Reyka

Reyka.

After Torn has retrieved my leg from the naughty seal he comes back
over to the hole in the ice and hauls me out.

"So what did you think of the hot spring?" he says.

"I liked it," I reply. "Except for the part where that seal stole my
leg."

Torn nods as if the answer expects and then he pulls on both pairs of
his underpants. Then his trousers. Then his socks and fur-lined boots.
I do the same except first I have to clip on my leg.

"You were right what you said about my balls freezing," I say.
"They're freezing."

"I'll sort it when we get home," says Torn. "In Iceland all boys are
given a special ball-heating device. You are given it on your
thirteenth birthday. Or when your balls drop. Whichever is
first."

"What do girls get?" I say and laugh out loud but whether Torn has
heard I am not sure. He has already set off across the field of ice
back towards where the speck of the house is pumping smoke into the
morning air.

As when we entered the previous evening Torn's parents are sitting on
either side of the chessboard in the front room. They are like bookends
nobody would deliberately buy.

"Happy Christmas!" they say in unison as we come in. They both turn
their heads towards us as if they are looking. I know they aren't.
Their eye sockets are still as eyeless as the night before.

"Happy Christmas!" I say and then I notice a third person over to the
left.

"Look who's here," says Torn's mother.

"All together again," says Torn's father.

"Reyka," says Torn curtly. "I didn't know you were out."

The figure I had seen raises herself and walks over. She is barely
five foot high and has jet white hair. It is pulled back tightly from
her head in a style that resembles more a mediaeval punishment than a
hairstyle.

"Torn," says Reyka, "it's nice to see you again after all these
years." She holds out a hand towards me. "You must be Thumbelina. Ma
tells me you have only one leg."

"Actually," I say, "I have three. One real and two prosthetics. One is
a spare."

"Lovely," says Reyka although she says it in a way that is not lovely
at all.

"You said out," I say. "From where?"

"What?" says Torn. He is sitting on our bed in a pair of cotton
underpants. They have a Union Jack on the front. When he wees he pulls
his penis from a flap directly in the centre of St George's Cross. I
know. I have watched.

"Reyka," I say.

"It's a long story," says Torn. "Come on, get ready. Christmas dinner
is waiting."

"It is you who isn't ready," I say, agitated at this turn of
direction.

"What?" says Torn. Then he says. "I am ready. Christmas dinner is
always eaten in underwear. It's a family tradition. Look, I got you
these."

He holds up a pair of underpants. On the front they have a picture of
a penguin. On the back a baleen whale.

"They are you to a T."

"In what way?" I ask but Torn has already left the room.

Downstairs Torn's parents are still on either side of the table
although now the chessboard has been replaced by a large steaming
turkey. As Torn and I come downstairs Reyka appears from the kitchen
holding a tureen of sprouts. She, or someone, has cut slits in them so
they appear like so many tiny heads.

"Just in time," says Reyka. "Torn you cut the turkey. I'll dole out
the sprouts."

This is all we eat, the two items piled high on each of the
plates.

"Something of a family tradition," says Torn.

He doesn't need to say this because out of everything this is one
thing that is clear.

After dinner it is time for presents. All the presents are clothes and
now I understand the necessity of the underwear. For as an item is
received it is immediately put on. There are jumpers, skirts, shirts
and mittens.

"I think you've forgotten something," says Torn's father as the last
present is handed out.

He is wearing an extremely pointed hat, a shirt with a button-down
collar and an enormous pair of pink leather boots. However, he doesn't
have any trousers.

He stands from the table and does a dance, moving his legs in
scissor-like motions and then he stops and laughs like a whistle.

"Actually," says Reyka, "there is one more present."

She goes into the kitchen and comes back out bum first dragging a
cardboard box in front of her.

"You open it ma."

I think we are all expecting trousers so when Torn's mother bends to
the box and comes back up holding a penguin there is a general sense of
surprise.

"It doesn't have any wings," says Reyka. "But it's not a cripple.
Penguins don't fly anyway."

Torn's mother places the bird on the table and it wobbles across the
surface making penguin-like noises.

"Do you like it?" says Reyka. "Do you like it?"

There is something pleading and insistent in her voice and I know
there is more going on here than it would first appear.

"So what is Reyka's story?" I say.

Torn and I are in our bedroom at the top of the house. The roof here
slopes and I am standing at an angle; the angle somewhat increased by
the rather statuesque blue hat I received as a Christmas present.

"She isn't an evil person?" says Torn and then there is a knock at the
door.

It is Reyka.

"I wonder if you could help me make reparation?" she says.

"You can only make reparation with yourself," says Torn. And then,
perhaps aware of the harshness of his tone he adds, "In your position
who knows what I would have done."

"So you will come with me?" says Reyka.

Torn nods. "We will come."

At this point, right out of the blue, Reyka twists her head and looks
at the place where once my real leg was.

"What happened?" she says.

Stunned by her directness I answer directly. "I fell asleep in a
field. The combine harvester didn't see me. I didn't see it. In a way I
was lucky. I also lost my tongue, but that they managed to reattach. I
often wonder what it would have been like if it was the other way
around."

"Oh," says Reyka and then she says something that at first seems out
of place, but later seems to fit right in. She says, "Once you have a
taste of human flesh it changes you."

It is night again and Torn has hefted the pack onto his back. The pack
contains everything we need for a trip, a tent, sleeping bags, warm
clothes, willie warmers. There are two of these. Reyka doesn't need
one.

"Although I could use it to keep one finger warm," she says and does
something with her lips that on another person would have been a smile.
In a way, I admire her for this attempt at humour. This whole adventure
is obviously difficult for her.

"Come on," says Torn putting on a jovial voice. "Letsbe Avenue."

Letsbe Avenue is the punch line to Torn's favourite joke; 'Where does
the local policeman live?'

This is one of the things that first attracted me to Torn. His sense
of humour. But not only that, his ability to use his humour to make a
bad situation better.

Outside the cold hits us like a blazing fire in a warm pub. We turn
and take a last look at the house. In the window is standing the
penguin. It looks right at home as if it has been there all it's life.
This is an illusion because I know for a fact that it hasn't.

We follow footprints in the snow and after the footprints end we just
follow the snow. It is all around, white, untouched, pure. Above the
snow is sky; star-filled and huge. In the distance are mountains. These
look like stairs to the sky. If God had existed then I am sure this
would have been exactly the kind of thing he would have created.

After two hours of silent tramping Torn stops and lowers the
pack.

"I need a piss," he says.

"Careful, it doesn't freeze," says Reyka. I can see that she means
this and while Torn unzips I search the pack for the willie warmers. I
find them at the bottom. They are in red wool with a buttoned closure
at the end.

"I thought these were just joke things," I say when Torn
returns.

"Do you know how cold it gets here?" says Torn.

"Jokes are a matter of perspective," says Reyka. "Like a lot of
things."

I think about this while Torn sets up the tent. Reyka's phrase opens
up all kinds of doorways in my mind. My thoughts hop from idea to idea
until rattling around in my head is the single sentence, 'Perspective
is a matter of perspective'. I don't know if this is profound or not.
Like a lot of things.

"Tea?" says Reyka finally interrupting my reverie.

"Thanks," I say and I take the cup she is proffering. Over her
shoulder I see Torn pulling the willie warmer over his penis. Torn is
my boyfriend. That is the same whichever way you look at it and that is
the thing I cling to in this snow-drenched wasteland.

We sleep like sardines and in the morning we eat sardines. I remember
Reyka's words about human flesh and it is only hunger which allows me
to put the staring eye of the sardine head into my mouth.

"How much further is it?" I say.

"Just around the corner," says Reyka.

I stand and gaze into the distance. All I can see is snow, snow and
snow. There are no corners. I wonder if the words are just a turn of
phrase.

Four hours of walking later when the camp is not even a distant
depression in the surface Torn suggests a song.

"On days like this we used to sing songs on the boat," says
Reyka.

"I'm sorry," says Torn.

Reyka stops in the snow, all five feet of her. A drop of iced water
hangs from the peak of her nose. "It's ok," she says, "if I'm going to
face up to it then I have to face up to it." She looks towards me. "I
used to be captain of a whaler."

I can see that she expects some answer so I put a hand under my chin
to cut off the reflection from below and say, "Did you catch many
whales?"

"None," replies Reyka icily and it is at this point that Torn takes up
the song. The tone is high-pitched and haunting and soon it is taken up
by Reyka too. I walk along behind them listening and it is only after
it has finished that I ask Torn what the words mean.

"It's about whales," he says. "They mate for life. And one when mate
dies they mourn for life. That is what the song is about."

"It doesn't sound happy," I say.

"It's not," says Reyka. "Look. We are nearly there."

I look up sharply expecting to see a corner. I don't. I see only a
small house.

The house has a green fence and a square window in a black roof. Smoke
billows from two chimneys, a third lies dormant.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" says Torn.

For a moment I think he is talking to me but it is Reyka who answers.
"If not now, then when?"

She steps up to the door and lets the knocker fall three times. The
head of the knocker is in the shape of the mouth of a fish.

We wait for what seems the longest time and snowflakes begin to fall
from the sky. I put my tongue out to catch one and it is at this point
that the door opens.

"Are you from Shell?" says the woman standing there. "I've told you.
The oil is not for sale. That's what you must realise. You can't buy
everything."

I have on my statuesque blue hat, Torn a pair of Mickie Mouse
earmuffs, Reyka a hound's-tooth pin through her mediaeval torture
hair.

"We're not from Shell," says Torn.

"I'm Reyka Ingridsdottir," says Reyka.

The woman raises her chin. She looks like I imagine Gretel would have
looked if the Grimms had written about her as an old old woman and
Hansel had died young.

"You may come in," says the woman.

She leads us into a small living-room. There are a number of wooden
chairs here with backs like ladders and we sit on these. Because of her
diminutive size Reyka has to haul herself up onto the seat. I wonder
for a second if she is going to carrying on hauling herself up the
ladder back and perch there like an African bird. But she
doesn't.

"Is this about Olaf?" says the woman.

"I?" begins Reyka but the woman interrupts her.

"I received this letter." The woman reaches down into her pinny and
comes back up with a folded square of paper. "It came five years ago. I
have read it every day. I will read it to you now."

The woman's voice changes. It becomes like a voice on a old phonograph
playing at the wrong speed a record that is warped.

"'Dear Ma, This is the most difficult letter I will write. I know this
because it is my last. First let me tell you. The sea is wonderful. It
is all I ever dreamt in that upstairs bed I used to pleasure myself in
on my scarce nights alone. It rolls and surges and when you look into
it you can see such colours there.

'What would it have been to live and not have seen it? Would that have
been a life or only an approximation of one? When Pa used to touch me
he said if we have no adventure in life then we have no life.

'Ma, I have had a life finally. And tonight is my final
adventure.

'The crew are in a bad way. The food was gone six weeks back, the
water three days whence. We hardly have the strength between us to pull
one oar and the breathe of the air doesn't come.

'Last night we made a resolution. If the wind doesn't come today then
we must eat one of our own. We must or we will all surely perish.

'Last night I didn't sleep. I decided that it should be me that be
eaten. The others they are so straggly but you ma you always fed me so
well. Remember when Pa held me and said what a handful I was? I thank
you for that now.

'Ma excuse the shortness of this note. My strength is going and beside
me the fire is beginning to roar. It's flames are like fingers that
want to grip. I only want to be gripped. Tell Pa I don't forgive him
but that death will make me forget.

'Your son, Olaf'"

The old woman stops reading. She folds the note back into a square and
deposits it in her pinny.

"I have only one question," she says. "Tell me. Did he have a burial
in a fashion that Christ dictated?"

On the chair Reyka's head snaps up. On her face is a look of abject
astonishment.

The woman looks at her and then buries her head in her hands. "You
mean, he didn't," she says and she starts to sob.

"But," says Reyka. Then stops. "You don't know?"

The old woman is still sobbing.

Reyka slips from her chair and places a hand on the head of the woman.
There is nothing lesbian about the scene. It is only touching.

"Olaf had no burial," she says. "He didn't die. We ate only the left
leg and the buttocks."

High up on a wall a cuckoo shoots out of a clock and then goes back
in.

"We were picked up by an American troop ship. I was incarcerated as
captain of a crew of cannibals and Olaf has been touring the American
freak show circuit. He appears as 'The Man With No Ass'. I have tried
to talk to him but he won't see me. I came to you to help me as
intermediary. I am haunted by the taste of his flesh. I thought you
would help me see him."

"And I thought he was dead," says the old woman.

"So he is punishing us both," says Reyka and she takes her hand from
the woman's hair. "Come," she says to Torn and I. "We will go."

The journey back is a long as the journey there. It is Torn again who
pitches the tent and Reyka again who prepares the food. The fire
crackles between us and it is the only sound except for that of our
voices.

"You know," says Reyka during one lull in the conversation, "sometimes
I wonder if it wouldn't have been better to be eaten than to have been
the one who did the eating."

"Is that a matter of perspective?" I say and then I don't know why but
I hold out my arms and pull Reyka to me. I hug her tightly and remain
hugging her as Torn excuses himself from the fire to go off for a
piss.

The fact of his willie warmer crosses my mind and then the reality of
my own. There is no doubt. My willie is snug as a bug in a rug.

Reyka will be ok. She is my family too now like Torn.

Torn is my boyfriend.

I love him.