The Fish Can Sing (18 page)

“Who are you, young man?” said the world singer.

“Álfgrímur,” I said.

He gazed at me abstractedly and repeated my name to himself: “Álfgrímur – he who stays one night with the elves. Álfgrímur – that’s what we should all have been called.”

Gú
múnsen the merchant put his hand into his pocket for a
ten-aurar
piece for me.

“Le petit garçon,”
he said.

Like all the gentry he wore a black overcoat with a velvet collar, even in the middle of the summer, and he had a thick gold chain across that broad paunch which only men of standing ever have, but he was cheerful and smiling as a country girl, or rather, as
was said of the Apostle Peter in one of my grandmother’s rhymes: “Ruddy and sweet as a plum”. To me, who was only a boy myself, he seemed more like a boy who had grown a moustache before he had grown up.

“I have been meaning to come and see you for a long rime now, my dear Björn,” said Gú
múnsen the merchant, and kissed Björn of Brekkukot. “But I’ve always lacked company. Now at last I have come to you in the right company.”

“You are welcome,” said my grandfather. “But let us not kiss too much to start with.”

Gar
ar Hólm stepped over the threshold into the fish-shed and kissed a few bunches of hung lumpfish which were dangling from a spar, and inhaled their smell at the same time.

“God be praised,” he said. “Long live Iceland.”

“You are always yourself, thank goodness, my dear Georg,” said my grandfather.

“I have often pictured to myself at home the romance of Brekkukot,” said the merchant, “how the lumpfish hangs from the spars in the fish-shed, pair by pair.
Madame la baronne est chez elle
. As Georg here says, I am absolutely certain that here dwells the true Iceland: the national soul, the national anthem,
Oh, God of Our Land
. It is good to have one’s thoughts supported by world-famous people. No lumpfish is so good as hung lumpfish. My father always keeps hung lumpfish in the room where he sleeps. I sometimes sneak down to the cellar for a bite of it. To tell you the truth, I don’t think there is any other food than hung lumpfish.”

“Yes, my dear fellow,” said Gar
ar Hólm. “At least there is no need to tie a ribbon round such food before it is eaten.”

“Well, as you know, Georg, my wife comes of that Danish merchant nobility that became Icelandic fish-businessmen here in the south,” said Gú
múnsen.
“Monsieur Gaston est sorti
. She is what is called a fine lady, and we know what that is – and what it costs. No lumpfish, at least not in the kitchen; and certainly not in the living-room; and least of all in the bedroom. But true romance – that’s what my heart has yearned for all my life, as you know perfectly well, my friend; for otherwise I would not have been shovelling gold and silver into your pocket for ten years.”

“We know that your wife’s toasted white bread is the best you can find anywhere,” said that world-famous man, Gar
ar Hólm.

“Yes, you’re great lads,” said my grandfather. “Dammit, but you’re great lads. Do come in. I hope the old woman has something warm. At least we can always find a lumpfish-head for you.”

When the gentry came into the living-room, my grandfather said, “Well, have a seat and show us some cheer.”

And when they were seated – “What news about the fishing, lads?”

It was Gar
ar Hólm who answered: “Plenty of skate in Paris this spring, my dear Björn; I ate it to whet my appetite in the Hotel Trianon every night for a month. Choice shark there in Paris, too.
Raie
and
requin
, you might say, to throw in a little French à
la Gu
mundur
.”

My grandfather seated himself on his hands but did not begin to grimace yet, nor did he jerk his shoulders; but as always when laughter or other unbecoming behaviour was in the wind he began to say “Tut tut!” and “Really!” And he added, “It is good to hear that you have been having fish, my boy. I know it would have pleased your mother. It is good to have fish.”

If one looked out of our tiny living-room window one could see the horse-daisies sprouting between the stones of the paving; the swedes and potatoes were coming up in the garden; the low rotting fence between the home-field and the vegetable garden lay smothered in tansies, dockens, and angelica; the home-field sloped down towards the end of the Lake, where the buttercups grew; beyond that, Vatnsmýri where the terns nested and where, according to Runólfur Jónsson, the greatest peat-pits in the world were to be found; then Skerjafjör
ur, where the lumpfish lived, then Bessasta
ir, and finally the mountains on the moon.