Free Walking Into the Night by Olaf Olafsson Page A

was eye to eye with her aunt.
    A smell of cigar smoke hung in the room, the light was gray, a cloud covering the sun. His frantic movements didn’t seem to surprise her.
    “Let it all out,” she whispered to him soothingly. “Oh yes, my love . . .”
    A sharp spasm shook his body; he raised himself off her and knelt by the sofa.
    “There,” she said, “there. You feel better now, don’t you?”
    He looked down, didn’t answer her immediately.
    “What about you?”
    “Of course, darling. It’s enough for me that you’re here.”
    When she stroked his cheek he found that one of her hands was balled. He looked up.
    She smiled.
    “The butterfly,” she said. “It flew to me and settled on my palm. Poor little thing . . . I held it so it wouldn’t be hurt. I’ll let it go now.”
    She stood up, taking care not to close her fist, letting the air in through her fingers. He rose too and watched her walk out into the hallway.
    When she opened the front door the sun broke free of the clouds. The butterfly fluttered away on its paper-thin wings, was transformed into a spark of light, and vanished. As she turned round, he emerged from the parlor. She went to him, forgetting to shut the front door.
    The daisies lay scattered on the floor between them in a splash of sunlight. He watched her tiptoe among them as if she were walking on blazing water.

22
    The rain began just after first light.
    He was awakened by the first drops as they vanished into the reddening sea of leaves outside, only a few at first, then a deluge. A squall swept the hillside but the bells remained silent in their towers; he concluded that the wind must be from the north. The leaves swirled in the gust, red and yellow; raindrops streamed down the windowpanes.
    He turned his head on the soft pillow and rubbed his eyes. The leaves looked like goldfish swimming in an aquarium.
    Summer was over but he didn’t miss it. The Chief and Miss Davies, who had been away since the beginning of spring, finally returned yesterday. The construction on the hill had been suspended for months; the summer days succeeded one another in a torpor of heat and drought. The workmen’s huts stood empty except for the one where the men responsible for maintenance and repairs lodged. Kristjan and the head gardener had been commended for managing to keep everything going with only half the staff, but neither was flattered by the praise.
    It was a Thursday in June when Kristjan had dismissed his staff; the head gardener had thinned out his workforce the day before. It rained on both days, and when Kristjan opened the window the following morning the warmth was gone from the air.
    In late June they were paid a visit by representatives of the people now overseeing the Chief’s property, to supervise crating up the works of art and antiques and transporting them to the docks. They swaggered around, talking loudly, so that no one could fail to realize that it was they and not the Chief who made the decisions now about what was to be sold and what could remain in the castle. When Kristjan found them in Miss Davies’ bedroom, rummaging in her drawers, he had to fight to keep control of his temper.
    The Chief rang Kristjan daily to remind him that they mustn’t take anything but the things he had agreed to put up at auction, mainly mail-shirts, suits of armor, swords, spears, and shields, which were still in storage in the warehouse down by the harbor, never having made it up the hill. But the list also included ancient Greek vases and several statues, as well as a church ceiling which the Chief had bought at the sale of the Count of Almenas’s possessions in the winter of 1927.
    For two days in a row an echo could be heard from the tennis court:
puck, puck,
punctuating the silence. On the first day, Kristjan took cold drinks of lemonade and soda out to them on the court, making three journeys with glasses and jugs on a silver tray, as he was accustomed to doing for the Chief. But he