But when he saw that there was no way that he could refuse the reward, he had this interpreted to the commander:
“Esteemed sir commander! God bless France and the king of France. Tell him that I live by the sea and the soil here is scanty. My salvation is the sea. But my yawl has started to leak, because it’s so old, and sometimes I’ve thought about how I might get myself a new yawl. And I’ve seen nothing in my life that has awakened in me such an unchristian desire as the ship’s boats here on deck. Those are fine boats, my Lord, I said to myself, and if Torfi in Björg could have one of those he wouldn’t need to fear for his children’s future.”
“Now that’s an Icelander!” bawled the businessman, and he hammered his fist on the table so hard that tears of fear came to the women’s eyes.
“More tea, more tea!” said Steinn Elliði. “The cheese is like rubber, Grandmother. And how come there aren’t more of those fine cakes on the table? I hope that the guests don’t have stomachaches?”
The mandarins in China are said to take three hours to greet each other, for the rules of courtesy demand that they hop, kneel, cast themselves down and stand on their heads, sing, shout, whistle, warble, crack their knuckles, and stand on one foot in front of each other untold times before they dare to ask the news or mention politics. When Saint Francis of Assisi addressed the birds in the forest he did so halfheartedly, because he found himself unworthy to speak to God’s handiwork, and he began this way: “Forgive me, dear brothers and sisters, that I should be so bold as to disturb you! When you have finished your conversation might I be permitted to say a little something that lies in my heart?” And who has ever compared to Beinteinn from Fagurhóll for courtesy? A well-mannered man, when he bids his guests farewell, accompanies them at least out over the threshold. An even more well-mannered man accompanies his guests out through the outer doors, even to the gate of the yard. Beinteinn from Fagurhóll accompanied his guests back to their own homefields. The parish there lies far from the main routes, and therefore every visitor to Fagurhóll is received as a divine revelation. Three times Beinteinn has accompanied his guests from Reykjavík all the way from the paving stones at Fagurhóll south to the Elliða River. And that is a journey of eleven days, as from Paris to Peking on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The road crosses twenty parishes, sandy wastes, and extremely dangerous rivers. Beinteinn won’t hear of allowing his guests to ride their own horses the whole way back. Several years ago an agronomist from Reykjavík, with degrees from Askov, Hvanneyri, and Voss, stayed at Fagurhóll. He was researching agricultural conditions in the eastern part of the country and came riding on a clumsy, haggard nag that he’d probably stolen somewhere out east in the Múli district. He went and fetched two small rocks up in a ravine, hammered them together until they broke, scrutinized the fractures, and then measured the waterfall. He was received like a king at Fagurhóll, and when he left, Farmer Beinteinn accompanied him out of the yard and then rode with him for eleven days. When they came to the slope above Ártún, five kilometers east of Reykjavík, Farmer Beinteinn dismounted, and they put the visitor’s saddle on his jade and bade each other farewell with a kiss, as was customary.
“Listen, Beinteinn,” said the agronomist when they had said their farewells. “You don’t suppose you could possibly loan me ten krónur? I’ll send it back to you by post.”
Nothing was more self-evident. Beinteinn removed the safety pin from the opening on his breast pocket and took out his wallet, wrapped within three white handkerchiefs, and from the wallet took ten krónur and gave them to the agronomist. After this they parted.
Twelve months passed and the post came twelve times, but nothing was heard from the agronomist. Beinteinn had never known a debt to go unpaid, and such a thing chafed against his conscience, so he thought the agronomist might be dead. But two years later he took a steamship to Reykjavík and learned that the agronomist wasn’t dead, but had actually set up an experimental farm employing the latest methods in Kjalarnes. Poor man, to have forgotten to pay his debt, thought Beinteinn, and he took this so sorely that he set off on foot up to Kjalarnes in stormy fall weather. The experimental farm was comprised of one tomcat, a woman, and three chairs of American design. “Those few krónur were somehow forgotten over the past few years,” said Beinteinn, “it doesn’t really make much difference, but still . . .”
“That’s good luck, because just this morning I happened to buy five hundred lambs,” said the agronomist, and he rounded them up, drove them in, and gave Beinteinn a small, late-born lamb in payment for the debt. Beinteinn begged forgiveness for having had to remind him of this trifle, thanked him, said good-bye and set off again for Reykjavík with the lamb upon his shoulders. But it had started to grow dark, the weather was rough and the fall night dim, so Beinteinn decided to stop for the night at the first big farm he reached. In the morning when he woke he suddenly remembered that he’d left the lamb at the foot of the homefield the night before. But he wasn’t going to work himself into a lather about it, and instead paid for his lodging graciously, bade farewell to the householder with a kiss, and left.
“What an unparalleled delight it is to listen to the man!” sighed the madam from the Twenty-Five-Aurar Society devoutly.
But Steinn Elliði had his grandmother pour more tea into his cup and kept on eating.
“At Hvolur I spent a night with Aðalbjörn from Hrísar. He’d been a respected farmer and parish administrator in Lón. But due to his good deeds for both the worthy and the unworthy, the parish coffer was emptied, and Aðalbjörn was taken to court; he was ordered to relinquish all of his possessions, but this still wasn’t enough to cover the loss. He had six sons, strong, promising men. Two were lost at sea, another in a river, a fourth from tuberculosis, and a fifth went to America. The sixth became a scholar and drunkard down south. Because of their bankruptcy the parish administrator and his wife were forced to go begging, and the wife died of exposure. Then Aðalbjörn was alone. He is eighty-two years old. He is like a cardinal, infirm and august, uglier than anyone but to children the kindest of all men. He invents machines, slaps his thigh and says: ‘Oh my dear children, I have so many machines to invent!’ He has far too serious work to attend to give himself time to die. We spoke together for five hours about machines. He told me about seven machines that he had invented during the last few years, and claimed that they had become so much in vogue that I would find them on every farm in the Eastern District and every other farm in the Western District. Then he asked me whether I’d invented any machines. And since the answer to that was no, he entrusted me with a secret. He was, to wit, on his way toward inventing a new machine, more remarkable than any previous one, an eiderdown-cleaning machine that would surely make all of the other methods of cleaning eiderdown obsolete, and would use about seventy-five percent less labor. He had come on foot over mountains and wastelands and was heading west to Vík to have a talk with the bailiff there about this grand innovation. He wanted to try to get a patent on his invention and later bequeath his parish the patent, so that it could build a children’s school there after a time. He set off early in the morning and worried about the cough that he would get along the way, because his route put him headlong against a breeze. The path curled like smoke up a steep slope. He wanted to make it to the western side that same day. He walked on with bent back south of the lane and staggered in his steps, supporting himself with a large staff. The breeze blew through his silver white locks. A spotted dog followed him, but otherwise he was alone.”
84.
Steinn came to the breakfast table after a long morning hike and sat down at it alone. But shortly after he has begun eating, the Director’s wife walks in. She is pale as usual in the morning; her body is still a mirage, but her soul is everything; even her hands are nothing but soul.
“Good day!” he says with his mouth full. “I thought that everyone had eaten already. I walked east to Vatnsvík through the entire copse. Such a fragrance!”
She sat d
own wearily and poured herself some tea.
“I always get up late,” she said, without looking up.
“That’s unhealthy,” he said, and kept chewing.
“I usually don’t sleep until around dawn.”
“Why is that?”
She shrugged her shoulders and made no reply. Twice he had seen her appear in the hallway in the last few days, but both times she had disappeared through the nearest doorway and acted as if she hadn’t noticed him. Yesterday she’d been walking with one of her girlfriends along a path from the east; he had come from the west. But the two women quickened their pace so that they could turn up the road to Hotel Valhöll before they met him, and they disappeared into the hotel.
He acted as if he had no idea that she was afraid of him, ate easily, and kept on talking.
“Who knows, maybe I can give you some advice about insomnia, my good lady,” he said. “I’ve spent time studying homeopathic remedies and was for a time a specialist in painful mental conditions.”
She leaned her elbow on the edge of the table and ate half a biscuit out of a sense of duty to breakfast.
“You should determine never to sleep until you have reviewed all of the happy moments in your life. I guarantee you that you won’t have finished reviewing the sixth before you relive the seventh in your dreams.”
“I’ve never lived any happy moments” – her answer came like an echo out of a frigid vacuum.
“Except for your honeymoon,” said the doctor, and he gulped down an egg in one bite.
“No.”
“What the hell?” said he. “That’s a sad story indeed. Have you ever tried taking the multiplication table to bed with you? Or read Manhood by C. Wagner? That’s such a hateful book that it could put a five-year-old bull to sleep.”
“Oh, Steinn, stop it!”
But he was not about to stop; he was eager to give his wholesome advice, like an elderly bourgeois.
“The best way to deal with a disturbed mental condition at night is to accustom oneself to going to bed in alignment with the compass. All the perturbed movements of a person’s heart are caused by its not being aligned properly with the magnetic axis. As soon as one lines oneself up with the magnetic axis, the heart is calmed and the thoughts become as fair as lilies of the valley. If I were a Protestant, I would invent a religion that would aim at aligning the heart of man with this particular axis.”
“Steinn, you are mocking me! Why can’t you speak seriously anymore?”
He looked at her with wide eyes as if he were completely surprised, but there was some devil in his heart that giggled unrestrainedly. How was it possible to imagine that he could speak a word in earnest in this pestilent atmosphere?
“Am I so despicable in your eyes, Steinn?”
Finally he stopped eating and looked straight at her:
“But you certainly couldn’t think that I look upon human feelings as sacred?” he asked. “Such ludicrous vanity!”
“Then are people even more ridiculous in your eyes the worse they feel?”
“Yes,” he replied unequivocally. “I am grateful to you for wording this question so well. People are even more ridiculous in my eyes the worse they feel.”
“Is that Catholic?” she asked.
“No, it’s Buddhist.”
“Steinn, I feel that I still haven’t begun to speak to you, to your essential self. Why aren’t we allowed to see you as you are?”
He couldn’t hold back his laughter.
“I have lived my life among giants and ogres,” he said.
“Do you know what I really long for, Steinn?”
No, he had no idea.
“I really wish that we could be friends, Steinn, all three of us.”
“Three?”
“True friends, Steinn; like brothers and sisters. Örnólfur, you, and I.”
“I’ll remember you in my prayers after I’ve gone.”
“Why do you have to go? Your friends are here.”
“Friends!” he said contemptuously.
“Imagine what a great man you could be here at home!”
“Stop this shameful nonsense!” he said, and stood up.
“Steinn, you’re hiding something!” she said hotly, and her eyes started to glisten. He looked at her dumbfoundedly, unable to make heads or tails of her vehemence.
“Yes, I’m hiding something,” he said, and he left.
85.
“Det var en vas med roser.”120
Skjaldbreiður is enwrapped in coarse clouds. It has started to rain; Almannagjá is like a dark, dirty streak traversing all existence, from the mountain above down to the lake, broken in only one place by a waterfall. Otherwise the mountains are not nearly as holy as Steinn had fancied in Belgium. Of what worth are mountains? He roams to and fro along the paths through the lava, and the raindrops fall from the sky. The drops come from Heaven and land in different types of soil, like good tidings. He shuddered most to think of how he enjoyed being a wicked man, entirely contrary to his conscience. He could care less about being better. He loved the Devil by leaps and bounds more than God. He started thinking about a certain medieval prioress who had made a contract with the Devil in her cell. It was a lengthy, detailed contract. She gave herself head and foot to the Devil. To him she dedicated her body and soul, her deeds and all of her thoughts. Because it is so delightful to give oneself to the Devil – it requires neither contemplation nor concern; nothing is easier. The contract is written on calfskin. It is stored in a certain archive, and is signed by both parties.
He thought to himself: is a man the same today as yesterday? If this is so, then there exists no more merciless truth, and the hopes of the Kingdom of Heaven dwindle. “The bird flew featherless and alighted on the wall boneless. Then came a man handless and shot the bird bowless.” Meaningless.
Now for the first time in a long while he recalled Hounslow, the suburb of London where he had studied Strindberg, and said: “I’m no better off here than there!” There he had suffered from angina; there he was stuck on a spit and roasted over a slow fire like Savonarola. One night he had bitten his own tongue, causing blood to flow from the corners of his mouth. All night he had cried out for the comfort of the downtrodden, for the God whom he neither believed in nor trusted. On one side death screamed: on the other insanity howled. He prayed the Lord’s Prayer nonstop, over and over again, incessantly, without rest, like a sailor who curses when his life is in extreme danger. He prayed for twelve hours at a time, from dusk until dawn, without believing in God.
On the days when he tried to read, the letters started dancing around and turned red; they were playing; the pages burned with corposant. And dismay lurked behind the entire dance. The little that he understood were hints and insinuations predicting his damnation. Finally he had ordered James to hide every last book that he found in the house. Where? Down in the basement. The shelves were emptied, the table and the floor cleared; the furniture was poked under to see if any volumes might have crept into hiding, until finally the rooms were emptied, but for a few bugs in the corners. When it was least expected, however, a very thick old book fell down from one of the shelves that had recently been emptied. It was a train timetable; an omen, he thought; some left at 10:15 and others at 12:45. He did not doubt that the book had come like a sending,121 in a fiendish way, and terror welled up in his heart the more he thought about its contents: a conspectus of trains that transported lost souls to Yorkshire and Devonshire, Budapest and Prague. He threw it out the window.
And as Steinn drank his afternoon coffee at Hotel Valhöll, he pulled The Imitation of Christ from his pocket to see whether the saint might not have something up his sleeve. Wherein could he find lasting peace of the heart and true advancement?
“If you have finally become so sturdy and perseverant in hope,” says the master, “that you are able to submit your heart to even more hardships when it feels as if all of your inner comfort has been taken from you – when you no longer try to m
ake excuses as if you felt you were too guiltless to suffer hardship, but rather admit Christ to be righteous in all of his dispositions and worship him as holy, then you will find yourself on the true path of peace.” One cup of coffee with cakes, two krónur fifty. He killed two flies with one swat of the book and stood up.
When he came home late that afternoon he wondered why the door to his room was ajar. He hung up his wet coat and went in. The Director’s wife was standing near the table in his room, arranging flowers in a vase. He saw her profile. There were violets from the slopes, forget-me-nots from the priest’s yard, and various other flowers, all Icelandic, beautiful, and small. They grew at the heart of the country.
“Good day.”
Unsteady fingers upset the bunch the moment he walked in; her pupils were dark, but she did not blush. She looked at him and started to rearrange the flowers.
“I’d planned to have been gone,” she said.
“Are these flowers?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“What are flowers for?” he asked.
“Flowers? I don’t know,” she said, and continued to arrange them. She tried to keep the violets on the outside, the forget-me-nots on the inside, because they were the smallest. “We always have flowers here in this room. I picked them for fun, because they grow–”
It was almost bizarre how her hands had gotten smaller since she was a girl; at that time they had appeared large; now small; then, her arms had been slender; now, her wrists were cylindrical, her skin more delicate, softer, whiter. She had had braids before; now her hair was bobbed. Her neck was strong, yet had soft lines, her femininity woven with a distinctive velvet blueness, her calves stout, adamantine, and beautifully shaped. And there she stood, arranging flowers.
Finally she walked over to him and said:
“Tell me, Steinn, what we can do for you. Now you’ve been outside the whole day. We’ve been worried about how lonely you must be.”
The Great Weaver From Kashmir Page 30
