Iceland review - 2019, Blaðsíða 123

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Iceland Review
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IcelandReview_May_2019_TheEnglishPub.indd 1 5/13/2019 2:45:51 PM
The son sits at the table, taping together a torn
magazine with scotch tape. He tries to puzzle
together faces and makes sure that the torn paper
ends go in the right place so that the faces aren’t
distorted. The precision work relaxes him.
– Jesus, what an idiot you can be.
His mother is standing in the middle of the
kitchen, tucking her hair behind her ears and
stretching her neck. The son stops taping and
silently tries to wind the scotch tape that’s he’s been
holding back onto the roll. They hear a familiar yowl
and prick up their ears.
– Okay, no, this can’t go on any longer.
She sticks her bare feet into her leather slippers
and storms towards the door. Down the carpeted
stairs, past the dank laundry room, and towards a
brown door. The mother stands with her ear right up
to the door of the basement apartment. She hears
sounds inside but no yowling or screaming. The
mother is irritable because she thought she’d solved
the mystery. She knocks on the door. It opens slowly
and a woman around thirty looks at her. The mother
regrets knocking.
– Are you the one who is always throwing cans in
the garbage?
Just as the woman is about to open her mouth, a
cat darts through the gap. The woman gives a little
cry and the mother is nearly knocked over as she
tries to grab the cat.
– He’s an indoor cat.
– Sure, but don’t throw cans in the garbage.
The mother doesn’t wait for an answer, just goes
back upstairs, treading heavily on each step. She
walks quickly into the kitchen and flings herself onto
the bench seat. In her commotion, she knocks into
the table and shakes it. The face that the son was
starting to tape back together rips apart. He picks
up the two scraps of paper and holds them in front of
his mother’s eyes, intending to tell her off. She’s first
to break the silence.
– It isn’t the woman in the basement.
– No. I knew that already.
– You didn’t think that was something you should
mention?
He gives up on scolding her, crumples up all the
paper, and throws it in the trash. Fruit flies are flit-
ting around across the room. The son paws through
the garbage, grabs the magazine again, and rolls it
up into a truncheon. A few fruit flies show interest
in his mother and she claps her hands together.
One of the flies is stuck on tape on the table and the