Pastor Jón Prímus’s doctrine. This clergyman’s doctrine is on the accompanying tapes. But it isn’t the whole story by any means. Regrettably the tapes are rather uncommunicative. Even though your emissary has tried to question the pastor about his innermost attitude towards the confessions of faith—to no avail. As far as I can see, however, some of the pastor’s ideas possibly touch lightly upon Christian theology in places—but where are the ideas that don’t? I lack the learning to analyse the mode of thinking that emerges in these tapes. I try in my questioning to take my cue from the confessions of the faith whose servant I am. Even though the undersigned considers himself a liberal in the theological profession, I would not unreservedly want to classify pastor Jón’s way of thinking as liberalism, as Protestants interpret that concept. I doubt if pastor Jón is even a Únitarian as understood by the church—let alone anything more.
Towards the end of our conversation in the churchyard today I got the impression that pastor Jón thinks that all gods that men worship are equally good. In the Bhagavad Gita, which pastor Jón cites, Krishna is reported as saying, as I recall: You are free to address your prayers to any god at all; but the one who answers the prayers, I am he. Is this what pastor Jón means when he says that all gods are equally good except the god that answers the prayers, because he is nowhere? Neither of these two standpoints can be accommodated within the framework of our confession of faith. The god who speaks through Krishna’s words isn’t particularly pleasant, either, because he alone controls the card-game and the other gods are only dummies and he is the one who declares on their cards. At any rate this god is rather far removed from the seventy-year-old grand-father with the large beard who came to breakfast with farmer Abraham of Ur accompanied by two angels, his attendants, and settled in with him, and whom the Jews inherited and thereafter the pope and finally the Saxons. When Krishna says he is the one god who answers prayers, then this actually is just our orthodox god of the catechism, the one who says: I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before me. Pastor Jón says, on the other hand, Thou shalt have all other gods before the Lord thy God. What is the answer to that?
But theology apart, people here at Glacier joke about the fact that whenever pastor Jón travels from farm to farm in February he is pursued by herds of free-range horses and flocks of snow buntings and even ravens, because he keeps these creatures in food. The ethical code that moulds pastor Jón’s behaviour is to be found, perhaps, in the compassion theology of the twelfth century.
Concerning a funeral on Snæfellsjökull. Whether this funeral took place behind the church’s back or to some extent with its connivance, the parish pastor has nothing to say. The parish clerk, Mr. Tumi Jónsen of Brún, ignores the question. From the parish clerk’s daughter, a middle-aged widow, was obtained the name and address of a man who is said to have gone up onto the glacier on behalf of Prof. Dr. Sýngmann, whom the people at Brún call the Angler. Concerning secret deaths at Glacier at the time when this journey is supposed to have been made—no news. Everyone got into the ground who had business there that summer according to the law as usual, though pastor Jón often passes on to others the task of officiating at the funerals of his parishioners, as was said before; for that matter the people here are not perhaps suited for long funeral sermons, although in other respects they are healthy and long-lived.
Conversation with “the Tycoon’s” handyman. This afternoon your emissary had a word with the man the widow Jósefína Jónsen had mentioned, the poet Jódínus Álfberg. This man appears to be the big noise in the district and drives a vehicle that weighs twelve tons and has eighteen wheels and wears out the roads at the rate of thirty-five thousand ordinary cars. This man seems to have a more than usually sensitive conscience and is mortally ashamed of three crimes that he loses no opportunity of justifying to himself and others, namely:
1. being a workingman
2. being a common man, and
3. being an Icelander.
Jódínus Álfberg himself, however, is pleased to call himself a poet. He has composed a Palisander Lay. He claims to be the representative of the oft-mentioned Sýngmann, whom he calls the Tycoon. He said he was paid for keeping silent, but since he was a wage earner he would also accept payment for talking. When we parted he said these words to me: There is a body in the casket; but since he got no payment, it is just as likely that he was not stating fact.
Consider that the investigation of this matter is the responsibility of other parties than the bishop’s emissary. Beneath the dignity of the bishop’s office to concern itself with gossip. Suggest that the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs refer the case to the Ministry of Justice with appropriate report; they for their part can then call for a police investigation on their own behalf if deemed necessary.
Finally, the undersigned can see no reason for a much longer stay in the area since, as was said before, ordinary facilities for receiving visitors are not available in this parsonage. Further activity, such as sniffing around for dead people on glaciers, might be a job for the police or the Scout movement, but is an unworthy task for the spiritual authorities of the country. Furthermore, I understand that I was only scheduled to spend this one day here in the west to complete my mission. The scheduled bus leaves tomorrow morning at 1145.
21
De Pisteria
Boiled fish? Twice today your emissary thinks he has noticed a smell of fish wafting out of the “old farmhouse,” that part of the house whose walls are still made of turf. This smell arouses the hunger of a visitor who has not been invited to table by his hosts all day. Can it be that the woman eats fish on the sly? Fairy fish?
Late in the evening, just when your emissary has arranged the items of his report and summarised the material (see previous chapter), Miss Hnallþóra is at the door of the guest-chamber saying, May I offer you a little cup of coffee?
It’s hard to give up hope that perhaps there might be fish as well, or even just a piece of bread. The undersigned follows the woman to the spare room. Alas no fish. The table was gigantic, as if giants had been working at it. Here stood that table loaded with an abundance of all dainties as in the Saga of the Virgin Mary—with the exception of the one dainty: proper food. A table of such plenty provokes by its very presence the same kind of hunger-nausea in a starving man as the roots of moss-campion and seathrift doubtless did during the famines in Iceland in olden times. Add to that the smell of “chicory” (dandelion root) being boiled as a substitute for coffee out in the kitchen. Still, it’s obvious how much the use of gaudy colouring on the sweet-cakes has been reduced since last night. Not only were the cakes drier and neater than before, but democratic tea-cakes were beginning to play a reasonable part, such as for instance so-called Jew-biscuits, which are rather pretty in shape, about the same thickness as oysters, and with a colourless blob of egg-white and sugar on top—it reminds one of something dried up, which there is no need to mention. Likewise there were now numerous doughnuts, which had not been seen yesterday, and so coarse, almost obscene, that it nearly shocked one’s sense of decency and called to mind the doughnut-mother in China who according to the newspapers is nearly half a metre in length and proportionate in girth and stuffed three times up herself. In all, six new sorts of cakes had been added to the collection since last night. And though a detailed description of such a banquet does not directly concern this report, I cannot but emphasise the crucial change that has taken place since last night, in that a new sensation has now overthrown the war-cakes—foreign wafer-biscuits coated with melted chocolate. These are Prince Polo biscuits of the kind the undersigned was offered this morning at the parish clerk’s, specially manufactured in Poland for the Icelanders. Concerning this foodstuff I refer to Tumi Jónsen the parish clerk. In itself it is no small compliment to the morals of a nation to point out that when it had become wealthy and no longer knew how rich it was, it did not copy the example of other prosperous nations by eating many kinds of steaks and pâtés on weekday
s and spiced peacock on Sundays, washed down with piment and claret; instead, Prince Polo biscuits were all that the nation indulged in as a sweetener after the centuries of black pudding and whale meat.
Miss Hnallþóra: I noticed last night that the bishop wasn’t much for rich cakes with spices, so I made up some plain dry-cakes and ordered from Akranes a few Prince Polo biscuits, which are so much in fashion now and thought most genteel down south.
Embi: Thank you, but I think I’ll wait until the master is seated.
Miss Hnallþóra: The master? Pastor Jón? Seated where?
Embi: I hope the pastor will be so obliging as to eat with me.
Miss Hnallþóra: This is just a cup of coffee.
Embi: Thank you, but it’s my custom not to drink coffee until after the meal.
Miss Hnallþóra, astonished: The meal? What is the bishop talking about?
Embi: Fish, for example.
Miss Hnallþóra: It has not been the custom here at Glacier to serve fish to the gentry. I am not going to be the first to offer a learned gentleman fish. I would be the butt of the whole county.
Embi: Why?
Miss Hnallþóra: Why? It isn’t genteel.
Embi: What is genteel?
Miss Hnallþóra: Nothing less than seventeen sorts is thought genteel here.
Embi: But the pastor must eat fish every now and again, surely.
Miss Hnallþóra: The pastor has something out of his pocket wherever he happens to be. The ladies send him a loaf of rye bread occasionally; that’s how they show their love for him. The drivers, too, sometimes leave something in the shed. Those who go out fishing from the glebe-lands give him a brace of fish now and then as his share of the catch, and he dries them himself on the old fish-racks out in the lava; sometimes a flounder, what’s more. His dulse he dries on the rocks. And there is water in the streams. One could say that the pastor lives off the abundance of the land.
Embi: You yourself could hardly avoid tasting this, er, stuff sometimes, on the quiet.
Miss Hnallþóra: What stuff ?
Embi: F-fish.
Miss Hnallþóra: It has never been thought fitting for better-class women to gorge themselves on fish in public here at Glacier.
The woman walked out, and I could see she was offended with me. This time she did not stay by me, as was the custom of the country, to ram the cakes down my throat, but left it to me to crawl out of the mess on my own. Perhaps this arrangement was a step in the right direction. Perhaps I could expect to get a simple piece of bread tomorrow or the day after. But I regretted having shocked the woman’s maidenly modesty by mentioning fish. Yet now it was easier to understand why such a woman was bound to have seen a fairy ram, and likewise why Úrsalei and her kinswomen had never been seen to eat.
22
Strange Moment of Time
0415 o’clock: the sun already up and shining on the face of the pastor’s sleeping guest. He swings his legs out of bed, determined to be off as soon as possible, and starts to get dressed. Consider myself in no way obliged to put up with hunger and misery here a day longer for the sake of an affair in which I think few people take much interest, least of all the parties concerned; besides, another day is unlikely to add much to yesterday as regards the prospect of salvation for souls in this part of the world. I start packing my equipment, the tapes and shorthand notes, into the duffel bag in the hope that I haven’t entangled myself in anything for which I shall have to suffer later; and secondly, that I shall never be reckoned other than an impartial reporter about Christianity at Glacier.
If pastor Jón Prímus has fled the farm on my account, I send him my greetings. If Miss Hnallþóra is annoyed with me because of inhumane attitudes towards sweet-cakes, she’ll just have to argue it out with herself. Consider myself beholden to no one in this place, hope that in the end the calf will get the cakes mixed in its swill. I have decided to spend the morning strolling over to the cliff-edge at the bottom of the homefield to hear what the kittiwake colony has to say, that colony where everything is multiplied a million times compared with what can be read in my report. Pastor Jón reckons that one million kittiwakes live in the sea-cliffs on this stretch of coast, which the pastor’s homefield touches at one point, reaching to the edge of the cliff as was said earlier. But it seems to me just as probable that one could multiply by seven the number of these white inhabitants on the black cliffs. Most of the birds are nesting now and have started laying—and excreting. The coal-black cliffs are white. Those who love the metropolitan cities of the world would doubtless call it salvation to be allowed to sit here for the rest of their lives.
The cries of these birds are a function of their flight, for when they are sitting they are silent. Just now there reigns in their bleating that contentment which is in the nature of this strange moment of time poised between daybreak and morning. The pitch is at once gentle and full; overpowering, unerring, rhythmic. Or am I perhaps describing the audio-perceptions of the person himself who has woken up, young and healthy, while the morning is officially not yet arrived and all mankind sleeps? Every now and again there is a deathly silence. Is it an artistic silence? Or sudden news of disaster?
The egg on the very brink of the cliff is for these folk their bank account, status symbol, and confession of faith. The female goes on sitting close to her man whatever happens. It is as if her senses have been disconnected. Many of them sit motionless for hours on end and seem to be doing mental arithmetic. A few are gliding without any effort over the deeps in front of the precipice on some inscrutable errand, like snowflakes drifting in a calm. Perhaps watching out for the enemy, the fulmar. The kittiwake is larus and has the title of tridactylus , that is to say a three-fingered gull. This is like looking into another world. It is as if one gets a vision of sentient beings in the galaxies. Sometimes there is a reading from an uninspiring book or someone gives a lecture or even stumbles through a homily; here and there an old woman argues with herself in an undertone all the while. But just when they are all about to doze off in the fine weather there’s always someone who starts up, though probably not necessarily the same one, and he’s thought of something curious while he was sitting beside his wife and the egg; who knows, he may have felt a touch of patriotism when he was falling asleep and now bursts our with O Iceland, Awaken ! Another one gets idealistic all of a sudden and wants to save the world without delay and takes wing with these words: Anything is better than being passive! Yet another makes himself heard above all the din just to tell a joke. A moment later there is ecstasy on the cliff again.
23
Winter-Pasture Shepherds
To pick up where we left off, when three winter-pasture shepherds had arrived here from far-off nations: the undersigned caught a glimpse of them yesterday when they got down from Jódínus Álfberg’s twelve-ton truck and sat down round Hnallþóra’s calf in the homefield. It is not the undersigned’s job to keep an eye on bearded men. The bungalow and its people don’t belong to my field of investigation.
As I stand there at the head of an inlet where the homefield ends, with a view of the cliffs to both sides, it seems to me that a shower of stones breaks over the middle of the bird colony. Stones are being hurled from the edge of the cliff west of the inlet towards the eastern face of the cliff, where the population is densest. Some of the stones miss their mark, but eventually a bird is struck and falls injured from a niche in the rock, is unable to save itself, and dies in the sea. Two or three birds that sat next to it fly up in surprise but settle again, and the accident arouses no widespread interest on the cliff. And yet a bird has just been killed there. When I look around for the cause of it I see the three men sitting on the cliff-edge.
We are loving, flower-giving apes, says the bearded one who is their spokesman and talks academic English, but out of the corner of his mouth, the American way. Beside him sits a man with a crown of flowers on his head, and my interlocutor plucks from this man’s wreath a flower and throws it to me. The flower was
not a genuine one. The flower-wearer’s dead smile, on the other hand, was genuine, the chisel-shaped teeth regular and white as when men smile from the shadow of the mango tree in the lands where famine is routine. The white of his shining black eyes was of the same kind; his beard was a little blue; his complexion halfway between chocolate and cream-coffee. He sits there in a Buddha posture with the garland in his hair on the edge of the cliff, with his back to the ocean and facing the glacier.
The third curly-bearded one crouched on his knees with his heels under his buttocks and plucked rather feebly at some kind of a lute, and stared hard down at the instrument while he plucked, wondering what would come, then raised his eyes to the sky and watched the sound drift away, then peered muttering into the instrument as if he had lost something, before he tried again, but never quite stopped the music altogether.
It’s a wonder that such dishevelled people, scantily shod and wrapped in rags, should be allowed in through Immigration! Men like this exist in Iceland only in old books and folktales, and occur in modern novels and plays only through an anachronism on the part of the authors. They herd sheep in snowstorms and wrestle with ghosts at Christmas and walk after death when the ogress has snapped their backbones. From them originates the demand in Iceland that people should be given their food without prevarication. Although violent ghosts came to an end centuries ago, it is in our natures as Icelanders to recognise these men whenever we see them, even though they are dressed in beggars’ rags with lute and garland.
Under the Glacier Page 9
