La dernière tempête

The days following Hulda and Jón’s discovery of Dimma’s body were lost in a haze.
Hulda could remember the moment when Jón broke the door open, but almost immediately afterwards a sort of amnesia had descended, blotting out the subsequent events. The trauma had proved too much even for a tough policewoman like her, although she had experienced her share of grim sights during her years on the force.
She had been wandering around in a stupor ever since. But even that hadn’t prevented her from finally seeing things in their true light. When she looked back at the events leading up to her daughter’s death, she realized just how blind she had been. The resulting mental torture was
beyond anything she had ever known. Her mind was racked one minute with self-accusations, the next with violent hatred towards Jón. As the numbness began to recede, she couldn’t bear to be at home. She had to get out, go to work – do something, anything, to disperse her thoughts and
give her a temporary respite from this hell on earth.

Et pourtant elle courait, courait encore, comme dans un rêve, un cauchemar, à peine capable de soulever son corps devenu si lourd dans les bourrasques de vent, à peine capable d'aspirer de l'oxygène dans ses poumons contractés par le froid, mais c'était la seule option, elle ne pouvait pas s'arrêter.

La neige avait beau embellir le paysage, sa manière de resserrer son étreinte autour d'eux ne faisait qu'accroître leur enfermement.

Assise à table, Hulda dut se forcer pour avaler un morceau de raie fermentée. Elle en supportait mal l’odeur, et c’était loin d’être son poisson préféré, mais chaque année le 23 décembre, à la Saint-Torlak, la caféteria du travail se pliait à la tradition et servait ce plat. Ceux qui ne l’aimaient pas devaient se contenter de deux ou trois toasts, en essayant de tolérer la puanteur qui imprégnait tout le réfectoire, ou bien sortir s’acheter un sandwich.

Elle passait donc ses journées dans son bureau à ranger documents et rapports, à prétendre les consulter sans réussir à s’en convaincre. La situation s’arrangerait, tôt ou tard. Certes, elle ne surmonterait jamais complètement la culpabilité qui la rongeait, mais avec un peu de chance, celle-ci finirait par diminuer. En revanche, sa colère ne faisait que s’intensifier. Jour après jour, elle sentait la fureur et la haine grandir en elle et la dévorer de l’intérieur, sans parvenir à lutter contre. Il fallait qu’elle trouve un moyen d’expulser ces émotions négatives, d’une manière ou d’une autre…

La maison était ancienne et lorsque le temps se dégradait, nul autre moyen pour se maintenir au chaud que de s'envelopper dans une couverture épaisse. Ce qu'elle avait fait, mais ses mains, restées à l'air libre pour feuilleter les pages de son livre, étaient désormais glacées. Un sacrifice qu'elle était prête à accepter car la lecture lui apportait plus de plaisir que tout autre activité : avec un bon bouquin, elle voyageait loin, si loin de son quotidien, dans une autre culture, un autre pays...

Même les hommes les plus raisonnables peuvent... peuvent perdre le contrôle.

Christmas Day.
This was normally one of Hulda’s favourite days of the year. After all the stress of getting the house clean and
dinner ready on Christmas Eve, the twenty-fifth was a day
of relaxation, which she liked to spend quietly absorbed in the books she’d been given, especially since Dimma had grown old nough to entertain herself. Even Jón generally took a break from work and lounged in front of the TV or read the papers.

She became aware that it was freezing cold. Of course, that was to be expected at this time of year. The house was feeling its age and when the wind blew from a certain quarter the only way to keep warm in some of the rooms, like here in the sitting room, was to wrap yourself in a thick blanket, as she had done now. The blanket kept her bodysnug, but her hands, sticking out from under it, were so chilly that it was hard to turn the pages. Still, she put up with it. Reading gave her greater pleasure than anything else she knew. A good book could transport her far, far away, to a different world, another country, another culture, where the climate was warmer and life was easier. That’s not to imply that she was ungrateful or discontented withthe farm or its location, not really. It was Einar’s family home, after all, so the only thing for it was to grit one’s teeth and make the best of it. Growing up in post-war Reykjavík, Erla had never dreamt of becoming a farmer’s wife in the wild Icelandic highlands, but when she met Einar he had swept her off her feet.

The fact was she'd simply had to come back to work; she couldn't bear to spemd another minute cooped up in the house with Jón. Even the breathtaking natural beauty of their home on Álftanes couldn’t work its magic on her these days. She was deaf to the sighing of the waves and blind to the stars and Northern Lights shimmering across the sky. She and Jón hardly spoke to each other, and she’d given up initiating any conversations with him, although she still answered if he addressed her directly.
The February darkness did nothing to help. It was the
coldest, greyest time of the year, and every new day
seemed to bring a deterioration in the weather. As if things weren’t bad enough, the snow had been coming down heavily that month, burying the city in a muffling layer and clogging its arteries.