Under the Glacier

by Halldor Laxness

  The undersigned didn’t consider himself a turnip thief in this vegetable garden and saw no reason to give an account of himself. Indeed the woman took no notice of me and ignored Jódínus’s introduction. She turned towards the foreigners and spoke to them with severity tempered with compassion, the same tone that housewives have always used for giving orders to winter-pasture shepherds both in the sagas and in Jón Árnason’s folktales: James the butler is waiting for you in the capital, so try to get on your way at once. He has plane tickets for you tomorrow night.

  Jódínus: I am driving south to my home in the twelve-tonner, and it’s no trouble to give a lift to a few World Redeemers and take them part of the way.

  Saknússemm the Second pulled out a handful of American dollar bills from underneath his blanket and waved them.

  Woman: Where did you get that money, vous pauvres diables vous ?

  Saknússemm II: Lord Maitreya who created us from nothing and has now popped home to the fifth heaven—he has also created money for us to live on until he comes back after three thousand years.

  Lute-player, now stopped squeezing geophysical drops from his strings: I have his head in my bag.

  The sleeper Epimenides got to his feet, turned a half-circle, smiled out to sea, and was ready to leave.

  Woman: Yes, try and get back to Los Angeles quickly, my poor wretches; you can catch cold here.

  In explanation and excuse the woman addresses this remark to us: “He” never tired of collecting such poor wretches, and never wearied of dragging them along behind him to and fro across the world.

  When the woman had briskly settled the question of the winter-pasture shepherds, as described, she turned to the matter that was truly timely and pointed to the zinc box on the veranda in front of the door.

  What was in that container?

  I suppose it was really a psychological phenomenon in itself that everyone should have forgotten about the box, including the undersigned, who after all had been briefed at great length by the spiritual authorities to find out what was in it. At last, in public view, a marvel had occurred of the kind that people never tire of mocking, because marvels pertain to theology. But this time it so happens that the only thing lacking is an attestation from a notary public for the marvel to become scientific; unfortunately it was overlooked at the time to have an attestation from such a person to accompany the Easter message of the New Testament. But what happens when attestable people see a miracle occur and a woman resurrect? It’s like offering a whole cake to a dog. People became downright impotent. Most people look at their watches, have other things to attend to, have to hurry away. When the woman reminded them, however, they pulled themselves together enough to start prising up the lid of the box.

  It was no more than a month to the solstice, night in the northwest would soon become morning in the southeast, yet the electric light coming through the door behind the woman did not affect the natural light. When the lid was removed, this light glistened on the contents of the box. The light shone dazzlingly on the material that filled the box to the brim, and glittered like a terrible jewel, larger than if all the principal diamonds in the world were put together. It was a frozen block. The ice had certainly started to thaw considerably, as was said before, after many hours of transportation in the above-zero temperatures of the lowlands, and had started to come away from the rims of the container. They turned the box upside down so that the contents came free. Now one could see through the melting ice, and it was clear that this long, gleaming, and translucent block housed a most beautiful salmon. A fish of this size has been lost by all great anglers, and they never forget it afterwards. When the winter-pasture shepherds had overturned this moist ice-block at the woman’s feet, they threw the packing out onto the paving and the Icelanders collected the debris. Helgi of Torfhvalastaðir took the wood for later use, while the poet Jódínus secured the zinc.

  And as the salmon lies radiating the colours of the rainbow at the woman’s feet, imprisoned in its diamond, the three winter-pasture shepherds make ready to leave. They gird themselves in their poncho-blankets. The lute-player puts under his arm the lute, which preserves in its strings a geophysical drop, and pretends he has stolen the head of Professor Doctor Godman Sýngmann and is going to shrink it.

  The sleeper Epimenides, with his white eyes, his blue beard and hair, and the smile from the shadow of the eternal mango tree—he knocks his forehead thrice on the floor in front of the woman and lays the scurvy grass and crowberry heather from his garland at her feet, then gets up effortlessly like a man made of rubber and glides down the veranda steps and now has no flowers left in his garland. When he reaches the bottom of the steps he turns round and kisses the bare earth in front of the woman.

  Saknússemm II, who will perhaps be burned one day for disputatious writings and alchemy like our compatriot Saknússemm the First, whom the French reckon the King of Denmark burned—he is the only one of the winter-pasture shepherds to address any words to the woman: Would you give me a receipt, madam?

  Woman: A receipt? For what?

  Saknússemm II: You have been resurrected. We are obliged to produce a receipt for everything we do. Perhaps the museum will lay claim to you.

  Woman: What are you talking about, my poor wretch? Saknússemm II: The epagogic museum that Lord Maitreya founded in California.

  Woman: Ah, the flies’ house! Comprendo. What poor dear wretches. Perhaps I’ll be nice and give you a receipt for that fish all the same, even though I never ordered fish.

  Saknússemm II: All right.

  The woman tears a page from her notebook and scrawls on it these words in English, “Received one fish,” and puts some name underneath, “sister Helena” or something like that, it seemed to me.

  Saknússemm II looks closely at the slip of paper and finally tucks it away: All right then. Our mission is concluded. Eat your fish now, madam. Thank you. Good night.

  38

  The Woman Guðrún Sæmundsdóttir from Neðratraðkot

  The woman from her doorway: What am I to do with the fish?

  Embi, alone on the veranda when the other visitors had gone: I don’t know, madam. You have given a receipt for it.

  Woman: What are you doing here?

  Embi: I hardly know either. I beg your pardon for being here.

  Woman: Were you in tow with these poor wretches?

  Embi: Oh no, I wouldn’t say I was with them. Could I have a few words with you even though it’s rather late?

  Woman: What did you say you were, again?

  Embi: I represent the bishop.

  Woman: Yes, of course, that’s right. Do come in, please. I’ll shut the door; it’s a little chilly. Do have a seat. You seem to be a nice young man. I think that though you’re not a bishop yet you will be one someday. It must be fun.

  While the woman was talking to me she was finding her way about the house, opening this door and that, peering into shelves and cupboards: And here’s a kitchen with an electric cooker and everything, she said aloud to herself. Won’t take long to make some coffee. I think I’ve got a tin of it out in the Imperial.

  Embi: Thanks, but I’ve given up coffee for the rest of my life. Woman: There must be a status symbol like whisky somewhere around. I don’t drink myself, as a matter of fact.

  Embi: Nor do I.

  Woman: You are certainly going to be a bishop one day.

  The woman had now twice made me a bishop in a relatively short time, and there was really nothing more to be done for a while. She opened the curtains and looked silently out at the churchyard: That fresh grave, is that his?

  Embi: Dr. Godman Sýngmann was buried there two days ago.

  Woman: Were you at the funeral?

  Embi: On the bishop’s behalf, yes.

  Woman: Did it go well?

  Embi: It was all right.

  The woman looked out of the window. Judging by a certain light on her cheek and hair, and the fresh sound of the terns’ cries outside, I felt
it to be morning somehow.

  She had her hair up in a Grecian knot, like Venus de Milo— it’s called a washerwoman bun here in Iceland. I had not thought the woman big at first on the veranda, but now I could see that she was rather big. When she had gazed her fill at the grave she took her knitting needles from the carrier-bag and yawned silently so that one could see down her throat, like a lion, before she started knitting. She sat down with her ball of wool beside her on the twin settee where Dr. Sýngmann had given up the ghost. This woman seemed to live without any effort, yet none can tell what comes naturally and what through discipline in such a woman.

  She explained as if it were of no importance that she had not heard of “this” until in Paris the day before yesterday, the day of the funeral. Of course James cabled everyone except me, she said, and went on: I was never popular with butlers in that blessed household. I got a telegram from old Mowitz and the rest in London. Some come late, but come nonetheless.

  That apart, the undersigned refers to the comments by local people about these women, particularly to what Tumi Jónsen the parish clerk declared here in this report, chapters 8‒11 (concerning women who do not sleep, etc.); and also remarks by pastor J. Prímus along the same lines. And though the woman yawned once as she took up her knitting it doesn’t refute the fact that long journeys by day and night have little effect on such women. I felt the woman grow larger on the sofa as she sat there knitting, having given a receipt for the fish. She was perhaps almost 180 cm tall. Of her other measurements I cannot speak. Vollschlank was sometimes used of women one cannot describe except in German; it means not fat, much less thin. She was certainly broad in the shoulder, and the “dowager’s hump” had perhaps begun to protrude a little; but the neck is still so youthful that there is no dewlap under the chin. On the other hand, such women quickly become bosomy if they don’t go in for sport; doesn’t have to stem from indolence. She was wearing a coat of light-blue velvet, very loose-fitting (such as younger women sometimes wear when they are expecting), which reached down to the hem of a beige dress; she was wearing pale suede boots. This woman wore no jewellery of any kind.

  The undersigned produced his report to see where matters stood, then chose a special opening under the heading of Unexpected Conversations, which might well prove to be outside the official brief from the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs.

  Embi: It so happens that the bishop has sent me here to this parish to make some inquiries about a trifling matter. There is something I would like to ask you about. But I would point out that you do not need to answer me at all if you don’t wish to, and you can be as evasive as you like; nor do you have to tell the truth in reply to my questions, and you may use reservatio mentis as much as you like, though I hope you do not know what that is. It is our task in the south to find the truth.

  Woman: I have never concealed anything that mattered. On the other hand I am not a stranger to the Jesuits. Question away as you please, my dear.

  Embi: What is your name, if I may ask?

  Woman: My name is Guðrún Sæmundsdóttir from Neðratraðkot, and I am the daughter of the couple there.

  Embi: Well I must say you rather took me aback there, madam. But there’s nothing to be done about that. One asks and asks and always the answers become more incomprehensible than the question. In the end one becomes an idiot.

  Woman: Go ahead, my dear.

  Embi: The bishop wants to hear about status.

  Woman: Status, what’s that?

  Embi: What you are.

  Woman: I am the pastor’s wife here.

  Embi: I didn’t know there was a pastor’s wife here. I thought the pastor lived alone—apart from Miss Hnallþóra.

  Woman: I am his wife.

  Embi: But been away rather a long time, isn’t that so?

  Woman: Thirty-five years. That’s not a very long moment of time.

  Embi: When you signed the receipt for the fish just now, it looked as if you wrote some strange name or other.

  Woman: Sometimes before I know it I write that name when I take delivery of fish. I was once in a Spanish convent and took delivery of fish at the gate and was called Elena.

  Embi: I see, so you were a nun.

  Woman: It so happened that I had been in charge of a bordello in Buenos Aires for a few years. But I have always found pleasures boring, so I entered a convent. About the time I had finished el noviciado and was to take the veil, my father-confessor, who was impotent, discovered that I couldn’t be a virgin. You see, I had forgotten to mention that I was a married woman and a pastor’s wife up north in Iceland.

  Embi: I don’t suppose you knew a girl called Úa?

  God help you, my boy, said the woman. Who put that into your head?

  But as I sit there engrossed in my papers and at a loss for an answer, all of a sudden a woman I did not recognise started laughing. When I looked up the laughter had stopped.

  Who was that laughing? I asked.

  Woman: When I had gone out into life, before I knew it I started to be called Úa.

  In fact there was nothing in this woman’s demeanour that aroused sensuality. Without doubt she was like any other ageing woman if one began to think about “life,” and indeed it was not until she had drawn attention to it herself that I remembered that everyone is part of the enigma of time.

  Embi: “Úa”—what does that mean?

  Woman: It is easily understood in France. Also in Buenos Aires. On the other hand, I have heard that the name is bad in Denmark. It is pronounced with the stress on the ú; then a short a. Ooh-a. Some people never learn to pronounce it nor to decline it. In the United States they think it is a South Sea Islands language. One man in Los Angeles offered a thousand dollars for it for his daughter who had still not been conceived—and got it. Yes—that girl, she is now dead. It is a word from the language of the eiderducks at home, úa-úa; they taught me to understand life.

  Embi: I gather from various things you say that you are the woman who three years ago was said to have died abroad?

  Woman: Yes, I died that year, the year I lost my Úa.

  Embi: So you have lost children, madam? Accidents?

  Woman: We do not know that, my young friend. Are there ever accidents where God is concerned?

  Embi: Doesn’t it take quite a lot to be able to ask such a question in all seriousness, madam?

  That is true, said the woman. Thank God that accidents happen. Then one first gets to know God. No, my children didn’t die. It was only I who died and moved into another house—the other house.

  The woman looked up and laughed another woman’s shrill, automatic laughter.

  Embi: You laugh?

  Woman: The woman in the other house laughs.

  Embi: Perhaps we’ll turn to something else with your permission, madam. Hmm. What do you say about the notion that your soul was conjured into a fish three years ago and preserved up on the glacier until this evening?

  The woman stopped knitting and answered in amazement: God bless you and keep you, you poor man.

  Embi: Thank you. But I don’t know if there is any point in noting that reply.

  The woman went on looking at me for a while and was obviously nonplussed. She said: Aren’t you just a tiny bit limited, my little one?

  Embi: It is only asses who are ever employed to make official reports. If I weren’t one, no one would have asked me to do this kind of thing. I hope you forgive me.

  Comprendo, said the woman.

  I looked out of the door and saw that the ice was nearly melted from the fish and there was a pool on the veranda. As a matter of fact, I was surprised that the woman hadn’t been still more astonished. It was obvious that this woman was very experienced and that it wasn’t easy to surprise her with anything, least of all with metaphysics. I made for safer ground and asked casually: What are you going to do with this fish?

  Woman: Come and have some salmon tomorrow.

  And then the woman from the other house laughed unnatur
ally heartily for a little.

  Guðrún Sæmundsdóttir put on her spectacles because she had dropped a stitch. She picked up the stitch and continued the row she was on.

  There is a strange restfulness in being close to a woman who is knitting. Could it be because by knitting, women succeed in suppressing their own inner tensions? At first I had thought it was a pullover but now it looked as if it had a thumb.

  Embi: So you knit mittens, madam?

  Woman: Yes, I knit sea-mittens.

  Embi: Why?

  Woman: How very immature you are, my dear. Why do I knit sea-mittens, what a question! Because I am a knitter, of course—what do you think, my love?

  Embi: I am wondering for whom you are knitting sea-mittens.

  Woman: I have introduced sea-mittens to Peru.

  Embi: To Peru, I see. You are the first Icelander in my life I have heard pronouncing the word Peru correctly—with the stress on the second syllable. It would be fun to hear a little bit about the country you pronounce so well, and which deserves sea-mittens.

  Woman: Yes, although you know everything, you young men, you perhaps don’t know that Peru is the biggest fishing nation in the world.

  Embi: The Icelanders are peripheral people and never see what is central in anything.

  Woman: In Peru there are a thousand times more seamen than in Iceland. But they had never seen sea-mittens before I arrived. Since then I always send between a hundred and a hundred and fifty pairs of sea-mittens to Lima every year.

  Embi: Is there always a market for sea-mittens out there in the south?

  Woman: They are mostly used as gifts for tombolas. The remainder is stolen in Paris. But I have also crocheted and knitted many a mantilla for dark-eyed girls to put on when they go to church to kiss the Redeemer and to take off when they meet a man.