Thee Random Words

08 – LOVE, FREEDOM, AUTHENTICITY - Part 2

Hours later, Frelsi was on her way home in much better spirits than when she had entered the cocktail bar.

When her sickness had kicked in, it had been her new acquaintance who had been of immense help to her – he had helped her up from the bar, had gathered her things and had pulled a few notes from his pocket, paying for their drinks, and had hurried her to the toilet, where he had obligingly held her hair while she had emptied the contents of her stomach into the toilet bowl.

After the sickness had subsided, Gothur had suggested going and grabbing something to eat, and still weak from her nausea, she had gladly accepted, letting him make the decisions as to the location and the means of going there. No research, no questioning had come to her mind as it would have otherwise, she had allowed herself to just be.

During the taxi ride she had merely stared out of the window, watching the rain beat against the glass and individual drops slithering down. In that simple moment she had felt so free from all the restraints and rules that had been regulating her life.

Not once, not until she was approaching her home, had it crossed her mind what her sisters and her mother would have thought had they known that she had put her faith in the hands of an unknown man.

Gothur had turned out to be very pleasant – kind, easy-going, with a decent sense of humour, though with a bleak taste in food. He had taken her to a grill bar where the favourites of the day had been barbecued ribs and burgers, accompanied by copious amounts of chips and beer. But they had miraculously managed to produce some coleslaw for her in place of chips, though even now, as she was walking home, she doubted their dietary superiority.

Frelsi had even given Gothur her phone number provided that on their next outing she was going to choose the restaurant. She hardly understood what had prompted her to do so – he did not meet all the criteria she considered vital in a man, but she had found him pleasant and entertaining, and at that moment that had been sufficient.

It had also not crossed her mind that the whole night she had not heard from any of her sisters, not until she was within minutes from her home. It was past two in the morning and that struck her as a bad omen. They always texted each other if one of them failed to come home for dinner.

She broke into a run. Somehow, in her heart she knew that something was amiss. And as she rounded the corner into their street, the ghastly sight that opened before her rooted her to the spot.

Where once their house had stood, now stood a black charcoaled mass, the entire upper floor whipped from existence, and only a few walls of the ground floor remained erect. What was even more astonishing, was that the neighbouring houses only held slight signs of external scorching even though it was a street of terraced houses.

And there, in front of the entrance stairs, the stairs that had once led to the entrance of their house, stood a woman, wheeping.

‘Sanngildi?’ Frelsi asked tentatively as she approached the woman. Was this really her sister, the one with always perfectly done hair and makeup, and immaculately dressed, now looking like someone who had been pulled out of a river? There was even a slightly perceptible stench that lingered around her.

‘What’s happened to you?’ Frelsi pressed further as she received no answer, but only a tearstained face stared at her. The question seemed to have evoked a monster in her sister because, with renewed strength, Sanngildi wailed even harder and ran towards Frelsi, seeking comfort.

In spite of her terrible state, and knowing that her own clothes would be ruined, Frelsi pulled her into a tight embrace and allowed her to cry to her heart’s desire. Sanngildi had always been the most sensitive of the three.

When the tears eventually dried out, Sanngildi found strength to tell her sister her entire story.

‘That’s quite odd, for Mother not to have recognised you,’ Frelsi spoke, more to herself than to her sister.

‘Mother!’ shrieked Sanngildi, as if only now she had grasped the reality. ‘What’s happened to Mother and Ast? What’s happened to our house?’

As on queue, the entrance door to the next house opened and a neighbour peaked out, ‘The house burnt down in the night. Your mother and sister have been taken to hospital.’

But before either of them could ask any questions, the neighbour retreated into the safety of her own home.

‘She’s never had any manners,’ Frelsi remarked.

‘What?’ Sanngildi broke out of her stupor.

‘Never mind, it doesn’t really matter,’ her sister suddenly found her own remark pointless. ‘At least we know where they are. Come on, I’ll call us a taxi.’

‘I can’t go to hospital looking like that!’ Sanngildi exclaimed. ‘I’m dirty and I stink. That is no way to go to a hospital.’

‘I agree,’ Frelsi did in fact agree wholeheartedly. Just the idea of her sister going around in such an unpresentable manner was contrary to her views of decency and decorum. However, in their present situation – all their belongings burnt together with their house – they had no alternative. Finding their mother and sister took priority over everything.

Frelsi called a taxi, which didn’t take long to arrive. Seeing the state of them, in particularly Sanngildi, the driver was at first reluctant to take them, but a hefty advance Frelsi pushed into his hands, followed by a bout of her ill humour, ‘Just f*cking drive!’ saw them within a quarter of an hour in front of the hospital, looking for their relations.

Within minutes of their arrival, they were finally reunited with their eldest triplet, Ast.

Ast was sitting on a chair in front of a room they were told was being occupied by their mother. When they saw her fully, they jointly gasped.

Ast’s hair was badly singed on one side of her head, and a big patch of bandaging covering a good part of her face. A sling hung around her neck, her arm, all wrapped up, resting in it.

‘Ast!’ cried Sanngildi, running towards her sister.

Surprised, Ast woke up from her slumber and gaped at her sister.

‘Sanngildi?’ Ast sounded astonished. The voice corresponded to her youngest triplet’s, but the physical image did not resemble in the least the general appearance of her sister, who had always had a penchant for an immaculate physical appearance.

‘Yes, it’s her,’ it was Frelsi who responded in her stead.

‘What’s happened to you?’ Ast almost echoed Frelsi’s question upon seeing how Sanngildi looked.

‘It’s a long story but of no importance at the moment,’ Sanngildi found her voice. ‘What’s happened to you? What’s happened to Mother? Where is she?’

A heavy, tired sigh escaped Ast. It had been a most horrendous night and she had very little desire to relieve it.

‘Mother’s inside,’ Ast pointed towards the door in front of which she had been sitting. ‘In intensive care. She’s not that badly burnt but she’s inhaled too much carbon monoxide and they are keeping her on oxygen. Hopefully, her lungs will hold.’

‘Could she die?’ Sanngildi was panicked.

‘The doctors are hopeful that she’s not poisoned too badly, and that the oxygen will help. But it will be hours before we know anything. She’s in an induced coma.’

Sanngildi started crying, feeling guilty that she had been too preoccupied with herself that night, that she had not insisted on making her mother understand that it had been outside the house. Had she achieved that, perhaps she could have helped her mother and prevented her current situation.

Unexpectedly, a pair of arms pulled her into an embrace.

The suddenness of the action, something she would not have expected from her emotionless, material sister Ast, almost gave her more comfort than the action itself.

‘Goodness, you stink,’ Ast said, deadpan, although she did not retreat.

‘I was hugging a homeless lady,’ her youngest triplet explained.

‘You were what?’ Ast was flabbergasted by the statement, to the point of breaking the embrace and holding her sister at arms’ length, looking at her inquisitively.

‘I was hugging a homeless lady under a bridge,’ Sanngildi elaborated further. ‘And I drank vodka from the same bottle as her.’

‘Some night this was,’ was all Ast could think of responding.

‘Yes,’ Frelsi interrupted. ‘But that’s neither here nor there now. What we must focus on, is making a plan on how to proceed.’

‘Can this not wait until the morning?’ Sanngildi whined. ‘I’m exhausted and hungry. I haven’t eaten since lunchtime yesterday.’

Frelsi felt embarrassed. She had not considered even for a moment that either of her sisters needed anything, let alone satisfying basic human needs. She was too busy making lists in her head of everything that needed doing in light of their homelessness and their mother’s hospitalisation. Considering other people’s feelings had always felt alien to her.

‘You should probably change first,’ Ast reminded her youngest sibling of her unusual appearance.

‘Oh, no!’ Sanngildi almost shouted. ‘I’m starving, I need food first. Everything else can wait.’

‘But there’s no food here, except in the vending machines,’ Frelsi reminded her.

‘That’ll be perfectly fine,’ Sanngildi stated confidently.

Ast’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. The external appearance had apparently not been the only thing to have gone through a transformation where her sister – who had made a habit of making every meal social media appropriate – was concerned. It was refreshing.

‘Come on, then,’ Ast offered. ‘I’ll take you to it.’

‘I’ll take her,’ Frelso firmly asserted herself. I’m the only one who’s still got money on her.’

‘I’ve got my purse,’ Ast spoke, although somewhat uncomfortably.

‘Never mind,’ Frelsi refused the offer, preferring not to dwell on the question of how it was possible that, amid the fire, Ast had somehow managed to salvage her purse.

The two younger sisters departed for the vending machine, leaving the eldest sibling alone with her thoughts.

Ast went back to sitting on the chair, turning her thoughts to the practicalities of their situation rather than allowing them to revert back to the horrendous night.

But in vain. As much as she tried to stir her thoughts away, her mind kept being assaulted by the images of the previous night – of the heated argument with her mother who had refused, point blank, to understand Ast’s frustration over losing a great portion of her wealth, and how Ast had subsequently shouted at her. The image of her mother’s face, aggrieved by the terrible words Ast had spat at her, kept coming to the forefront of her thoughts, and the tears Ast remembered appearing in her mother’s eyes suddenly mirrored in her own. And when her mind determined to plunge her into the abyss of despair, making her recollect her mother’s screams while Ast stood one foot in her brand-new car, seconds away from driving out of the burning house, finally pushed her over the edge, and she wept.

They were tears of frustration, tiredness, and most of all, shame.

Shame, that she had allowed her resentments towards her mother and her preoccupation with material things to make her forget, even to think, that in a situation of crisis, one first thought of people, and only after, of material things.

And had she acted differently, most likely her mother would not be in such a critical condition.

Frelsi found her in such a state as she returned alone. It would have been her primary instinct to first question her sister, make her analyse whatever it was that had been bothering her, for Frelsi had always believed that a cold, analytical approach to dealing with troubles was the only sensible way. But seeing the commonly emotionally detached, feelingless sister in such a state, she could only think of one thing.

She crouched next to her and hugged her.

And without knowing why, or caring for that matter, she wept along.

‘Where’s Sanngildi?’ Ast was hyper-aware of her sister missing as the two finally stopped crying.

‘I’ve called a friend, and he’s come to take her to his home to shower and change. She does stink horribly.’

‘What friend?’ Ast was surprised. Frelsi had always been too preoccupied with this or that to have any male friends.

‘Gothur. I met him last night,’ Frelsi explained in a manner that suggested that it was quite ordinary to call for help in a situation of crisis someone one had just met.

‘You met him last night and you’ve called him to take your sister away?’ Ast was looking for confirmation; it just didn’t seem possible to her. She would never have expected something as reckless as that from Frelsi.

‘Yes,’ Frelsi responded defiantly. ‘He helped me a great deal last night, and he’s quite a nice guy. I’m probably going on a date with him if he asks me.’

Ast gaped in astonishment, her eyes blinking incredulously.

First, Sanngildi – who had always been most self-conscious of stepping out of the house looking her perfect self, even if she just had to pop into a bakery – had come to the hospital looking like she’d been to the garbage depot.

And now, Frelsi – her level-headed, play-by-the-book sister – had in one night befriended a complete stranger and entrusted him with her family’s safety.

But were you not also, a voice whispered in her head, just minutes ago very uncharacteristically been crying in a public space. You, who had not cried since you’d been a child?

‘Then I hope he asks you soon,’ she responded graciously.

‘I was let go yesterday,’ Frelsi announced to her sister, sounding almost pleased with herself.

‘You were what?!’

‘Fired from my job,’ Frelsi reiterated patiently. ‘Apparently, I’m a bully because I remind people too often that they must follow rules. Ended up in a bar – wanted to get drunk to forget my shame – that’s how I met Gothur.’

Ast gaped again. Was there no end to surprises tonight?

‘I’m quite pleased about it now,’ Frelsi continued unabashed. ‘I didn’t really like that job. And I certainly didn’t like the people there, always complaining about too much work.

‘But why hadn’t you given your notice if you had disliked it so much?’ Ast couldn’t understand.

‘I suppose I could have. But I’d been there only a little over a year. Had I left already, it would have felt like a failure.’

‘I lost considerable wealth this week,’ Ast felt she needed to share her story, too. ‘Found out yesterday. I was fuming when I got home and got into an argument with Mother over her remark that it’s just material things, of no importance.’

And then Ast succinctly and soberly, as only she managed to retell things in a detached, objective way, even if it concerned her, told Frelsi about how she had shouted at their mother for lack of understanding; how when the lightning – which had caused the house to catch on fire – had struck she had been on the phone with one of the junior brokers, berating him for the losses that had occurred due to his carelessness, which is why she had only notices something was amiss when the smoke had started rolling under her door; and how she had immediately understood what it meant; and how she had grabber her laptop bad, her purse, and her phone; and how she had heedlessly ran down to the garage to save her most expensive possession – her car; and how she had been one foot in when she had heart their mother’s screams; and how she had not even considered her for a moment before that; and how she had – as shamefully as it was to admit – hesitated for a few seconds whether to save her car or go back for their mother, but not even she had a heart of stone so she had eventually ran back upstairs to get her mother; and how the fire had already been burning the door, but nevertheless, she had barged insider to find their mother on the floor; and how she had hurriedly started pulling her out, towards the stairs, where luckily she had been intercepted by the firemen who had come inside in search of survivors.

‘Had I only remembered first about mother and not have been preoccupied about the car, she would most probably not be in such a state as she is in right now,’ Ast finally admitted loudly her greatest self-reproach.

‘Probably,’ Frelsi sensed that her sister deserved honesty and not lies disguised as kindness. ‘But you’d gone back, and you saved her.’

‘I don’t want to imagine what we would do without her,’ Ast confessed. You, Sanngildi and Mother have always been the reason why I’ve never acquired a house of my own. And I could have. Well, until yesterday, that is. But I could not bear the thought of being away from the only people I love.’

The sisters hugged again. There had been so little of that between them in the last decade.

It was Frelsi’s turn to explain to Ast in detail the events of her night.

‘I felt such freedom,’ she added in conclusion, ‘being with Gothur, doing whatever we felt like doing, and not carrying about what should be done, and what could be the consequences. I just was, and I enjoyed myself. Even in that shabby burger bar, but he’s promised that I can choose a place for next time when we go out. I mean, I did enjoy doing simple things, but I still prefer quality cuisine over a dodgy street barbecue.’

Now, the two sisters laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’ A familiar voice interrupted them.

Their sister, Sanngildi, had returned, reborn like a white snow turned from an insignificant, grey cygnet.

‘Frelsi’s new friend’s dietary choices,’ Ast laughed even more.

‘Oh, he’s so lovely, so funny,’ Sanngildi beamed. ‘Although a terrible sense of dressing. But I gave him a few pointers.’

Now, all three sisters chortled.

‘But you look very lovely,’ Ast complimented her. It was beyond her understanding how her sister had managed to whip up a fashionable outfit from man’s clothing.

‘I’m quite pleased with it, considering the limitations,’ Sanngildi agreed. ‘I think it has a flair of authenticity. Don’t you think?’

And it did. Oversized jeans rolled up to her ankles, revealing a pair of colourful socks, a white man’s shirt all buttoned up and tailored at the waist with a brown belt, her many pieces of jewellery now clean and shiny as her freshly washed hair, while a pair of female loafers peaked her sisters’ interest.

‘Where did you get those?’ Frelsi suddenly felt uncomfortable as an unwelcome thought had entered her mind.

‘Gothur’s borrowed it from his neighbour, an old lady who apparently never sleeps. They’re a bit frumpy, but they go well with everything.’

On an impulse, Ast walked to her sister and hugged her, while with her hand beckoned for Frelsi to join them. And soon, the three sisters stood in the middle of the hospital corridor, hugging, happy with the thought, that no matter what may happen in their lives, they always had each other.

***

When my good friend, M.M., gave me the three words, I groaned in frustration. I wasn’t certain that I could come up with a story where I could effortlessly incorporate all three without the story being some sort of new-age wannabe moral. I’m not quite sure I have managed to escape that, but I am nevertheless rather pleased with how it turned out.

Probably due to the above sentiments, it was the longest it took me to write and complete one story – a whopping two months! The story didn’t develop itself so easily, it took me over two weeks just to come up with the basic storyline. And at moments, I had to force myself to get back to it and finish it. So, that was a good exercise in sticking to something and seeing it through. Finishing is not my best suit, to be honest. So, thank you for that, M.M. ?

The names of the three sisters were, of course, not chosen randomly. They are Icelandic translations of the words love (Ást), freedom (Frelsi), and authenticity (Sanngildi). If you wonder why Icelandic – for no other reason than it sounded best to me, compared to some other languages I had tried.

Because it took me ages to complete, I am just managing to transcribe the last words (all of which had been initially written by hand) late in the evening, on the day of M.M.’s birthday. And because it had been meant as a sort of birthday prezzie for her, I’m just going ahead and posting it unedited. Happy birthday, M.M., may your 40th be full of amazing adventures and great life lessons. Always with people that you love, and love you back.