Heaven and Hell

by Jón Kalman Stefánsson

  The boy has started to think about the captain’s library he has been imagining ever since Bárður told him about it, four hundred books, one probably needs nothing else in life, except of course sight, he thinks, even snidely, but is startled when the blind man brushes against him and goes into the house, shuts the door firmly behind him. Another beer, you wimp, says Brynjólfur loudly, and the boy brings him his ninth beer. The beer disappears into the giant, his body receives it endlessly, I’m so big, explains the giant to the boy, sit down here by me, dammit, or else I’ll hit you, it’s so difficult to sit alone, a man feels so lonely when he’s by himself, you see, be good now and don’t leave an old man.

  The boy is good. He doesn’t leave the table, can’t get away for that matter, Brynjólfur has latched his large fist around his right arm. The boy sits next to the giant, who drinks beer, does so with gusto, then starts to tell about an old shipmate, Ole the Norwegian, they sailed together for a whole fifteen years, made it alive through wretched, ferocious storms and heaving seas, then Ole drowned in utter calm, his ship at the pier. Ole was piss-drunk and tumbled over onto his bald head, broke the mirror that was the Lagoon, and disappeared, didn’t even get to finish the bottle he’d bought from Tryggvi, French cognac that Ole had saved up a long time to buy. The body was dredged up and the bottle turned out to be half full and neatly tied to his waistband. Dammit, says Brynjólfur in the middle of his story about the Norwegian, closes his eyes halfway, holds his fingers in front of them, I can’t see clearly anymore! he half shouts in fear: I’m losing my sight, that goddamn bastard has infected me! I’m going blind! Brynjólfur closes his eyes but opens them again when the boy explains that after nine beers most people stop seeing clearly. The captain is so appreciative that he releases his grip on the boy, who rubs his sore arm under the table.

  It is past noon and the sun would no doubt be shining through the Café’s windows if it could make it to Earth through the clouds, yet it wouldn’t have lifted itself high enough to shine on the Spit and the main part of the settlement surrounding Central Square, the Eyrarfjall peak rises into the sky and buries the houses in its shadow. But if there were a sun in the sky it would soon shine through the parlor windows of a house not far from the old neighborhood, wherein sits a woman staring at nothing, she has big eyes, recalling a horse that has stood all of its life outside in heavy rain. She sits completely motionless, as only one does whom the joy of life has abandoned. Once, it was a long time ago, she laughed quite often and then her eyes were suns above life, the icicles that hung cold and hard from the houses turned into refreshing drops of water, where now is the joy in these eyes? The woman sits motionless, stares, a bit as if she were waiting for someone who has gone so far away that he might possibly not have enough time to make it back in this life. She sits bent over, her shoulders a bit hunched, she’ll sit like this the whole day, and when it grows dark and everything becomes hazier, she’ll resemble a mound more than a person. Where now is the justice in this existence, this wretched existence? You live with the most beautiful eyes in the world, they’re as beautiful as the sea, then thirty years go by and they’re no longer beautiful, they’re just far too big and follow you around reproachfully and you see nothing but exhaustion and disappointment when you look into them.

  Bloody hell, one looks into them and thinks of a rain-drenched horse, that’s not to say a jade, are you nuts, boy, I would never call my wife by such a name and whoever says something like that will get to meet my fists! Brynjólfur hammers on the table, the boy jumps and the empty beer bottles Brynjólfur has lined up carefully in front of him clink loudly, eight, no, nine empty beer bottles. The captain grabs the boy’s arm once more and unfortunately in precisely the same place, holds it tightly, there will be an ugly bruise there but the boy doesn’t dare move. If only you’d seen my wife laugh before, huh, boy, and seen her eyes, oh, what has happened, where did the joy go and why did she need to change like that, where does this darkness and grayness come from? Do you know, boy, we played together with Kristján as children, we three were always together, no one takes good, bright memories from a man, but bad memories don’t disappear either, they grow more insistent over the years if anything, damn it all. Kristján drowned, did you know that, the sea took him, and that’s of course the way we fishermen should go but I really miss him, I have so few people to talk to, you know that Bryndís is his daughter, Bryndís, that’s a beautiful name, I’d imagine that God invented it so we’d feel a bit better. But, dear friend, I wish you’d seen her eyes before, not Bryndís but rather . . . rather . . . dammit, dammit to hottest Hell, I don’t remember her name!

  Brynjólfur sits there staring, perplexed, and doesn’t remember the name that is ingrained in his life. The name of the girl he played with when youth shone over the three of them and they built ice-castles in the winter, played at being farmers together in the summer, and sometimes she stuck buttercups in her hair and walked around just like the Sun, she was the fairy tale itself. Brynjólfur wrinkles his brow, tries with all his might to remember her name and then automatically releases his grip on the boy’s arm, and the boy sighs in relief but silently. Finally a gleam comes to his drunken and bloodshot eyes, like a glimmer before a clear thought, like a light deep within dim fog: I drink too much. He says this firmly and clearly, then nods his head in agreement with his own words and adds, yes, and then I betray everyone. Brynjólfur looks gloomily at the boy but seems to be having trouble seeing him clearly, leans his head back slightly, squints and repeats, everyone! I betray her, you know, my wife, and her eyes, I betray them every day. I betray Snorri and it hurts. I betray my darling boys, Björn and Bjarni, and I also betray Torfhildur. How is it possible to betray someone like Torfhildur, what sort of villainy is that? Think about it, this morning I wished she would die and do you know why? Because she is so good to me! She trusts me and speaks beautiful words to me but instead of being grateful I try to avoid her because she makes me remember the betrayal, imagine if she were to die today, or maybe tomorrow, wouldn’t I just kill myself then? Still, I’m not evil, it’s just this heaviness within me, here inside, he says, and strikes himself a mighty blow on the chest, there are some little black beings inside there and they’ve dug themselves into my heart. Sometimes I’m not aware of them, yes, months can go by and I’ll start to believe that something has killed them and I’m a free man, but then they reappear and start going at it, stronger and more vicious than ever before. I’ve tried to drown them, drown the bastards in beer and whiskey, but they must be strong swimmers and take bloody revenge on me when I sober up. You can never imagine how their revenge is, you’re so young, oh, if she’d just laugh again, then her eyes would be so beautiful and everything would be good, and if I could just remember her name, I’d take the straightest path home, would take her in my arms and beg her tearfully for forgiveness, I’m man enough to weep, you can believe it. What was her name again?

  Brynjólfur stops. He tries to hold his head steady, gropes for the boy’s arm, the boy moves away and that is also all right, the captain just gropes into empty air without being aware of it. I guess I can stay here a week, thinks the boy to himself, it would hardly do any damage and then Andrea wouldn’t need to worry about me at all. Even two weeks. I can surely read two novels in two weeks, and a few poems as well, besides what I have to read to Kolbeinn. It’s hardly betrayal to live two weeks longer, he thinks optimistically, even happily, but then it quickly grows cold inside the Café, the cold slips through their clothes and covers their skin. He looks up and meets the cold eyes of Bárður, who stands behind Brynjólfur. Bárður moves his lips, blue with frost and death: how long am I to wait for you, then, his voice asks inside the boy’s head. How long is your mother to wait, how long is your father to wait, and your sister, who is only three years old? Why should you live and not us? I don’t know, mutters the boy, shivering with cold, then he straightens up in his seat, looks at Bárður and half shouts in his desperation, I don’t know! Hush! Not a
word! Brynjólfur thunders suddenly and grabs the boy’s arm tightly, wait! Don’t go! There’s something happening, hush, not a word, it’s coming! Brynjólfur leans forward, as if to listen, to catch a distant message, catch a name that his life depends on his remembering, leans forward, shuts his eyes, his large head sinks slowly and he is asleep before his forehead reaches the tabletop. Then it’s just the two of them, the boy and Bárður, he who lived and he who died. The boy pulls back his arm, does not look away from Bárður, who moves his cold-blue lips and says, I’m lonely here. I am too, the boy mutters, half apologetically, then he raises his voice and says, don’t go, without knowing whether he means it. Bárður says nothing, just smiles bitterly. It has started snowing. The snow falls silently outside the windows, large, hovering snowflakes shaped like angels’ wings. The boy sits motionless, angels’ wings hover outside, he watches Bárður dissipate slowly and turn into chilling air.

  Translator’s Note

  Bárður reads from the Icelandic translation of Milton’s Paradise Lost done by Reverend Jón Þorláksson (1744–1819), a prolific translator, poet, and exponent of Enlightenment ideals in Iceland. To preserve the spirit of Bárður’s reading of the poem in translation and to give a sense of how the text reads in Icelandic, I have retranslated Reverend Jón’s lines into English, but here provide Milton’s original lines for comparison:

  see here, “A cowl casts over all, accompanied by silence”—Milton: “Now came still Evning on, and Twilight gray / Had in her sober Liverie all things clad; / Silence accompanied” (Book IV, 3286–8).

  see here, “And birds in nests for the night reposed”—Milton: “Now came still Evning on, and Twilight gray / Had in her sober Liverie all things clad; / Silence accompanied, for Beast and Bird, / They to thir grassie Couch, these to thir Nests / Were slunk” (Book IV, 3286–9).

  see here, “of early-rising birds, a delight to the ears”—Milton: “Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, / With charm of earliest Birds; pleasant the Sun / When first on this delightful Land he spreads / His orient Beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flour, / Glistring with dew; fragrant the fertil earth” (Book IV, 3330–4).

  A Guide to the Pronunciation of Icelandic Consonants, Vowels, and Vowel Combinations

  ð, like the voiced th in mother

  þ, like the unvoiced th in thin

  æ, like the i in time

  á, like the ow in town

  é, like the ye in yes

  í, like the ee in green

  ó, like the o in tote

  ö, like the u in but

  ú, like the oo in loon

  ý, like the ee in green

  ei and ey, like the ay in fray

  au, no English equivalent; but a little like the oay sound in sway (away). Closer is the œ sound in the French œil