Nothing but Ghosts. Judith Hermann
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no more light at all.
Jonina finds driving to Olurfsbudir soothing; it calms her nerves, her whole body and also her heart. She longs to sit on the sofa by the window in the wooden house, to stare out at the grassy hummocks and not think of anything. Even after all these years she still finds it purifying. She was afraid that Magnus wouldn’t know how to deal with Olurfsbudir when she took him out there for the first time, that he would think it all too monotonous, too quiet, but her fears were unfounded. Magnus enjoyed Olurfsbudir. On his first visit there, he took a small leather suitcase the contents of which Jonina inspected while he was in the bathroom. Three ironed shirts, three pairs of trousers, a perfect travelling case with shoe polish, brushes, polishing cloths, another case just as perfect containing sewing things, and a CD by Nick Cave. Jonina stood before the suitcase staring at its contents, at its touching and disquieting contents; then she snapped it shut again.
Magnus calls late that night. Sunna is already asleep. The other summerhouses are unoccupied in the wintertime. He says, ‘Well then, we’ll come tomorrow; they would very much like to come too.’ ‘What are they like?’ Jonina asks. ‘What’s the guy like and how did it go with Irene?’ Magnus laughs softly. Jonina feels a wave of affection; she suddenly feels very sorry for him; or rather, she would like to touch him now. It must really be awful – meeting again after such a long time. He says, ‘It was good. No, really, it was good. She gave a fine lecture and afterwards we went out to eat. It wasn’t difficult; actually it was the way it used to be,’ and Jonina says, ‘Then come. Don’t get here too late. It is very beautiful out here.’
Jonina folds the wrapping paper around the photo again; her breathing is shallow and quiet; her heart is pounding; she is afraid that Magnus might wake up any moment. He doesn’t. He is sleeping his sound, childlike sleep behind the white bedroom door. In the kitchen Sunna pours cornflakes into a bowl; the sound seems incredibly loud to Jonina. She gets up and walks over to the hall cupboard and puts the package under the boxes that contain her old school exercise books, her photographs and letters. She’s got to find another place for it, maybe get it out of the apartment entirely, or maybe she ought simply to show it to Magnus. She isn’t sure. ‘What are you doing,’ Sunna calls from the kitchen; it’s not a question, it’s a statement; she sounds suspicious and grown up. ‘Nothing,’ Jonina says. ‘I’m only putting things away.’ She has to laugh.
She, Magnus and Sunna moved into this apartment four weeks ago. When Irene and Jonas arrived in November, a year before, they had just bought it. They had been looking for a long time and then finally found it, a small five-room apartment in the old harbour district of Reykjavik, with trees outside the windows and plasterwork on the ceiling. They were both very busy at work – and so they planned to renovate in January and move in February. They began the renovation in March, painted the walls, enlarged one of the doorways, put in new windows, and everything was actually finished, but then Magnus pulled up a floorboard, then a second and a third and decided to lay new parquet floors.
At that point Jonina opted out. She simply let go. She let him do the renovating by himself, and he took the entire apartment apart and couldn’t finish, he simply couldn’t finish, and in dismay Jonina concluded that concealed behind his reserve, his quiet and absent-minded manner, there was an absolute mania for perfection.
For months after that she no longer went to the apartment. She just couldn’t stand it. She couldn’t bear to see the awful mess – the destruction of things that had really been quite all right, and Magnus still thinking of new ways to make more changes. Summer came, and finally autumn, and in October he forced her to come and look at the result. They stood facing each other in the empty living room where the sunlight fell on the shining parquet floor and the walls gleamed. The plasterwork on the ceiling was accentuated by white paint, the doorways leading from one room to the next were wide and high. The windows had received a third coat of paint, and a huge silvery refrigerator hummed in the kitchen. Sunna’s room. Your room. The dining room. Our room. Magnus took off his glasses; he looked ill. He said, ‘I still have to lay tiles in the bath,’ and Jonina said, ‘Either I move in tomorrow or not at all, ever. Take my word for it. Tomorrow or not at all,’ and then he gave in.
In the kitchen, Sunna, wise beyond her years, says as if she were talking to herself, ‘There’s nothing to put away here,’ and she’s right. Magnus didn’t have any things, and Jonina had sold her own furniture. In all the rooms except Sunna’s there was only what was absolutely essential. Perhaps Magnus thought this was the way it ought to be. This was how an apartment for the three of them should look. It had to be empty so that it could then be filled with their new, shared life. Maybe, in his awkward and insecure way, he had visualized it like that. But so far nothing has been added.
Jonina had sensed their friends’ astonishment, their embarrassed politeness: ‘What a wonderful apartment, such a lovely location. But it’s rather bare, isn’t it? You ought to hang some pictures, some photos, anything.’
‘Could it be that Magnus worked on the renovation for such a long time because he wasn’t actually sure?’ Jonina’s sister had asked hesitantly. And Jonina had said, ‘Could be. But I’m not sure either, and we still have time, all the time in the world.’ It was reassuring. Her sister’s conjecture reassured her. It was good to know that Magnus was afraid of living with her, of the decision and its outcome; she is afraid too.
She shuts the cupboard door, goes to join Sunna in the kitchen and sits down at the table with her. The tap is dripping. Sunna is silent. Jonina gets up to turn it off. Then she sits down again. Sunna eating her cornflakes from a lemon-yellow bowl, sleepily, slowly. The cornflakes crackle in her small, closed mouth. She gazes intently at her mother. It’s not yet light outside.
In Olurfsbudir, Jonina and Sunna spend the afternoon – the last hours before it gets totally dark again at five o’clock – on the terrace. Jonina is sitting in a garden chair in the snow; Sunna is in the pool. Jonina has set the water temperature at 40°C; whenever the water gets too cold, more hot water flows in automatically. The pool is made of turquoise-coloured plastic. The water glitters; the snow around the edge of the pool has melted, but deep drifts of it cover the terrace. Sunna is sitting in the blue water, naked; her cheeks are quite red, her eyes sparkle, an intense and disturbing turquoise. They don’t talk much; in general Sunna doesn’t talk much. The cold is a dry cold and there is no wind. The plain is white and smooth like a desert; the snow has covered the tough perennial grass. The Iceland horses are standing up to their bellies in snow, not moving. To keep Sunna from saying anything, Jonina doesn’t smoke; Sunna hates smoking.
Jonina can see Magnus’s car while it is still far off, maybe miles away, but in the clear air she can already see Magnus. He is driving slowly; his car doesn’t do well in snow, but he refuses to buy a Jeep. He says he isn’t the type for a Jeep, and he’s right. The car approaches at a tediously slow pace and stops at the foot of the hill on which the house stands. Jonina doesn’t move. Sunna doesn’t either, only the water ripples softly. Then the engine is switched off; it is quiet; the car doors remain closed. For one terrible moment, Jonina thinks it isn’t Magnus sitting in the car but someone else, someone she doesn’t know.
Then the car doors open, and Magnus gets out, Irene and Jonas get out. Jonina stands up. Magnus calls her name with exaggerated relief in his voice. She goes to meet them; they seem rooted to the spot, unable to move, just stand there, looking at the landscape, overwhelmed. Or they are only pretending to be overwhelmed? Jonina is always ready to assume the latter.
Had she known what Irene looked like, she wouldn’t have had to ask Magnus whether he had ever lived with her. She is too small. Too soft. Physically not enough of a presence for Magnus, who feels drawn to women who simply ignore his shyness, his tenseness and his absent-mindedness, and who win him over without his being aware of it. Maybe that’s how Jonina had done it. Or maybe she simply touched him, took him home with her and persuaded him to stay; she isn’t sure; she can’t remember exactly how it happened.
Irene looks shy and absent-minded like Magnus. She isn’t really short, but she isn’t tall either. Her face is tense, serious, intellectual, with girlish features. A young woman you would notice in the university