The Orchestra - Sinfónia Lifsins - 59. Relations

Eiri’s birthday started like any other day. I headed for breakfast thinking I would greet my cousin, wish him happy birthday, and have a nice meal with my family. Jó would surely create the most extravagant fruit salad with all the out-of-season fruits he could get his hands on, and my cousin would joke about how he’s only twenty-eight but has already gotten a house, a wife, and a grown-up kid. Jó would pretend to be offended at being called a ‘wife’, and I would do my best to not blush or show how much I appreciated being thought of as their child, even in a joke.

But instead, I found the kitchen empty, with a note on the table addressed to me in Jó’s extra-swirly writing. “We’re sorry we had to leave before you woke up, but Eiri and I wanted to enjoy some quiet time by ourselves, and the best way to do this is to go out when most people are still in bed,” the note read. “We’ll see you (and Dmitri?) for a proper family lunch. Enjoy having the house for yourself! Love, Eiri and Jó”.

I smiled as I read Jó’s carefully crafted message, but it only lasted as long as the note did. Of course Jó and Eiri would want to have some special time together. And I understood why they had to go without waiting for me. They deserved it. Really, they did. But after expecting a happy, noisy breakfast, it didn’t feel right to resign to a solitary meal. If only Dmitri were here…

The doorbell rang.

Could it be him? But why would it be him? He wasn’t meant to be here for at least a few more hours. Did something happen? My feet rushed me to the front door while I tried to imagine what would make Dmitri come so early. Maybe he just missed me. He had become really clingy recently. Maybe he thought spending Friday away was enough, and he didn’t want to miss any part of Saturday with me.

Yes, that could’ve been it. It sounded like the kind of thing he would do. Unless he hurried here because something bad happened to Siggi, and he needed urgent cuddles to feel better.

I stood in front of the door, but I couldn’t bring myself to open it. What if Dmitri had bad news? But if it was that bad, then he needed me more than ever and I had to comfort him.

“Is anyone there? I heard movement.” The voice on the other side of the door sounded nothing like Dmitri’s.

“I’m… I’m sorry!” I struggled to turn the key that was already in the lock and my hand slipped from the door handle before I finally faced the stranger on the other side. She didn’t seem impressed or amused by my lack of motor coordination, standing fully upright with her arms crossed over her chest and her pierced eyebrows raised like she expected to be dealing with a toddler.

“Hi. Is this the house of Eiríkur Mathiessen?” The girl seemed to be about my age, maybe older. Her hair was short, spiky, and coloured like a bright rainbow. After she spoke, she let the tip of her pierced tongue show for a second, and glared at me as if I should be sorry for not being my cousin. Even the piercing in her eyebrows and the one on her chin seemed to stare at me in disapproval.

“Yes, but he’s not here at the moment.” Even the solitary breakfast seemed like a better option than standing there with my legs shaking and my hand sweating on the door handle. Maybe she would go home now that she knew Eiri wasn’t here?

“Really? What kind of person isn’t home on a Saturday morning?” She rolled her eyes. Her eyebrow piercings twinkled. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“I think he’ll be back before lunch, but I don’t know when.”

“Great,” she snarled. “I cross the city, battle an old rag for information and almost get hit by a shoe, only to find that my brother isn’t even home! I hate Saturday mornings!”

“Your… brother?” I didn’t know Eiri had siblings.

“Oh, yeah, sorry about that. I should’ve introduced myself properly, though I don’t know who you are either.” She finally uncrossed her arms, revealing an open leather jacket with a black shirt underneath picturing a punk unicorn. Was she really related to Eiri? Her stare reminded me of Aunt Margrét, but surely I would know if I had another cousin? She kept staring at me, until I realised she wanted me to introduce myself first.

“I’m sorry! I… I’m Eiri’s cousin, Gunni. I live here with him.” I knew better than to mention Jó at this point.

“My name is Róska. I’m guessing you’re a cousin on Eiríkur’s mother’s side, ‘cause I don’t think we’re related.” She crossed her arms again, pointedly avoiding shaking my hand. “How about you let me in, Gunni? I’ll wait for Eiríkur here, so I don’t waste my trip.”

“I… I…” Eiri and Jó had left me in charge of the house. Would they be OK with having someone else in their house when they weren’t home? Jó hadn’t cleaned the living room yet. We still had the popcorn bowl and empty soda cans on the coffee table from last night’s movie marathon. He would freak out if a visitor saw it.

“OK, whatever. I’m not going to stay here the whole morning waiting for you to make up your mind.” Róska pushed her way past me as if this was the normal way of entering someone else’s house. She kicked her shoes vaguely towards where we kept ours and headed to our messy living room before I could stop her. Jó wouldn’t like this. He would never leave me alone in the house again.

I followed Róska into the living room, and found her sitting on the couch with her feet up the coffee table next to the soda bottles. She stared at me, her pierced left eyebrow raised, until I found my voice again. “Is Eiri expecting your visit?”

“I’m not even sure he knows I exist. I only found out about him last month!”

“So… he doesn’t know you?”

“Holy shit, you’re slow!” She sighed. “I’ve never seen Eiríkur before. All I know is that my father apparently had this other family before I was born, which includes a son ten years older than me and an ex-wife who I’m now sure came straight out of hell.”

Out of all the things I could’ve answered, my mouth decided to go with: “Have you met Aunt Margrét?”

She put her hands up in the air. “What can I say? I’m sorry you’re related to her, though I’m even sorrier that Eiríkur has her as a mother. I had the not-pleasure of meeting her before I came here.

The address we had for Eiríkur probably hadn’t been updated since my father’s divorce, so she opened the door and thought I was a Satanist wanting to sacrifice her before I said I was looking for Eiríkur. She yelled some shit about God and the Devil and how my hair made me a degenerate lesbian.” She snorted and turned to me with a devilish grin. “I guess she doesn’t know that short hair makes cock-sucking easier. If she had called me a depraved bisexual, she would’ve at least been closer to the truth.”

Her eyes darted pointedly to my groin. I looked for a place to hide, to run from that predatory stare and not have to deal with her anymore. But the living room offered no such place, and with no one else home, I couldn’t really leave Róska on her own.

“Oh, look, you’re blushing! I guess you’re not like the guys I was having sex with last night. Or maybe you are, but you aren’t drunk enough for it yet. Either way, I’m just messing with you. You’re too cute to be really my type. I mean, I would do you if I was desperate enough, but that baby face with freckles is a serious turn off. I can help you improve that, if you’re interested…”

“No. No.”

She laughed so hard she rolled her head back and hit the wall. I really wished I could blend into the fabric of the armchair next to me and disappear until Eiri marched in to deal with his intimidating sister. I looked at my feet until the laughing stopped. “Anyway, that woman howled all sorts of things about her precious son being too pure for my vile presence or whatever, then threatened to hit me with a shoe if I didn’t leave.”

“And you did?”

“I said I was the spawn of Satan and that if she didn’t tell me where Eiríkur lived, I would curse her precious son to a life of depravity.”

I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t speak. Róska laughed.

“Yeah, she threw the shoe at me for that.” Róska tried to make a serious face, but it took her a while to stop laughing. “Then I said I was her ex-husband’s daughter trying to meet my brother, and I got the feeling she liked me more when she thought I was related to Satan. I’m surprised you didn’t hear her screams from here.”

“I… wow, I…”

“Anyway, she closed the door in my face once she didn’t have the voice to shout anymore, and I would’ve gone home empty-handed if her next door neighbour didn’t tell me Eiríkur lived here. She heard the old hag’s screams and came out to see what was happening. Apparently she does that a lot? I’m not surprised. And that’s the story of how I got here. What about you? How come you live with your cousin? You’re, like, fourteen or something, aren’t you?”

“Seventeen, actually.”

Róska laughed again. “Sure thing. I totally believe you’re the same age as me. Like, really.” She snorted. “I have a fifteen-year-old brother who’s got a deeper voice than you. And more facial hair.”

“I’m just… late, I guess.”

“No shit, Sherlock. But whatever. I still don’t know what you’re doing living here with Eiríkur. Spill the beans, we have the whole morning, and I’m not a nice person when I’m bored.”

“Well, I…” The doorbell rang again. My sense of relief was so strong I didn’t think before dashing out of the room (and tripping over my own feet) to get it. Róska’s harsh words (so like the ones Siggi tended to throw at me) took over so much of my thoughts and feelings that I was surprised to see Dmitri standing on the other side of the door.

“Sorry I’m early.” Dmitri threw himself at me, and I almost fell with the impact. His arms wrapped around me like vines, strong and desperate, as he put more and more of his body weight on me. The door closed with a bang. His breathe became shallow. He broke into tears the moment I touched his hair.

“What happened?”

He shook his head. My answer would have to wait until he could speak again. But just like how I had forgotten about Dmitri because of Róska, I forgot about her the moment he came in. I stood with Dmitri in the hallway, hugging him and trying to comfort him for something he couldn’t even tell me about, until Róska’s head peeked out of the living room.

“What’s up? Are you going to leave your visitor waiting? I sure hope my brother is a better host than you, because –”

“Who’s this?” Dmitri lifted his head to look at Róska. He tightened his hold on me and shifted my body slightly to the side, so I wouldn’t have my back to her.

“I’m Eiríkur’s long-lost sister. I take it you’re not him, or I just found out my brother is in a creepy incestuous relationship with his child cousin. That would explain why Gunni was avoiding my question about why he’s here, but –”

“Shut up. Don’t talk about Gunni like that.” Dmitri let go of me to face Róska head-on. “I’m his boyfriend. My name is Dmitri. And I didn’t know Eiri had a sister.”

“The cue is in the ‘long-lost’ part. I didn’t know I had an older brother until a month ago.” Róska shrugged. She didn’t seem to mind that Dmitri stood in front of me like a guard dog doing his best to appear bigger than he really was. Dmitri was taller than Róska, though not by much (and she was probably more muscular). “But even if you’re not Eiríkur, you’re still a grown-up. What are you doing dating a teenager?”

I had to do something before a fight broke out. Why did this have to happen when Eiri and Jó weren’t here? “Róska, please, that’s –”

“We don’t have to justify our relationship to you. Having a national newspaper call me a paedophile was enough.”

“You were in the newspaper?” Róska stepped closer to us, her narrowed eyes examining every detail of our faces. “That’s why I thought I had seen you somewhere before! You are that Russian prostitute-turned-musician, right?”

I expected Dmitri to finally snap at the mention of his past, but his shoulders relaxed instead. “The one and only.”

“Cool, I’ve never met anyone important enough to appear in a newspaper.” Róska smiled. She looked nice when she wasn’t making fun of me.

“Well, then, now you know you’re in the company of Iceland’s most talented violinist and his boyfriend, who is not a creepy guy seeking relationships with children.”

I blushed at Dmitri’s praise, but hopefully Róska was too distracted by my boyfriend to notice. Dmitri took my hand and guided me to the living room. Róska let us pass and took her place on the couch with her feet up on the table. Dmitri made me sit in the armchair and took a place on the right armrest.

“I’m here being bored waiting for my brother, but I’m cool with you guys making out and shit. If you want a bit more privacy I promise I won’t steal anything when you’re not looking. What kind of psycho would steal from her own family, anyway?”

Once again I found my vocal chords pressured into silence by sexually-suggestive talk. At least Dmitri was here, and he was able to talk about that stuff as easily and naturally as she did. “Don’t worry, we’re not going to abandon our guest. Gunni and I are all about the cuddles, anyway.” He grinned at her, and I felt my body relax against the chair. “Why don’t you tell us more about yourself? You know all the gossip about us from that newspaper article, so it’s only fair we get something on you too.”

“My life is much more boring than yours.” Róska shrugged. “I’m seventeen, I have two siblings, and we live with our mother on the other side of town. We’re a much happier family now that my arsehole of a father is dead, and we don’t have to smell his stinky breath every time he yells at us.”

“Eiri’s father is dead?”

Róska blinked in surprise and stared at me with vacant eyes. “Oh, yeah, sorry, I forgot to mention that. It’s been a month, so I guess I take it for granted that everybody knows. That’s why I’m here, to tell my brother that our father is finally gone forever and we can all be relieved.”

Dmitri pursed his lips like he was trying not to laugh. “Maybe you should’ve started with that!”

“Maybe. But what’s the fun in doing things the proper way?” She winked at Dmitri, and he smiled back. I smiled too, glad to see their tense first meeting seemed to be behind them now. “We only found out Eiríkur existed because his name appeared in my father’s will. He didn’t have anything to pass on to anyone in death, but he was enough of an arsehole to have it in writing that his previous family would never have anything of him ever.”

“And it was because of the will you found Aunt Margrét’s address?” I asked.

“Yeah, sort of. I spend this last month tracking him down, once the shock had worn off. I mean, Mum knew Dad had been married before, but he never said he had a child too, probably because he knew Mum wouldn’t have agreed to his divorce if she knew.”

“I wonder how Eiri is going to take all this. It’s a lot of stuff to get his head around…”

“That’s why I want to stay here and wait for him. I’ve been looking for him for far too long to just go home empty-handed. So, now that the basic introductions are done, how do you want to spend the next few hours? I don’t like being bored. I’m your guest, so entertain me.”

I really was glad to have Dmitri around. He had a much easier time dealing with Róska than I did, even though I knew he was only putting on a show of being cheerful in front of her. My body still felt the remains of his desperate hug. Something had gone horribly wrong in his house, but he was forcing it to the back of his mind until we were alone again.

Dmitri suggested we entertain Róska by playing for her, even though he had left his oboe at home. Róska knew little about classical music, and kept demanding I play pieces and styles I was not at all familiar with. Once again Dmitri saved the day by leading a singalong of things I had never heard before, but which he seemed to have a passing knowledge of and which made Róska jump on the couch with an air guitar and lots of intimidating punk gestures. A lot of the songs seemed to revolve around the vocalist screaming their lungs out.

As weird and entertaining as it was to watch my boyfriend and Eiri’s sister form a sort of punk-rock noisy bond, it was the first time I felt betrayed and let down by my musical knowledge. I was good enough to be Leader of a professional orchestra, skilled enough that everyone trusted my judgement on our style of play, but there was still so much more I didn’t know. Music had a whole different world outside of my comfort zone that I was completely ignorant of.

I didn’t want to think too hard about my shortcomings as a musician, so I texted Eiri to let him know his sister was here to talk to him about their father and that he should come home as soon as he could. I didn’t want to leave Róska waiting (and singing strange things with my boyfriend) longer than necessary. Also, Eiri and Jó had the habit of kissing each other passionately as soon as they were safely inside their home, so with my warning they would know to be more careful. I told Dmitri and Róska about what I was doing, but they continued to have their fun as if it didn’t matter much. At least this was keeping Dmitri distracted from whatever happened at his house.

The front door opened about fifteen minutes later. Eiri came into the living room without Jó and tried to smile at his sister, but he lost his composure as soon as he laid eyes on Róska’s piercings and colourful hair. “Hi. I’m Eiríkur. You must be my sister?” He put his hand forward for her to shake. Róska had been sitting upside down on the couch with her legs spread open and her feet landing on the armrests. Her face was red from being upside down, and she was playing the air guitar like a great rock star. She looked at him from head to toe, but made no motion of taking his hand.

“Hi. The name is Róska. You’re shorter than I imagined, though I like your muscles.” She got up in a swift backflip that would’ve given Jó a heart attack (and missed his coffee table by hair’s width) and showed all her teeth and pierced tongue in a playful smile. “It’s nice to finally meet you. Better late than never, right?”

“Yeah…” Eiri took some time to speak. I shouldn’t have felt so relieved that I wasn’t the only one stunned by Róska’s attitude. Dmitri came to stand by my side with a hand on my waist to watch the sibling’s first meeting. “Gunni said you wanted to talk to me about our father. Did something happen?”

“Dad’s dead. It’s been more than a month now, 13^th of March. He had a stroke while watching TV in the evening, and we didn’t notice until it was too late.”

“That’s… I don’t know how I feel about it.”

“If you want to organise a party, our family will be more than glad to help. It’s about time we got rid of that arsehole.”

Eiri opened and closed his mouth a few times before he found the right words. “You didn’t like him.”

“Nobody did. Even Mum stopped loving him ages ago, but she felt sorry for him and wasted her time trying to make him into a better person instead of sending him packing. My brother and I were the ones who shouted at him and had arguments about everything.”

“You have a brother? I mean, I have a brother?” Eiri finally showed some enthusiasm for the conversation. Even Róska smiled properly at him.

“You have a brother and another sister. Magni is fifteen, and Sölvey is twelve. They wanted to come here today too, but Mum thought we would overwhelm you too much.” Róska rolled her eyes. “But she said you’re welcome to visit us at any time. Even she wants to meet you, now that we know you exist.”

Róska told Eiri what she had explained to me about not learning of his existence until now, and how she had tracked him to his mother’s house. At this point Eiri’s face became so pale I feared he would pass out, and he spent the next five minutes apologising to Róska for his mother, even though she hadn’t even gotten to the part where Aunt Margrét threw a shoe at her.

“For fuck’s sake, brother, stop apologising already! It’s not your fault that your mother is horrible! Actually, I’m surprised you haven’t run away from her yet.”

Eiri bit his lip, like he was thinking too carefully about what he was going to say. “It’s a long story, and I would rather not spoil this… moment… with it.”

“Sure, whatever.” Róska shrugged. “It’s not like we can criticise you for it when we didn’t get rid of Dad either.”

Eiri started a new wave of embarrassed apologies, so Dmitri tried to distract me. “Maybe we should give them some privacy, don’t you think?” He whispered in my ear, pointing towards the stairs. I nodded, and we left quietly to not get in their way. They didn’t seem to notice we were gone. We found Jó waiting by his office’s door, doing his best to listen to what was going on, but Dmitri made us go up to my room instead of filling him in.

Dmitri sat behind me on my bed, and we cuddled in silence for a while. The way he clung to my body told me he had reached his limit in terms of false cheerfulness. He was getting ready to talk to me about his morning at home, and I tried to mentally prepare so I could help him with it.

But he never said a word. I kept expecting him to give me bad news about Siggi, or to cry on my shoulder, or to at least tell me he wasn’t ready to talk yet. Instead, he just got up and moved to the desk, never looking at me or acknowledging I was still in the room. He fumbled with the mess of scattered music sheets on the top drawer until he found his spare reed-making kit: a collection of weird little machines and measuring tools, a sharp knife, and a bag with pieces of cane.

“You don’t mind if I work on some reeds for a bit, right? My current ones are about to die.”

“No, go ahead. I like watching you making them.” I sat towards the end of the bed to take a closer look at what he was doing.

“Thanks. I’ll try not to be too boring.”

“It’s fine. I can always play for us if I have nothing else to do.”

Dmitri nodded, but again said nothing. His concentration fully turned to his reeds, and he said only a handful of words for the next two hours. I watched him for the first twenty minutes, the time it took to make and adjust the first reed. I hadn’t lied when I said I liked watching the whole process. Oboists spent so much of their lives creating the perfect reeds, from shaping and thinning the piece of cane to scraping shavings as thin as a hair from the tip to make it sound just right… I didn’t want to feel lucky that the usual maintenance for the violin revolved around changing the strings every month or so (a process that took less than ten minutes), but I couldn’t help it. Dmitri made new reeds almost every week. That was two hours he spent with a knife in hand while the rest of us got extra practice time or at least some leisure time. I never saw him complaining, though. He seemed to like the reed-making process, as complicated as it was.

And that was why, the week after he confessed his feelings for me, Dmitri brought a spare reed-making set to my room. We were going to spend a lot of time together, so it made sense that some of his things ended up permanently with me. In that same week, I made some space for him in my wardrobe, and a few of my clothes ended up in a drawer in his room. But more than just moving our clothes around, having Dmitri’s reed-making kit in my room felt like the biggest step up in our relationship so far. This would enable him to live with me full-time if he wanted. All the things he needed for his job and his daily life could be found somewhere in my bedroom now. Was it too soon to take such a huge step? Would it even be a good thing if he did?

For the entire month, Dmitri didn’t seem to be able to stay away from me for longer than a day. It started with him sleeping over my house, but soon my single bed became too uncomfortable for such frequent sleepovers. He suggested we sleep in his bedroom instead.

“What about Siggi?” I had asked then. Dmitri shrugged, said Siggi would be happy to sleep with Gísli, and that was the end of it. Maybe I should have insisted a bit more, worried a bit more, because after a few days of being denied his own bed, Siggi left to sleep at Arnar’s and I never saw him in his house again. After a while, Dmitri gave me even more space for my clothes, saying another drawer had freed up so I might as well use it.

Maybe I should’ve said something then. All this sounded so wrong, but Dmitri was quick to reassure me that Siggi was happy, that he was even happier, and that we didn’t need to worry about anything. We would be fine. Everything was finally the way it was meant to be, and he had never been happier.

The Dmitri in the present blew into his reed, creating a loud, coarse sound appropriately called ‘crowing’ that was never pleasant to hear. He scraped the reed some more, tested the crow again, and went back to scraping. The perfect ‘crow’ would take a while.

Maybe it was time I said something. “I think I know what happened between you and Siggi.”

The crowing died halfway through. Dmitri’s face paled. “Then you tell me, because I don’t.”

Maybe I should’ve stayed quiet.

Thanks for reading! 
And I'm sorry about the cliff. But it kind of has to be this way so that we can move on to Siggi's point of view without spoiling all the interesting things that are coming next. 
What do you think of Róska and Eiri's new-found family? They're not going to be a chapter-only characters, and I'm looking forward to introducing the rest of them! They're going to play a significant role in a certain unresolved, long-suffering plot...  (any guesses?) 
 
See you next month!
(The hope here is strong!)