Towards White Page 3

  “Then I can write your article?” I add a chuckle at the end of my question in case he’s so insensitive he doesn’t pick up on my sarcasm. When I glance back, I catch him smirking to himself. “Look, I don’t care about your technology right now, about the Heimspeki or any history being made. I don’t even care about travelling alone.” His smirk fades. “I just want to get to Höfkállur, and find my brother.” Regardless of whatever state he’s in.

  “How about,” Director Úlfar’s tone shifts, becomes more urgent, “I pay for your brother’s repatriation to Sydney? Then will you stay in Reykjavík?”

  He isn’t getting it. “No, Director Úlfar. I need to see Höfkállur for myself. Surely you can understand that? Weren’t you a lawyer too, before you joined the MUR?”

  “I see someone else has been on LinkedIn.”

  “Which is why you’ll understand my need to see where my brother’s been living. I have to talk to people, and see this glacier where they say he went hiking.” Instead of phoning me.

  “You’re not going to the glacier?”

  This time, I can’t stop a smile spreading over my lips. “You think I’d leave Iceland without seeing where my brother supposedly died?”

  “You can’t—it’s much too dangerous. Come back upstairs,” he grabs the sleeve of my jacket, “let me show you some hotels.”

  I wrench my sleeve free with such force I almost fall off the bottom step. “If it’s that dangerous, I’ll hire a guide.”

  “But,” he pauses. I can almost hear his brain working. “At least return to Reykjavík before Friday? I will still pay for your brother’s repatriation if you’re back before then.”

  “Why Friday?”

  “I can’t tell you.” He forces himself to add a qualification. “Yet.” His eyes flit between my face and something over my shoulder.

  Turning, I see a hubbub of passenger activity around the oval. I check my watch. The Austurleid SBS is due to depart in minutes. I hurry towards the exit and, as I trigger the centre’s automatic doors, the centre is flooded with the clamour of chattering passengers, accompanied by the purr of an expectant engine. “Where the hell have they all been waiting?”

  “Oh, er, everyone must have…waited at home,” Director Úlfar mumbles. “Leaving early inconveniences passengers, so Heimspeki drivers depart exactly on time. No need to wait in the cold.”

  Hearing us, Rut stands up behind the reception desk. He says something in Icelandic, shrugs and gestures at the passengers outside.

  Director Úlfar bats him away, dismissive.

  We walk across the depot in silence.

  At the Austurleid, the bus driver raises his eyebrows at Director Úlfar. While I load my suitcase underneath the transport, they talk in hushed tones, glancing occasionally in my direction. If ever I had any doubt about travelling up to Höfkállur, alone or otherwise, I’m certain now. I flew to Iceland knowing Mark would never have gone hiking last Saturday instead of phoning me. Now, though, there’s obviously something Director Úlfar doesn’t want me to find, or know, or see in Höfkállur.

  When I go to board the Austurleid he even blocks me, standing in front of the Austurleid’s steps. “Tell me, Miss Dales, were you close to your brother?”

  I notice the driver watching us. “Why else would I be here?”

  “Then please, for his sake, do not go to Höfkállur.”

  “Give me one good reason why.”

  “If you stay in Reykjavík a few days, I will.”

  “I don’t have a few days, Director Úlfar. I have to get to my brother, now.”

  He doesn’t move so I push pass him.

  Looking through the windows, I see him shove his hands into his pockets and exchange looks with the driver. Then the doors of the transport are being sucked into place and it’s too late for me to change my mind. I’m on my way to Höfkállur, whether Director Úlfar likes it, or not.

  As the transport pulls away from the oval, I get comfortable in the front row of seats and watch Director Úlfar through the windscreen. He must find something amusing, because he chuckles to himself then salutes the driver with a smirk.

  Once we’ve left the depot, the driver glances over his shoulder and looks me up and down, as if assessing something.

  We join the highway and head north. After the Austurleid has settled into a rhythm, he glances at me again; then regularly for miles.

  It makes me uncomfortable.

  But clearly he isn’t the type of Icelander who cares about being subtle.

  Chapter 2

  The ground beneath me splits into fissures and I plummet through jagged shards of ice that slice my thighs and arms into shreds of gaping flesh. Something bites me. I scream and spin around in search of my attacker. With a smirk as wide as the moon, an icy quagmire is revelling in its feast, sinking and choking me under its suffocating wetness, feeding on my exposed wounds.

  “Let’s go!” it cackles, challenging me. “To the glacier!”

  I thrash at it with limp punches from drowsy biceps, whack it with sluggish feet, and don’t last long. In the end, I give up and the shivering finally wakes me.

  Glancing around the Austurleid, I’m relieved to see no one’s noticed me having my nightmare. The still-black night outside has cast a blanket of rest over the transport and everyone is occupied with the quiet, even the driver. His eyes are set on the black road ahead.

  Shifting upright, I straighten my clothes and rub my eyes of sleep.

  Why am I dreaming of drowning? Director Úlfar didn’t say Mark was found in the Skepnasá River, did he?

  I go over our conversation from yesterday morning but don’t find anything in it other than my kernel of hope that there’s been some mistake. I water my kernel of hope with the tears I can’t cry until I get to Höfkállur, then plant in it the knowledge that if Mark really had died this weekend I would have sensed it. I haven’t.

  I check my phone again. Maybe Mark messaged me while I was asleep.

  Nothing.

  All that’s changed is the time and the mounting taste of blood in my mouth. I’ve been gnawing the inside of my cheek. My jaw is tense too. I roll my jaw to release the pressure, then feel for grazes with my tongue. I trace the damage I’ve done to the inside of my mouth while searching for a distraction outside my window. It’s still too dark to see anything. There are only rough shapes—the jagged outline of a mountain range in the distance; a flash of rubble beside the road. I always thought countries habitually tortured by seismic activity had rich fertile soil. But the lack of foliage along this highway makes Iceland seem barren and desolate.

  “Babe, the landscapes over here are magical.” Mark once told me. “They more than make up for the temperature. You gotta see them, Bex.”

  I rest my head against my window. The rhythmic bounce of the coach tempts my eyelids towards surrender again, so I push my cheeks up to meet them, taking the strain off the bruises pulling under my eyes. I need more rest, but anxiety has never been a kind lullaby for me. When I close my eyes, flashes of ice and roaring water torment me, twisting me back inside my nightmare. The air around me grows heavy with a fusty dampness, which fools me into thinking I must be drifting off to sleep, slipping back into that freezing water, until I recognise its source. Since moving to London, I’ve come to sense the atmospheric shift that comes with falling rain. Certain of seeing a delicate drizzle speckling the driver’s windscreen, I open my eyes, and I’m right. His wipers are already swishing.

  I watch them for a while, hoping their rhythm will put me under. Instead I notice a familiar glow lighting the ceiling: flat screens. Turning, I glance down the aisle to see the shadowed faces of still-awake passengers lit by the dim flickering of flat screens. It reminds me—Mark did some work recently with Iceland Tourism. Perhaps the documentary he helped film is in the Flybus’s programming. I untuck my screen from m
y armrest and tap at its display.

  A list of TV shows and promotional features appears onscreen. I squint to scan the list and one of the features catches my eye: Iceland, The Truth About Life. Is that the one? I reach into my bag for my reading glasses and activate my phone to take notes. It’s habit. Whenever I speak to Mark, he’s always got a whole new set of reasons prepared to convince me to follow the Heimspeki. These days, I like to have counterarguments ready.

  As I swipe through my online notes application to find the right file, a blond presenter in a long-sleeved black t-shirt and jean breeches beams out from the display. My heart leaps at his resemblance to Mark. They have the same complexion, the same slim build and authoritative yet casual stance of fists on hips. It isn’t Mark of course. An Australian shouldn’t be the one to present Iceland’s national treasure to the world, which is what Mark says the Heimspeki has become.

  “The Heimspeki,” the Icelander begins on cue, “people use the word to refer to scientific findings, philosophical and religious theory. But what does it really mean? For many people, Iceland’s Heimspeki has come to represent the truth about life.”

  I roll my eyes as he talks about man’s historic search for the meaning of life, how man has believed in a life after death for as long as there has been man.

  “Karma, reincarnation, God’s kingdom…electrical energy, souls, spirits,” the presenter says, “they all follow the same idea—an unknown materialisation of us existing after death. When something is so believed across humanity for so long, surely there has to be some common universal truth behind it.” He pauses to let the logic of his statement seep in, as Mark would do. “All we’ve been waiting for is a time when science would discover that truth…and that time is now.”

  The presenter sounds excited. Mark’s done a great job of advising the producers on how to explain certain concepts, but I’ve heard it all before, and all it is is theory. Waiting for the presenter to finish his theoretical summary, I lean against my window to watch the Austurleid’s headlights push yellow beams into the dark road ahead. I only half-listen until the presenter uses one of Mark’s catchphrases.

  “Think about it.”

  I sit up and force myself to pay attention. The film reel switches from orange-robed monks kneeling in communal prayer to lab technicians reading books on subatomic and quantum physics. Then the presenter jumps straight into the heart of Iceland’s scientific breakthrough.

  “Everything in the universe is cyclic.” The presenter stands before a montage of life-cycle diagrams. “Everything has its place in the circle of life, everything becomes something else. There is no wastage. Nothing tangible ever disappears.”

  I know this part well. There are oxygen and water cycles, carbon and nitrogen cycles, as well as the energy cycle of course. The conservation of energy law is a fundamental law of physics. Everything always becomes something else.

  “So where does the electrical energy in our brains go when we die?” The presenter taps his head, in the exact same way Mark does. The two of them have definitely been talking. “Think about it. Energy doesn’t die. One form always becomes another form. Electrical energy is the most efficient of all energies too. It even outperforms hydrogen as a power source. So only a tiny portion would entropy as heat. Where does the rest go? It can’t simply cease to exist. Just as our bodies go to the worms, it must continue within the energy cycle and become another form of energy.”

  I chew on my penstick as the presenter explains the details. The reasoning in his summation sounds like it’s been lifted straight from Mark’s thesis, word-for-word.

  “Until now we’ve had no choice but to believe in more mystical explanations for the gap in our knowledge,” the presenter continues. “But no longer. The world is round, not flat. People can sometimes take a while to accept new facts as truth. But now that we have the Heimspeki, we have science’s answer to the age-old question of life-after-death.”

  I stop chewing. Facts? Truth? Science’s answer to life-after-death? This doesn’t sound like Mark anymore. Iceland has no actual proof of life after death. No facts, no truth—only a new theory. Granted, it’s an appealingly logical theory, grounded on some extraordinary discoveries. Nonetheless it is mere theory, and there are plenty of those in the world. I have my own. Mark has his. Neither of us claim our theories are facts though.

  “And the ultimate result?” The presenter enthuses. “A perfect life, a perfect society…”

  They’re kidding!

  I look away as the presenter concludes his presentation by welcoming both visitors and theology-tourists to Iceland. As far as I’m concerned, unsubstantiated theories are little more than hunches.

  Once the flat screen zoops into a neat black silence, I shove its display into my armrest and fold away my reading glasses. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s people who think they know what’s good for others, including me. Mark is the only exception. He knows me. You can’t know a person after a twenty-minute appointment, no matter what your medical degree. You can’t know why a person is the way they are after a brief summary of the facts, and you can’t possibly know what ‘perfection’ means to them. A life lived. Then you know. Some random philosophers in Iceland have no idea about my life, just as I have no idea about theirs. What is perfect for one person simply isn’t for another.

  Expecting darkness to welcome me back, I look out my window to see a dull dawn of grey cloud breaking the night. Under its faint light, it seems like we’re travelling along a highway lined with enormous rugged boulders. Are they noise barriers or roadside sculptures? Gigantic chunks of barbarous art maybe? They tower over the roof of the Austurleid, so it’s hard to tell.

  It isn’t until the highway mounts the brow of a hill, and I see an endless plain of matt-black lava rocks stretching towards a horizon struggling to brighten, that I realise these boulders haven’t been put here by man. We’re travelling through a lava field.

  Mark’s told me about these lava fields, how expansive they are, sharp and black. Once, red-hot seas of magma bubbled across this volcanic landscape, plastering its soil with rocks fresh from the earth’s core. Now winding roads cut through the cooled crust, curving around the hardest sections of basalt like white-icing messages on chocolate cake. Populated neither by animal nor human, invaded only by sporadic mosses and grasses, the remoteness of these never-ending extrusive igneous black rock fields used to remind Mark of Australia’s outback, where dusty red forever-deserts are speckled only by wispy hummocks of long thin grass.

  The vision resonates with me and I let it. Australia. I haven’t been home to Sydney for a year and a half now. Not since Riley.

  A heaviness descends on me at the thought of his name. Riley.

  As the Austurleid speeds along, I gaze out trying not to remember. I’m here to find Mark, and whatever it is in Höfkállur that Director Úlfar doesn’t want me to see or know.

  Having long moments to myself like this is never a good idea though. These days, it’s better if I have work to do. I suppose that’s why I’ve been promoted so quickly over the last year and a half. Once I get involved in a project I don’t stop. I don’t because I can’t. Mark phones to check on me on our Saturdays, more often if he can. The rest of the time I simply have to stay busy, lest I remember too much and shame drags me down into a pit of self-pity so deep I can’t crawl out of it again.

  If I let myself, everything reminds me of something to do with Riley and the mess he left me in eighteen months ago. Anyone would think he’d died, rather than find himself a new girlfriend. It’s pathetic, really. And I hate thinking about it. That was the old me. This is the new me.

  I straighten in my seat and focus again on the view. The drizzle abates and the enormity of each volcanic rock carves a dramatic form out of the black canvas of night. If I’m honest with myself, it truly is beautiful here. Magical enough, I suppose, to make some people wonder…to ma
ke me wonder.

  Mark’s says the wonder of life is what’s led the Icelanders to find the peace they have. He says if I gave their ideas a chance, I could find peace too. Wondering and imagining, he says, is intrinsic to our nature and vital to our nirvana. Yet it’s constantly downplayed by science. Our imaginations aren’t random, our instincts aren’t the obsolete impulses I say they are, gut feelings aren’t illogical nonsense, because all kinds of electrical energy can trigger our brains to think certain things at certain times. Why acknowledge the value of some, and not the others? We should—I should—trust every facet available to our senses. Or so he says.

  “You analyse things too much,” Mark’s been telling me. “Not everything has to be deduced logically. What about things that feel right?” He thinks I should go with the flow more, stop listing potential boyfriends’ attributes against incompatibilities, like some factual investigation. He’s right about one thing: “You can’t control people with notes or lists.”

  Still, I have good reason for the habit. Riley ‘felt right’, and look where that got me.

  Images surface.

  I push them back under, but also don’t have the strength to resist them right now. I don’t mind travelling alone. On a trip like this, though, it would have been better to have work to do. It’s a shame really that I finished my report on time. Lots of things are a shame. It’s a shame I even met Riley.

  I wish I hadn’t. I wish he’d never come up to me at Victoria’s Christmas party, on the balcony, where he’d gone for a smoke. He said he couldn’t believe I was a law student and leant in close to whisper: but you’re so beautiful. He made me feel special, like one of those romantic heroines he played opposite in his local theatre each season—Juliet to his Romeo, Cleopatra to his Anthony, Isolde to his Tristan. A lawyer himself, working for one of the big Sydney law firms, Riley practiced amateur dramatics to ‘keep him sane’. I didn’t realise what he meant at the time. But I did go to watch him one night. He was so good—I couldn’t understand why he didn’t take up acting full time.