Heaven and Hell Read Free

his sleep. So there you are, says Andrea, and pours coffee into their mugs. Yessir, says Pétur, and spent the whole day blathering their brains out. They don’t need an entire day to do that, says the boy, and the mugs in Andrea’s hands shake a bit as she suppresses a laugh. Einar clenches his fists and shakes them at the boy, hisses something so unclear that barely half of it can be understood, he is missing several teeth, his dark beard imposing, grown halfway over his mouth, his ragged, thin hair nearly gray, but then they drink their coffee. Each sits on his own bed and the sky darkens outside. Andrea turns up the light in the lamp, windows at both gables, one frames a mountain, the other the sky and sea, they frame our existence, and for a long time nothing is heard but the surge of the sea and the contented slurping of coffee. Gvendur and Einar sit together and share one of the newspapers, Andrea scrutinizes the English textbook, trying to enlarge her life with a new language, Pétur just stares at nothing, the boy and Bárður both have their own papers, now only Árni is missing. He had gone home the day before yesterday after they had finished clearing the landing, struck out through the downpour from the north, through frost and snow, couldn’t see a thing but still managed to find the way, a six-hour walk home, he’s so young that the woman pulls him in, Andrea had said, yes, follows his goddamn dick, said Einar, seemingly furious all of a sudden. I know that you neither believe it nor can imagine it, she then said, speaking to Einar yet glancing partly at her husband, but there are men who are a bit more than muscles and longing for fish and women’s crotches.
    Maybe Andrea knew about the letter that Árni had been carrying. The boy wrote it for him, and it wasn’t the first time Árni had asked him to write a letter to his wife, Sesselja, she reads it when we’re lying in bed together and everyone’s asleep, said Árni once, and reads it over and over when I’m away. I miss you, wrote the boy, I miss you when I wake, when I grab hold of the oars, I miss you when I bait the lines, when I flatten the fish, I miss hearing the children laugh and ask about something I can’t answer but you certainly can, I miss your lips, I miss your breasts and I miss your loins —no, don’t write that, Árni had said as he looked over the boy’s shoulder. I can’t write miss your loins ? Árni shook his head. But I just try to write what you think, as always, and surely you miss her loins? That’s none of your business, and besides, I would never say it like that, your loins. How would you say it, then? How would I say it . . . I would say . . . no, that’s none of your goddamn business! And the boy had to cross out the words your loins and wrote your scent in their place. But maybe, he thought, Sesselja tries to see what words have been crossed out, she knows I write the letters for Árni, she peers at the word and when she finally manages to read it, and read it she does, she thinks of me. The boy sits on the bed, peers at the paper and tries to push this image away: Sesselja reading these warm, soft, moist and forbidden words. She peers at and reads the words, whispers them to herself, a mild current flows through her and she thinks of me. He swallows, tries to focus on the paper, reads stories about Members of Parliament, reads about Gísli, the schoolmaster here in our village who had not felt well enough to show up at school for three days due to drink, a lot of pressure on the man, to have to teach in addition to his drinking, and Émile Zola had published a novel, a hundred thousand copies sold in the first three weeks. The boy looks up quickly and tries to imagine a hundred thousand people reading the same book, but it’s hardly possible to imagine such a throng, particularly not when one lives here, at the world’s northern outskirt. He gazes thoughtfully but looks hastily back down at the paper