The Greenlanders

by Jane Smiley

  These confessions went on most of the night. Last to come was Vigdis of Gunnars Stead. She made her confession in the usual way, and welcomed the priest, and when she was gone, Sira Audun came out of the booth and found a large cheese waiting for him, a thoroughly salty and savory goat’s cheese, white and melting, the most delicious goat’s cheese he had ever tasted. He cut it up and served bits of it for communion instead of the hard wafer made from dulse that the Greenlanders were accustomed to having. After the mass, he cut up the cheese into large pieces and passed them out to the poorest families, and when he went into the church, he saw that the Lord looked down on him with a flickering, secret glance of pleasure.

  Just then there was a disturbance outside that rapidly spilled into the church through the open door. Sira Audun turned to acquaint himself with the source of some shouting, and saw a poor man, Thorstein Steinthorsson, who had already buried two of his children in the snow this winter, stumble backward through the door of the church, clutching his parcel of cheese to himself. He was followed by Ofeig Thorkelsson, who was shouting curses and grabbing for the cheese. Now Thorstein came against the stone wall of the church, where there was a soapstone carving of St. Jon the Baptist attached to the wall, and with his free hand, Thorstein grabbed this carving and pulled it off the wall and attempted to bring it down on Ofeig, but he was so weakened by hunger, and the carving was so heavy, that it fell from his hand and Ofeig bent to pick it up. But Sira Audun was there before him, and some of Ofeig’s friends were on him just then, and pulling him back.

  Sira Audun stepped up to Ofeig, with whom he was of a height, and slapped him hard across the face, saying, “Ofeig Thorkelsson, are you so sunk in sin that you would steal a man’s sustenance, and kill him, too? What are you doing here? It cannot be that you have come to pray, as you have not taken confession in five or six winters, and your soul is even now in mortal danger.” Ofeig showed no sign of having heard the priest, and his friends were about to drag him off when Sira Audun stopped them, for it seemed to him that if Ofeig could be brought before the sad and inspiring wooden countenance above the altar, he would be melted. He gestured to them to drop Ofeig’s arms, and they did so reluctantly, for they were more used to his ways than the priest was. Now Sira Audun began to lead Ofeig toward the altar, and Ofeig followed with apparent docility. They came to the altar, and Sira Audun told Ofeig to get to his knees, and Ofeig did so. Then Sira Audun began to pray as follows, “Lord, fill this sinner not with fear but with joy, as You have filled me of late, for I was no better than he is, except through Your grace. Lord, it may be that his heart is so hard that he knows not that it exists, but You can find it and warm it. Lord, it may be that the demons who are as plentiful on the ground as mosquitoes in the summer have made a happy home in this man, but You can drive them out, and whiten his soul again. No man who breathes is lost to You, Lord. He has done evil, but if You come into him, he will repent, and sin no more.”

  Now Ofeig looked up and around. Those at the back of the church whispered expectantly. Sira Audun went on, “Lord, it has pleased You in Your mystery to make us look closely upon death, and yet some of us do not know what we see. Open our eyes, we pray to You.” Just then Ofeig lifted his fist, and a sly smile flitted across his face. Suddenly, however, Ofeig was on his back on the ground, and Sira Audun was sitting on his chest. Ofeig was screaming in pain, for Sira Audun had butted his head into Ofeig’s belly. Now Sira Audun’s voice rose. “Lord, hear the demons screaming. How they hate to be driven off!” And he continued praying in a loud voice until Ofeig was silent, and then he stood up, and helped Ofeig to his feet. As Ofeig staggered off, Sira Audun said, “Go, then, and sin no more,” but no one could say whether Ofeig heard him or not.

  When the church was empty, Sira Audun knelt and thanked the Lord for filling him with such power against Ofeig’s demons, and he prayed there for a while before coming out of the church and going about his business of visiting the farmsteads of the district.

  This was a distressing business indeed, for at every farmstead he had to pronounce burial rites over one or two folk who had died, and give last rites to one or two others who seemed doomed. And it was also true that at every steading he was offered refreshment, even if it was only a few dried berries. At first he only said that he was not hungry, but he saw that folk were disappointed that he spurned what they had, and so he began telling them the truth, that the Lord had filled him with miraculous strength, and was feeding him some sort of invisible food that made him strong and able. And then he could induce the folk at the steadings to eat their own refreshments themselves.

  Finally at the end of the second day, he came to Gunnars Stead, and he looked forward to seeing Vigdis after seeing her neighbors, for indeed, such sights as he had witnessed in Vatna Hverfi were wearing and fearsome, even to someone in such an exalted state as he was in. But Vigdis’ mood had changed, or so the servants said who greeted him as he neared the steading. She was abusive and angry toward everyone, and rained curses down continually upon the heads of such absent folk as Erlend Ketilsson and Ketil the Unlucky and Gunnar Asgeirsson, as if the injuries that had been done to her had just taken place. It was best, the servants said, to wait her out, for her mood would change again in an evening, or a day. But Sira Audun was filled with the power of the Lord, and he went forth boldly toward the steading, and pushed open the door.

  Inside, Vigdis stood with her clothing in disarray and her dark hair falling out of her headdress, arrested by the opening of the door in the midst of cutting some dried meat at the table. The room, in fact, as Sira Audun looked about, was full of food. Vats of sourmilk and whey-pickled pieces of sealmeat and blubber, rounds of cheese, hanging birds. And Vigdis was hugely fat, fatter than she had ever been, so that her breasts hung down to her waist and her chins hid her neck completely. Sira Audun saw at once that she had responded to the hunger of the settlement by consuming and consuming without cease. Even as he watched, she jammed some of the meat into her mouth and began to cut some more. But now she stopped doing this, and put down the knife and began yelling at him so that the food fell out of her mouth. “So even the priest is come to steal from me, eh! You had your cheese, and a fine cheese it was, the best on the place. But I see you are not satisfied and crave to eat me out of house and home! But indeed, I’ll drive you off, I will. I’ll have my servants chase you off with the dogs. They’re hungry enough, I tell you, the dogs are!” She flourished the knife, which had been sharpened so many times that its blade was honed into a crescent moon shape. Sira Audun stepped forward, feeling the power of the Lord in his breast.

  “The Lord steals nothing, but only gives grace and eternal life. Woman, your soul is in peril! You cut your path to Hell with your own knife, for indeed, gluttony is a mortal sin in good times, but in times such as these, such gluttony amounts to murder! Your neighbors are failing all about you for the want of a bit of meat or a dish of broth. Today I have spoken the burial service over seven children who died for lack of food, such a little food as would fill the mouth of a small child, such as fell out of your own mouth just now, it makes me weep to tell it, their little faces were so thin, all forehead, and their mothers wept over their graves in the snow so that they could not lift themselves up to go into the warmth of the steading.”

  Vigdis listened to this in silence, but indeed, when she was not talking, she seemed not to be attending at all, and when Sira Audun fell silent, she said, “I cannot sit up every night as hard as I try. Folk must sleep, and that’s the truth, but some folk are not folk, and sleep nary a moment, but wait till you’re gone and then take all the best bits. They think I can’t see it, the devils, but a bite here and a bite there, all the best bites, and then the next best bites, the sweetest, tenderest morsels. They think I don’t see, but I do. Sometimes I am only pretending to be asleep, and that’s the truth. I see them go about, biting this and biting that even as it hangs!”

  “Woman!” Sira Audun was shouting, as if Vigdis were hard
of hearing. “You must attend me! Satan awaits you, and the door is wide open, and your feet are steady on the path! You are old, and time is short. Satan himself is beginning to smile his knowing smile. But the Lord can cheat him at this late moment! Give up these demons!” He knelt down beside the door.

  Vigdis went on, “Isn’t that loathsome? It astonishes me what folk are brought to these days, but I know what I’m doing, and I see it all, indeed I do, and these folk shall be driven off by the dogs, and that’s a fact, and for every bite they have taken, they shall be bitten about the flanks and nipped about the calves and they shall feel it, and that’s the truth!”

  “The Lord beseeches you, put off this burden of gluttony, give your food as alms to your neighbors. What rots in you shall nourish them! What turns to vermin in your hand becomes wholesome when your neighbors feed it to their starving children. Indeed, this may be the curse that brings the Lord’s anger down upon us. What you give away shall be returned to you a thousandfold, when the reindeer run across your fields, and the seals teem in the waters of the fjord. It seems to me that you can do this for us all, if you turn away from sin as the Lord wishes you to!”

  But Vigdis paid no attention, and fell to muttering and pulling at the meat on the table with her fingers. Sira Audun was panting, and he felt himself go limp, as if the power of the Lord had left him, and so he called out, “Lord, be with me, for I am in the presence of sin, and we sinners cry out to You to show us Your mercy!” But he was not strengthened, but instead, began to sway with dizziness and hunger, and also sickness at the odor of the food hanging about. He stood up with what felt like his last strength and went out of the steading, and sat down in the snow.

  After a while, one of the servingmen approached him and sat down. He was a grizzled fellow named Gizur, and his hands were much bent with the joint ill. He sat down with a groan. He said, “So, priest, she was too much for you, eh? Well, you are not the first. She has been too much for every man, and that is a fact, I’m telling you. She is my second cousin, and that’s a fact, and she is a rich woman and the mistress of the steading, and I spent my life sleeping in the cowbyre. Well, such a rise tells on a person, and it tells on her. She has her bad days.”

  “The steading is all hung about with food!”

  “Oh, yes, that’s her way. She has a magic touch with food, yes she does, like Jesus with his loaves and fishes, maybe. Never been a day without two meals at Ketils Stead, or at Gunnars Stead, since she’s been here. Makes up for a lot of things, always has, though she doesn’t lay the strap on us anymore, she’s too old for that.”

  “Everyone in the district is dying of hunger!”

  “Are they now? Well, I wouldn’t know about that, and they don’t know much about Gunnars Stead, and that’s a fact. We keep to ourselves, and that’s the way we always have done, and I expect that that’s the best way for everyone.” The old man put a crooked hand upon Sira Audun’s arm. “That’s the best way. Don’t you think? But indeed, you are the priest, and you do look a little weak, and so let me go into the storeroom over here.” Gizur crept back with a pair of cheeses and slipped them into Sira Audun’s bag, and then he and another servant accompanied him to the boundary of the steading and pointed him toward Undir Hofdi church. He hadn’t skied but a short ways, though, before he stopped and pulled the cheeses out of his bag, and indeed they were beautiful, and he could not resist pulling one of them apart and eating about a quarter of it.

  Now Sira Audun had a poor night, for he could not forget how the Lord had left him just at the critical moment, and he spent much of the night in prayer and in examination of his soul for the sin that might have caused the Lord to give up on him or turn away. He could find nothing, everything. He took refuge in his usual prayers, and in the morning, felt somewhat better. In fact, it seemed to him that he was himself again, Sira Audun, the same man he had been all his life, self-satisfied, easily annoyed, content with his own schemes, and far from the Lord, farther than he had ever known himself to be. He divided the cheeses in a large number of segments, ate one with some water, and began to carry the others about the district, and when folk asked in wonder where he had gotten them, he told them simply and with humility, that he had called upon the Lord to bend the heart of Vigdis of Gunnars Stead, but the Lord had abandoned him. The next day he left for the south, and his trip was slow and difficult. He saw that his arms were visibly thinner, and his knees seemed to tremble with every stroke of the skis.

  Folk in Vatna Hverfi district now began to talk about Sira Audun’s three cheeses, the one he had given out at the church, and the two he had taken about to the farmsteads, and their talk first concerned how miraculously good these cheeses had been—soft, salty, free of mold, obviously made the previous summer, but then Vigdis had huge flocks of sheep and goats and some cows, for as sparse as the hay crop had been, Vigdis had more farms than just Gunnars Stead and Ketils Stead, and the men to care for them, didn’t she? When this talk had been going on for a few days, for hungry folk chew over and over the news of food as if it were the choicest morsels, some men went to Gunnars Stead one night and looked about, in spite of the dogs, for one of the men knew spells, and cast a spell over the dogs so that they would not harry, or even bark. And these men saw that Vigdis had plenty of hay hidden at the end of the cowbyre, and also that the storehouse had food in it, although it was hard to tell how much. The cows in the dark byre felt warm and sleek to the touch. And the priest had said to Magnus Arnason himself that the steading was crammed with food. After a while Vigdis’ dogs began to grow restive, and the men crept away.

  Now it is the case that folk who have set themselves to look upon their deaths with resignation, and to anticipate the mercy of Heaven for themselves and their children are easily distracted by the knowledge of a store of food in the neighborhood, and their lot seems less bearable to them as they think upon these stores. So it was with Vigdis’ neighbors. Folk recalled how fat she was, how proud, though only the daughter of a cowman, and how niggardly. Serving boys had been beaten for taking a bit of honey, and neighbors had been summoned before the Thing on suspicion of hay stealing or sheep stealing, when anyone could see that the hay had only been used up, and the sheep had only been lost in the hills above the steading. In addition to this, everyone in the district had received one of Vigdis’ tongue-lashings, and in the time of Ketil the Unlucky, more than a few had had verses made against them, and been held up for ridicule. As folk talked about Vigdis’ hoard of food, they began remembering these things, too, and, as it often happens, these injuries came upon them the more freshly for not having been thought of in many years.

  Among those who talked about these things, Ofeig Thorkelsson and Mar Marsson were not the most backward, even in the presence of Jon Andres Erlendsson. Indeed, of late no one had suffered injuries from Vigdis as her son had, for the sight of him seemed to concentrate in her mind all the ills that had ever been done against her, and she was often moved to attack him and box his ears. Even so, Jon Andres never joined in the talk among his friends about his mother, and when Ofeig opened his mouth, Jon Andres would get up and go outside.

  It was the case that the hunger was not so bad at Ketils Stead as it was at other steadings. For one thing, servingfolk at Gunnars Stead would send food to their relatives at Ketils Stead from time to time. For another, the Ketils Stead shepherd was a talented fellow, and had accumulated a large flock, so that in the autumn many sheep had been killed, and their meat dried for the winter and their heads singed into svid and their brains made into sausage and their feet boiled into broth. Even so, Jon Andres and his friends had little notion of household economy, and by Yule much of this food was eaten, or wasted, and Ofeig and Mar and the others were impatient at the prospect of shorter meals and eking things out as their neighbors did. Mar, in particular, could not stop talking of what there was to eat at Gunnars Stead, and urging Jon Andres to get some of it from his mother. But Jon Andres paid him no attention. After the argument at the ch
urch, Jon Andres had been avoiding his friends, and one evening he told Ofeig that it was tiresome to have these boys around him. “Indeed,” he said, “they are not boys anymore, but men with no occupations and no inclination to return to the steadings of their fathers, where they might be made to do some work,” and this was true. For some years, Jon Andres had fancied his band to be something on the order of a band of Vikings, Harald Finehair and his hirdmen was what they were called in the neighborhood, and Jon Andres did not mind this nickname, but after the conflict at the church he grew impatient, and spoke to his friends sharply if at all.

  One day he came among them where they were lounging on the benches of the steading, and he said that it was his desire to send them away, back to their fathers, for the life he had been leading oppressed him, and he wished to change it. As a going away gift, he would give them each a suit of clothes, the horse that each had been riding, and some dried meat to take away with them to their fathers’ steadings.