Iceland review - 2019, Page 121

119
Iceland Review
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mother is glad she didn’t wear her shoes. On the way
back, she looks into the kitchen and sees that her
son is turning on his heels and clapping his hands
together. She remembers the flies and promises her-
self to clean the trashcan. On the way up the stairs,
the soles of her feet stamp brown footprints, fainter
with each step. In the kitchen, the son’s cooling his
face with ice that he’s stuck into a washcloth. He flips
through a magazine contentedly and has started
whistling again.
– Quit that whistling.
*
The mother and son sit on the sofa in the twilight.
She sits on the armrest above him and combs
through his hair with a lice comb. He’s had scales on
his head since he was born. His mother has spent
many nights combing yellowish flakes from his scalp.
She runs the comb lightly across his head, the steel
teeth of the comb catching the scales like a bottom
trawler. She feels like she’s playing a scratch card
and really likes it when the flecks are big. The son
flips through an old paper, reading about New Year’s
parties where all the guests are pink and shiny and
dressed to the nines. He’s happy he doesn’t have to
go to a party like that but likes seeing the people
smiling and posing. They’re mostly around his age
and he doesn’t understand why their parties are
photographed and printed in the paper.
*
The laundry room under the mother and son’s
apartment is a desolate sight. Clothes belonging
to people who moved away years ago hang on the
clothesline next to the wall. There’s a vague scent
of cat piss emanating from the clothes, but the
mother and son have stopped noticing them. The
son takes care of the laundry and sometimes in the
evening he feels a vague anxiety when the darkness
of the garden turns the laundry room window into a
mirror. The son can’t see out, just sees himself, and
for a moment feels stupid and doesn’t know what
he’s doing with his life. He gets a feeling of unreality
and spaces out, getting further and further into
the heavens and out of himself until he is just one,
stupid grain of sand in the universe. When he walks
up the stairs with the empty laundry basket, he
tries to decide if it’s a positive or negative thing to
be an unimportant grain. On one hand, it means the
freedom to do whatever you want, but on the other,
the thought makes him unsure that his life matters
at all.
*
The teenager sits up in a tree, in the dark, eating a
Danish. He loses his balance for a moment and the
Danish falls into its bag. The teenager has trouble
getting the Danish back out of the greasy, brown
envelope with one hand. He hears a rustle and stops
moving. On the poorly lit sidewalk, he sees a furry
creature approaching the tree. It walks past without
noticing the teenager and when it has gone a safe
distance, he lifts up the envelope and points it at his
face, tips the Danish out of the bag, and grabs it with
his teeth. In the garden next door, a light goes on in
the basement window.
*
The washing machine’s broken and the laundry
room drain is clogged. Dirty water is spouting out
of the machine. The son stands ankle-deep in grey
water and his old pants are slowly becoming wet
and see-through. He’s about to starting fussing
over them when he hears a scream that turns into
a horrifying squawking that then dies out with a
pitiful whimper. The son looks frightenedly out the
window, but he only sees himself in his transparent
pyjama pants. He dunks his hand into the grey water
and clumsily manages to clear the drain. Then he
runs up the stairs in a dead panic. The mother, who
had been dropping off to sleep on the sofa, snaps her
eyes wide open.
– What’s that noise? Did you wet yourself?
A long yowl in the distance interrupts the son,
who goes into the bathroom and takes off his pants.
The son looks down at himself, naked from the waist
down with soft skin and stout legs like a child, a sight
that’s accompanied by a long, drawn-out yowl in the
background.
*
High up in the scaffolding around the church tower,
the teenager sits and smokes and daydreams
about leather gloves. White flecks of ash land on
his black sweater and for a moment, it’s as if his
chest is reflecting the starry sky. The streets that
run up to the church are empty. Smoke wafts from
a little house that stands between a hotel and a new
building, growing thicker until it’s a cumulus cloud.
The house is enveloped in light in the midst of the
dark neighbourhood. Slender tongues of fire lick
the window casements and in a fraction of a second,
the house is engulfed in flames. The glass panes
burst, and a handful of neighbours come out onto
the street in their robes. No sirens are heard, no one