Heaven and Hell

by Jón Kalman Stefánsson

  It’s best to get going.

  Already returned the book, mission accomplished, thank you very much, next on the schedule is to decide whether he should live or die. Refreshing when one’s choices are limited to two and are so decisive. Of course it’s considerably simpler to die, just one decision and then everything’s finished, get a piece of rope, tie it around a stone, hop off a cliff, and never come back up, no one would need to stumble upon his stranded corpse.

  It’s entirely more complicated to live.

  It won’t do to get a piece of rope, even if it were a very good piece of rope, one needs more than that to live, life is a long and complicated process, to live is to question. Where, for example, should he stay the next night, the next nights, the next ten thousand nights? And he needs to find work, he’s not going to sea, fuck that, no, and he’s not going to work at Leó’s Shop in the summer, not without Bárður, out of the question. But what then, he needs to eat, it costs money. He could conceivably make a deal with Magnús’ Shop or Tryggvi’s Shop for moderate credit, the ships will sail soon and then there’ll be more than enough to do and any workers very welcome. Yes, yes, of course it’s not a problem to take necessary provisions out on credit for a few days, no problem to survive, but entirely more complicated to figure out whether he has, in general, any business in this world.

  That’s how the boy thinks, has finished his porridge, holds his empty spoon and stares at nothing, no self-pity in his face but perhaps a touch of helplessness, because how is he supposed to get some rope? One doesn’t find it in the street, life will always put obstacles in our way, nothing is ever easy. Bárður never had any problems with anything, yet he died and will never again laugh that infectious laugh of his.

  The boy is startled, Helga is saying something. What? he asks but she shakes her head and mutters, so I’m left with a deaf man and a blind man. The boy looks swiftly at Kolbeinn but there is no Kolbeinn there, he’s simply gone. I just, says the boy, falls silent as he searches for more words but doesn’t find them, has lost all of them.

  You lose your hearing, get it back and then lose your voice, you’re truly exciting to be around, says Helga, and he naturally has no idea whether she’s saying this cheerfully or sarcastically, once again he’s uncertain and fearful of this woman and thus agrees silently, with a movement of his head, to go out with her and down to Tryggvi’s Shop. We need milk, beer, porridge, bread, I need a pack animal, deaf or mute, it doesn’t matter, but hopefully your strength doesn’t disappear as suddenly from your arms.

  VIII

  The sky is no longer cold as frost over the world, the snow has started to soften in the street, it is April. And here he walks.

  Helga says nothing, luckily, as if she’s left all her words behind at the house, Geirþrúður wants to speak to you later, was the last thing she said, while they were putting on their coats. Later? he asked, as if this word, later, were completely incomprehensible, she doesn’t like getting up early, Helga had said, and ignored the boy’s inquisitive look, why does she want to talk to me, he thinks out in the street, maybe to blame me for not having saved Bárður from the frost? Helga walks so quickly that he has to use all his strength to keep up and his line of thinking is constantly tearing apart. This street is called Moon Street, he thinks. We’ll walk to the end of it and then Sea Street starts and goes all the way to the Point, but there’s the churchyard, should I maybe whistle to the dead and invite them out for a walk? They’ve cleared a decent path along the road and an even better one in Sea Street, besides the snow there is packed and it’s no trouble at all to walk on it. It’s fairly bright in the sky despite the heavy clouds, the hour is likely near seven, the sea blue and slightly rough out in the fjord, likely near freezing. The boy has warmed up during their walk, it seems not to matter how long his strides are, he is always at least half a step behind Helga. Smoke ascends from the chimneys of the houses that stand next to Magnús’s drying lot, three men smoke pipes outside the shop, likely foreign fishermen, the masts on the two ships rise into the air at Lower Pier down at the Point, the ships themselves hidden behind the buildings. One of the ships is called St. Lovisa, it comes from England, Captain J. Andersen and his body still warm after nights and days with Geirþrúður. The smoke from the pipes of the three men ascends into the sky, blue but dissipates quickly, turns to nothing. The boy looks at the masts that rise above the houses in the morning air, I should go to America, flashes in his mind, of course, that’s the answer, or Canada, which is a very large country. Then I would come a very long way from the sea, from the fish, I would learn English and could read important books. He wants to think more about this but his thoughts dissipate in the air like smoke. The road branches before them, Sea Street continues along the sea but Main Street curves past the corner of Magnús’s Shop and shoves its way in between a dense row of houses. The streets here have been shoveled well, the road is almost empty, with snow piles on both sides. There are eight, no nine, houses of varying stateliness on both sides of Main Street and two little spruces peek up from the snow in front of one of the better houses, so absurdly green that the boy stops abruptly. He longs to clamber over the snow piles to touch this green color and smell its fragrance. He looks up and sees a woman in the window above the trees, she is young, appears to be polishing something, a candlestick, it seems to him, and she looks at him, then smiles so beautifully that he suddenly feels happiness, yet Bárður froze to death by his side forty-eight hours ago. Confused, he tears himself away from the window with two living eyes and a smile and runs off after Helga, who is disappearing around the corner, he runs and runs fast, as fast as he can, as if he were trying to catch up with himself, looks a fool, naturally, which is excellent because that is precisely what he is.

  Main Street goes to the center of the Village, Central Square, which is what we call it when we dream of life without saltfish, dream of a square with trees, benches, and statues, but statues of whom, that is the question, because who has been so faithful to life that he deserves a statue?

  Central Square is covered with April snow and will doubtless be like that for the next several days, there is snowfall in these clouds and the sun will hardly show itself today. Few people out and about, in fact just these two, the boy winded at Helga’s side, he didn’t manage to escape from himself. Window curtains move in the house above them, a face looks out. Sometimes very little happens here and folk run to the window if they sense any movement, merely waking and thinking of the day ahead makes you sleepy. Helga heads for Tryggvi’s Shop, a big house neatly labeled with a large sign, long windows full to the brim with goods in the summer and fall, but sparse now. A man comes out with a little bag of sticks under his arm, glances at Helga without, however, saying hello, she pretends not to see him and opens the door, they step into the shop and the bell rings.

  IX

  The boy blinks to accustom his eyes to the difference in the light. It seems half dark in here after the brightness of the snow outside. A handful of people in the shop, shop staff and customers, and everyone stops talking as Helga and the boy come in, innumerable eyes that look first at her, then at him, curious, investigative eyes, some even hostile and it’s not nice at all to be gawped at in such a way. Good floor, will you swallow me up, thinks the boy, but is however rather skeptical because floors have never swallowed anyone up, floors don’t actually know anything but how to be flat and walked upon. It would thus be better for him to have a look around, regard the selection of goods in the largest shop in the Village, the largest that has ever been seen in this part of the country, one needs to go south to Reykjavík to visit a more remarkable shop, or even all the way to Copenhagen, across the wide sea that is dangerously deep, full of sunken ships, drowned folk, dashed hopes. He has of course come here before, thrice in two years. But everything looked different then, because certain people were alive at that time. The April light comes in through the windows, neither hard nor particularly strong. Several paraffin lamps are lit but th
e shop is large, and four tall and broad cabinets break up the space, create shadows, make it more difficult for the light. The counter is long, many meters in length, and behind it are shelves displaying various goods, some empty because we’re waiting for more spring ships, the two ships at Lower Pier only brought coal, salt, and a captain for Geirþrúður. The boy has counted nine people there when the tenth, a tall, well-built man, appears at the end of one of the cabinets, had been examining something but wishes to check who the newcomers are and stares for a long time at the boy, this is Brynjólfur, captain of the ship attached to Snorri’s Shop, his beard dark and grizzled, the boy looks away from the dark, almost black eyes and looks in through the open door of the liquor room. The boy went in there with Bárður fifty thousand years ago, when mammoths roamed the Earth. At that time the shelves were nearly empty. The cognac was finished, the whiskey was finished, the sherry was finished, five bottles left of port, ten of brennivín, two of Svensk-Branco, nine bottles of red wine, this was how the possibilities of life had diminished. But there were still dense rows of several types of beer and more than enough in the warehouse, the shop assistant had said, had looked at Bárður and the boy as if from a distance, leaned back to emphasize the difference between him and them and the smile beneath the most neatly trimmed mustache the boy had ever seen, not at all free of arrogance. Bárður asked for brennivín, huh, what? not red wine? asked the assistant, as if in surprise. Bárður had it put on his account, easy enough, his account was in good order, the mustache also said, yes, this is fine, after looking Bárður up, and the distance between them diminished slightly, from seven hundred kilometers down to two hundred. The boy was filled with pride, stood up straight while Bárður simply extended his strong arm, I’ll take it like this, and they walked out, the neck of the bottle in Bárður’s grasp, drank it down to the shoulder on the way out to the fishing station but Bárður never drank any more wine in this life. Now that damned Einar is gaping his mouth over the bottle, thinks the boy, eyeing it greedily like a starved seagull.

  The thought of Einar, his greed and indifference to Bárður’s death, makes the boy so angry that his shyness is momentarily alleviated and he walks over to the counter where Helga asks for goods, speaks quietly but determinedly and without any sign of hesitation, or submission for that matter, in her manner.

  Oh, how everything in this world is divided unequally.

  Some people can stand like that at a shop counter and say without hesitation, I want this and that, and the assistants go obediently wherever they point, while the rest of us have to ask, request whether it would be all right to add this, and that, and say that it would be so lovely to have a handful of raisins, God help me, not to mention Danish boiled sweets! Then we smile feebly into the face of the person behind the counter, on pins and needles over whether she will pull out the big black book with the red spine where all our debits are recorded, our debts to society and men written in immovable numbers that are impossible to dispute, you just give in. Most of us are eternally in debt to the big shops, and of course also to life itself, but that debt is paid with death. The case is not so simple as far as Tryggvi’s Shop is concerned, there the sins of the fathers pass down to their descendants, because although death is a powerful bastard its power doesn’t extend to account ledgers; if the man dies the wife pays, the children, parents. This has nothing to do with cruelty but rather with business, it’s just reality, that’s how reality is. Tryggvi’s Shop and Leó’s Shop are so big that the Village stands and falls with them, their disciplined and thoroughgoing management keeps everything running, sustains us, heedlessness in management, irresolution, and we’re finished, the Village and its residents would fall into destitution. Friðrik has said this many times and we would rather not dispute him, except under our breath, as when we say our prayers. He has a majority of the town council under his wing, or perhaps in his shadow, and few decisions are made without getting his opinion on them one way or another. But Helga doesn’t need to curtsey and smile nervously. She just sticks her hand in her pocket and pays cash. Those who are in the shop, some to buy things, others just to loiter, pass the time, have waited for this moment ever since Helga walked in. Money, pay cash, the moment has a kind of dreamy sweetness. Add two cases of beer, says Helga to the female shop assistant, who turns to her coworker, the mustache himself, who bows humbly and says, of course, we just need to get it from the warehouse, then we’ll deliver it up to the Café. He looks first at the assistant, who is called Ragnheiður and is Friðrik’s daughter, neither more nor less, and then at Helga and smiles courteously. Then go get the cases, says Helga, almost coldly, doesn’t even look once at the mustache, the smile vanishes from his face, he says, of course we’ll do that, and looks quickly at two other assistants standing near him and following the proceedings, they hop to it and head out to the warehouse.

  The bell rings again above the door and a tall, slim woman walks in. She has brown eyes like the man who froze to death because of lines of poetry. Hello, Þorunn, Helga says to the woman and smiles, Þorunn smiles back, goes over to Helga, and they hug. The boy is flabbergasted to see Helga so cheerful, but once again becomes insecure and somehow lost, because the two women, Helga and this Þorunn, walk over to one of the windows to speak together, leaving him standing alone at the counter. Ragnheiður and the mustache, who is called Gunnar, both look at him, then she turns and reaches for a glass of water. They both watch as she raises the glass to her lips and empties it.

  She drinks slowly. Her small larynx moves like a sleepy little animal in her white neck.

  A dull sound of bells carries to them from the liquor room. Gunnar curses quietly, opens his mouth, and appears to be on the verge of saying something to Ragnheiður but either decides not to say it or doesn’t dare. She doesn’t take her eyes off the boy, as if she is curious, as if she can’t pull her eyes off him. Gunnar looks at him suddenly, with a heavy and hostile expression, then goes into the liquor room, heeding the bell.

  It was the captain, Brynjólfur, who had taken the opportunity when everyone’s attention was directed at Þorunn and Helga, gone into the liquor room, rung the bell extremely carefully, and now shuffles his feet restlessly when he sees Gunnar’s heavy expression. The floor creaks beneath the captain’s huge feet. It would take a god to bring down Brynjólfur, we sometimes say, because he’s withstood all the raging weather of the sea, when the sky appears about to be ripped apart, the waves rise dozens of meters above the ship, the air is filled with a maddening whine and everything unfixed vanishes overboard, the men are tossed to and fro down in the forecastle, which is filling with seawater, and everything is soaked, and there stands Brynjólfur firm as a rock on those giant feet, hands on the helm, smiling, even laughing in the face of the terror, shouting with delight, some have said, shouting with wild happiness. But in such Doomsday weather one can still hear nothing but the maddening whine of the storm, then the sound when the waves break, crash over the ship, which shakes from end to end, and the most experienced fishermen break with the waves, weep from fear and defenselessness down in the hold, but Brynjólfur stands at the helm with that ominous grin. Those who have looked up from the hold and seen him appear briefly in the midst of the spray maintain that his face radiates happiness, a happy, heathen expression, an old fisherman once said. But it’s of course one thing to stand unaffected before the threats of the elements and another to long for beer, to long so much for beer that it almost hurts, and another to be in considerable debt to the shop and because of that entirely subject to Gunnar’s whims. Indecipherable, this Gunnar. Brynjólfur decides to be modest: it wouldn’t be bad getting four or five beers off you, dear Gunnar, he says, puts on a tender, even pious expression to counteract the voice that by its nature has little space for modesty. What do you want with beer? asks Gunnar brusquely, looking derisively at the captain. Brynjólfur laughs hesitantly, as if he were holding a delicate bomb, that’s a good question, he says, and tries to be companionable, what does
a man do with beer!

  What does a man do with beer; if only the world revolved around drinking or not drinking beer, if only it were so simple.