The Bone Clocks

“Writers don’t write in a void. We work in a physical space, a room, ideally in a house like Laxness’s Gljъfrasteinn, but we also write within an imaginative space. Amid boxes, crates, shelves, and cabinets full of … junk, treasure, both cultural—nursery rhymes, mythologies, histories, what Tolkien called ‘the compost heap’; and also personal stuff—childhood TV, homegrown cosmologies, stories we hear first from our parents, or later from our children—and, crucially, maps. Mental maps. Maps with edges. And for Auden, for so many of us, it’s the edges of the maps that fascinate …”

HOLLY’S BEEN RENTING her apartment since June, but she’ll be moving back to Rye in a couple of weeks so it’s minimally furnished, uncluttered, and neat, all walnut floors and cream walls, with a fine view of Reykjavik’s jumbled roofs, sloping down to the inky bay. Streetlights punctuate the northern twilight as color drains away, and a trio of cruise liners glitters in the harbor, like three floating Las Vegases. Over the bay, a long, whale-shaped mountain dominates the skyline, or would, if the clouds weren’t so low. Цrvar says it’s called Mount Esja, but admits he’s never climbed it because it’s right there, on the doorstep. I biff away an intense wish to live here, intense, perhaps, because of its utter lack of realism: I don’t think I’d survive a single winter of these three-hour days. Holly, Aoife, Цrvar, and I eat a veggie moussaka and polish off a couple of bottles of wine. They ask me about my week on the road. Aoife talks about her summer’s dig on a tenth-century settlement near Eglisstaрir, and nudges the amiable but quiet Цrvar into discussing his work on the genetic database that has mapped the entire Icelandic population: “Eighty-plus women were found to have Native American DNA,” he tells me. “This proves pretty conclusively that the Vinland Sagas are based on historical truth, not just wishful thinking. Lots of Irish DNA on the women’s side, too.” Aoife describes an app that can tell every living Icelander if and how closely related they are to every other living Icelander. “They’ve needed it for years,” she pats Цrvar’s hand on the table, “to avoid those awkward, morning-after in-Thor’s-name-did-I-just-shag-my-cousin?moments. Right, Цrvar?” The poor lad half blushes and mumbles about a gig starting somewhere. Everyone in Reykjavik under thirty years old, Aoife says, is in at least one band. They get up to go, and as I’m leaving first thing in the morning they both wish me bon voyage. I get a niece’s hug from Aoife and a firm handshake from Цrvar, who only now remembers that he brought Desiccated Embryosfor me to sign. While Цrvar laces up his boots, I try to think of something witty to mark the occasion, but nothing witty arrives.

To Цrvar, from Crispin, with best regards.

I’ve striven to be witty since Wanda in Oils.

Letting it go feels so sodding liberating.

·   ·   ·

I STIR, STIR, stir until the mint leaves are bright green minnows in a whirlpool. “The nail in the coffin of Carmen and me,” I tell Holly, “was Venice. If I never see the place again, I’ll die happy.”

Holly looks puzzled. “I found it rather romantic.”

“That’s the trouble. All that beauty: in- sodding-sufferable. Ewan Rice calls Venice the Capital of Divorce—and set one of his best books there. About divorce. Venice is humanity at its ripped-off, ripping-off worst … I made this smart-arse remark about a rip-off umbrella Carmen bought—really, the sort of thing I say twenty times a day—but instead of batting it away, she had this look … like, ‘Remind me, why am I spending the last of my youth on this whingeing old man?’She walked off across Saint Mark’s Square. Alone, of course.”

“Well,” Holly says neutrally, “we all have off days …”

“Bit of a Joycean epiphany, looking back. I don’t blame her. Either for finding me irritating or for dumping me. When she’s my age now, I’ll be sixty-sodding- eight, Holly! Love may be blind, but cohabitation comes with all the latest X-ray gizmos. So we spent the next day moseying around museums on our own, and when we said goodbye at Venice airport, the last thing she said was ‘Take care’; and when I got home, a Dear John was in my inbox. Couldn’t call it unexpected. Both of us have been through a messy divorce already, and one’s enough. We’ve agreed we’re still friends. We’ll exchange Christmas cards for a few years, refer to each other without rancor, and probably never meet again.”

Holly nods and makes an “I see” noise in her throat.

A late bus stops outside, its air brakes hissing.

I fail to mention this afternoon’s message to Holly.

My iPhone’s still switched off. Not now. Later.