The Great Weaver From Kashmir

by Halldor Laxness

  The fate of man slumbers in his will. Man goes where he wishes, as high as he wills, as low as he wills, neither higher nor lower. The one who loves God goes to God. The one who loves the Devil goes to the Devil. It is simple. Whoever directs the powers of his body and soul away from the illusions of the visible world and defeats the desires of the flesh and the arrogance of the intellect, practices asceticism, humility, amity, peace, willingness to make sacrifices, and prayer, defeats the created, himself and his own demands, and lives as a pure spirit before God, he will surely achieve the condition that is called the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven signifies union with divinity. When his life in the pinch of mortal fetters ends, his soul is free.

  He who sacrifices his life to illusion, lives to eat and drink, reckons whoredom and harlotry as the highest good in life, pursues riches, reputation, power, fame, and praise, considers more important how he appears in the eyes of men than in the eyes of God, mocks holy things, suppresses all the aspirations of his soul toward a higher state of being and knows nothing higher than himself, he will go to Hell, or, better put, from one hell to a worse one. He might just as well abandon all hope. The one who holds himself higher than the Lord has already chosen the Devil; he has pushed away the love of God. He has no hope of resurrection to eternity, without repentance. Hell is eternal; that is to say, the condition of the soul in the next world is fixed. Time no longer passes by. The condition of the soul of man at the hour of his death is its eternal condition. It is too late to repent after death.

  No one has placed man on a higher pedestal than the Church. In truth man is holy, because he exists by the will of God and has an imperishable soul, created to enjoy the highest glory throughout eternity. Man has been created to be saved, and nothing else. Therefore all of man’s goals other than his salvation are contrary to the will of God. And God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that whoever believes in him, that is, walks in his footsteps, will not perish, but instead will have eternal life. Man and woman are consecrated by God in the sacrament of marriage because their offspring are created for heavenly predestination; the sacrament of marriage is holy because man and woman are not creatures void of responsibility: their child is the living temple given into their hands by God, and they will be held accountable on Doomsday for how they have maintained this temple. A child that has not learned from its parents to love God will curse its mother when it grows up, and call damnation down upon her on Doomsday because she failed to teach it the Lord’s Prayer.

  The Church provides everything to all of its children and to each his own. It feeds its wise men, its simpletons. It feeds its ascetics and its laymen. It sanctifies the life of the layman with its sacraments and gives a higher dignity to his work. Each one of you should do your work in the name of God and for God’s sake, says the Church to the layman, through the mouth of the saint from Sales, the gentleman saint. It commands the apostles to seek the kingdom of God above all else. It grants to its ascetics the strength to endure. To all who heed its message and believe in its truth it guarantees happiness in this life, salvation in the next. It has made marriage a divine service, the home a chapel. It has called the common layman to the same glory as the one whom God elects to a holy way of life, has given mankind the saints as measures of perfection, and although the virtues of the layman are slight compared to those of the saint it promises the same wage to each. The Lord gives one man a hundred talents, another man two. One is granted the grace to take upon himself the yoke of the ascetic, another to polish the boots of the bourgeoisie. But both are promised the same wage.

  72.

  Father Alban was Steinn’s guide in Christian studies, and he decided that Steinn was prepared to join the Church in the fall. Steinn was baptized sub conditione and accepted the faith.

  During the week leading up to this he was required to pray before the most holy sacrament and was not allowed to speak to anyone other than his teacher. The ceremony took place on a clear and fair Sunday morning, before High Mass. All of the monks were present, along with a crowd of visitors, because it had been announced in the newspapers that an “English poet” would swear off heresy in the abbey church that day and would accept the true faith. It was standing room only in the church that day.

  Before the high altar he renounced the Lutheran heresy in which he was raised. The bishop then released him from the church ban that lies over the Lutherans, and chanted over him grand incantations that drive the spirit of Satan from the heretic. When this was finished Steinn placed his hand on the Holy Bible and recited before the apostolic servants the creed of the Church in Latin. Next he was sprinkled with water and anointed with holy oil back and front, and then the sal sapientiae, the salt of wisdom, was placed on his tongue; this, however, he spat out, because of its disagreeable taste. At the end of the baptism he changed into a white woven garment and was led to the sacristy, where he was to make his confession before he could receive communion. The sacristy was a great hall draped with tapestries; it had high windows, and outside, the sky was replete with morning rays. On one of the walls hung a simple rood, and beneath it, in a low seat, sat Father Alban, who stood on his feet and turned toward the penitent as he approached; his smile had never before been so gentle.

  Then the canon sat back down, asked Steinn to kneel on the priedieu at his side and at the same time stroked his head with the palm of his hand as if he were a little child. Here had Steinn come, to receive, for the first time, absolution for his sins from the apostolic servant, according to the power that Christ gave to his Church with these words: “Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.” “Whatsoever ye shall bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven.”

  Steinn trembled from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet when he kneeled on the prie-dieu by the side of his Father Confessor and began the Confiteor for the first time. He had prepared himself for his confession the day before and accounted for most of what his conscience deemed his most outrageous crimes against the will of God. And when he began his confession it was in a voice that he did not recognize, although it came from his own throat; it was as if his speech organs had been borrowed from another being. He spoke the language of a distressed child who has been shaking for a long, long time from suppressed weeping, and the Great Weaver from Kashmir was no longer anything but an empty shell.

  In his youth he had despised his father and mother, never heeded their biddings or prohibitions, lied to his mother on a daily basis, scarcely spoke to her without lying, generally had constantly lied in his youth, lied about every conceivable thing to anyone and everyone. He had had a special fondness for torturing animals. He had sought out wicked company, trained himself in abominable language, held obscene conversations with his companions and thought with the greatest pleasure about everything that leads to the consternation of the spotlessness of the pure soul, surrounded himself with pornographic pictures on foreign postcards. He had taunted and offended his companions and bribed them into keeping quiet about it. At home and in the company of adults he had always pretended to be the guileless, well-mannered boy. When he was eleven he had gotten drunk for the first time, when he was fourteen committed an actual sin against the life of chastity.

  The Father Confessor said that whereas actual sins against the holy life of chastity were mortal sins, they required more detailed confession. He asked how many times Steinn had fallen, but the penitent could not answer this with certainty; he could only make a rough guess.

  And the confession continued. With the exception of the hysterical fantasy about creating a “masterpiece for mankind,” he had never thought a congenial thought for anyone, had never been appreciative of anyone. He had of course admired certain individuals for their virtuosity, their intelligence, and their knowledge, but had usually become disappointed in these people after getting to know them better, and looked down o
n them afterward. Then he had made a sport of uncovering people’s defects. In general he had never looked upon mankind as anything other than Staffage zu gewissen Ideen.102 Concerning others’ opinions he had never considered them of any worth – the only thing he thought excellent was what he thought of himself; these were crimes against sacred humility.

  He had never done anyone any good secundum intentionem puram,103 for the love of God.

  He did recall, however, three good works that he had done at one time, although they weighed little against his sins. Once he had come out of a chocolatier on Oxford Street with a package of Nestlé’s chocolate, and as he was about to shove the first piece into his mouth he came across an urchin looking for cigarette butts on the ground. He gave him the package of chocolate as if in capitulation and continued on his way. Another time he was walking along Hverfisgata in Reykjavík on a summer day. In front of the National Museum he noticed an emaciated wagon jade standing on the pavement. But in the yard in front of the museum there were patches of beautiful grass. Steinn had made little of it, had taken hold of the jade’s goatee, led it across the street, opened the gate of the yard, and let it in. Then he had closed the gate and continued on his way. Once he had been at a trattoria in Rome, not far from Saint Peter’s Basilica. At the next table sat a German pilgrim, drinking beer, an old peasant who had neither Italian money nor any understanding of Italian. “Wie viel?” he asked, when the pitcher was empty. The waiter held up five fingers, meaning five lira. Then the farmer took out a five-gold-piece note, intending to pay with this without any grumbling. Steinn saw that the man was poor and humble, butted in, and paid for the pilgrim’s beer, letting him keep his gold. These were all of his good works. Were not all the good works of the world something like this? It is no trouble to perform good works. It is a far heavier burden to keep oneself from doing bad deeds; there the best and most respectful men wreck their ships. No one becomes more famous for good deeds than the worst crooks and wretches, like American millionaires.

  On the other hand he had never missed the opportunity to deride God and repudiate Christianity, did everything he could to silence the voice of God in his heart, defended with the utmost pleasure the teachings that were most inimical to men, listened spellbound to the Devil in human form unravel his own scriptures on the destruction of man and mankind, and from this became extremely eager to commit an abominable crime. Finally he had decided to lay hands on himself, but providence had taken hold of him and sent him into a deep sleep.

  It was as if putrid pus had been squeezed from a pustule; his soul felt lighter like the sky after hail. He no longer composed clever philosophical systems to justify his sins, but instead walked humbly before God and prayed for forgiveness. He begged for mercy, redemption from the righteous punishment that his sins called down upon him. Some of his sins were so difficult for him to admit that he had to use all of his strength. But he knew that nothing could heal his soul until the wounds were completely cleansed, and that he could never start a new life as a new man without receiving absolution, even for the most hidden sin. He knew that nothing but God’s forgiveness could cleanse his sins, because even though he might come to possess from that moment on a faith so powerful that it could move mountains, or if he were to give his wealth to assuage the poor, or sacrifice his body on the fire for the cause of the kingdom of God, none of this could compensate for his crimes. None of these things were, in the eyes of God, anything but plain duty. Even if he were to live a holy life from that moment on, his sins were nevertheless inexcusable without forgiveness, and his holy life could never become anything other than his obvious obligation in the eyes of God; there would never be compensation or propitiation for his sins. No matter how much good a man does, he can perform no good deed over and above his most simple obligations to God. God’s mercy sanctifies a sinful man if he repents his misdeeds and mends his ways. Steinn was to a certain degree aghast at the thought of the horror and repulsion that his lifestyle must surely awaken in the soul of this man, who just a short time ago had greeted him with love and tenderness, but on the other hand he was elated to know that he could kneel in the sight of God and receive absolution for his sins from the servant of the Apostolic Church, one of those to whom Christ had given the authority to release and to bind.

  When Steinn finished his confession there was a momentary silence; all that could be heard was the organ sounding from within the church, as if from a great distance. He will surely be shocked, thought Steinn, and he sank still deeper into the prie-dieu. Finally he felt that when Father Alban opened his mouth it would be to proclaim to him that a righteous God would never be able to forgive such sins. And Steinn would not have found such a proclamation remarkable in the least. The Great Weaver from Kashmir squatted here on his knees, suppressing sobs, his face in his hands, fearful that even Almighty God would not be able to wipe away such crimes.

  But then Father Alban began to speak.

  No, it was far from being the merciless voice of the prosecutor. The voice that spoke was gentle, bright, and pure, heavy with love, woven with radiance. Not even half a word of rebuke, no astonishment at the volume of his misdeeds, not once a sigh over his wickedness.

  “We thank God for having granted us the mercy to accept us into the lap of his Holy Church. At the moment that I grant you absolution for your sins you will stand as a pure spirit before God, as a newborn child, as the angels themselves. Today your prayers are as powerful as the prayers of the angels, as the prayers of the saints. Human understanding can have naught but the tiniest fleeting suspicion of the abundance of grace overshadowing you at this moment. Protect your baptismal grace! Pray for your father and mother. Pray for all of those whom you wished to have done well. Pray for mankind. Pray for us, the unworthy servants of the Lord, that we might acquire the strength to stand faithful in holy servitude. Pray for God’s Church on Earth, for the representative of Jesus Christ, the Holy Father in Rome. And pray for the spirits of those in prison. Glorify God from this moment on with your entire being, in the humility of a pure soul, and with all the strength of your being, all of your life and each footstep of your life, with no exceptions. Now I grant to you the apostolic absolution.”

  When the words of absolution had been spoken in Latin, the Father Confessor stood up, raised Steinn from his prie-dieu, took both of his hands, kissed them, and said:

  “Pray for me, a wretched and unworthy servant of the Lord!”

  73.

  The venerable Père Abbé had invited Steinn to remain with the monks as long as he pleased, and Steinn accepted the invitation with thanks, because he knew that he would never find a better opportunity to unite himself with the Catholic spirit. In his life with the monks he found himself in the first group of friends he had ever had in his life; the thought that the day would surely come when he would be forced to say good-bye to Father Alban only served to awaken in him a sorrowful apprehension.

  The desire to work was rekindled in him; he sunk himself zealously into the study of Catholic doctrine, the history of the Church, the lives of the saints, philosophy, theology. Beyond all else, however, he loved the study of asceticism: everything that touched on prayer and one’s inner relationship with God. All of his affections were directed toward the cultivation of his prayer life; he attended the divine offices, including Tenebrae, which started before dawn. At first he had made it a rule to pray for one hour a day; a bit later he found himself compelled to double his prayer time. Finally he found that the entire day and the night along with it were insufficient, so much did his soul have left to say to its Creator. He prayed at times following the systematic contemplative methods of the Jesuits, at others the simple rules of the Rosary. He tried to bring his piety into accord with the ritualistic life of the Benedictine monks, but knew that it was best to approach God as a little child approaches his father, according to the practices of the Carthusians. The most sincere prayer is not prayed in words, but rather in the tears of a child. He took on the task of
translating into his mother tongue the Imitatio Jesu Christi, which he considered the most precious pearl of all that had been written in the world, studied Hebrew with one of the fathers, and tried to translate the psalms of David into rhythmic verse.

  With each day that passed, his mind became more balanced; few things are better suited to soothing a troubled disposition than Benedictine gentility. He slept undisturbed at night; his groundless fears disappeared; his thoughts became ever more calm, stronger, more firmly coherent. He recalled that long season devoid of joy, full of stress and insomnia, when he had stayed at the Villa Warren Hastings in Hounslow near London; it made him shudder like someone who has experienced being buried alive. He recalled the rooms where everything had been in chaos, as in the graveyard at Doomsday, books and papers all over the floor or up on the furniture, and in among all that mess floated innumerable notebooks containing English lessons marked over in red by Mr. Carrington, as well as endless drafts of poems that their author had deemed dead and banal after having struggled so much to try to knead them together; where everything had been covered in dust and filth, because it had been strictly forbidden to tidy up; where every single thing had been thoroughly soured by tobacco smoke. His room in the abbey was a dwelling place of another sort, clean and simple, only a few books on the shelf over the desk, everything in order, no decorations, nothing for comfort, and Steinn adapted himself to the monks’ habit of having nothing at hand that was unnecessary. Two large windows looked out at the abbey garden and remained open most of the time, allowing fresh air to stream in, blended with the smell of decaying vegetation and rainy soil. At the start of winter the leaves dropped from the trees, and the bare branches appeared against the evening sky like an image of man’s brain drawn on a gray tablet, while the moon sat at the edge of the forest like a bronze kettle on a shelf.