The Tricking of Freya (40 page)

"That was Birdie's notoriety, Freya, not yours. Go see Iceland with your
own eyes.

"Maybe." I felt a glimmer of temptation. Then again, I was on my fourth
glass of wine. Stefan had had quite a few himself. Maybe I could loosen
that stiff upper lip of his yet. "How did you and Birdie meet?"

"In high school, in Winnipeg. She and your mother and grandmother
moved there after Olafur died."

"That's when they stayed with Vera Gudmundsson's family."

"Exactly. Birdie was a vision, even then, in bobby socks and saddle
shoes."

"Were you in love with her?"

For a moment I thought he wasn't going to answer. "I suppose. At least
for the first few years. Completely unrequited. I sent her love poems and
she returned them to me marked up in red. `How cliche!' she wrote. But I
stuck with her. She was the most exciting thing around. A rare bit of Manitoba glamour."

"Did you want to marry her?"

"For a time. But eventually even a loyal dog like me gets kicked once too
often. We were more like siblings than anything. Your mother had Vera, and
Birdie had me. And then I went off to the war, and when I got back three
years later, Birdie was wilder than ever. Having affairs with married men.
Drinking and spending and shocking the entire West End. I didn't want her
anymore after that. Not as a wife. But I stuck by her through the years.
Doggedly."

"And you never met anyone else?"

"I never did."

"Birdie used to say you were like those old bachelor farmers."

"Except without the farm." He stood up and began clearing the table.

After dinner Stefan took me to his study to show me his work in progress.
"The nearly completed New Iceland Saga, all eight hundred-some pages of it. A comprehensive history of the original New Iceland settlement, family
by family. It's actually based on the structure of Landnainabok, the Icelandic book of settlements written in the twelfth century that accounts for
all the original settlers of Iceland. The important ones, anyway."

"Slaves didn't count?"

"Exactly. But mine's more democratic. Everyone's included here. If they
took a plot of land in the 1870s, they're in the book. There's also a couple of
hundred pages of background material, life in Iceland history, economics, climate, folklore, living conditions followed by a complete history of
the New Iceland colony. I'm trying to include as much original source material as possible. I'm hoping to have the book ready for next year's Islendingadagurinn and the opening of the new museum." He started flipping
through the typewritten pages, the photographs and charts taped in place.

"You know, Stefan, it's practically as long as Birdie's Word Meadow. I
think that was nearly a thousand pages. Has it ever turned up?"

He shook his head. "She must have burned it, before she ... Or dumped
it in the lake. Who knows what? All her writing, her letters and journals, her
poems, everything. Gone. A damnable waste, if you ask me. Anyway, I've got
a photograph of Birdie here that I thought you might like to see."

The photograph was of Birdie and a man standing in front of a statue.
"The unveiling of Olafur's monument in Reykjavik," Stefan explained.
"There's Birdie. That must have been 1964, the centennial celebration of
Olafur's birth."

"Who's the man?"

"Ulfur Johansson. He's-"

"I know who he is," I interrupted. I studied the photo closely. Strange to
see this younger Ulfur, with his shock of dark hair. So rnyndarlegur, Birdie
had said. Before he turned into a Wolf and came after her. In this photo
there was no sign of discord. In fact, she seemed to be looking into Ulfur's
eyes. Gazing? "What if Birdie fell in love on that trip, and got pregnant?"

"With Ulfur? He was married already, I believe."

"Did that ever stop Birdie before?"

"No. But really, Freya, I hardly think Birdie would have had time to fall
in love. The Icelanders kept her very busy, giving lectures about her father,
touring her around the island. It was a lot of pressure on her, too much. After she got back she just ... collapsed. Into a deep depression. She was
convinced she'd failed her father somehow. That's when she tried to kill
herself. Nearly succeeded."

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I said. She swallowed a whole bottle of pills, who knows
what. Then lay down in the bathtub. I think she thought she would drown.
But Sigga came home unexpectedly and found her. A close call. She was
committed at Selkirk the entire next year."

"I never heard about that."

"No, I don't suppose you would have."

"But ... why didn't anyone tell me?" I was angry suddenly.

"You weren't even born yet."

"I know that. I mean later."

"When? When you were a child, you should have been told such a
thing?" Stefan too was sounding angry, his voice still quiet, but harsh.

"No, I don't mean that!" I didn't know what I meant. "I mean ... after
Birdie died. Someone could have told me then."

"Why on earth-?"

"So I wouldn't have blamed myself. That's why on earth!" I was nearly
shouting. The louder I got the quieter Stefan became. It must have driven
Birdie crazy.

"Blamed yourself?" He was whispering. "But it wasn't your fault. Surely
you knew that."

"I knew she killed herself on my birthday. My fourteenth birthday. How
about that? Don't tell me that was coincidence, or that she didn't know
what day it was. She knew. She was punishing me.

"For what?"

"For turning her in, at Askja."

"You mean for rescuing her, saving her life?"

"Birdie didn't see it that way. She called me svikari. Traitor. It was the
last thing she ever said to me." I was crying. "She died hating me."

"No, Freya min." It was the first time Stefan had used that endearment
with me. It just made me cry harder. "Never think that. Birdie loved you,
you were a great joy to her. You did the right thing."

Oh no I didn't, I wanted to say. If I'd done the right thing I never would have stepped on that plane with Birdie in the first place. Stefan put an arm
around me, awkwardly, but I let him, even leaned my head against his
shoulder. I remembered the time so many years earlier, when Mama was in
the hospital and Stefan had comforted me on the couch at Oddi.

"Freya, I'm not sure it's helping, this idea you have that Birdie had a
child. Nothing can bring her back to us. Not even a long -lost child. Besides,
I just don't think it's true."

Maybe he was right. Maybe this child was simply a figment of my pathetic imagination. Maybe whoever said Ingihjorg's child was talking about
some other Ingibjorg. Maybe Sigga's dream was about exactly what it appeared to be about: lambs and eagles.

"Why don't I drive you home?"

"I want to see Birdie's things."

"Maybe another night would be better. When you're more ... composed."

"I'll compose myself." And I did. I went into the bathroom and blew my
nose and washed my face. Then I followed Stefan up a steep narrow staircase and into the attic.

High noon and a very low tide exposes more beach than seems decent, littered with flotsam, glinting tangles of shell-encrusted seaweed wrapped
like a second skin around knobby chunks of driftwood. I poke a soggy, halfdecayed gull wing with my sneaker. Then I spot it, bobbing close to shore.
Something red. I wade out to my knees, then thighs, but the closer I wade
the farther away from me the thing floats. When the water reaches my waist
there's nothing to do but start swimming after it: my old cherry red suitcase, merrily bobbing just out of reach, a cartoon version of itself, wily and
slick, darting below the surface so I have no choice but to follow it down
into the cold dark depth of the lake, where I skim along the slimy bottom
like an eyeless fish. Then I run out of air and shoot to the surface, gasping
and treading and longing for everything I've ever lost.

Sweat-slick I kicked off the covers, waking up zombie-rigid in my childhood bed at Oddi. I wasn't having it. I was not giving up. That had been a moment of weakness at Stefan's, deciding that Birdie's child was nothing but a
pathetic figment. True, my investigation so far had been a wash. Posing the question to Sigga had proven impossible, with Halldora flapping around
every moment of the day. And even if I could manage to get Sigga alone,
and get her to understand and then answer the question, could her information be trusted? Could I consider her a reliable source, she who had mistaken me for my dead mother? Stefan was useless too. No, not useless.
Stefan is one of the most useful people on the planet--a dear man, yes, I
know, Mama helping old ladies and teaching high school students and
setting up the new museum. But he was not useful in this matter. In this
matter he knew nothing, or claimed to. Nor had anything turned up among
Birdie's things in the attic. Like Stefan had said, all her writing was gone.
Mostly clothes and jewelry, things I wasn't interested in. And her old Underwood on a typewriter stand, along with three books. "That's how Sigga
found things," Stefan explained, "when Birdie ... died. The books and the
typewriter. So I put them back together up here."

A reconstructed suicide altar. I stayed only a minute before climbing
back down the narrow stairs. It was time to turn elsewhere. If Birdie had
had a child, her sister would have known. And if her sister knew, in all likelihood her sister's best friend would have known as well.

As much as I dreaded it, it was time to visit dear Vera in Winnipeg.

The next afternoon I borrowed Stefan's station wagon-an updated version
of his old Rambler-and drove Highway 9 to Winnipeg to visit Vera in her
house of knickknacks on Victor Street. It was just as I remembered it: outside, the formidable brick facade with the wrought-iron gate; inside, the figurines and china and silver all dusted and polished and gleaming in their
display cases.

Vera wanted to talk about my mother. Vera loved my mother like a sister, Vera missed my mother terribly after she married and left for the
States, and then when she passed away, well, tragic was the only word.
Tragic! Of course, Anna was never the same after that terrible fall. She became an old woman overnight. Her hair turned gray and she had to walk
with the cane just to keep her balance. How forgetful she became, a
shadow of herself.

As if I didn't know!

And on Vera went about my mother, and on and on. I let her, although
her every word pained me. I could not cut to the chase and ask the question
I had come there to ask. I had to be subtle, not risk offending Vera's sense
of propriety. The last thing Vera would want to discuss was Birdie. And so I
saved her for last.

Painful as it was, the truth is that I loved hearing about my mother. In
my life in New York no one knows my mother; they know only that I no longer have a mother. And if there is anyone left in this world who really
knows my mother, it is Vera.

"I remember so well when your mother's family came to live with us here
in Winnipeg, right after Olafur died. And oh, when they first arrived! What
a pair, fresh off one of those New Iceland farms. Birdie a wild thing, Anna
so shy she barely spoke. Despite the fact they'd been born in Canada those
two girls spoke English with thick Icelandic accents. Raised to speak only
Icelandic in the home! Can you imagine? My own father Dr. G. would not
allow such a thing. Not that we Gudmundssons were ashamed of being
Icelanders! What's to be ashamed of? But he wanted us to do well in this
new world. No child of his would suffer with the taint of an immigrant accent.

"Birdie was only twelve when they came to Winnipeg, life here was easy
enough for her, she loved the excitement of the West End. But your mother
was sixteen, she had to fit in at high school, it took her longer to adjust. She
was awkward and awfully shy. Other kids teased her. I was the one who protected her, tucked her under my wing, took her shopping at Eaton's, taught
her proper Canadian ways. But don't think our friendship was one-sided.
Oh no. Your mother was the dearest, sweetest friend I could have asked
for."

Here Vera opened the album she'd set out on the coffee table and began
showing me photographs. Anna and Vera in Winnipeg, standing outside the
old brick school. Vera and Anna singing in the choir at the First Icelandic
Lutheran Church, two doors down on Victor Street.

"Your mother had the voice of an angel, but she never showed off. That
was the difference between your mother and her sister. Birdie was a showoff as soon as she arrived in town. Had to be the cleverest, prettiest, wildest
girl in the West End. Anna was expected to look after her, but there was no
keeping up with Birdie. Soon after she arrived, she threw her farm shoes
into the sewer because she wanted a new pair this during the Depression,
mind you. City shoes, she insisted. Next thing we knew she was cutting
school and meeting boys and smoking cigarettes. So Sigga took a job teaching school in Gimli, and that's when she and Birdie moved into Oddi. Sigga
wanted to remove Birdie from what she called the city influences. Anna
stayed here with us. We both attended secretarial school-that's what bright young women did in those days-but a few years out of high school
your mother met your father. He was in town for an accountants' convention. He proposed, they got engaged, and six months later, Anna was gone.
Oh how I cried! I missed her like a sister, I tell you. Of course I wanted
only happiness for her. But I don't know how happy she ever was in Connecticut. The homesickness was terrible. And being unable to have a child
all those years. And then, finally, you came along. What a joy for your
mother! A miracle. I still have the letter-all her letters-when she wrote to
tell me the news. She was just over forty by then. It was a difficult pregnancy and birth, so Sigga took the train to Connecticut and stayed with
your mother the first couple of months after you were born. But Anna never
complained to me in her letters, about the pregnancy or the birth. She believed you were the best thing that ever happened to her."