Heaven and Hell

by Jón Kalman Stefánsson

  They recede into the distance.

  Andrea still stands in the same place and watches as they diminish. Their facial expressions are erased, she watches until they’ve become as one body taking the boat out to sea, into the night, in the direction of the fish that swim in the deep and simply enjoy existence. Andrea watches them, asks God to protect them, not to forsake them. She waits to return to the hut until she sees the throng of boats from the main huts round the cliff. It’s pleasant to stand alone in the night, just above the foreshore, and see nearly sixty boats appear in the calm, see all of these men apply all of their strength to be the first to reach the fishing grounds and get to choose the best place, see them apply their utmost powers, which are however almost nothing in comparison with the sea, the fury of the wind, the wrath of the heavens, we trust in you, Lord, and your son, Jesus. She makes the sign of the cross, turns and notices her brother-in-law, Guðmundur. The brothers may no longer be speaking to each other, but they pay close attention to each other’s activities. Then she wasn’t alone, it was just a trick of the mind. Reality is complicated like that, because Andrea was completely alone in her thoughts and senses and her existence was based entirely on these, while several meters above her Guðmundur had been standing, watching the same thing as she was. Her anger flares but evaporates just as quickly, why should she get angry, Andrea thinks, completely surprised at herself, and she walks off in the direction of the hut, various tasks await her there and the Danish naval hero, if he weren’t just another damned blatherer, another politician, did you know that incredibly few people can bear to wield power without remaining untarnished? Andrea makes a game of moving closer to Guðmundur than she has to, looks directly at him, greets him, says something about the weather. Guðmundur is a serious man, strict, and existence is of course no joke, there he actually has something, and besides, existence is never as barren of jokes as when he has just got up, Andrea knows this and that is precisely why it’s so enjoyable to move so unnecessarily close to him, to be unnecessarily cheerful, almost as if life were full of coltish pleasure this night. Guðmundur gives her a stern look in return, almost scandalized, and Andrea reins in her smile. The world has so many puzzles. How can such a stern and serious man have such a beaming and happy daughter? There’s a great deal I don’t understand, Andrea thinks, and decides that when Guðmundur and his men are gone, likely after two hours, and she has finished her chores, she will saunter over and let the girl have Bríet’s lecture on women’s liberation that Bárður and the boy had given her earlier that winter; the booklet would rub Guðmundur the wrong way, and it will hardly ease his discomfort that it was bound together with A Carpenter’s Quire by Jón Bernharðsson; Guðmundur takes great pleasure in carpentry. Andrea trills as she steps into the hut, she starts to whistle a variation on the melody Benedikt blew at them, but in the doorway she remembers the heat and the scent that streamed up from Bárður’s collar, she closes the door on the night and her thoughts roam far and wide.

  III

  Guðmundur doesn’t watch her but hears the door close. He looks out at the sea, the dark sea, and sniffs the air, a bit uncertain about the weather forecast, doesn’t it seem as if there’s a whiff of northeasterly behind the mountain, a sharp, even murderous wind direction? He doesn’t move, the boats recede, they’ve started to vanish into the dark blue night, have started to spread out over the deep that opens up between the shores, between the mountains that rise precipitous and ancient. Guðmundur has a huge beard, it covers the entire lower part of his face, we never saw these men’s chins, if one of them made the mistake of shaving, it would look as if he’d had a horrendous accident, a part of his personality cut off, nothing but half a man remaining. He stands motionless for a long time. Many minutes pass. It’s healthy for a person to stand alone in the night, he or she becomes one with the tranquillity and discovers a kind of peace, which can however change without warning into painful isolation. It’s still quite dark but there’s a hint of a gleam in the east, so weak it’s almost an illusion. But this gleam, imagined or not, dissolves Guðmundur’s uncertainty, he is able to read the clouds over the white beach on the opposite side of the fjord, vague in the twilight, what his nose and ears couldn’t tell him, that a northeasterly was on its way, likely gale-force, but would hardly reach them before midday. If they rushed to set out within the hour, they should be able to return before the sea could harm them, before the surf became murderous. He shudders, turns swiftly and takes long strides to his hut. These are such quick and unexpected movements in the calm that had befallen the night after the rush to launch the boats that they seem even to disturb the air surrounding the huts, as if causing it to quiver slightly, and Andrea looks up as she cleans the floor in the loft. Guðmundur tears open the door to the hut and shouts, rise and shine! we’re rowing! He has a strong, sonorous voice and his men wake up immediately. They’re out of bed before they can even blink, some still half asleep when their feet touch the floor. Guðrún lies in bed a few moments more, counting to a hundred, life is cozier under the cover than on the floor among the men, grunting in their coarse wool, yawning away their sleep and dreams, immediately eager to launch out onto the sea, to meet freedom and the fish.

  Guðmundur’s men are quick to come outside. They turn the boat over, almost a full meter longer than Pétur’s boat, load it, don’t forget to make the sign of the cross over everything they touch. They have rowed together for twenty years, started young fishing for shark during the years when no laws controlled deep-sea fishing and they could fish whenever it suited them, often during the blackest of midwinter days, when the darkness was so dense that one could draw a knife and carve one’s initials into it and then the night would carry your name into morning. Some nights they lay for hours at a time above the sharks, in biting frost, far out at sea, and then it was as if the night would never pass and the east was heavy with darkness. The shark is always hungry and swallows everything, once Guðmundur’s men found a dog in a shark’s belly, the shark had eaten it the day before in a fjord fifty kilometers away, the dog had swum after its master’s yawl, happy, tongue dangling, then it yelped suddenly and was gone, that’s how dangerous it is to know how to swim.

  Andrea cleans the floor in the loft, she thinks about the six men out on the sea in their yawl, she thinks about the moment with Pétur in the salting house the day before and then suddenly becomes so sad that she stands up, has a drop of coffee, sits down on the boy’s bed, sighs quietly and reflexively strokes the cover of the book Bárður was reading. She reads the title out loud, opens the book and sees the letter Bárður had stuck into the middle of it, maybe to use as a bookmark. It is to Sigríður, three densely written pages. Andrea reads the first lines, which are burning hot with love, but is a little ashamed of herself, or just enough to stop reading. She closes the book again, looks to one side and sees Bárður’s waterproof, and it’s as if something cold touches her.

  IV

  They have been rowing for a long time and the sky is brightening. They have rowed out of the night and into the fragile morning. They have taken off their sou’westers. Little by little they lost sight of the other boats scattered over the wide expanse of the deep, the sea rolling, and they row further than the others and head toward a deep-sea fishing bank that Pétur knows of but has not visited for several years, they trust him, he knows more than all of them combined as far as cod are concerned, he thinks like a cod, Bárður once said, and it was difficult to know whether that was praise or derision, it can be difficult to figure Bárður out, but Pétur decided to take it as praise. They attack the oars and put more distance between themselves and the land. It can hurt to move further away from land, it’s as if one were rowing toward loneliness. The boy watches the mountains diminish, they seem to sink into the sea. The mountains threaten us when we’re on land, gather storms unto themselves, kill people by hurling stones at them, wipe out towns with avalanches and mudslides, but the mountains are also a protecting hand, they foster u
s and embrace the boats that row into the fjords, but nothing protects the fishermen who row far except their prayers and ingenuity. They’ve started to grow weary although Einar still takes delight in the task, still has a gleam in his eyes. Bárður breathes shallowly at the boy’s side. We two aren’t born for seamanship, he had said yesterday, in the German Bakery, over a cup of coffee and a sweet roll.

  The coffee in the bakery is somehow cleaner, free of grounds. Might as well get used to the luxury, the boy had told Bárður, but then the bakers, husband and wife, started to argue in German in the back. Their disagreements were quick to explode, and in a short time they were shouting at each other, but suddenly everything went dead calm and silent in the bakery, then a suppressed giggle could be heard, followed by the smacking sounds of passionate kisses. The two female shop assistants went about their work and pretended not to hear, but Bárður glanced with a smile at the boy and it was incredibly good to be alive. There they sat in the bakery, celebrating the future, Bárður having secured them summer work at the shop run by Leó, his father, a close acquaintance of the Factor, who was called Jón and who has trouble standing still, shuffles his feet as he speaks, shuffles them as he listens, continually licks his lips with the tip of his tongue. Jón would be nothing without his wife, Tove, Bárður had explained, she’s Danish, some call her the Frigate and you would understand the name if you saw her come sailing down the street. The world becomes considerably easier if you have her on your side, she appreciates hard work: you just need to stick to your job and everything will be fine. It’s also a dream job, no hard slogging, you’re not exhausted by the end of the day and there’s not a stain to be seen on your clothing, you don’t even need to wash your hands!

  The sea is wide and very deep and the boy has never rowed out so far.

  This is actually unnecessarily far.

  Just a thin piece of wood between them and drowning, he will never get used to this, and here the wind blows harder. The waves rise higher, the sea becomes heavier. Yet this is no weather to speak of, and they row. They pull hard, their muscles knit, wait for us, cod, we’re coming. He looks at Pétur’s back, there is no resemblance between him and his niece, Guðrún, are you crazy, it’s like comparing a summer’s night and sleet. It’s a shame it’s so difficult to talk to her, it’s nigh impossible because he frequently loses both his tongue and his courage when she looks at him, and in any case Guðmundur would order the men to tear him apart and use him for bait if he tried something other than look at and admire her. The land continued to sink into darkness and sea but soon the light will come from the east. They see a few stars, the clouds are of various types, blue, almost black, light and gray and the sky ever-changing, like the heart. Bárður pants and mumbles something, in snatches because of the strain . . . cowl casts . . . color of dusk. All of their hearts beat fast. The heart is a muscle that pumps blood, the abode of pain, loneliness, joy, the one muscle that can keep us awake at night. The abode of uncertainty: whether we will wake again to life, whether it will rain on the hay, whether the fish will bite, whether she loves me, whether he will come over the heath to speak the words, uncertainty about God, about the purpose of life but no less the purpose of death. They row and their hearts pump blood and uncertainty about fish and life but not about God, no, because then they would scarcely venture out in a little cockleshell, in an open coffin, onto the sea, which is blue on the surface but pitch black beneath. God is all-embracing in their minds. He and Pétur are likely the only ones whom Einar respects in this world, sometimes Jesus, but that respect was not as unconditional, a man who offers his other cheek wouldn’t last long in the mountains here. Árni rows and sometimes becomes one with the exertion, for a long time thinks nothing but then Sesselja comes to mind, and the children, three living children and one dead, Árni rows and thinks about the houses, the livestock, the parish, he plans to become a town council member within three years, a man has to have a goal in life, otherwise you get nowhere and decay. There is power in the twelve practiced arms but the boat seems hardly to have moved at all, the waves toss and turn all around them, there is no violence in them but still they are large and block any sort of view, there is an ocean in these waves and the boat is just a piece of wood, the men sit on the wood and trust in God. Bárður and the boy are, however, not as confident as the rest. They are young and have read unnecessarily much, their hearts pump more uncertainty than the others’, and not just about God, because the boy is also uncertain about life, but particularly about himself in life, about his purpose. He thinks about Guðrún and his uncertainty doesn’t lessen because of it. Guðrún has bright eyes, they are so bright that they vanquish night, he thinks between oar strokes, and is pleased with this sentence, repeats it and memorizes it to tell Bárður later today, when they have firm ground beneath their feet and where it is considerably more distant to the next man than here in the boat. He looks at Pétur’s back, hears Gvendur breathe slowly and gigantically behind him. Eyes so bright that they vanquish night, he repeats to himself, and a line Bárður had read from Paradise Lost last evening comes to him there in the boat: nothing is sweet to me, without thee. The boy murmurs these two sentences, eyes so bright that they vanquish night, nothing is sweet to me, without thee—but then starts to think about her breasts. Tries as hard as he can to think instead about the night, about uncertainty, but it’s useless, his head is filled with images and words and he has an erection. In fact it’s good at first, but then it isn’t good anymore and he is deadly ashamed of himself. Now he can no longer look at Guðrún, it’s finished, he has lost her, I should jump overboard like a shot, nothing is sweet to me, without thee, pants Bárður, as if to punish him. Quotes from the book the blind sea captain had loaned him. They had stopped at Geirþrúður’s café on their way out of the Village; now we’ll go visit Geirþrúður, Bárður had said as he finished his cup of coffee at the bakery, the smacking of kisses has fallen silent but the baker has begun to sing in German, an importunate song, in a high, soft voice.

  There is considerable traffic on the streets of the Village and some of the houses rise high above them.

  The boy felt slightly smaller because of the bustling life, the houses and the name Geirþrúður. They stopped first at Tryggvi’s Shop, and then to see Magnús the shoe-smith, where Bárður had his feet measured and ordered knee-high boots for the spring and summer here in the Village. Don’t be afraid of Geirþrúður, said Bárður afterward as they were approaching the Café, she won’t eat you, or at most just one of your arms. And what Bárður said was absolutely right, she didn’t eat the boy, but perhaps mainly because she wasn’t there, or at least didn’t come into the Café, where they stopped for around half an hour. These were rather long minutes for the boy, feeling insecure about Helga, Geirþrúður’s right hand, about her gray, searching eyes, fearful of the sea captain and his hoarse voice, his cutting words and those dead eyes beneath his high, wrinkled forehead that contains remarkable thoughts, or should have done, must do, because he owns at least four hundred books, Bárður had assured him. Bárður who seemed right at home there, had a laugh, introduced the boy, my friend, too gifted for the fish, and the word friend was so warm that the boy felt a little better. The mocking remarks of the three fishermen who sat over bottles of beer didn’t touch him, he understands their language after having rowed through almost three winter fishing seasons. The overland postman, Jens, was also there. Big, drunk, newly arrived from his monthly trip from Reykjavík, a six- to eight-day journey. Bárður and the boy had seen the boxes and bags of post in the Café’s entryway. Of course Jens should have taken the post directly to Dr. Sigurður, where it is sorted and then handed over to the sub-postmen who carry it to the farms and fjords all around, but Jens couldn’t care less about regulations, he also bears half a grudge against Sigurður, and in any case it’s much better to sit in Geirþrúður’s café and drink as much beer as he can and as he can afford, nor is Sigurður too good to come fetch the post himself. Jens
had given the boy a quick look but otherwise didn’t pay any attention to him or Bárður, occupied as he was with speaking to Skúli, editor of the Will of the People newspaper. The boy had seen Skúli once before, but from a distance, had stared at this tall, well-dressed man. It must be wonderful to work as a writer for a newspaper, a thousand times better than fishing. Skúli had papers in front of him and was writing down something dictated to him by the postman. The next paper will be chock-full of fresh news because Jens has walked and ridden the whole way from Reykjavík, with news from the capital and from abroad, along with all the little bits of news he has collected on his long journey. Jens stops at many farms, there are many mouths that wish to tell something, gossip, ghost stories, speculations on the distance between two stars, between life and death, we are what we say, but also what we do not say. The blind captain, Kolbeinn, is silent about many things and luckily had no interest in the boy, he only spoke to Bárður, take this book about Juel for Andrea, he said, and this one here is for you. Kolbeinn put one hand on the large book before him, Paradise Lost, printed in 1828, you see I trust you, he said to Bárður, almost cruelly, was silent for a moment, as if contemplating these words, you see, continued to speak about the book, it will change your life, which could certainly use a change.