41 / 238
41
outside of it. Indeed, a true vogue for experimentation had
swept that part of Tórshavn right before World War I. The
trees had grown quickly, and the beautiful crowns with
their conspicuous light green leaves provided pleasure to
almost five generations of west city inhabitants, not to
mention to the countless starlings and sparrows that had
sat and whistled or chirped in the branches throughout the
years. Now the trees had stopped growing, that much was
obvious from the uppermost branches, which were leafless,
barkless, and broke off easily. Light green and reddish
carpets of moss grew up the trunks, and when the sun was
shining, golden beams of light seeped through the loosely
woven crowns. Actually, the trees were coming to resemble
the people over which they watched. And there was nothing
strange about that. The roots, after all, had long been
imbibing bodily fluids; eventually, one becomes what one
drinks.
The gravel crunched under the soles of his boots, and when
Eigil reached the graves of the nameless children, he
stopped like he always did. He knew nothing of their
history. Presumably, they were stillborns or newborns taken
by some sudden, devastating death. The graves looked
exactly like the zinc tubs in which women used to wash
clothes. However, they had no bottoms. They also had no
cross at their heads, and the tubs were upturned on the
grass. In the months of June and July, buttercups and
orchids grew out of the holes in the tubs; their stalks waved
yellow and reddish-blue summer flags.