My mother helped me with the list of names. She remarked, a little piqued, that of course they remembered my name without any trouble. I defended myself, arguing that they only had to remember one. The feeling was a 62heap of documents. Meeting family like homework not quite done.

A wedge of swans honked in passing above Gásadalur’s roofs.

I let the wet air touch my face.

Over by the waterfall the small clover flowers were trembling. On the roof of a dead tractor perched some brown starlings, sleeping.

A car drove noiselessly down the road from the tunnel.

Nothing else.

Everywhere the greenery was new-washed by the night. I turned and saw my mother standing in the middle of it all. She bent down and touched something. Lightly. Acknowledging the grass among the stones. I saw the crown of fog around her hair. The light within her skin. The black padded coat that glittered as if wet. All the things that lovingly took her hands.

We stole down to listen to the Sunday service in the little village hall. On reaching the door, we were bashful. Whispering. Unwilling to intrude. So we stayed outside, held each other’s hands and listened.

I was about to say something about the electronic organ, or whatever it was, that we were acting like tourists, like spies, lurking this way. When I looked at my mother she was gone. Her face was shut. She bobbed her chin to the melody, recognizing it. 63

There was water in our shadows on the wall.

Afterwards she stroked my cheek.

Afterwards the Tarantula found us, gave me a prod and said, ‘Look, the path’s up there.’

Jegvan was given what money there was. He got into the navigation school in Copenhagen. As it happened, though, the issue resolved itself so that Abbe was able to study after all. An uncle lived in Vordingborg. There was no technical college there, but you could qualify as a teacher. That, thought Great-Aunt Ingrún, had to be better than nothing. Abbe probably thought that if it couldn’t be any other way, it might as well be that way.

In those days Abbe and Omma were engaged, not married. She worked in the village, at the filleting factory.

‘Why didn’t she just go with him?’

The women had smiled. Ma. Aunt Ása. The idea of her simply turning up and standing in the street—no job, penniless, there in that foreign country. Who would offer that to someone they loved?

I don’t know how they said their goodbyes. It was just the way things were. He left, and she stayed.

One year later she took the boat from Tórshavn.

64

LITTLE PASSENGER

The boat chugs off among the fjords, into the evening.

Marita isn’t afraid. She’s waiting for the expulsion, the blood. Darkness shuts the porthole and sends the gulls home.

Now there is only the sea.