Ásta Sigurðardóttir
In Which Carriage
Translated from the Icelandic by Meg Esja Matich
Some people are quick to heap abuses on you, even when you haven’t done a thing to deserve it—you’ve merely observed their carriages and tried to take a peek inside of one or two, quick as you can.
They seem to find it strange that you’d be wont to poke around in things that are none of your concern.
And it’s true. It really is none of your concern, since you’ve never even owned a carriage and no longer have a child, either.
But that doesn’t make any difference. You can’t resist the urge to see what’s in the carriages all around you, regardless of what their owners may think or do. And maybe that does concern you a little bit.
It’s astonishing how unique they all are, even though they come in droves. You see their differences most clearly when you tiptoe around them and admire their dressings; when you listen to each subtle sound with pricked up ears, like a little boy examining the cogs of a clock.
Some are strikingly beautiful, with adorable colors—the canopy is sewn from gabardine the color of red lilac blossoms, and the carrycot itself is slick, lacquered. You can see your reflection in its bassinet. Its white rubber wheels are so soft they spin without making a sound. And the footbrake between them responds to the lightest tap; it stops the carriage gently, even on a slope. The wheels are so large that you hardly have to lean forward to glimpse the baby.
There it coos, wrapped in a warm down blanket like a hatchling in a nest, its little face peeking out from between soft lace pillows like mounds of snow, its eyes filled with wonder.
A pristine baby bottle with notches along the side and a fashionable nipple are raked into a corner. When you catch the faintest whiff of baby powder and milk, your heart hammers.
Still, this child is a stranger to you.
Fine carriages are immaculate works of art. Everything is in its place: pristine diapers folded at baby’s feet and a little, lovely rattle dangling from the shade. Everything is decided in advance: each object fits with another to form a harmonious whole—everything is in order, the child and the carriage.
—Gosh, how you envy that woman!
But there are ugly carriages, too. They’re awkward to maneuver; of necessity, they’re botched together out of random parts, out of whatever materials were immediately at hand.
A basket that was originally intended for the washing is rigged to a scooter or roller skates. The workmanship is shoddy. The pronged skeleton of a beat-up umbrella, its fabric replaced with a shabby waxcloth from the kitchen table, is patchworked over the bassinet in place of a canopy. And everything is painted black with shoe polish.
You nearly double over to see the baby inside because the wheels are so low to the ground. Its bedclothes are gaudy calico, the pillowcases cut from a different cloth. Yet the baby’s head rests on a pillow—a delightful baby, surrounded by shambles.
Its milk is kept in an old medicine bottle. The label has been partially scratched off, revealing to any passerby that its contents have curdled.
A few packages are placed near the baby’s feet—among them, a rust brown paper bag on its side that a few potatoes have rolled out of.
A subtle sour smell wafts from the carriage and sometimes a pleasant, sweet-acrid odor, too, when the child inside has wet itself.
You get butterflies in your fingers, but dare not touch anything—instead, the only option is to bend down and hope that nobody catches you.
But it’s all the same whether a carriage is attractive or ugly—at the worst moment, the mother will inevitably come running with suspicion in her eyes and tout something under her breath. And you’ll scamper off, shame running down your face and a stab in your heart out of envy for this woman!
But this baby doesn’t concern you. You’re doing something that isn’t allowed.
And so, the women push their carriages away and all that’s left to do is watch them from a growing distance, tightening your fist, holding your breath.
The posh ones flip the brake with their toes and the carriage rolls forward, soft and noiseless, like a magic carpet in a fairy tale.
How sweetly the child must be dreaming!
Mothers smile absentmindedly at the sky, and fathers jog at their sides and help them steer when the carriage rolls down a slope or they struggle to push it uphill. Their peaceful and calm faces betray how pleased they are with themselves for thinking of everything in advance. The lady knows what she’s going to buy and where she’s going to shop and how much money will be left after; and while she steps into the store, the husband waits outside with the baby even though the brake is locked, and the carriage isn’t going anywhere.
And he raises his hand to the brim of his hat if he encounters acquaintances. If their wives are with them, he tips his hat using his thumb and forefinger. It’s a smart and stylish gesture, a civilized greeting and it secretly makes him feel big and important.
They take on the same expression of students roaming the streets in graduation caps for the first time, trying to make out as if it’s nothing much, nothing remarkable.
But the wives of these acquaintances shoot this dad teasing, even flirtatious glances, then look into the carriage without the least shyness, and say something absolutely inane to the kid:
—Wook ’ow pwetty, wittle wove! Or something equally as intelligent.
And you begin to feel sore about it, and your blood rushes to your head from excitement because you yourself want to look under the tiny canopy and say the same.
But you can’t make yourself do it. They’re so fine and ladylike, and you’re nothing but a wretch, a silly girl with a bare head, wearing the wrong clothes.
No. You have to sate yourself on stealing and sneaking, like an amateur thief crouching at a locked safe. And even when you’ve only managed to see the tip of its nose as you hurry past—yes, even then you can be content that it wasn’t your baby, since your baby doesn’t have such a nose.
It really is better to deal with an ugly carriage. The women who push them are most often alone, and a throng never gathers around them to poke at the baby. But it must be an ordeal to go into town with this sort of carriage because people gape so at the tired, rawboned woman pushing it, and they contort their faces into a curious expression, an ambiguous puckering at the corners of their mouths. But the child needs fresh air, just like the children in real carriages, and the woman needs to do the shopping—alone. If she were engaged or married, her boyfriend wouldn’t want to stand outside with the carriage, even if she just needed to pop into the store to ask what something costs.
And her friends wouldn’t want to help her push and wouldn’t want to walk with her but for a moment because of the state of the carriage. But someone still has to keep an eye on such a carriage when you steal away so that it doesn’t roll off or the child doesn’t tumble out. Anything could happen. Most often, there aren’t any brakes on these carriages and if they’re on a scooter or skates, they’re unsturdy.
I imagine you remember being on skates yourself not that long ago. Once you’ve kicked off, it’s near impossible to stop, and you don’t really have any say in what direction you’ll go; they can whisk you out into the street just as a car barrels toward you, and you can’t swerve out of the way or stop on your own, and sometimes you fall right in front of the car and the driver slams the brakes and the tires burn the asphalt, and they tell you off. They might even give you a whopping. But you still did it over and over; you couldn’t stop yourself because it was so fun, so thrilling to be unable to stop yourself at the most urgent moment.
The nature of roller-skates doesn’t change just because you stick a basket on top of them and call it a baby carriage.
These carriages occasionally drag women behind them all the way down the slope of Bankastræti. They’re forced to run after them, breathless and bursting with frustration, until the roller-skates are eventually brought to a halt by a pothole. They fix their carriages to a handrail near the steps and don’t dare wander off until they’ve stuck a stone behind the wheels, even though the carriage is on even ground.
They mop their brow with the back of their hand and calculate whether they have enough to buy meat for dinner. In the meantime, you lie in wait, aim for the carriage like a cat sizing up a mouse, pouncing only after the woman has gone into the store.
Even though you’ve never owned a carriage yourself, it’s impossible not to notice these things when you circle these carriages and sneak a peek inside them while the mothers are away. You’re careful not to touch the ugly carriages; they might roll away and something bad could happen.
A stone isn’t always at hand to brace the wheel.
The babies in Silver Cross carriages cry at times, just like those in the other ones, and that gives you a good and valid reason to peek under the canopy and babble sweet words to the baby, even when their dads are right there. Fathers mean well but are, without fail, inept at comforting babies. And nobody could blame you for wanting to comfort a child that’s crying, regardless of whether you’re a chit of a girl or a fine lady.
If you’re comforting a child in a Silver Cross, or any real carriage, then you shake its rattle and make a funny face. But if it’s in the other type, you make clucking noises and wiggle your fingers because there is no rattle.
If nobody is nearby, you reach for the bottle and ease the nipple into the baby’s mouth, but if the parents are close, you don’t dare. It’s presumptuous to give someone else’s child a bottle.
When mothers catch you red-handed, all you can do is hurry away and look with reverent adoration at the child.
Women with ugly carriages turn still bluer in the face; some of them look like they’ve been found out. They yank their young away in their jalopies, which jangle and shake. The precarious carriages drag them along; they try to dig their heels into the curbstone, but they’re as helpless as a dory boat dragged by a barge.
The fine ladies peer at you out the corners of their eyes with a sort of benevolent scorn and inspect the baby to make sure you haven’t ruined it. Then they swish away like yachts in a favorable wind, and send you a feigned saintly smile.
And you try to beat it into your own head that you don’t have a child anymore— since this one isn’t a black-haired boy, but a little blond girl, whose hair, eyes, and mouth are completely unlike his. And it certainly doesn’t concern you. This is the child of another woman. But it still hurts. You still clutch your hands behind your back to stop yourself from snatching her and never letting her go—it certainly does concern you—oh yes!
Maybe you really didn’t have a child?
No. You gave birth, you writhed and screamed in pain like a wild animal in a wildfire—and you nearly died, though you heard the distant voice of a doctor say:
—It’s a boy, miss.
And in a haze as if in a dream, you felt a little warm bundle in the crook of your arm. Maybe you only dreamed up those pearlescent blue eyes and those black curls beside you?
Maybe you only dreamed your breasts were bursting, that you were bursting to let him suckle? Maybe. Because the next morning he was gone and your milk had seeped into your clothes and stiffened like blood. But you didn’t only dream it when you cried and searched and prayed to God that this unknown woman would return him, bring him back to his mother, who loved him so much because you were, after all, his mother—it makes no difference that you were just a promiscuous girl and he was just an American soldier and you just couldn’t stop, no more than you could in the old days, but you’re a mother, still, you’re the mother of this boy.
Neither is it a dream when you hope and pray that God lets him be in one of these carriages, that god lets you find him, lets the little boy recognize his mother and smile at her.
No, it’s not just idle curiosity when you look in every carriage. Because it does concern you, it concerns you deeply, no matter what anyone says. Maybe you no longer have your boy, but nobody can stop you from loving him and searching for him.
You hope he’s in one of the proper ones, but that’s by no means certain; you have to look everywhere because this wonderful baby boy with those pearl blue eyes, that dimple in his left cheek, those obsidian curls is in one of them, but in which carriage?