Under the Glacier

by Halldor Laxness

  6

  Morning at Glacier

  Your emissary is up and about early. The light wasn’t conducive to sleeping, especially since there was no curtain at the window of the discoloured blue room where Miss Hnallþóra had shown me to bed the previous night after the coffee; in fact it was already beginning to dawn even then.

  The room was on the right-hand side of the passage from the front door, opposite the spare room. The door had only one hinge and you fastened it with a piece of string. It was evident that it had been nailed up during the winter, and would be nailed up again in the autumn.

  The fog was lifting, the homefield very green after the overnight drizzle. The sheep had got into the homefield; nobody bothered to chase them out. There were a few bluebottles at the window. I felt a little queasy after the immoderate consumption of cakes and chicory-coffee. Admittedly I hadn’t managed to finish even the litre and a half the woman had brought me at the first go; but what would she have expected of me if I had emptied the coffeepot twice, as she expected—three litres in all!

  There was a bed in the room, certainly, but that was the only piece of furniture there: no utensils or other fittings or articles. Was it the intention that a visitor who had taken three litres of that coffee should use the bed itself, like an infant? Upon closer examination, there was in the corner a rusty washstand of the kind now much sought after by folk museums, and that I’m told are still to be found in dwellings in England. It’s the kind of stand that accommodates a washbasin, ewer, and soap dish. There is some brownish water in the ewer. Has this water perhaps been used before for washing? How often? Had previous visitors used the ewer for other purposes, after drinking three litres of coffee last winter while the doors of the house were nailed up?

  A ragged towel hung from a nail in the middle of the wall; it reminded one of a work of art, albeit highly abstruse, by Duchamp. It gives rise to some baffling riddles. Why is this paltry object, so frayed and tattered, given such obvious prominence that one could say it dominates the whole room? Is one to understand this shrieking towel as a gambit directed at myself—a symbol? I mustn’t forget to mention that the room had been thoroughly scrubbed the day before from top to bottom, scrubbed with powerful washing soda, undoubtedly, which produced a stench of putrefaction very like the reek of cows’ urine. This stink now mingled with another nasty smell, of rotting wood and musty earth from the turf wall behind the panelling. To this was added the smell of the bluebottles, curiously strong but in some way not nearly so offensive as the smell of many a vertebrate. I forgot to mention that I found it quite impossible to open the window last night before I went to bed. How these plump and powerful bluebottles had got in was a mystery to me. One thing was certain—they couldn’t get out again; but perhaps that wasn’t the intention, anyway. Was it conceivable that these flies had been fetched in here when the scrubbing was finished? And if so, for what purpose? Were they there as substitutes for art in the house? Or decoration? Were they there instead of goldfish or canaries? Perhaps both. Pictorial art is a delusion of the eye, whereas flies are living ornaments and much more lively than flowers, what’s more, because flowers are languid in their movements and keep silent. Even goldfish are silent, but the bluebottle is the poor man’s canary, endowed with a singing voice that awakens memories in the minds of visitors. The bluebottles remind the undersigned of the sunshine of childhood, but they also create moral problems that need to be resolved but that have not to my knowledge been fully resolved by moral philosophers and World Teachers. This is the dilemma I have now reached at Glacier. I ask:

  1. Is it morally right to kill flies, taking all things into consideration?

  2. Although it may in certain circumstances be excusable, for instance if flies are proved to be carrying disease into the house, is it still morally right for a guest to kill these creatures? Would that not be comparable to killing the host’s dog?

  7

  Two Buildings

  Your emissary has gone outside, where other tasks require attention. The fog is lifting, and there are sunshine patches on the countryside here and there. For the first time I catch a glimpse of that white tureen-lid of the world, Snæfellsjökull, between wisps of fog and the shadow of the clouds. Yesterday evening when your emissary went outside to while away the time, fog had merged with dusk and only the white birds were visible. This morning in the middle of the almost overgrown path a dandelion glistens between the paving stones and a buttercup is preparing to burst open. This is between the parsonage and the church.

  And now it becomes clear that there was something in what the bishop had said when he warned his emissary that a monstrosity had been built in the west: at any rate, the church looks somewhat insignificant beside this edifice. For one thing, they hadn’t even managed to put this monster parallel to the church, but at an angle to it. Either the people who built it hadn’t noticed that a church was there, or else they had wanted to trample on the church’s toes: there is only just enough space for a person to squeeze between this building and the church.

  Suffice it to say meantime that the church is built of timber and had originally been clad with corrugated iron, but there’s only the odd sheet of it left on the walls here and there. I also note pro tem that the church seems only moderately suited to attracting a congregation. Windows boarded with boxwood, the main door securely nailed shut. The churchyard looks in sad condition, too; not a single cross at a proper angle to its foundation any longer; these memorials, some made of rusty iron, others of rotten wood, all look decidedly tipsy. Withered grass stands between the graves higher than I have ever seen elsewhere. On the other hand, the birdsong is in good heart, with the thrush’s trilling whistle from the church gable and the soughing bleat of seabirds from the nearby cliffs.

  We turn now from this poor House of Glory to the edifice already mentioned. Timber structures of this kind are called bungalows, from whatever language that might be and whatever it might mean. Usually this word applies to a single-storey country cottage that wealthy white men in the colonies built for themselves to ape the native style of architecture, except that it’s made of choicest wood and equipped with all modern luxuries.

  Half in a dream, your emissary went over to this model of avant-garde architecture in a homefield where the entire husbandry consisted of one ailing calf.

  No road led to this building from any direction, not even a path. Windows carefully shuttered, with nowhere a chink for a Peeping Tom. On the south and west sides were broad covered verandas, presumably to provide shade from the sun. Everything closed and locked.

  8

  Interrogation of the Parish Clerk

  Your emissary happened to glance into the living room and saw that many goodly cakes were on the scene again, this time intended for breakfast, as well as the three war-cakes from the evening before. I presumed that the mighty coffeepot would soon be making its appearance, so I sneaked out again backwards, taking care not to touch that noisily creaking door.

  On the map of the district the parish clerk’s farm, Brún, is indicated at the roots of the mountain about two or three kilometres away. It would be advisable to have a talk with the clerk before pastor Jón returns from his travels.

  A farmer gave me a lift in his jeep and took me some of the way. The man asked if your emissary was on a holiday outing, and I said yes. But isn’t it very boring, tramping the highway on foot like this, the man asked. I said no. Once one starts telling lies it’s difficult to start telling the truth again. Had I said I had been sent by the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs or by the bishop, I would have been thought rather a dangerous creature. Country people cannot understand why the emissaries of Christendom don’t drive about in cars; indeed, it’s unlikely that Saint Paul would have been flogged in Thessalonica if he had had a jeep in working order.

  The farm is a sort of longhouse on the same coral-principle as the parsonage. It doesn’t look as if it has been cared for much this century, except that a concrete porch wi
th steep cement steps has been built onto the old timber house, and this remarkable structure protrudes from the middle of the sidewall. Perhaps someone once had the idea of entering the house at some other point than through the front door, wherever that might have been originally. It must have been quite a job to build such an excrescence onto a wooden house clad with corrugated iron. The gravel used for the concrete was too coarse, and there was too much sand in proportion to the cement, with probably quite a lot of clay or even soil in the sand, because the concrete is all cracked and there is grass growing in the fissures, as well as some sorrel and the little white flowering chickweed called alpine mouse-ear. Soon this porch will be reduced to a pile of rubble on the paving, and then there will be a hole left in this turn-of-the-century house.

  The farmer left his work and invited me inside after I had explained who I was.

  Embi: Are you Tumi Jónsen, clerk of the congregation?

  Farmer: So they say. I’m only passing on what I’ve been told.

  Embi: Are you Danish?

  Farmer: No such luck, I fear. I am directly descended from those famous Jónsens who wrote the History of Iceland.

  Tumi Jónsen is well over sixty, perhaps seventy or eighty, his features marked by toil and kindliness. His bald pate is the colour of parchment, but the eyebrows are fair, the eyes blue and a little rheumy. He asks the news from the south, and then if the roads aren’t more passable now. Then: Is everything going well with our bishop, the blessed creature?

  Embi: Yes, thank you, although he has a touch of rheumatism. I am to give you his greetings, and his thanks for the letter. He asked me to inquire if you are troubled with rheumatism?

  Tumi Jónsen: The dear light of heaven! That’s just like him. He is a noble soul. Are you in orders, may I ask?

  Embi: No, just an errand-boy.

  Tumi Jónsen: It is nice to be modest, my boy. Please take a seat. But the womenfolk aren’t at home, I fear; they went into town to buy some soap. They say that spring is here. Time to start scrubbing. I hope they will be back soon to make the coffee.

  The parish clerk opened his trunk and brought out a bottle of port and one beaker; he filled the glass and drained it and said: I’m drinking first, because I am the older. But had you been in orders, I would have let you drink first.

  He wiped the inside of the glass with his thumb, filled it again, and handed it to me in silence. Then he put the bottle and beaker back in the trunk and closed it.

  Embi: So you are the parish clerk?

  Tumi Jónsen: You can put a name to anything, my boy.

  Embi: Yes, well, I hardly know how to raise the subject. I’m only twenty-five years old. I haven’t the faintest idea about the cure of souls. I cannot imagine how I’ve blundered into this.

  Tumi Jónsen: Perhaps I could fill your glass again?

  Embi: No thanks, I’m sweating enough already. I am wondering why the pastor isn’t at home. Gone abroad, perhaps?

  Tumi Jónsen: No, I hardly imagine our pastor Jón’s gone there. I imagine he was fetched over to Nes late yesterday to shoe a herd of horses. It must have taken them all night.

  Embi: I thought he mended primus stoves?

  Tumi Jónsen: He can do everything, that man. But primus stoves have for the most part gone into disuse since the electricity came.

  Embi: Are there no electric primus stoves?

  Tumi Jónsen: Not that I have heard of.

  Embi: What are primus stoves, exactly? What’s a primus like?

  Tumi Jónsen: A primus, let me put it this way, has a head on it that is heated by burning meths. The oil is pumped from the container into the red-hot head, you light a match, and then a gas is formed that starts burning. A blue flame. Yes, that’s the way of it. These contraptions replaced the old oil stoves in their day.

  Embi: And a lot of people here have primus stoves in disrepair, would you say?

  Tumi Jónsen: That is perhaps putting it too strongly. They’re a lot of bother; and besides, the electricity is here. But I wouldn’t swear to it that pastor Jón hasn’t got a primus himself. Nowadays he does mostly electrical repairs—for other people, that’s to say, because he doesn’t use the electricity himself.

  Embi: Are there any grounds for thinking that he sometimes overlooks his pastoral duties, like for example burying the dead and suchlike?

  Tumi Jónsen: Some people claim he’s none too quick at burying.

  Embi: But everyone’s satisfied?

  Tumi Jónsen: True enough, it can be a little inconvenient for those who don’t need burying. It matters less for the others. On the other hand he’s the only person hereabouts who can shoe a horse properly. I don’t think there’s a single horse in these parts that pastor Jón hasn’t stuck a shoe on.

  Embi: So it doesn’t matter if burying gets forgotten?

  Tumi Jónsen: Some people find it a little odd, perhaps. But so far as I know, everyone gets to the right place in the end.

  Embi: And his doctrine’s all right?

  Tumi Jónsen: Well, now, there’s no fear of our pastor Jón saying more than he should.

  Embi: What does he lay most emphasis on in his doctrine?

  Tumi Jónsen: We’ve never been aware that pastor Jón had any particular doctrine, and we like it that way.

  Embi: What does he preach, then?

  Tumi Jónsen: Large questions often get little answers, my boy. Pastor Jón did not preach much in the past and preaches even less now—fortunately, many people would say. But it’s not that we here are against doctrines, least of all if there’s no need to follow them. Doctrines are for entertainment, I’ve always felt. In a parish not far from here there’s a pastor who has preached a lot. People have started to take what he said seriously. It has not turned out well. People tend to do the opposite of what they are taught.

  Embi: Many unbaptised children in the parish?

  Tumi Jónsen: I haven’t counted them.

  Embi: But don’t you find it tiresome, all the same?

  Tumi Jónsen: Some people find it a little odd, perhaps; but the children thrive.

  Embi: I want to put a question to you now as parish clerk: have you any plans in hand concerning God’s House in the parish?

  Tumi Jónsen: The church? Oh, dear, so you went and had a look at that too, my boy!

  Embi: The church is nailed up.

  Tumi Jónsen: Well now, what a shame, the church nailed up! Yes, you are right, the hinges really do need mending. And panes needed for the windows, what’s more. That is not so good. A lot of good visitors come here in the summer to have a look around. And then it is bad if the church is nailed up.

  Embi: What does the congregation itself think? Don’t they think it bad that the church cannot be opened?

  Tumi Jónsen: Oh, I wouldn’t say that.

  Embi: At Christmas, for example?

  Tumi Jónsen: There are so many entertainments nowadays.

  Embi: Perhaps there isn’t even a service at Christmas?

  Tumi Jónsen: No special services at Christmas, no, one can’t really say that.

  Embi: I wonder who broke the windowpanes in the church?

  Tumi Jónsen: Oh, just some practical jokers, I expect; unprincipled youths from other districts. They could also have gone in a storm, the wretched panes. It can be pretty gusty here at Glacier, my boy.

  9

  Women Bring Soap

  A jeep came roaring onto the paving outside the window: a cracked silencer, or no exhaust pipe. The women climbed out with the soap. The older woman had that drained, tolerant look that was for a long time the net profit that older country people earned from life’s struggle; the other was in good shape, at least twenty-five to thirty years younger, wearing a floral print dress. The parish clerk introduced the women from the window.

  Tumi Jónsen: There is my dear wife, if I may speak so ill of any human being. The other is our stepdaughter, Jósefína. She brings us the spring from the south with her scrubbing brush. It is she who does all the clea
ning for everybody.

  Stepmother and stepdaughter came in by the kitchen door, and the business of introduction continued.

  Tumi Jónsen: The visitor whom you for your part see here, my dear girls, well, he is not actually the bishop of Iceland, but the same as. To be the same as—that to my mind is the same as being more than the bishop. Such a man is at once what the bishop is and in addition what he himself is: a nice young man.

  The housewife offered the visitor a limp, rather clammy hand, without change of expression; after all these years she had doubtless long since given up heeding the things her husband went on about. The floral stepdaughter, for her part, had a meaty palm with a firm thumb muscle, and gave her name as she greeted him, as they do in the south: Mrs. Fína Jónsen, widow, from Hafnarfjörður. The coffee will be ready at once. And plenty of Prince Polo biscuits.

  Tumi Jónsen: Yes, there’s a lot in the papers about extravagance nowadays. Prince Polo biscuits are what we have indulged in here since prosperity came to the land. Perhaps those who write in the papers don’t have Prince Polo biscuits.

  The undersigned declined the offer of coffee and Prince Polo biscuits even though the latter might be the Icelander’s present-day mark of prosperity. But it isn’t the custom in the country to take it seriously if people decline coffee and cakes; and Mrs. Fína Jónsen went out to put the kettle on. She didn’t close the door behind her, but carried on chatting while she busied herself.

  Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Well then, I’ve heard the Angler’s back on the rivers now. There’s gold on the go! Let’s hope the sea trout’s running. Yes, what a man! But we’ll carry on scrubbing our kitchen ceiling, mother, as if nothing’s happened.

  The widow started to prepare her soap-water in a tub at the kitchen door, and went on talking from out of the tub: Do you make anything by tramping round the country for bishops, young man?