The Tricking of Freya (43 page)

Of King Gylfi's homecoming little is told, but doubtless he received a
hero's welcome. Fanfare and feasts, speeches and toasts. And then the evenings one after another in the king's great hall, where he told and retold
what he'd learned from the three High Ones, and how he'd outsmarted
them in the end. And so in the way of all heroes returning from quests Gylfi shared his newfound knowledge with his spellbound tribe, knowledge that
circulated up and out and down through the generations until it became
the very cosmology of the Old Norse world. Important stuff, indeed.

And with what returned our questing Freya? The answer to one question: yes, Birdie had a child. What became of it nobody knows, is probably
impossible to find out, and no one but me seems to care. A partial answer,
an unusable answer. And then, too, I'd obtained answers to questions I'd
never intended to ask. Birdie swaying in front of her bedroom window, each
typewriter key buried in its own neat piling of snow. Her life's work vanished. How everyone secretly took credit: Mama, Stefan, Sigga, me, each of
us simultaneously and solely shouldering the same and entire hunk of
blame. It was the most startling thing I'd discovered-next to you, Cousin.
It made a mockery of the burden I'd believed was mine alone, the sense I've
had ever since Birdie's death that at the heart of me there is something bad,
something criminal, a belief that has fused to my sense of self like a barnacle, tenacious and cementlike in its grip.

So, yes, like Gylfi I returned home with newfound knowledge, but at
first there was nothing to do with it. No one to tell. No fanfare, no feasts.
No elixir to share with the tribe. Until I began writing you this letter.

After I got started, I wrote to Stefan and asked him to ship me Birdie's
old Underwood typewriter. It seemed only fitting.

Oh, Clever Cousin, vanishing without a trace. No birth announcement, no
birth certificate. No evidence you were ever born. I returned home from
Gimli in late September, hired the detective in early October. Now it's December and I've received conclusively inconclusive news: The detective has
found nothing. I got a letter from him today, along with a bill for his services. Not that I regret hiring him. You're worth it. Even the idea of you is
worth it.

Don't worry, I'm not giving up. I'll develop new theories, avenues of investigation. A plan even. In the meantime there's nothing to do but keep
writing.

I've been reading up. When I can't write or sleep, I read through the
night. In Iceland in winter words take the place of light. I'm conducting evening-wakes of my own, with the three books that lay on Birdie's suicide altar. Stefan was kind enough to include them when he shipped her typewriter. I like to think she left them there for me, or maybe you. We'll never
know. Stefan says she wrote no note: at the end of her life Birdie was at a
loss for words.

I've just finished reading the first of the three. If you haven't read Egil's
Saga, Cousin, I recommend that you do. Not only because some believe it to
be the greatest saga ever written, precursor to the modern novel, a crowning
achievement of medieval literature. And not only because Birdie was one of
those believers. It's a question of influence. Birdie loved Egil's Saga. She
loved Egil himself, that cruel, charming, cunning, brilliant, impulsive, trollish
brute of a Viking warrior-poet. She claimed, in fact, to be directly descended
from him, and if personality is any indication, I wouldn't be surprised if this
were true.

What strikes me most is Egil's poetry, woven throughout the saga: Odinsent, bloodstained, tear-riddled, mead-laden, heartless and heartbroken,
magical, mundane. And life-saving-Egil nearly committed suicide once,
after the death of his sons, but composed himself back into life with his famous poem, "Lament for Lost Sons." My tongue is sluggish/for me to move,
begins Egil's lament. My poem's scales/ponderous to raise. Word by word, line
by line, Egil wrote his grief, his rage, his loss, and his ultimate resurrection.
(Of course, I shouldn't use the word write to describe Egil's process, since
he did not write. He did not know how. Christianity brought writing to Europe, and the Icelanders came late to Christianity. Alone on their rugged island, our stubborn heathen ancestors held out against God and pen. Viking
exploits, deeds of the gods, law, history-all were preserved in memory like
amber and passed through the generations as precious verbal jewels.)

Shall we write it together, Cousin, when we meet? Our own "Lament for
Lost Mothers"? Or have I already begun? It has not escaped me that I may
be attempting Egil's strategy myself, seeking to resurrect myself with words.

Today my darkroom buddy, Frank, informed me that Klaus is considering
firing me.

I have to admit, Cousin, the thought of being fired fills me with terror.
There aren't many places left in New York for a black-and-white printer to
work, and what else can I do? I never finished college; I don't know com puters; even my typing skills are limited to hunt and peck. I have nothing to
put on a resume but burns and dodges; maneuvers accurately in dark places;
discerns the finest shades of gray.

I should stop comparing myself with King Gylfi. Not because he's a king
and I'm a lowly worker bee. Actually, it's Gylfi who's the pawn. The scholar
Snorri Sturluson's pawn, to be exact. Yes, the same Snorri who was assassinated in his hot pool. For Snorri, Gylfi is nothing more than a literary device, the king's quest a clumsy platform upon which Snorri can expound to
his readers the whole of Norse cosmology, lest it fall into oblivion. As Birdie
had explained to me so long ago, when I was far too young to understand,
Snorri was worried that the young Christian writers of his time were forgetting the pagan myths from which the baroque kennings of skaldic poetry
arose, and without which the poetry is rendered meaningless. And so
Snorri-a Christian himself-penned The Prose Edda, a treatise on the art
of skaldic poetry that preserves the pagan myths for posterity. The Prose
Edda is the second of the three books on Birdie's altar. In it reside the tales
of gods and goddesses, dwarves and giants, that Birdie regaled me with as a
child. Freya and Freyr, Odin, Thor, Loki-they I re all here. The Tricking of
Gylfi too. Along with the hundred kennings for sword, plus kennings for sun
and stars and rivers and anything else to which a poet might want to refer.

And so King Gylfi's quest and trial were nothing more than a vehicle for
Snorri, a convenient format for explicating the old mythology. In the context
of Snorri's master vision, Gylfi is a cipher, a mere literary trick. And what
about you, you ask? Are you nothing more than a vehicle for my pent-up
musings? Good question, Cousin. In the world of the Old Norse, questioning acted as a form of ritual, and as Gylfi learned, posing the right questions
can save your life. I intend to keep asking them until I find you.

Do you remember, Cousin, the story Birdie told of how Olafur, Skald Nyja
Islands, was born in the East of Iceland with teeth cutting through his
gums? Skaldagemlur! his grandmother Ingibjorg the light-mother had cried
out. Destined to become a poet. And you? Were you born with teeth? Are
you a scribbler, a versifier? Do tell.

Ah, but you are silent as ever. I'm no closer to finding you than when I returned from Gimli at the end of September. It's February now, the day
after my birthday, Birdie's deathday. Excuse the morbidity. I am thirty years
old. Yes, I celebrated, or tried to. In other words, got drunk with my buddy,
Frank, from the darkroom. February is not a good month for me.

Saemundur appears in my dreams sometimes, with his black hair, his eyes
the odd green of a glacial river. Eye-moon-lure.

Did you know that the great god Odin hung himself in a ritual act of selfsacrifice, from the World Tree, no less? I remember Birdie ranting about it
on our fateful drive to Askja. You can read about it yourself in the ancient
poem "The Words of the High One," which is in the third of Birdie's books,
The Elder Edda, a compilation of the oldest pagan verses. Here speaks
Odin himself:

Wounded I hung on a wind-swept gallows
For nine long nights,
Pierced by a spear, pledged to Odin,
Offered, myself to myself.
The wisest know not from whence spring
The roots of that ancient rood.

They gave me no bread, they gave me no mead:
I looked down; with a loud cry
I took up runes; from that tree I fell.

Odin saved himself by interpreting the runes. But nothing saved Birdie.
She ran out of words and meaning. Sacrificed herself to herself.

You disgust me sometimes. Yes, you. Don't look so injured. You escaped,
whoever you are. I imagine you living a perfect life somewhere and a jealous
rage comes over me. It should have been you, not me, that Birdie took to
Iceland. Your birthday for her to desecrate.

And now I'm about to lose my job. All because of you. I know, I know. You
didn't ask me to embark on this dredging expedition. But if it weren't for you, I would never have begun. I feel responsible for you. For finding you. And I
will.

Maybe getting fired wouldn't be such a bad thing after all.

Sorry about that. I hit a low point there. But things are looking up now. In
fact, I'm entertaining a new theory about you. If Birdie conceived you during
her 1961 visit to Iceland, then Sigga might have arranged for you to be raised
by your father in Iceland. Or relatives of his. Or ours. Kin is my point. No
matter what Halldora says, I simply can't imagine Sigga consigning you to a
blind adoption, sent off to live with strangers in Ontario or British Columbia. She would want her granddaughter raised by kin.

Why don't I quit speculating and hop on a plane to Iceland and look for
you? That's what you're wondering? Good question. With a simple answer:
I can't afford it. I wasted my meager savings on that private detective I
hired. Who turned up zip. So I'm saving again. Besides, it's winter in Iceland now, a daunting prospect. Who could find anyone in all that darkness?
Days so dark they pass for night.

Aefingar 30: Venus loved Adonis. I must buy some stamps and envelopes. I hope they will remember to bring my bicycle. They rubbed
their hands for joy when I had finished the story. You need not always be
reproaching me with that; it is now many years since it happened. Is
your wound healed? No, it heals slowly. Turn your gloves inside out.

Do you remember Snaebjorn Jonsson's Primer of Modern Icelandic, the
book Birdie used to tutor me back in Gimli? I am making use of it again.
Your mother would be pleased. In the subway, on the street, in the darkroom, I murmur Snaebjorn's absurd paragraphs out loud. Yes, I'm brushing
up. Ja, Ja (rhymes with wow wow), I'm Iceland-bound.

Don't worry, I am building a more serious vocabulary list as well: birth
born death died mother sister aunt cousin adoption unknown; to look for; to
find.

Klaus has been oddly kind since I gave notice. He lent me and Frank his
van so we could empty out my apartment. Most of the so-called furniture
the futon, the card table, the boards and concrete blocks and milk crates, the old door masquerading as a desktop-we piled on the sidewalk outside my
apartment building with a FREE sign. The rest we took to my storage locker in
Queens. I made Frank unlock the padlock and raise the metal door. I
couldn't bring myself to look inside. The plan was for me to hand him stuff
from the van; he could put it wherever he saw fit. I guess I forgot to warn him
that the locker was nearly full already.

"What is all this stuff, Frey? Are you a fence or something?"

"It's my house. My mother's house. I didn't know what to do with it so I
just stuck it all here."

Frank peered at me hunched in the back of the van. "Don't you think
you should go through it sometime, keep what matters, sell the rest?"

"If I'd known you were going to be so nosy, I would have hired a professional." I began passing him boxes. By the time we got back to my apartment, all the furniture we'd left at the curb was gone.

It makes perfect sense to me, Cousin. Like one of Old Gisli's rigmaroles I
memorized as a child:

A dream dreamt I a short while ago
Of that dream there are many things to tell
A whale appeared to me on the heaths bellowing
Over that whale men sat watching
Off those men blood was running
Of that blood drank the ravens
Through those ravens creaked the wind
From that wind turmoil in the clouds
Off those clouds shone a moon
From that moon a very bright sky
In that sky, stars
On those stars grew leeks
And with those leeks maidens played
Over all the lands and islands

You can't tell me one thing does not lead to another. Birdie went to Iceland. With a man had sex. From that sex conceived. From that conception gave birth. From that birth gave up the baby. Back that baby went, to the
man in Iceland.

Of course there are other possible scenarios, but this is the one I've
decided to pursue. Even if you didn't end up in Iceland, someone there
will probably know where you are. They keep track of us, you know, their
far-flung kin.