Madam Jófríður sighed. But she comforted herself with the thought of being able to get some rest tonight, here in the peace and quiet of Þingvellir – if, that is, she could catch a wink of sleep with all of this nonsense going on – it was as if she had just arrived from a flight over the North Pole! She had decided to come here tonight to get away from the ruckus in Reykjavík – as usual, whenever someone decides to go somewhere, everyone else suddenly shows up, wanting to do this and that; it’s only then that people realize how much they’ll miss someone. “Oh, Madam Valgerður, how poorly I’ve felt since the blood appeared in my saliva last spring; my only hope is a prolonged stay in the warm air down south.”
Although Madam Jófríður was the mother of an eighteen-year-old son, she bore none of the marks of a middle-aged woman. On the contrary, her skin was smooth and youthful, her body chubby, swollen with full-flower femininity, her face milky pale, her lips kelpred, and her hair auburn, but her dark eyes burned with dangerous embers, bearing witness to a number of different things at once: passion, consumption, hysteria; her eyebrows were two dark arches high above her eyes. In her facial expression, however, there was something that recalled a mask, the stylized face of an automaton or a wax image, but which had one thing beyond those, in that it was made of flesh and blood. But despite the ever-vigilant womanhood that shone from her with each word, every glance of her eye, every movement, there still appeared from time to time in her bearing something that reminded one of a tired child. She was not just formed of astoundingly delicate, perishable material, but she also seemed to know precisely how precious, fragile, and costly she was. She was like a vase made of Oriental glass. Every slight occurrence in her vicinity distressed her; she was perpetually afraid, perpetually annoyed, perpetually confused; it seemed as if she would die, were she to dip her hand in cold water. There was a depressed comeliness in her fumbling hand movements.
“Alright, Jófí dear! And what are you planning to do with your house in Rauðarárvík?” replied the mother-in-law. “Have you decided to leave it empty?”
“Yes, and I was the one who got to decide,” she answered with childish pride. “Grímúlfur wanted either to sell the house or to rent it, because he says that it’s foolish not to earn interest on one’s possessions. But I don’t find it foolish; I absolutely refuse to listen when Grímúlfur starts talking about interest or compound interest. Don’t you think I’m right, Mama? Haven’t I always said that Grímúlfur is and always will be a child in everything that touches on our family’s welfare? Because when our house is sold we’ll be left without a home in the world. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll find out that it’s better to own an empty house up near the North Pole than nothing in the lands to the south. And then there’s Steinn, who so dearly loves the beautiful view from the west windows, who has sat there so often in the spring, writing beautiful things at sunset.”
Grímúlfur sat down discreetly in one of the wicker chairs on the veranda; his mood was pensive. He cared as little about the beauty of Þingvellir as he did the smoke coming from his cigar. He was still a man in his prime, yet somewhat short – he scarcely reached all the way up to his son’s shoulders, but he was burly, with prominent shoulders and an evenly shaped head. His face was marked with deeply drawn lines, and he had large, bushy eyebrows. His eyes were gray and keen, shielded with gold-rimmed glasses. His upper lip was carefully shaven, while his hair was dark and grizzled, parted meticulously in the middle of his forehead. His face retained an aura of dry business concerns. It was obvious that this man’s work was the only reality that concerned him.
Suddenly from inside the house came the sounds of singing and the grand piano being played, just as Örnólfur came up the veranda steps after having finished tinkering with the car. He kissed his mother on the forehead and asked what was new at Þingvellir, and when he was told that everyone at the Ylfingabúð was doing fine he said:
“Since tomorrow is Sunday I’m going to do nothing but enjoy the peace and quiet of Þingvellir until tomorrow night. Father and son can hopefully handle driving south tomorrow morning.”
He glanced at his hands – his fingers were dirty from touching the grimy engine parts. “I’m going in to wash up,” he said, and he smiled and went into the house.
He could still be called a young man, not yet thirty-five years old, his hair longish and thin, he himself well-built and dashing, with manly shoulders. His manner was calm and determined, almost crafty. His face bore the same qualities of thoughtfulness and acuity as his elder brother’s, was marked with similar lines from the nose to the corners of the mouth, but on his forehead, over the bridge of his nose, were runelike marks that would deepen with age. His eyes were quicker and livelier than Grímúlfur’s, his eyebrows at least as bushy, his hair dark. Something in this man’s face would have reminded one of an eagle or a hawk lying in wait to snatch its prey, had not another quality come into play that spoiled his raptor’s likeness: namely, his gentle, modest smile, and the beauty that it lent to his face. The smile played about his lips every time he spoke. It also appeared every time he listened to others speaking. In fact, every time he looked into someone’s face, even if he were just passing through a room where others were gathered, this smile appeared on his face and warmed everything around him. No one was more skillful at sealing business deals than this great industrialist with his gentle smile. His personality contained an energy that found its outlet in pliancy.
After Örnólfur went inside, Madam Jófríður shook her head and looked plaintively at her mother-in-law.
“What really gets to me,” she said, “is when I hear this man complain about laziness, because if any man is going to die from ungodly overstress it’ll be Örnólfur. That Kristján, one of their managers, was even talking about it with me yesterday at breakfast. It’s been nearly a week now since Örnólfur came back from his little trip to Akureyri, on some kind of wretched fishing tub, and Kristján said that he would venture to swear an oath that this entire week he hasn’t slept more than three hours out of twenty-four, if in fact he even tried to sleep at night at all! ‘It’s no mortal man who works like the director of this fishing company’; those were his exact words. He, who’s in charge of so many offices. He confided to me that Örnólfur didn’t just think for and control the company, but literally knew every single thing that concerned the company inside and out, both at sea and on land, by night or day. He knows where every ship is stationed at all times; he knows about every worker in the company, man and woman, what each one is supposed to be doing at all times; he knows about every truck, yes, every wheelbarrow! It’s as if he knows every item by rote, every number in the accounts, both small and large, and I’m sometimes close to believing that he flies off on his broomstick to the company’s offices in Genoa and Barcelona so that he can get their numbers as soon as they’re written down. He’s the kind of man I would dare to trust with a kingdom.”
After concluding this description Madam Jófríður added: “I’ve never heard anyone talk about a mortal man the way the workers talk about Örnólfur.”
“That’s right,” answered Madam Valgerður, without taking her eyes off the door, which had closed behind her son. “How often haven’t I said to the boy: ‘You must have built such an expensive summerhouse here for something if it’s not just for your foreign guests, like the ones who were here last year and the year before, or for me, the old lady, and those impetuous girls, Diljá and her girlfriends.’ Last week there were sometimes seven of them here, surrounding me with their constant music and racket. He himself has never enjoyed a single week’s rest here in this blessed beauty–”
“No, it’s not a week’s rest that Örnólfur needs,” interrupted Jófríður, “and the last time I told him that was yesterday, when I stopped him in the foyer of the National Bank and ordered him under threat to invite me to midafternoon coffee at Hotel Iceland. It’s something else he needs to be getting. He needs a wife. And I said to him: ‘I would have been willing to
be your wife if your brother hadn’t already spoken for me twenty years ago. You should get yourself a darling young wife and a comfortable home; you obviously have your choice of women both here and abroad,’ said I; ‘. . . a beautiful and loving wife, yes, a devoted wife, dear Örnólfur, who waits impatiently for you to come home from your office at three and serves you your afternoon coffee; receives you with both hands whenever you return from a trip abroad, throws her arms around your neck, kisses your eyes and mouth, and runs her hands through your hair. Just like that,’ said I, ‘that’s what you need, my boy.’ There’s nothing like a wife. Nothing can keep a man in line but a wife. A wife’s the best elixir of life there is if you pick the right one.”
“And what was his reply?” asked Madam Valgerður in a low voice.
“Oh, it was completely useless! He smiled and said, ‘Mmhmm; first we’ll wait and see how the new markets are doing in Portugal and Sicily.’”
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard such answers before; Lord knows how I’ve been put to the test by Örnólfur’s eccentricities!” said Madam Valgerður.
Both of them shook their heads and looked sadly into the distance. Grímúlfur was still sitting pensively, waiting for both his cigar to burn out and the moment when it would suit the women to get up and his mother to invite him to coffee. No more music came from the parlor. The clock in the house struck eleven.
5.
He had greeted her as cheerfully as ever. But, truth to tell, there had been no joy in their parting. It was night; he had come to say goodbye; in the morning he was gone.
He said he had come to speak to her, but he ended up saying nothing. All he did was ask her to play the grand piano; he would accompany her. But it hadn’t worked – neither of them was in any mood to play or sing. They couldn’t even laugh at their own awkwardness.
She stood up and walked across the room, although on no particular errand, and he went to the piano and closed it; the curtains in the parlor were thick and shadows filled the room. She leaned up against the windowsill and watched him attend to the piano; night closed over her face.
“Are you leaving tomorrow morning?” she asked, abruptly and dully.
“The ship leaves just before noon,” he said. “It’s been nothing but parties since the voyage was announced. Tonight we were supposed to have gone to yet another party, but Mother chose to come out to Þingvellir and visit Grandmother, instead of sitting up until midnight in the company of potbellied misers. I myself went to a party that started at five today – there were young poets and artists, schoolmates and a few girls, toasts and good-byes, a bit of dancing. At eight-thirty the car honked outside; there was silence in the hall, a moment’s sadness, then the shouting of good-byes: ‘Farewell, Steinn Elliði!’ said my friends. ‘Hail, ye who put to sea in your golden magical swift-sailing vessels, to search for new lands, explore new worlds, new philosophies, new mythic worlds of the living arts! And sail home again hale, arrow of southern fire, laden with holy power, the bearer of the new arts to your people in the north, Icelandic ambassador to the new dawn in the culture of a youthful Europe!’”
She didn’t care a whit for the clever words of his friends’ farewells, and instead asked in a faraway voice:
“Why do you have to go, Steinn? You’re not going to sell fish?!”
“I go because I want to go! Of course I will go, go, go! What further business do I have among these rustics, surrounded by barbaric boors and avaricious fisherfolk in this land of plebeian wisdom, where the vanguard of culture is composed of beggars, grannies, fortune-tellers, and retired bailiffs? I’ll never be the main character in a romance with a setting and characters such as these! God bless the mountains of Iceland!
“I want to go out into the world, dear Diljá, to where the world wars were fought, in countries where cathedrals were shot at just for the fun of it and widows’ hearths were leveled due to unscrupulous mistakes. You must have heard of such things. I want to see the day dawn over broken roods and carven images of Christ cut in half, over grapevines torn asunder and grapes trampled underfoot, forests uprooted; see the blessed human being who lies exhausted in the grass and either praises the Lord for the victory or curses the Devil for the defeat as he licks at his swollen wounds. I want to greet the day that dawns over the nurslings from the summer of 1914, who lost their fathers as offerings to the hands of the Kaiser, the fatherland, and the lie, freedom, slogans, and the Devil. I want to go, Diljá; Diljá, I want to see. I’m born to see; born for the wide world, the great huge world with its countless kingdoms and cities, a world full of monuments, crumbling or intact, from untold ages of culture, from ages of ascendancy and periods of decline, a world that hopes to see seven suns of new culture rise over the crumbling walls of palaces and tumbled-down towers.”
She was silent for several moments, half-hypnotized by his passionate outburst, but when she regained her senses, she said:
“I thought perhaps, Steinn, that you would have found it difficult to leave Iceland, the mountains, and your friends, but now I can hear that you’re in seventh heaven. Don’t you know that Italy is teeming and swarming with crooks, thieves, and murderers, and that it’s totally corrupt? Folk there are like savages, and they worship idols that they call saints.”
He walked over to the window where she was sitting and, with the intention of ridiculing her, laughed out loud.
“Where in the hell did you acquire all of this wisdom about Italy?” he asked.
But she only looked down at her toes, avoiding his glance, and without looking up fled over to the piano once again. She recalled having read it somewhere: in her history book, or in Karl Finnbogason’s Geography.8 But maybe she hadn’t read it anywhere; she just knew it offhand; in fact she’d never given a thought to Italy before yesterday.
A maid knocked at the door, then stuck her head in and announced that the coffee was ready in the dining room. Neither Steinn nor Diljá moved. Steinn Elliði fiddled with his cigarette case and lit a cigarette; neither of them said anything. But the air around them quivered with future tidings, burned with secrets. The clinking of tableware was heard from within the room at the other side of the hallway, where everyone else had gone for coffee. The grandmother called out:
“Children! Come while the coffee is warm!”
Diljá came to her senses and said:
“Yes, what are we doing here alone like asses?”
He cleared his throat and replied, in an annoyed, impatient tone:
“There’s never any peace with these old grannies about! They grumble and rumble like spinning wheels, three or four at a time. Do they think we’re all better off just because we’ve poured lukewarm coffee down our throats? Didn’t I just tell you, Diljá, that I need to discuss an important matter with you?”
In the next instant his tone changed; he held out his hands like a rhetorician and said abstractedly:
“I ought to tell you something, Diljá. I was up all night thinking about the heavenly divinity that radiates from the face of this earthly world; I was thinking of what things I should say to you before I left. What is disturbing me, Diljá, is of no small consequence. All spring long I sat by my window in the brilliant sunshine and composed a princely hymn to the sun, in between skewering fish flies with my fountain pen. No one in the world has ever conceived such magnificent thoughts as I did this spring.”
“Don’t you think then that you ought to lie down and get some sleep before morning, Steinn?” she asked.
“Me?” he asked warily. “Do you think that I’m the kind of creature who could sleep here tonight? No, tonight I’m planning to stay awake, to gaze at the mountains and talk. And if no one wants to listen, then I’ll talk to the mountains.
“Diljá,” he added quickly, imploringly, “I have to speak to you tonight after everyone goes to bed! Stay awake!”
But she still lacked any coquettish promptitude in her responses.
“Stay up, me?” she replied hesitatingly. “I don’t know about that.
The idea never really crossed my mind. But what is this, boy, you’re going to miss the coffee!”
Then she added, in a lower voice: “At least Grandma mustn’t know about it if I do stay up.”
6.
The clock in the house strikes one, just one tiny stroke.
It is noiseless and still; he starts up at the dulcet metal sound and looks around the loft where his bed had been prepared. Had he drifted off? Was he the kind of creature who would let himself fall asleep? Hadn’t he been dreaming of a girl with golden arms and red lips? Damn. Or had he dreamt that the night before? Or was it a memory of an even older dream? Damn.
The day would soon dawn behind Ármannsfell – it was much brighter now than it had been at midnight. Everyone was surely asleep, guests and residents; nothing stirred except for a window hasp that dangled from the frame of an open window somewhere on the back side of the house, and the flag rope that smacked at the gable at long intervals. They hadn’t set a time for their meeting, but he snuck downstairs in complete certainty that she was waiting for him, and found the veranda door open. Only those doors through which someone is expected to come stand open like this at night, he thought, and he stepped out onto the veranda. He peered about; the maid had stacked the chairs before she went to sleep, to speed up her morning cleaning duties. He peeked through the windowpanes: the parlor window to the right of the door, the dining room window to the left, but no one was there.
The Great Weaver From Kashmir Page 2
