Season of the Witch Read Free Page B

immorality, and iniquity of those who lived in this land of milk and honey that they sent a tidal wave to destroy Atlantis. And since then people have always been searching for the lost island.”
    “How come you know so much about Greek mythology?”
    “Hail Atlantis!” exclaims Jóa with the vocalist, and the music swells. “I know about all sorts of things, if you haven’t noticed. I’ve even read Plato. Have you?”
    “Yes, actually, I read him in high school,” I haughtily reply. “He was an ancient Greek philosopher. I know these things. But what’s he got to do with Atlantis?”
    “He was the first person to give an account of Atlantis. And he was one of us.”
    “One of us?” I ask as we pass a sign welcoming us to Akureyri. “Or one of you?”
    “Both!” chortles Jóa.
    There is nothing on the evening news about an Akureyri woman being unconscious after having fallen into the glacial waters of the Jökulsá River.
    Ásbjörn has found office accommodations for us in the heart of the town. The
Afternoon News
has its offices—three offices, reception, break room, and bathroom—on the upper floor of an old wooden building clad in red corrugated iron on
Rádhústorg
, the Town Hall Square itself, at the corner of Hafnarstræti and Brekkugata. Ásbjörn, naturally, didn’t waste money on renovations. When they open a new club, they rip out all the fixtures and start again, but Ásbjörn doesn’t see the
Afternoon News
premises as a place of entertainment, but a workplace. So we move straightinto the old offices of a wholesaler, with ocher-yellow paint peeling off the walls. Ásbjörn and his wife live on the floor above.
    Town Hall Square is an expanse of concrete with the odd leafless tree and deserted benches. The few people who venture out into the square appear to be kids on skateboards—much the same as in Reykjavík. Our competitors, the
Morning News
and the state radio station, both have their offices in a modern glass-and-concrete structure rather like a fish tank on the corner of Kaupvangsstræti and Glerárgata, at the southern end of the harbor. They have a breathtaking view of the fjord, and an American fast-food chain is conveniently located in the same building. Next to us, on the contrary, is one of the many travel agencies offering wilderness tours and all sorts of trips in the quest for what we want to find, without knowing what it is. The view from my office window is the cracked wall of the building next door.
    All’s quiet on the Akureyri front on a Saturday evening: the weekend edition has long been delivered to anyone who’s interested. Nonetheless Ásbjörn is hanging over his computer in his office.
    “How did it go?” he asks without looking up when I knock on the doorframe.
    “Jóa got some pictures, and I did a rather uncomfortable interview with the organizer of the trip. He may be a great outdoorsman, but I think he needed trauma counseling as much as the rest of them.”
    “You can talk to Trausti about it, anyway,” he curtly remarks over his shoulder. “He phoned and asked you to get in touch.”
    If I don’t have a very high opinion of Ásbjörn, I’m not yet sure what I think of his successor in the news editor’s chair: Trausti Löve—who in another lifetime worked with Ásbjörn and me as a temporary summer employee, when he and I, by pure chance,started out on our journalistic careers together on the late, lamented
People’s Times
. Later he became a TV reporter and was once chosen “Iceland’s Sexiest Man” in a popularity poll.
    I hear the office door open, followed by shrill barking.
    “Ásbjörn!” calls a husky female voice. “Ásbjörn Grímsson!”
    He turns off the computer and struggles to his feet, a stocky figure with a sagging ass. He quickly takes off his green slippers, which he has unfortunately brought with him from the head office in Reykjavík, and thrusts his feet into black fur-lined boots. Sometimes Ásbjörn reminds me of an