Miss Iceland. Audur Ava Olafsdottir
is why he tried to rent an attic room, also because there is less of a chance of anyone breaking in. Not that there’s anything to steal, except a sewing machine, he adds.
“Next week I’ll search for a job and a room,” I say.
“There’s enough room for both of us on the sofa,” he says.
He looks past me.
“Besides, I’m not always home at night.”
I sit on the bed and he reaches for the duffel bag, opens it and pulls out a brown suede coat.
“For you,” he says with a smile. “It’s the latest fashion in the British Isles.”
He hands it to me.
“Try it on.”
I stand up and slip on the coat. Meanwhile, he empties the bag and arranges more articles on the bed: a violet polo-neck sweater, a mini skirt, some kind of pinafore dress and a corduroy skirt. Finally he pulls out knee-high leather boots with heels and zippers on the side.
“You can’t be spending all your wages on me,” I say.
He says that when they docked, the second mate had sent him into town to buy food. On the way he’d been able to buy some clothes. While the crew went gallivanting around the harbour and got sloshed.
“I don’t understand how you manage to get the foreign cash.”
“I have connections. I know a cab driver who works up at the military base in Vellir.
“They’ve got currency.”
I change clothes in the middle of the wooden floor and he doesn’t look away. I first slip into the dress and leather boots and he tells me to walk up and down. I take two steps north and two steps south, two metres towards the harbour and two metres towards the graveyard.
“Hemlines are getting shorter,” he says, and “should be five centimetres over the knee. And the skirt is supposed to be flared.”
I take off the dress and slip into the skirt and parade back and forth. He observes me in silence and is clearly pleased.
Then I climb out of the skirt and put my trousers back on and sit on the bed beside Jón John.
“Next time I’ll buy you a pantsuit with a belt.”
I smile at him.
“They don’t all come back, Hekla. Men go off on drinking binges and don’t snap out of it and make it back to the boat before it sails off.”
He hesitates.
“I considered vanishing and staying behind, but then I bought those boots and wanted to see you walking in them.”
He stands up, walks over to the skylight and turns his back to me.
“I swear, Hekla, I won’t always be here. In the back of beyond. I’m no match for the pounding surf. I’m going to leave. I want to see the world. Something more than Hull and Grimsby. I want to work in the theatre and make costumes for musicals. Or in fashion. There are more people like me abroad. A lot more.”
I crucify the flesh by indulging it
I wake up as Jón John comes home just before dawn. He props himself up against the door, then the wall, falls into a chair, grabs the edge of the table and allows himself to slide onto the bed beside me in his clothes. I move over for him while he takes off his shoes. It takes a fairly long time for him to loosen his laces. He seems as if he hasn’t slept, is drunk and reeks of aftershave.
I sit up and turn on the bedside lamp.
He looks battered, with dirt on his knees and scratches on his face. I see what I think are traces of gravel in his eyebrows, as if his face had been pressed into mud. I help him out of his clothes, fetch a damp towel and wash his face.
His eyes are open and watching me as I clean the grit out of his wounds.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Where were you?”
“In the outskirts, the heathlands of Heidmörk,” he says and lies down.
He curls up on the bed.
“I’m such a loser,” I hear him say.
“Now now,” I say.
After a short while, he adds: “There were two of them. I went to the Hábær bar and met a man who invited me for a drive. On the way he picked up a friend.”
“We’re going to the police.”
“There’s no point. Do you know what they do to perverts? I’m a criminal, a pathological freak. I’m hideous.”
I spread the quilt over him.
“Besides, one of them is a cop and a prominent figure in the anti-homophile league.”
He is quiet a moment and sniffs.
“They consider us the same as paedophiles. Mothers call in their children when a queer approaches. Queers’ homes are broken into and completely trashed. They’re spat on. If they have phones, they’re called in the middle of the night with death threats.”
He falls into such a long silence that I think he’s fallen asleep.
“It’s so difficult not to be scared,” I hear him say under the quilt.
“You’re the best man I know.”
“I love children. I’m not a criminal.”
I stroke his hair.
“Men only want to sleep with me when they’re drunk, they don’t want to talk afterwards and be friends. While they’re pulling up their trousers, they make you swear three times that you won’t tell anyone. They take you to the outskirts of Heidmörk and you’re lucky if they drive you back into town.”
He turns to the wall and I lie behind him and hold him. I envelop him against the wall like a child who must be protected from falling out of bed.
“Tomorrow I’ll buy some iodine at the pharmacy,” I say.
He grabs my hand. We huddle up tightly together, he’s trembling.
“I wish I weren’t the way I am, but I can’t change that. Men are meant to go with women. I sleep with men.”
He turns to face me.
“Did you know, Hekla, that just before the sun sinks into the ocean it gives off a green ray beyond the horizon?”
In the morning I rub the congealed mud from the knees of the trousers that Davíd Jón John Johnsson kicked off in the night.
With love from John
On my way to the pharmacy I buy a copy of the Visir newspaper and skim through the ads at the back. They’re looking for a girl at the Fönn Laundry and at the bakery, and they also need a girl in the Smørrebrød open sandwich restaurant at Hotel Borg.
When I return, Jón John is lying on his stomach with his face buried in the sheets, his arms outstretched like a crucified man.
The Passion Hymns lie open beside him.
He doesn’t want to talk about what happened last night.
“Are you okay?”
He turns around, sits up and combs back the hair on his forehead. One of his eyes is bloodshot.
“My head is full of black streams.”
I put the bottle of iodine and plasters I bought at the pharmacy on the table and take off the suede coat.
“Thank you,” he says without looking at me.
He stares at his hands, his open palms.
“I don’t