The Fish Can Sing (45 page)

I think that Gú
múnsen himself was the only person in that whole family with some remnants of a Danish disposition in his blood, combined with a certain lightness of demeanour, as well as a humour which often partly or, indeed, entirely, hides the inner person – or can at least give a misleading impression; but it could well be that he had to a certain extent adopted this demeanour in Denmark, where he had been a shop-apprentice in his youth.

He took me by the arm and led me over to a wall, where he showed me a huge oleograph of a lion.

“My dear student Hansen,” he said. “I’ll bet you’ve never seen anything like that at Brekkukot! That’s a lion.”

“Indeed?” I said. “No, I’m afraid I’ve never seen a lion.”

“That’s exactly what lions in zoos look like, except of course that this one is twice as large as an ordinary lion,” said the merchant. “It’s not so funny if a beast like that comes at you and wants to bite you.”

“Do lions bite?” I asked. “I thought they just gobbled you up.”

“Oui, oui
, yes,
oui
, of course a lion gobbles you up,” said the merchant, and roared with laughter. “So it’s better to have a care, eh?
You have a map and a ruler
, ha-ha-ha!”

Nature in some fit of absent-mindedness had neglected to give this fully fifty-year-old man the proper marks of age. He had a little toothbrush moustache on his upper lip, and his hair was cut equally carefully; but now as before, when I had first looked at his cheeks, I could not help thinking of the plums in my grandmother’s rhymes. But even though he was such a cheerful ruddy-cheeked fellow, or perhaps just because of this, he could suddenly become very serious and start saying something sharp in the middle of his boyish antics; and because he was not quite sure whether his words of wisdom were appropriate, or the
phrasing opportune, he would peer round rather furtively to see whether his remark had gone home; and if he saw no signs to that effect he would burst into loud laughter so that people would think he had not really meant what he had said but had merely been trying to shock people for fun with some dubious contention, even trying to test their credulity, but was ready to take it all back again. I imagine that underneath it all, merchant Gú
múnsen suffered from shyness and fear of ridicule, which was how in my youth we described all manner of things which are now given Freudian names. There was one face in particular which he always studied like a barometer to see what success he was having, and that was the face of the person who had tied ribbons and bows on both the cat and on the birds that the cat most wanted to eat. And this was really no surprise, for Mrs Gú
múnsen came of both an older and a better family than he did; and though her lineage would not have been reckoned in Brekkukot better than that of Adam in age or quality, I can at least say to her family’s credit that Iceland had won as regards this woman’s bearing and appearance, and no doubt her very soul as well, because she never wore Danish dresses and never let herself be lured to visit Denmark.

Icelandic national costume, as we all know, has three grades, and even its lowest grade is loaded with more gold and silver than any other costume with the exception of the get-ups of emperors and army generals; thus the national costume of Icelandic women was the most unlikely national costume in the world to become the uniform of destitute mountain-crofters, as was the case with the national costumes of other lands. Mrs Gú
múnsen was wearing the grade suitable to an occasion of this importance, namely the second grade, and I will not attempt to say how much wealth she was wearing on her bodice in gold and precious stones; but it would be generally agreed that few emperors or army generals would have borne their gold with greater authority than this genuinely Icelandic Mrs Gú
múnsen (despite all her Danish gutturals) as she sailed majestically through her rooms and saw to it that no article was without its ribbon and bow.

In accordance with the peculiar custom that used to be followed in Iceland if one wanted to show exceptional hospitality,
visitors were first of all offered coffee and cakes before the meal itself; it could be that this custom was a relic of the times when there was no other fuel available than peat, and slow-burning stuff it was too, so that visitors often had to wait for hours for the roast meat and pudding, and therefore there was no alternative but to serve light refreshment to blunt the keenest edge of hunger during the waiting. There was no question of slow cooking in this case, however, but rather a loyalty to an old tradition of hospitality in Reykjanes; and not until the guests had regaled themselves on pancakes, doughnuts, fruit-cake, tart, pastries, and about twenty other kinds of biscuits along with coffee and cream was there any attempt made to prepare the table for the banquet itself.

I said earlier that I had thought the party rather heavy going. Was it not remarkable that a pillar of the community like Gú
múnsen should be content to eat with his family in honour of his protegé, a famous Icelandic world-figure, on the day of his homecoming – a man who according to the Store’s mouthpiece had recently been giving a concert for the Pope – instead of holding a banquet for him and inviting to it other pillars of the community? Did not such a guest have a right to an even grander reception than this one from his patron and protector? What did this family party signify? Was this feast an invitation to Gar
ar Hólm to become a member of the family without further ceremony? Despite the ribbons and bows on the cat and the canary, the gold-laden cousins and aunts, the Rhapsodies by Liszt, and the most lavish hospitality imaginable in Iceland from brambleberries all the way down to porridge, I still could not fathom the meaning of this party. The family’s attitude to this famous man was, to put it mildly, rather ambiguous. Granted that the appreciation of a famous singer was somewhat lacking among people who did not know what singing was – but what exactly was this man in their eyes? Or had the former shop-assistant Georg Hansson from Hríngjarabær just been fished out and tied with a ribbon and bow for this one evening because they wanted to mislead someone about something? And if so, whom, and about what? What had happened since little Miss Gú
múnsen had been
locked in her room the previous summer? It was only a few weeks since she had confided to me that it was she who was waiting for Gar
ar Hólm, but all evening I saw no sign that any understanding had been established between the singer and the merchant’s daughter; it was quite obviously a rule in this house that the daughter should not know this guest better than any of the others; they pretended scarcely to see one another; but on the other hand it was not clear to me who was putting on an act for whom.