Burial Rites(95)

Margrét studied her daughter. ‘I’ve been trying to find you,’ she said.

‘I only wanted a minute to myself.’

They regarded each other for a moment in the ragged light of the guttering candle.

‘To bed, then,’ Margrét finally suggested. She handed Lauga the candle and silently followed her out of the room.




THERE WAS NO PURSE. FRIDRIK never found the money he wanted. Agnes, Agnes, where did he bury it, is it in the trunk? But it was too late, my fingers were slippery-thick with the whale fat all rubbed into the wood and mingled with the blood on the floor and the lamp was already dashed on the boards and Sigga had already screamed at the sound of glass breaking.

They try to make me eat, but, Tóti, I cannot do it. Don’t feed me or I will bite you, I will bite the hand that feeds me, that refuses to love me, that leaves me. Where is my stone? You don’t understand! I have nothing to say to you, where are the ravens? Jóas has sent them all away, they never speak to me, it’s not fair. See what I do for them? I eat stones, I shatter my teeth, and still they will not speak to me. Only the wind. Only the wind speaks and it will not talk sense, it screams like the widow of the world and will not wait for a reply.

You will be lost. There is no final home, there is no burial, there is only a constant scattering, a thwarted journey that takes you everywhere without offering you a way home, for there is no home, there is only this cold island and your dark self spread thinly upon it until you take up the wind’s howl and mimic its loneliness you are not going home you are gone silence will claim you, suck your life down into its black waters and churn out stars that might remember you, but if they do they will not say, they will not say, and if no one will say your name you are forgotten I am forgotten.




THE NIGHT BEFORE THE EXECUTION, the family of Kornsá sat together in the badstofa. Steina, tear-streaked, had gathered as many lamps as she could find, lighting them and placing them about the room to dispel the shadows that lingered in the corners. The servants sat on their beds with their backs against the wall, dumbly watching Tóti and Agnes as they huddled together on her bed. They were holding hands, the Reverend whispering quietly to her. She gazed at the floor, shivering.

Jón came in from feeding the stock, and eased himself down on the bed next to Margrét, bending down slowly to untie his boots. Margrét took the knitting out of her lap and stood to help him out of his jacket, and then hovered there, holding the frayed coat out from her.

‘Mamma?’ Steina got up from her place beside Lauga, who was staring impassively at the dancing wick of the lamp at her side. ‘Mamma, let me take that.’

Margrét pressed her lips together and silently handed Steina the wet coat. Then she slowly got down on her knees and, stifling a cough, shuffled closer to her bed. Her daughter watched as she reached beneath the bunk. ‘Steina?’

Steina bent down and helped Margrét pull out a painted trunk. ‘Put it on the bed there, next to Jón.’ With some difficulty, Steina heaved the wooden trunk onto the blankets. Dust rose into the air. She watched as Margrét undid the iron latch. Inside the trunk were clothes.

Margrét cast a glance at Agnes shaking against the Reverend’s side, reached into the trunk and took out a fine woollen shawl. Without a word she walked to her bed and, nodding to Tóti, leant down and wrapped it about Agnes’s shoulders.

Tóti looked up at Margrét’s face in the dim light and gave a tight smile, his face wan.

The rest of the family watched as Margrét continued to rifle through the trunk, her lips pressed together firmly. She took out a dark skirt with an embroidered pattern about the hem and laid it carefully on the blankets beside her. Then she did the same with a white cotton shirt, an embroidered bodice, and finally a striped apron. She smoothed the wrinkles out of the folds of material with both hands.

‘What are you doing, Mamma?’ Steina asked.

‘It’s the least we can do,’ Margrét replied. She looked around the room, as if waiting for someone to object, then she snapped the lid of the trunk closed and motioned for Steina to put it back under the bed.

For a moment Margrét stood still, looking across the room to where Lauga sat on her bed. Then, in a few quick strides, she crossed the badstofa and held out her hand.

‘Your brooch,’ she said. Lauga looked up, her mouth falling open. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she got off the bed and bent to the floor. She slowly handed her mother the clasp and sat back down, blinking away tears. Margrét turned, placed the silver brooch on the bodice spread out over the bed, and picked up her knitting.




THE WORLD HAS STOPPED SNOWING, stopped moving; the clouds hang still in the air like dead bodies. The only things that move are the ravens, and the family of Kornsá, but I cannot tell which is which: they are all in black, jerking in circles around me, waiting to be fed. Where did time go? It left with summer. I am beyond time. Where is the Reverend? Waiting by the river at G?ngusk?rd. Looking for a skeleton amongst the moss, amongst the lava, amongst the ashes.

Margrét is reaching out to me and she takes my hand in hers, clasps my fingers so tightly that it hurts, it hurts.

‘You are not a monster,’ she says. Her face is flushed and she bites her lip, she bites down. Her fingers, entwined with my own, are hot and greasy.