The Tricking of Freya (46 page)

What becomes of me now? Your guess is as good as mine.

Pardon my melodrama. It seems I overreacted. That, or Ulfur has a bigger
heart than I imagined. He was waiting for me at breakfast with a list of
names. "Various men Birdie spent time with while she was in Iceland. I've
included only people she met with more than once, or that I remember her particularly liking. Which is not to say and I must emphasize this-that I
have any knowledge of whether or not Birdie engaged in sexual relations
with any of these people, or anyone else in Iceland. You must find a way to
be more tactful, Freya. Tell them you're writing an article about your aunt's
life, trying to learn as much as possible about her visits to Iceland. I don't
want to hear about you accusing anybody of anything, is that understood?"

Understood.

The list has twelve names. A dozen prospective fathers for you, Cuz! I'm
wriggling like a bloodhound. I'm on your trail. I'm going to find you. Even if
you don't consider yourself lost.

And that is that. So ends my letter to Birdie's child. Three years have
passed from when I wrote that last entry, in the turret room of Ulfur's
house of books on the lake.

But don't worry, I won't leave you hanging, despite the fact that you
aren't you anymore. I wouldn't skip the ending. Everything needs to end, if
only to begin again. The serpent circles the globe, tail in mouth. The blackened earth rises from the sea, fair and green. Or so the volva would have us
believe.

When I say you now, I'm not referring to Birdie's child. That is no longer
necessary, or possible. But old habits die hard. I've grown accustomed to my
imaginary audience. For you, now substitute yourself. Yes you, the readeryou, the plurality of strangers presumably reading this book. You see, certain
people have convinced me to publish this pile of pages. It's no big deal, here
in Iceland. Everyone writes books, especially biographies, memoirs, family
histories. I throw mine in with the lot. And if you've stuck with me this far,
you deserve to know how things turned out, how the mystery of Birdie's
child got solved, the unanswerable question answered.

The tricking of Freya.

Or maybe you've already figured it out? Maybe you're smarter than I,
or maybe I didn't want to see what was right in front of my face, so to
speak?

In any case, read on. Or not.

Cousin indeed!

I lied. My letter to Birdie's child did not end with that last entry in early
June. Quite the opposite, in fact. In the weeks that followed I wrote like a
maniac. The proof sits here in front of me, a stack of red-and-blue spiralbound notebooks. But it makes no sense for me to transcribe the notebooks
verbatim. First of all, some pages, especially toward the end of my journey,
are utterly indecipherable. Second, what is legible is not necessarily useful.
The details of all my dead ends are of no interest to me anymore, although
the friendships I developed with several of the old men on Ulfur's list I
maintain to this day. And when I say details, I mean details: in those notebooks I documented every conversation, every interview, every thought that
entered my brain, and there were many.

Can I spare you and resort to summary? Consider it an act of kindness.

By nine a.m. that morning I was on the phone; at noon I was sitting down
to lunch with my first interview, Snaebjorn Gunnarsson, former professor
of Icelandic literature at the University of Iceland. I've always loved the
name Snaebjorn, which means Snow Bear. The same name as our old
friend Snaebjorn Jonsson, Sometime Translator to the Government of Iceland, who authored the infamous Primer of Modern Icelandic. It could only
be fitting, I reasoned, for Birdie's child to have a father named Snow Bear.
But I cautioned myself not to jump to conclusions, to remain objective, to
gather facts, to conduct a proper investigation.

Snaebjorn knocked on Ulfur's door at precisely 1:00 that afternoon,
wearing a black suit shiny at the knees and collar, a square-faced man no
younger than seventy with thin wisps of gray hair plastered to his head. I invited him in; he declined with what seemed a whiff of disdain.

Snaebjorn turned out to be a man of strong opinions. Over lunch at the
university cafeteria, he informed me that Ulfur's family's massive private
book collection more properly belonged in a place of public access, such as
the Icelandic National Library. Thus the whiff of disdain. Book hoarder was,
I believe, the term he used to describe Ulfur, though my Icelandic was
quite rusty at the time, and the phrase was muttered under Snaebjorn's breath like a curse. Mainly our conversation was conducted in English.
Snaebjorn's English was perfect but his accent odd, different from that of
other Icelanders, yet somehow familiar to me. I soon came to understand
why-in the early 1950s he had spent a number of years teaching Icelandic
at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. "I helped to establish the Department of Icelandic Language and Literature, the first such department
in North America," he recalled proudly.

"Are there others now?"

"I've never heard of any," he admitted.

No wonder his accent seemed familiar-he had become fluent in English through speaking with the Icelandic Canadians of Winnipeg and the
Interlake region. Not only did he know Birdie but he had met Sigga, Stefan,
even my mother. Snaebjorn had worked on a number of translations of Olafur, Skald Nyja islands, he explained, which is how he first came in contact
with my family there. He told me he'd attended the Islendingadagurinn festival in Gimli each summer, and his greatest disappointment was that he'd
arrived a decade too late to meet the great Olafur, Skald Nyja Islands.

Birdie would have been in her early twenties then, Snaebjorn a decade
older, but from what I could see he hardly seemed her type: fastidious, orderly, proper. But what did I know of Birdie's type, or types? Keep an open
mind, I reminded myself. I told Snaebjorn I was writing an article about
Birdie's life for The Icelandic Canadian, a publication he not only was familiar with but had edited during his stay in Canada. He nodded thoughtfully. "I don't know what I could tell you about your aunt that you don't
already know. Our visits and conversations focused mainly on literary matters, especially pertaining to your grandfather's work."

"Then you never had a ... romantic interest in Birdie?"

"Me ... and Ingibjorg?" He made a short, harsh sound, something between a cough and a laugh. "A beauty like Ingibjorg would hardly have
wasted a moment on a homely man like me." He sounded wistful, and I had
no reason not to believe him.

Yet Snaebjorn still proved useful to my investigation. After lunch he
took me on a tour of the newly constructed National Library, a modernlooking building adorned by large red shields. A Japanese influence, Snaebjorn explained, as if to make some sense of it. Inside, he set me up with a microfiche machine and a young library assistant, and I spent the rest of
the afternoon flipping through films of Iceland's daily paper, Morgunbla-
did, looking for references to Birdie's visits. I made it through her one visit
in the 1950s and the two visits in the 1960s, and left the library with photocopies of several articles and an interview, which I planned to translate
with Ulfur's help. (I admit I was tempted, but no, I did not scan the microfiche for the headlines from our 1978 vanishing act. I wasn't prepared to revisit that yet.)

Despite having to cross Snaebjorn off the list, I was far from discouraged. In fact, I considered the day a promising start. There were still eleven
names on Ulfur's list, and I remember the feeling of certainty that grew in
me that evening. For the second night in a row I was unable to sleep, and I
cycled Johanna's bike around the lake at one o'clock in the morning. Birdie's
child is here in Iceland. The sun hadn't set but the light was muted, an early
morning dusk that cast a green glow on the water.

What happened to the blind-adoption-in-Canada theory? you ask. I let it
slip from my consciousness. Over the following days and weeks in Reykjavik I became increasingly convinced that I was closer than ever to finding
Birdie's child. Propelled by my own blind faith, I pursued the investigation
with a nearly religious fervor. Birdie's child is here in Iceland.

And I was right.

Friday night Saemundur arrived on his motorcycle to take me out on the
town. His pale cheeks were flushed red from the wind. "To sample some of
our famous nightlife." He handed me a helmet and I climbed behind him
on the bike.

"Is it famous?"

"Quite the scene."

I fastened my hands tight on his hips and we were off. Soon we were
bumping along the cobblestone streets of Old Reykjavik, choked with
throngs of drunken youth, on foot and in cars, yelling, laughing, singing,
fighting, embracing. Dancing to music that pulsed from cars and club windows. "This is runtur," Saemundur yelled, above the roar of the bike and the
thrum of the street. "It means circle, or maybe circuit is a better word."

Inside a club called Berlin he bought me a beer that cost ten American dollars. The air was thick with smoke and sweat. Saemundur smiled at me,
that same wide smile that had made me melt as a teenager. "How do you
like it?"

I paused. I wanted to say I loved it, and why don't we dance, and slug my
beer like a true drunken fun-loving Icelandic chick. Instead I blurted out, "I
don't. I hate crowds. I can't breathe."

I waited for a teasing retort, but Saemundur only shrugged. "Then we'll
go.

He didn't say where. He just climbed back on the bike and I climbed on
behind him. I felt like a disappointment as we breezed through the night.
(It seemed like night somehow, though it wasn't dark.) But I hadn't come
to Iceland to sample its nightlife, I reminded myself, or to impress Saemundur. We sped through residential streets, passing young boys kicking
soccer balls at midnight, until I had no idea where we were. Then I smelled
salt and fish and we came to a stop along a strip of rocky coast.

"If it weren't so cloudy tonight you could see all the way to Snaefellsnes
Peninsula from here. That's where I'll be spending the next few days. Leading people across the Snaefellsjokull Glacier. That's the real Iceland. Not
Reykjavik's drunken fools."

"Sheep-drunk, you call it?" I remembered the expression from our ice
cave escapade.

He laughed. "Yes, sauddrukkinn. Drunk as sheep. And why are we speaking in English, when you are supposed to be practicing your Icelandic?"

"I am? I never said that. Really, Saemundur. I can't remember much.
Just simple things."

"Then let's talk about simple things," he said in Icelandic. "Did my father
tell you I lead tours to the interior? He doesn't approve. But what should he
care? He has two successful children, a geologist and a linguist. Two out of
three isn't bad." (I'm guessing here at exactly what he might have said. Approximating. At the time I understood only one out of three words at most.)

I struggled to remember the word for tour guide. "You're a leidsogu-
madur," I ventured in Icelandic. Road-story-man.

"Yes. But I try not to talk too much on the tours. I let the island speak for
itself. And what about you? Have you become your family's next great
poet?"

"Hardly. I've become nothing."

"Nothing? You're too hard on yourself."

We were walking now, along a pebbled beach. Small waves nipped the
shore. Whatever lay in the distance was obliterated by fog.

"Maybe you should come on the tour to Snaefellsnes, Freya. You've
never seen anything like it."

"I can't. I have ... things to do in Reykjavik."

"Reykjavik!" He sounded disgusted. "The whole point is to get out of
Reykjavik. Reykjavik is nothing. The real Iceland is out there."

Same old arrogant Saemundur. "I'm not trying to find the real Iceland."

"Then why are you here?"

"To find Birdie's child."

No, I hadn't intended to tell him. But I did. I talked all the way through
the early morning sunset. Sometimes we walked, sometimes we sat on the
rocks. The wind blew cold and hard. At one point Saemundur offered me
his leather jacket.

"Are you sure you want to do that?"

"You look freezing."

"The last jacket you lent me, you never got back. Do you remember?"

He did.

When I was done talking-and it seemed to me I had never talked so
much at one stretch in my life-the first thing Saemundur asked was,
"What about my father? Do you suspect him?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact I do. Though he denied it when I asked."

"Do you believe him?"

"Should I?"

"I don't know. I always wondered about him and Birdie, if there was
something between them."

"If that's true . . ." I wasn't sure how to phrase it. "Saemundur. You could
be Birdie's child."

"Me?" He laughed derisively, just like his father had. "I can tell you one
thing, Freya. I am no child of your crazy aunt Birdie."