World Light (32 page)

It was noticeable that the more often the gentry halted for refreshments and shook hands and became better friends, the more of an irritant Ólafur Kárason became in the station owner’s eyes. About the time they had got as far up the pass as they were far down the second bottle of cognac, the station owner announced that he could not bear to have that jackass near him, least of all sober, and that they would have to pour some cognac down his throat.

“He doesn’t understand that sort of thing,” said Pétur Pálsson. “He’s in bad health, poor creature. He has enough difficulty keeping the horses together even when he’s sober.”

“It’s none of your business what I do with my cognac.”

“It’s not that I grudge the cognac,” said Pétur Pálsson. “But as everyone who knows me knows perfectly well, I have always believed in teetotalism for others, particularly for youngsters.”

“Yes, you’ve always been a damned socialist all your days,” said Júel J. Júel. “Grímur Loðinkinni Ltd. won’t have anything to do with fellows of that sort. Fetch me the boy at once; that cognac is going into him.”

“No, thank you,” said Ólafur Kárason from a distance. “There’s really no need.”

“Leave the poor wretch alone, my dear Júel,” said Pétur Pálsson the manager.

“The cognac’s mine and I decide what I do with my own cognac. If I say he must down my cognac, then my cognac he must down,” said the station owner.

“Run and fetch the horses, friend,” said Pétur Pálsson.

“Stand still,” said Júel J. Júel.

Everything began to go black before Ólafur Kárason’s eyes. Nothing had such a paralyzing effect on this poet as when the authorities of the nation went to the trouble of fighting over his soul. But Providence so willed it that Pétur Pálsson should stand up and stagger in pursuit of the owner of the cognac and grab him by the arm. They scuffled a little over the poet’s soul, and the station owner said that Grímur Loðinkinni Ltd. would not have anything to do with notorious damned socialists, while the poet took the chance to make his escape and went to fetch the horses.

With every halt for refreshment, it became more and more difficult to get the gentry back into their saddles, particularly the station owner, for he was lanky and swayed inordinately, and the horses were nervous. Ólafur Kárason was full of foreboding about the rest of the journey; it was already late in the day, and they still had not reached the highest point of the pass where the mountain path proper began.

It was one of those quiet late-summer days, with white sunshine and no birdsong, like a young girl who has become old. He tried to forget his companions and life as a whole, and to listen to the late-summer stillness that seemed to have no limits. Nature herself hesitated, at once amazed and questioning, in memory of the sounds that had died away.

Up in the pass there was a cairn where for the past two hundred years had rested two luckless people who had been executed there in their time. The fanatical and intolerant mood of the age, which could neither understand nor forgive, had grudged them the pleasure and satisfaction of being allowed to lie in consecrated ground. These two long-dead corpses, which had to face the afterlife so high above sea level, had during their lifetime borne the name Sigurður Natan and Móeiður, but a prejudiced and coarse populace had distorted these names and called them Satan and Mósa. This was the cairn of Satan and Mósa.

Their story, briefly, was this: At Kirkjuból, to the west of the heath, there lived fully two hundred years ago a couple named Jón and Móeiður. Jón was a prosperous farmer, but was thought to be less doughty in more manly exploits. His wife Móeiður was said to be a very energetic and hard-bitten woman. Their marriage was thought to be a somewhat precarious one. It is said that one autumn, the farmer hired a young and able fellow called Sigurður Natan or Natansson, who hailed from the south. Sigurður Natan, according to those who knew, was a very artistic fellow, an excellent carpenter, a good singer and versifier. But it was rumored that he was not quite such a faithful servant, and he was thought somewhat fickle in his love affairs. To cut a long story short, early that winter the housewife and the farmhand fell in love so desperately that neither felt able to live without the other. They agreed to get rid of Jón the farmer, seize his money, and then go abroad where they could enjoy their love in peace. They both attacked Jón one night when he was asleep in bed; the wife undertook to hold him down while the farmhand struck. This done they emptied his money chest, and to hide the evidence of their handiwork they thought it best to set fire to the house and burn it down. All the buildings burnt to ashes during the night with everything they contained, both the living and the dead, including five servants, four cows, three children, two old women and a dog, in addition to the farmer. Satan and Mósa were convicted at the
ingskálar Assembly next spring and executed up in the pass on Midsummer Day and buried under a cairn. They were both said to have walked a great deal after death, and for more than two hundred years they had been considered the worst ghosts in the district.*

“Poor blessed creatures,” said Pétur Pálsson thickly. He sat down beside the cairn overcome with grief, took off his pince-nez, and wept.

“Eat shit!” said the station owner.

“The love was nothing, my friend, compared with burning down the house,” said Pétur Pálsson, and shook his head in despair as if all were lost. “My dearest Júel, it’s so dreadful to burn down a house.”

“What the devil does it matter! What was the house worth?” said the station owner.

“Oh, it was a lot of money, Júel, and no insurance in those days,” said the manager.

“Haven’t I told you over and over again that money is worthless if you need a woman?” said the station owner. “Either you’re going where you’re going, or you’re not going where you’re not going; a hundred thousand million, what do I care?”

“Yes, but the people, dear friend: four cows, three children, two old women, and a dog, what d’you say about that?” said the manager.

“You should deny facts if they’re inconvenient,” said the station owner.

“People are still people,” said the manager thickly, and he went on shaking his head over all this loss of life.

“People!” said the station owner. “What do I care? Grímur Loðinkinni Ltd. doesn’t stand for any nonsense.”

“My dear, beloved Júel, my dear friend and loving brother, who’s going to help me and us and this damned estate that neither God nor man wants to own! Forgive me for just this once if I, as an older man and an intellectual and president of the Psychic Research Society, ask you as a five-trawler man and two stations up north: If money’s worthless, and people are worthless, and everything’s worthless, and nothing’s worth anything, what then is worth something?”

“Fish,” mumbled the station owner and closed his eyes and let his head fall forward, with a newly opened bottle of cognac between his legs. “Fish. Fish.”

“Fish?” echoed the manager, weeping. “Fish—and nothing else?”

“Nothing else? Yes, of course,” said the station owner and looked up with a sudden hiccup. “Roe and liver are also worth a lot. Fish offal and whale oil are worth a lot. Even muck is worth a lot. It’s only people who are worthless. And money if you need a woman. Grímur Loðinkinni won’t have any damned socialism.”

As he threw out these winged words he caught sight of Ólafur Kárason who had forgotten the danger again and was sitting a few yards away. The station owner’s instinctive wrath at the poet flared up anew. He jumped to his feet, this time without any warning, threw himself on the poet, and sat down on him astride his chest with one hand at the neck of his jersey and the bottle of cognac in the other. It was useless now for Pétur Pálsson to beg for mercy for the poet, not even when he let it be understood that this was his own poet whom he had been feeding all summer; the station owner refused absolutely to have any people in full possession of their senses near him: “Poets should be given enough drink to make them mad,” he said, and tried to hold Ólafur Kárason’s head in such a way as to force the neck of the bottle into his mouth. “And if they don’t want to drink, then they can starve; they will be trampled underfoot into the mud.”

But at the moment when the poet felt he was going to be robbed of his last scrap of human dignity because it was not possible to rob him of anything else, at the moment when he was going to be deprived of the most fundamental human right of self-determination, at the moment when he actually felt the gentleman’s boots on his face, he suddenly felt that it did not matter. He thought of his poems: when everything was said and done, he owned a fortune that the station owner’s hands could never touch. He thought of the thousands of poets whom the station owners of the world had trampled into the dirt with their boots before him. Time passes, and grass grows on the graves. But long after the station owners have sunk into the dark night of oblivion, shrouded in the contempt of the centuries, the songs of the poets will still sound on the lips of living and loving people.

Pétur Pálsson had at first watched the proceedings idly, but at this point he put on his pince-nez and stood up.

“Your name is Júel Júel Júel, my lad, and that is a fine name,” said Pétur Pálsson, and grabbed the station owner’s shoulder. “But I’m no Icelander, s’help me, if you want to know. My grandmother was called Madame Sophie Sørensen.”

“It’ll be a long time before Grímur Loðinkinni Ltd. helps such rats as you, who sink ships, embezzle funds, falsify books, and burn down houses,” said the station owner when the manager had dragged him off the poet. They scuffled for a short time in earnest on the grass beside the cairn. But just when the manager seemed to be getting the better of the station owner, the latter spewed a jet of vomit straight up into the manager’s face. At this unexpected attack the manager retired, removed his teeth and his pince-nez and put both in his pocket while he wiped his face with his sleeve. The station owner went on spewing. After a moment he fell asleep in his vomit. Pétur Pálsson also lay down beside the cairn and went to sleep. Ólafur Kárason sat some distance away and kept an eye on the horses, but occasionally he watched how these pillars of society went about going to sleep.

And the day turned to evening.

20

On the following evening, after an eventful journey, he was sitting in the poetess’s low-ceilinged loft at the open window, while the swell broke on the gravel beach with a slow, regular murmur and the sea gleamed in the moonlight. He had finished eating and telling the story of the journey, and the woman had cleared the table and washed up the dishes. That white-scrubbed kitchen with its open window had both a kind of universal dignity and an impersonal warmth, which made you happy in the midst of the adversities and sorrows of life. The friendly rose-patterned plates in the rack, the ladle on the wall, the blue-checked curtains, the woman’s knitting on the windowsill, the warmth from the cooking stove, the cat, the aroma of coffee, the moonlight, the sea—it was perhaps not many krónurs’ worth if you tried to sell it, but all the same it was the world at its fairest and best.

Then there came a commotion on the stairs, a violent blow on the outer door, a knocking on the kitchen door. But it was not the woman’s husband after all; it was the manager’s hoydenish daughter. She said she had a letter for Ólafur Kárason from Júel J. Júel, and then was gone.

The woman came over to him at the window while he was tearing open the letter. He took out of the envelope a piece of paper decorated with pictures; he turned it over and studied it from all sides in the moonlight, but did not know what it was.

“It’s a fifty-krónur note,” said the poetess.

He was absolutely flabbergasted. It was the first in his life he had ever come into any money. It took him a long time to realize what blessings a gift like this could bring. Finally he clutched the poetess’s arm and said, “Now I can buy myself some clothes! And probably boots! And perhaps I can get to Aðalfjörður to have my poems published and to visit my mother.”

She did not say anything. Eventually, after a long silence, she cleared her throat in a high-pitched note.

“Don’t you think it’s a lovely present, perhaps?” he said.

“No,” she said bluntly. “I think it’s better when the mighty abuse the lowly free of charge—and indeed that’s undoubtedly their dearest wish.”

He was speechless; to be honest, he did not understand what she was getting at. She went over to the side of the kitchen that was in deepest shadow, and vanished.

“It’s a poor overlord who hasn’t the guts to kick a pauper in the teeth without opening his purse afterwards,” she said. “There’s no creature on earth so despicable and loathsome as a rich man with a conscience.”

Her thin, silver-clear voice cracked and became a whisper.

“Hólmfríður,” he whispered, alarmed. “Where are you? Come here. Sit beside me.”

She crossed the room twice before she sat down. Then she sat down on the little bench beside him. She turned her back to him and looked out at the sea.

“Hólmfríður,” he said again; but she did not answer, just sighed and picked up her knitting.

“I’ll throw this money out of the window if you like,” he said.

There was a long silence. She knitted very rapidly. At last she said in her clear, silvered voice, having regained her composure: “I can’t give you anything in return.”

He replied after a long silence: “Yes.”

There was another long silence.

“What?” she whispered out into the moonlight, almost inaudibly.

“You know what it is,” he said.

Silence.

“No,” she said.

Silence.

“Yes,” he said.

The conversation went on like that for a long time, with meaningless monosyllables, long silences and the breathing murmur of the waves breaking their green-white fringes on the gleaming pebbles of the beach.

“Hólmfríður, you who see everything,” he said, “you know what’s wrong with me.”

“How should I know?” she said. “No one knows what goes on in someone else’s heart.”

“You surely know that I’ve suffered a terrible sorrow.”

“Sorrow?” she said. “No, I don’t know that. What sort of sorrow?”

“A love sorrow,” he said.

He had suddenly begun to think to himself that a little sorrow was actually worthwhile if one could afterwards enjoy consolation from such a woman. But then she said bluntly, as if nothing were amiss, “Love sorrows don’t exist.”

He was a little disappointed that she should reply like that; she used a special tone of voice; it was very difficult to get close to her.

“You can call it what you like, Hólmfríður, because you’re so intelligent and much more of a poet than I am, what’s more,” he said. “But for the past few weeks I have felt as if life’s days were getting shorter and shorter, darker and darker, and that soon everything would become one unending night.”

“Soon everything will become one unending night,” her weak, silvered voice echoed in the moonlight, but the woman went on knitting.

He continued to listen after the words had died away; finally he shivered and moved closer to her, involuntarily, put his hand on her shoulder and said, very seriously, “No, Hólmfríður, you mustn’t say that.”

“They were your own words,” she said.

“Yes, but you mustn’t repeat them,” he said. “If you want to save my life . . .”

“Child,” she said, when he fell silent. “How strange you are! You’re so equivocal that one never knows whether you’re being serious or joking. And yet so simple that one feels sorry for you.”

“I am that which craves consolation,” he said.

“But who is to console me?” she said.

This question took him aback, and he felt ashamed and blushed to the roots of his hair. He had always seen himself as the only person in the world who was in distress; it had never occurred to him that she, too, was in need of consolation, this reserved, clear-sighted woman, this weak voice.

“I’ve wanted so much to read you my poems all summer,” he said. “And yet I’ve wanted something even more, and never more so than tonight—to hear your poems.”

“I have burnt them,” she said.

Autumn sounds from the sea. The moon was only a short distance away, it was on this side of the mountain, it was almost over the middle of the fjord and yet really even closer, it hung right over the gleaming stony beach, scarcely more than an arm’s length from the window. As a child one would have stretched out a hand and caught hold of it; its beam on the fjord was a path one could walk—because if something is beautiful enough, one believes in it. This simple scene was for a long time the only sequel to their conversation. Finally he laid his face against her neck and whispered, “Will you let me kiss you?”

“No,” she replied bluntly, without taking offense.

“Why not?” he said.

“I could be your mother.”

“Then be my mother,” he said.

“Promise me one thing, little Óli—don’t be a womanizer when you grow up. We others cannot imagine anything more disgusting than that,” she said.

“Just one kiss,” he implored. “Then I know I’ll see life in a new light. Then all the sorrows of life will be wiped away. Then I shall have a seed which will live in my heart until next spring.”

“We mustn’t play with fire,” she said.

“Just this once,” he begged. “And then never again.”

“For that very reason—no,” she said.

They heard the stair creaking, and the outer door was torn open.

“Quick, get up, he’s coming!” whispered the poet in confusion.

But she did not move, did not even look up, just went on knitting. Then the woman’s husband was standing in the doorway. Even though he was drunk he saw them at once, silhouetted against the window; he looked at them for a moment, growling to himself. Then he began to pour abuse on his wife. She carried on knitting for a long time without moving, but eventually she gave a start as if she had been stabbed: he had said “whore.” But she did not ask for mercy; she merely said in her coldest and most silvery voice, “You’d better go to bed.”

“If that boy ever comes into my sight again, I’ll murder him,” said the woman’s husband.

At this, Ólafur Kárason became not a little uneasy. Of all dreadful things, nothing is more dreadful than murder. On the other hand, the woman seemed to think differently. It was not until the man had repeated that one word that she made any move. But then an amazing thing happened, the like of which Ólafur Kárason had never seen. This youthful-looking woman with that girlish bosom, that slight voice and the impassive, preoccupied thoughtfulness in her large dark eyes—she stuck the needles into the ball of wool, went over to her husband, and gave him a box on the ear. And for whatever reason, this gigantic, formidable man, who looked as if he could have crushed her with one hand, stopped swearing, wiped his face with his hand as if it had been splashed, and then gaped speechlessly at his wife.

“There,” she said, as if she had been chastising a child. “Do as I say and go to bed at once.” She turned to Ólafur Kárason and said, “It’s getting late. You’ll come over for morning coffee at your usual time.”

Then the couple were alone in their home, and Ólafur Kárason was standing outside.

He was far from contented. The road to his bed had become the Way of the Cross for him each day. With the onset of autumn he was the only person in that empty building which had previously been part of the warm winds of summer. Each time he approached the building he felt it was teeming with evil forebodings all around; it was as if it were besieged by evil thoughts. And he discovered that the whole building was tenanted by dreadful wild animals. As soon as night fell, the rats began to scratch and scrape, squeak and squawk behind the walls, or even to fight and scream; sometimes they fell several feet behind the wainscoting, and he could count up to five before their bodies came down somewhere with a thud. Even if he got out of bed and hammered on the walls, it had little more effect than waking a snoring man—after a few moments the fun would begin again. But the yowling of the feral cats in the cellars was perhaps even more horrible than the rats themselves. Around midnight (not to mention when there was moonlight like tonight) it was as if evil spirits took possession of these man-shy, broad-jawed creatures which otherwise lay in hiding all day; their discordant howls, either in frightful solo or shrill chorus, gave the night the character of hell itself and everlasting torment, and robbed this sensitive poet of both sleep and peace of mind so that he could hardly bear it.

He tried to kill time as much as he could, stopping at every other step and looking at the moonlight on the sea. And then, as so often before, the good spirits of the world smiled upon this young poet with the uncertain future: he found Eilífðar-Daði in the dirt. This Jesus-brother and drinker of cough mixture was lying, as was his custom, directly across the road, with one cheek in the soft mud, asleep. The poet recognized him at once and tried to rouse him. He had met him once before, in the spring, before the summer began; he had then thought him the only person left in the whole world. Now he met him again in the autumn, and it was wonderful to meet him again when the summer was over, because even if he perhaps was not the only person in the world, as the poet had once thought, he was at least a person in the world. Jesus! My brother! Heave-up!

His name was Daði Jónsson, and he was called Eilífðar-Daði (Eternity-Dave) because people were convinced that he had achieved eternal bliss already in this world; some called him Eilífðar-Dauði (Eternity-Death). He was said to be a good seaman, he was even much in demand as a fisherman, and he never missed a fishing season. At the end of the season he would come home to his sister, the mother of a family in Sviðinsvík, and hand over most of his pay to her if there were any; but the rest he would deposit with the doctor for cough mixture, and usually he managed to achieve bliss in the course of the first day. Cough mixtures—they were his family, his million, his hotel. He left his sister’s house and slept on the road, always directly across it; but the chariots of the Lord would on no account run over this strange consumer. It was difficult to avoid being fond of such a man, who loved the whole world without doing any harm to anyone except himself. Few people could boast a more courteous and humble soul, even among those who were reckoned to be in their full senses. On dry land, Eilífðar-Daði Jónsson never said anything but those three familiar phrases: Jesus! My brother! Heave-up!

He took a sip from the flask of cough mixture when he woke up, and his face was convulsed by the most incredible grimaces. He said “My brother!” and greeted the poet tearfully and with long handshakes and embraces. Ólafur Kárason considered himself a good and loving person to have found an individual who was even less able to shift for himself than a poet, and he was determined to take him to his palace and invite him to be a fellow lodger and soul mate because it was now autumn, and because he was alone in the darkness, surrounded by wild animals and evil foreboding; and there was no longer any consolation.