Núlli died at the precise moment when he drove the final nail in, boomp! was heard as he struck the nail, boomp! was heard in his heart and then nothing more was ever heard from Núlli. He sank slowly forward, his forehead touched the side of the building next to the nail that stood halfway out and still does, in memory of a good carpenter, a noble fellow, so high up that we can’t hang anything on it except raindrops and spiders’ webs. It’s not possible to say much about Núlli’s life, it passed without any grand events, there weren’t many stories about him and it wouldn’t be entirely easy to write his obituary, yet we felt the emptiness long after he was gone. His brother Jón was naturally brokenhearted, they were unmarried, got on extremely well, and had lived together, just the two of them, since their parents died. We sometimes found Jón crying out in the open or with his hammer in his hand over some project. This was heartrending and we were completely at a loss. We just watched how he pined away, nearly turned into a wretch from sorrow and regret and loneliness. It isn’t an overstatement to say that he was well on the way to indigence when Gunnhildur, who had had a child by Reverend Þorvaldur, you recall their night together when he didn’t take his cassock off, visited Jón in the rubbish bin that the brothers’ apartment had become.
Well, dear Jón, she said, we two certainly are orphans in this world, I toil away over a little child whom the cassock-wretch refuses to have anything to do with, have no one to support me, and no one at all to talk to in the evenings, let alone anything else. And here you are alone, with your good heart. You can be such a tremendously hard worker but it’s awful to see you now. I think you’re wasting away from loneliness and regret. There’s no shame in it, but it’s also perfectly unnecessary. Look here, we could certainly continue to toil away on our own, I’ll survive, not elegantly but I’ll manage, and won’t make my child feel ashamed, still it won’t be easy and it won’t be pretty. On the other hand, you, dear Jón, you can’t manage on your own for long, you’re just that way. You’re a hard worker and a gem of a man but far too sensitive. God gave you a good and beautiful heart but completely forgot to harden it. You’re losing everything, soon you’ll lose the house, soon you’ll lose your independence, finally you’ll lose life itself. Why should we let that happen, what, I wonder, would be the purpose of that? What do you say, dear Jón, about my moving in here . . . Gunnhildur looked around, Jón sat on a tattered chair and couldn’t take his eyes off her face, her enormous number of freckles . . . into this hole of yours, and together we make it into a good home? As far as love is concerned, naturally there’s nothing to say, since we barely know one another, but I’m absolutely certain that in the future we’ll grow fond of each other, and that, you see, is no small thing. I feel so strongly that I could easily grow very fond of you, you’re a marvelous man, and to see the blueness in your eyes, I could completely forget myself looking at it! On the other hand I’m not nearly as good as you, I’m actually a damned trove of faults, yet not entirely bad, and I’m a terrifically hard worker and brutally honest. What do you say to that, dear Jón? I could be the hardening around your heart. My boy is unchristened, Reverend Tatterfrock isn’t after me about it, imagine that, but suddenly I got the idea that Nikulás would be a stand-out name for the boy, and then Jónsson, if you’re interested. By the way, don’t you have any coffee for us, I’ll brew it, you know how good it can be to think with a good cup of coffee in one’s hands, I’m not used to speaking so much, by the way, I expect I’m a little bit nervous, yes, I see the coffee, there it is.
Shortly afterward the house smelled of coffee. Jón the joiner got to kiss her on the mouth, she started to tidy immediately and then went to fetch the child from her girlfriend. Can’t you sleep? asked Gunnhildur that night, had awakened to the child’s crying, comforted it, rocked it back to sleep, and then noticed that Jón was wide awake, lay there with wide-open eyes, scarcely daring to blink, can’t you sleep? No, actually not, he said apologetically. Is it because of the child, do you want us to sleep in the parlor, I’ll move us immediately! She pulled the cover off and was halfway out of bed when Jón placed his work-worn carpenter’s hand carefully on her shoulder, no, he said shyly, don’t go.
Brynjólfur shivers. He’d lost track of himself, leaned against a streetlight, looked at the school, and let his mind wander, the air is chilly and it’s cold to stand there motionless for a long time. The street lamp is extinguished as well. Bárður the nightwatchman looks after our street lamps at night and extinguishes them when there’s no longer any need for their light. There are not all that many street lamps in the Village, with long distances between them; they’re actually like life: several gleaming moments set apart by dark days. Brynjólfur shivers, clears his throat, spits and then continues on his way. A child coughs in a nearby house, a long, hard cough, be good now, God, and watch over this life, Brynjólfur prays, then greets and smiles at two housekeepers walking toward him with water buckets on their way to the well, trusting that Bárður the nightwatchman has done his duty and broken the ice off the well cover during the night. Brynjólfur becomes so incomprehensibly happy at seeing the two women that he stops, flings his arms wide, transforms them into an embrace large enough to have room for both of them, if I weren’t married, he says, I would kiss you both and then marry you! The two women smile at his words and at the neck of the bottle poking out of the captain’s pocket. Are you man enough to be of use to two women? one of them says, it’s Bryndís, she’s lost two husbands to the sea and is raising three children, if you only knew, Brynjólfur says, and he laughs and grabs his crotch, yes, Bryndís says, but it’s not just size that counts, the other giggles and then they’ve gone past him.
Brynjólfur turns to watch them walk away. Bryndís is almost a head taller, a combination of nobility, softness, and tension in the way she walks, I love her, thinks Brynjólfur in surprise, and places both hands firmly over his left breast, as if to prevent his heart from tearing itself out of his chest cavity and pursuing Bryndís, the heart that at one time beat only for Ólafía, his wife, they’ve lived together for so many years that Brynjólfur doesn’t want to think about it now and instead watches as Bryndís kneels down and removes the cover from the well. It’s so sweet to look at this woman, perhaps the best thing there is in this life. But then she is finished filling the buckets, she smiles at Brynjólfur and is gone, the moment past.
Brynjólfur takes the stopper out of the last bottle, turns down School Street into Old Lane, thereby entering the old neighborhood. Many of the oldest houses in the Village are located in this area, variously sized timber houses from the latter part of the eighteenth century. Most of the residents of the neighborhood are simple fishermen or laborers, some with irritable hens in their backyards, and in some places their houses are so densely packed together that they almost touch each other. Those who have sailed to other countries, seen other worlds, and woken up beneath foreign skies, surrounded by other languages, say that at its best the old neighborhood resembles foreign cities with their innumerable confined, winding lanes. Folk from better classes choose, on the other hand, to avoid the neighborhood, and it caused a great deal of amazement, if not scandal, when the schoolmaster Gísli, the brother of the factor Friðrik and the priest Þorvaldur, invested in a little house there and moved into it; the old neighborhood is not considered at all suitable for a schoolmaster, much less for a man from an important family. But Gísli read French poetry and some French poets are half crazed, recommend all sorts of dubious things, and that’s likely why Gísli doesn’t always follow the well-trodden paths. On occasion he and Brynjólfur have drunk together; ended up one time at Bífröst, the café run by Marta and Ágúst, which everyone calls Sodom and is located on the outskirts of the old neighborhood, all the way down by the beach. It’s good to come here, it’s horrible to be here, Gísli had drawled after he and Brynjólfur spent the night drinking in the café, the weak light of morning came in through the little window and Marta was dead drunk in the arms of the schoolmaster.<
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Brynjólfur drinks his beer, longs very much to empty the bottle in one go, but forces himself to wait, it’s good to have discipline, he mutters, then starts thinking about Bryndís. Maybe I love her? Brynjólfur is both amazed and moved at the thought. She is so determined, so strong, no one understands how she survives, alone with three children. The magistrate Lárus planned at one time to break up the family, but she managed in some incomprehensible way to ward off that threat. It was sometimes as if there was something unearthly about Bryndís, something that drew others’ attention to her and has confused the most unlikely of men.
Bryndís’s second husband was on a sixereen with her brother and father, whom Brynjólfur knew well, they were childhood friends, and now he is dead. The memory of him stops Brynjólfur in his tracks, childhood friends are irreplaceable, that’s why Brynjólfur feels compelled to finish his beer. There is often a kind of clear sky above childhood friends, light and innocence. Brynjólfur sighs over his memories and over his beer being finished. He has leaned against the fence outside the little timber house with its small addition that could be anything at all, really, a storehouse, toolshed, workroom, he knows the people who live there, a fisherman on one of the ships and his wife, they have five children, argue endlessly and curse each other, no one understands what keeps them together but we will likely never understand this glue that can connect two different people their entire lives, so powerful that even hatred can’t tear them apart. Brynjólfur regards his beer bottle, Gamle Carlsberg, it’s so heartbreakingly empty and it has been so heartbreakingly long since he was a child. Brynjólfur looks down at his feet and mutters, there now, go on you two, and they obey, reluctantly, he walks slowly and thinks about his friend and thinks about his daughter, Bryndís, who lost them all in an instant: husband, father, and brother. Her father was the skipper and it wasn’t particularly bad sea weather, windy with gusts, and when the boat was seen last it had its sail up, her father was setting the fishing lines, a squall likely took the sail and capsized the boat in the blink of an eye. A wind that blows up only to drown six fishermen. They set fishing lines, each with his own thoughts and a shared anticipation of fish, the boat rises and falls calmly and then they’re in the sea and none of them can swim, memories gather while they strike the water around them as if to grab hold of something, because although memories are precious they don’t keep us afloat out on the sea, they don’t save us from drowning. But which should the skipper try to save, his son or his son-in-law, or just himself? He hesitates, and in his hesitation he drowns.
Brynjólfur walks slowly along the dense streets of the old neighborhood. Considers paying Gísli a surprise visit, had heard that the schoolmaster was having one of his drinking spells, but when Brynjólfur drew near Gísli’s house he changed his mind and continued his rambling. Wanted to be alone and wade through the snow, difficult passage, Lúlli and Oddur hadn’t begun to shovel here, always leave this neighborhood for last, those who have less influence are frequently left for last. A dull light above the houses and around Brynjólfur, as if the air is a bit too thick or slightly dirty, and he thinks about his life.
Who understands existence?
Once everything was easier but now it has grown so terribly heavy and it’s not as enjoyable to exist. Yet things were more difficult here before, he and Ólafía didn’t have much money but had three children who were often sick, he sat there night after night with one or the other of them in his arms, listening anxiously to the child’s unsteady breathing, and tried desperately to keep death away from their small, fragile bodies. It worked, somehow, they all lived, the two girls and the boy, Jason, who, to his father’s sorrow, refused to go to sea. The one time Jason sailed was when he went along with his younger sister and her boyfriend to America ten years earlier, you should move here, they say in nearly every single bloody letter, it’s much better here and it would certainly be good to let the sun shine on your old, tired bones. My bones aren’t tired at all, Brynjólfur mumbles to himself, go, he says spitefully to Ólafía in his mind, it’ll be good just to get rid of you! but bites his tongue at the same moment. Why isn’t it enjoyable to look at her anymore? Once it was life itself to wake up by her side, feel her thick body, rest his arm across her heavy breasts, then perhaps just hold her and say something, something out of the blue, and she would say something similar in return, it was so good.
So where did the joy go?
Bryndís, he whispers softly, tries to say this name out loud, as if to get his bearings, discover the taste. Oh, how delightful it would be to love again, then everything would be so bright. Bryndís. It’s good to say this name, he lets it go and the air trembles slightly.
No, it’s not possible to figure love out. We never get to the bottom of it. We live with someone and are happy, there are children, quiet evenings, and many rather ordinary but good occurrences, on occasion little adventures, and we think: that’s how life should be. Then we meet someone else, perhaps the only thing that happens is that she winks and says something perfectly normal, yet we are finished, completely hopeless, the heart pounds, it swells, everything falls away except this person, and several months or a few years later you’ve started living together, the old world has collapsed but a new one arises; sometimes one world needs to perish so that another can come into being.
Brynjólfur’s smile fades a bit when he thinks about Ólafía. She looks at him sometimes with those large eyes of hers that remind him of the eyes of a sad horse, it would completely do her in if I got together with Bryndís. Brynjólfur has become sad again, continues his rambling, strolls around the old neighborhood, sad about his life, at no longer taking any pleasure in touching Ólafía, it isn’t because her heavy breasts have lost their ripeness, not because her body appears to have become grayer, no, this is something completely different, he simply doesn’t know what it is and uncertainty is a destructive force. Sometimes he becomes out-and-out angry when the sad horse’s eyes follow him around the little apartment, that’s why he rushed out early this morning, drank his morning coffee so hurriedly that he scalded his tongue and still can feel it, muttered something about how he had things to take care of, had to hurry out before the anger burst to the surface with ugly and hurtful words, hurried out but could think of nothing else to do except hang around in Tryggvi’s Shop, jabbering about worthless things, examining goods he had no interest in but still knew all about anyway, nothing to do but read a copy of The Will of the People that Gunnar loaned him. Read the paper carefully, although nothing captured his attention but an advertisement that read, lost here on the streets a coin purse with 20 krónur in gold coin, several silver and copper pennies and a gold ring, the finder requested please to return the purse to the print shop, for a fair reward. And Brynjólfur had thought, bloody hell, it would be good to find the purse, keep the money, then I could buy more than enough beer and whiskey without needing to write anything, but no, I’m incapable of that much dishonesty, I am such a great bloody weakling, and besides people would ask, where did you get this money? and what would the answer be? Brynjólfur walks in the snow along the narrow lanes of the old neighborhood and is sad. Maybe he should put this announcement in the paper:
Lost here on the streets of the town the purpose of life, the mercy of sleep, joy between me and my wife, my smile, and eager anticipation. The finder is requested to return these to the print shop, for a fair reward.
Suddenly he’s standing in front of Snorri’s Shop.
Dammit.
It wasn’t supposed to happen so quickly. There were still lanes left untrodden in the old neighborhood, and he still had various things to contemplate. I should have gone to visit Gísli, then I’d be sitting there now, drunk and happy, thinks Brynjólfur, and he looks heavy-browed at the low-roofed, rather long house, Snorri’s Shop, it says on the side, gold letters on a brown board, fading colors, fading life. The house lies lengthwise along Hansen Field and it’s too late for Brynjólfur to turn around, the shop assistants have see
n him and wave at him happily, father and son, Björn and Bjarni. We always have trouble remembering which is which and frequently have to guess when we address them, it doesn’t help that they’re so courteous or timid that instead of correcting us they just respond to the names by which we address them. Brynjólfur has an excellent memory and has naturally had so much interaction with them that the names don’t get in his way, except when he feels tipsy, then much in his memory starts to spin, and in life as well, actually, and the three beers have made him tipsy, he steps inside and says simply, hello, father and son.
There’s not as much space between the walls here as in Tryggvi’s Shop, no, that’s like comparing a hill and a mountain. The floor creaks beneath the weight of the captain, who reaches the counter in just a few steps, father and son both wearing dark jackets Snorri had tailored for them in the days when the world was a brighter place. The shop is desolate after the winter, and unnecessarily much of what was taken away will never be paid for. Most of the customers are from the old neighborhood and some of them look first to Snorri when their accounts have become ominously high in the larger shops, and the folk there don’t blame others if they do some of their shopping at Snorri’s, the merchants know how things are, that when the summer comes with fish and plentiful work, people try first to settle their accounts with the larger shops and neglect Snorri. Where is Snorri, Brynjólfur intends to ask when he comes to the counter, the creaking has ceased, the floor has stopped complaining, but he then hears the soft notes of the organ coming from Snorri’s apartment at the other end of the house. Snorri sits at the organ, music book open, joyful Mozart that was intended to enliven the morning, to nudge optimism or, rather, to haul it up from the depths, but the merchant managed only to play to the end of the first page and could go no further, not today, too far to Mozart, the ocean and half of Europe between them. So Snorri closed his eyes and let his fingers wander, they followed the sheet music in his breast and the darkness flows from the organ, penetrates the timber walls. This doesn’t appear, however, to have much effect on father and son, they smile cheerfully at the captain, or up to him, they reach to just under his chin, he looks down at their pates. The son’s hair is thin on the crown of his head but there’s a prominent bald spot on the father’s, who has worked in the shop from the start, both so faithful that uncertain wages don’t trouble them, the son must be nearing thirty and still lives with his parents. Father and son often take a step back when someone comes in, instinctual courtesy. Torfhildur, the wife and mother, most often sits with them behind the counter, helping out when needed but otherwise doing some sort of handiwork, knitting a pullover, socks, mittens for her two men and Snorri as well. The three of them feel best together, Torfhildur, father and son, and don’t need to say much to each other, are quiet because closeness says everything that needs to be said. Torfhildur always calls Brynjólfur her darling boy, although there’s not much of an age difference between them, and greets him by stroking his cheek with her hard but warm palm, needs to stand on tiptoe to reach so high up. But now she’s nowhere to be seen and unfortunately Brynjólfur is very relieved, yet feels ashamed because of it and asks, as if to calm himself, where are you little devils keeping Torfhildur, you can’t be so wicked as to leave her behind at home?! Brynjólfur feigns cheerfulness, smiles broadly but feels a sting in his heart when it seems to him as if father and son darken suddenly, but then they both smile, she just doesn’t feel well enough, replies the father, Björn or Bjarni.
Heaven and Hell Page 13
