenty-first-century life preserved for later generations.’ They laughed.

  There was no sign of the marker posts or the road. Rather than turn round and risk being questioned about whether he was doing the right thing, Hrafn decided to keep going east; they should probably stop and wait for a couple of hours until it got light, or until the fog lifted. On the other hand, that would be incredibly stupid if the road was only a few metres away. He drove on. He didn’t want to give up too soon, or perhaps he had he lost all sense of time, was caught up in his thoughts – either that or he didn’t care. Perhaps none of them did, he reflected, as they stared silently into the fog, which was grey at the edges and illuminated in the centre, giving Hrafn the impression that he was driving through a shiny white opening, an ever-deepening tunnel.

  At some point he glimpsed a faint, golden light through the fog. Almost instinctively, he turned towards it, gripping the wheel tightly. The darkness began to swirl about them, and he murmured to himself, squinting at the light, which disappeared suddenly as something came hurtling out of the fog and crashed into the jeep.

  2

  ON ALL FOURS

  Hrafn

  The windscreen shattered, cracks spreading across its surface, as a white bubble expanded over the world, swallowing up his head. Inside the bubble were luminous fish – whole banks of tiny fish with piercing red eyes fixed on him. Ejected from the bubble, Hrafn saw Egill hit the passenger window; a red trickle ran down his cheek as he flew out of his seat, a grin on his face.

  Now there is blood, Hrafn thought as the car listed to one side, and he felt the shock absorbers judder before everything went quiet. He took a deep breath, blinked and was aware of a pain in his chest where the seat belt was cutting into him. The air bubble had vanished. The jeep was filled with a grey vapour that tasted of petrol, and white specks floated in the air. Raising his hands to his face, he felt for any shards of glass, and found none. Then he undid his seat belt and all at once found himself outside the car, the fresh air flowing into his lungs.

  The first thing he did was reach into the back seat and help Vigdís out. She assured him she was all right. Anna was screaming out Egill’s name as he lay, now slumped over the driver’s seat. The window on his side was also broken.

  Beyond the car, the darkness had congealed, like a great rock stretching up to the sky, looming over them, sinister and silent. Hrafn wondered when the sun would come up, whether it would manage to scale this black colossus, as he dragged Egill from the jeep and laid him out flat on the sand. The dog ran yelping in circles around them.

  Vigdís knelt beside Egill and shouted at Hrafn to fetch the first-aid kit from the boot. A light went on in the upper part of the rock, one light then two.

  ‘He’s only been knocked out,’ he heard Vigdís say as he passed her a bottle of surgical spirit. Anna cradled Egill’s head while Vigdís wound a piece of gauze around it and staunched the blood.

  The headlights were smashed and had gone out. The grey vapour inside the car had dissolved and was now pouring out from under the crumpled bonnet. Hrafn crouched down beside the front tyre that wasn’t plunged into darkness, and heard a faint, steady hiss, as though an animal had crawled beneath the car to hide.

  The fog in his head began to clear, and he glimpsed the outline of a house, a black house on the black sands, into which they had driven. He heard the sound of soft, unsteady footsteps and saw a beam of light dart across the sand. The dog barked. Someone appeared from behind the corner of the house and shone a torch at them.

  ‘Who’s there?’ a woman’s voice enquired out of the darkness.

  Vigdís replied, saying they needed help. The beam alighted on Egill’s bloody head, and then a second torch appeared out of the darkness. The woman’s voice gave a groan, and Hrafn could make out her shape against the light – hunched back, wispy hair – and behind her a scrawny old man, smiling the way Egill had when he hit the window.

  ‘Into the house,’ a voice said.

  ‘Into the house,’ the crone repeated and told them to hurry, swinging her torch and scolding the old man. Anna was sobbing. Hrafn picked Egill up under the arms while Vigdís held his ankles. Between them they carried him round the corner, up a steep flight of stone steps and into the house.

  The old woman beckoned them into the front room, where they laid Egill out on the floor. He started to come round, mumbling incoherently and smiling with his eyes closed. Anna called out his name.

  Hrafn felt Vigdís loom close to his face, almost as if the world had become two-dimensional, and she asked him if he was all right.

  ‘I think so, a bit dazed,’ he said, and they clutched hold of one another. Over Vigdís’s shoulder he could see the old woman tottering around what looked like a kitchen.

  ‘How about you?’

  Vigdís told him that she was fine as far as she knew, disentangled herself from his arms and said she was going out to the car to fetch the first-aid kit and the whisky to perk Egill up.

  Soon afterwards, there was a commotion, and Hrafn went through to the hallway where he found Vigdís arguing with the old woman, who was standing in front of the door, barring her way.

  ‘I need to get some things from the car,’ said Vigdís.

  ‘Are you locking us in?’ asked Hrafn. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  The old woman didn’t reply. She shook her head and gazed at them with wide-open, pleading eyes.

  ‘Let’s keep calm,’ said Vigdís, clasping Hrafn’s hand. ‘I understand that you and your husband are upset. We drive into your house in the middle of the night, make an almighty din and scare you half to death . . .’

  ‘Will you open this door!’ said Hrafn, sounding to himself as if he were on the verge of laughter. A strange atmosphere of hostility hung in the house; where it came from, or why, he didn’t know.

  ‘We’re all perfectly calm,’ said Vigdís, and Hrafn was astonished to see that she was looking at him not at the old woman.

  Then he found himself back in the front room. Anna was leaning over Egill, speaking to him in hushed tones and gazing down at him like a lovesick girl . . . Sick, sick people, thought Hrafn. Somewhere in the house he heard the sound of hammering.

  Vigdís appeared in the front room, dragging the dog behind her; it clearly wanted to go back outside. She passed Anna a plastic bag containing a blanket and a bottle of whisky. Anna spread the blanket over Egill, who had opened his eyes, and poured some whisky into the lid, which she placed to his lips.

  Hrafn felt the old craving wash over him, and heard Egill cry out, pointing a finger at him and yelling angrily:

  ‘You did this on purpose! But you forgot the air balloon!’

  He carried on babbling – drivel to which Hrafn turned a deaf ear. Anna leaned across Egill, preventing him and Hrafn from looking each other in the eye.