When they had sown their grain that first year, a host of grasshoppers swooped on the crops like a cloud-burst. The people tried every means to beat them off, but the grasshoppers showed no signs of moving once they had settled. People could see their precious grain, which they had gone to such pains to transport, being utterly destroyed before their very eyes, and starvation and death looming. But God, who never failed his prophet Joseph, sent the bird which the Mormons have ever since held dear; it was the seagull, and Mormons call it their bird. The gulls flew a thousand miles from the sea to their help, and ate up all the grasshoppers. And the saints of the wilderness had their first bread.
Spanish Fork was now full of homely farmhouses built of sun-baked bricks; the log-cabins were disappearing fast, and in the dugouts lived only the occasional Lutheran. Practically everyone had a best-room with a picture of the Prophet and his brother Hyrum and also of Brigham Young. On the table lay the Book of Mormon and The Pearl of Great Price. Those cultural institutions that transform a village into a town were already in existence: a community centre, Post Office and a shop. God (in the person of Zion’s Co-operative Mercantile Institution) owned the shop. His eye was painted over the shop-doors, surrounded by rays like the spines of a sea-urchin, and the slogan “Holy is the Lord.” The Church owned the community centre, and the Territory owned the Post Office. The Church owned the right to allot land; in addition to the wilderness, it owned mountains and hill-pastures where sheep could fend for themselves. The Church had also started to compete with the pagans at mining ore; and it owned the water which was led from the hidden arteries of the mountains to irrigate the fields. All the arrangements prescribed by the Church authorities, even if alterations were made in the original arrangements, bore witness, altered or unaltered, to God’s personal guidance and what was called correct thinking. Everything people earned or acquired proved that the doctrine had its origin in cosmic law. New shoes and a new hat were matter for eulogising the Church of the Latter-day Saints and the prophecies of the great leaders. Mules, these rather solemn beasts which combine the best qualities of the horse and the ass except the ability to breed—were they not remarkable proof of the Golden Book’s special guidance in all things, large or small? Who, more than the saints, had made of this unique and model creature such a useful servant? Steinar Steinsson was shown a primary school where a specially-trained English-speaking teacher was employed to instruct the common children in the learning that would enhance a man’s status in the world. These men and their wives who had lived there in dugouts two decades earlier and wrapped themselves in skins for their faith in the Prophet— could there be more tangible proof of the truth of these prophecies than such a fount of wisdom for the populace? Even the most progressive nations in the world, which had for long enough lived in the shelter of one special grace—where were their schools for the common people? Only the children of the wealthy and the unrighteous received any schooling in the Old World. Come and see for yourself one day how happy the children are to be able to listen to a man of learning! Was it not as if the children who once had been laid to rest in the sand were here being re-born into a life of happiness? Or take this pram, for example! A pram, just fancy that! Yes, all hand-made by a skilled Mormon, copied from a pram in a catalogue from New England. On four wheels, upon my life and soul. See how the superstructure is made from artistically twisted metal rods: they first go in a circle and then into another circle, sometimes like the figure 8, sometimes like the letter S. Who but counts and barons could have dreamed up such a treasure in that part of the world where correct thinking does not prevail?
“But there is one thing perhaps which proves better than anything else how far this nation has advanced, and that is the sewing machine. I could only just pronounce the word,” said Pastor Runólfur, “because I had heard it in the capital. Was there any sewing machine where you lived, in Steinahlíðar?”
“I must admit there was not,” said Steinar Steinsson.
“There you are!” said the Reverend Runólfur. “Only counts and barons abroad have sewing machines; yet here in Spanish Fork there is a sewing machine. You run a piece of cloth through it and in a trice it has become a garment that fits you like a glove. The cosmic wisdom that lives in the words of the Prophet and the deeds of Brigham Young does not manifest itself exclusively in enormous truths which can only be encompassed in the brains of fearfully large-headed University professors; no, it lives also in the sewing machines of people who yesterday had correct thoughts, certainly, but no shirt. It is the bliss of mortal man to have been led to this land.”
“It cannot be denied,” said Steinar Steinsson, “that it needs a lot of philosophy to match a sewing machine.”
Unfortunately they never got round to showing Steinar this sewing machine at the time, and whenever he asked about it later some hitch always cropped up. But nevertheless the little fellow from Hlíðar was convinced that everything there testified to the cosmic wisdom, even the cross on the Lutheran Church, because it had been broken off.
Small things and large things alike contributed to convince him. The time now came when Pastor Runólfur felt that Steinar was sufficiently convinced and began to think in terms of having him immersed, but said that he could not bring himself to have him baptized in the customary village pond which was full of poisonous trout, serpents, and insects that bit people in the leg. He said that he wanted to round off Steinar’s instruction by taking him to the capital city of the faith, which was called Salt Lake City, whatever some wits were pleased to call this holy shrine amongst cities. He wanted to show Steinar the glory of the city and then take him to one of the Elders and have him consecrated in a temple service.
“When you yourself have been immersed according to ritual,” said Pastor Runólfur, “you have the right to have any of your departed kinsmen baptized whom you think worthy of it; you have yourself immersed once for each of them, so that they have the opportunity to build a holy sanctuary in that world of light they now inhabit. Perhaps I could scribble down their names now so that we can apply for a recommendation for them from the Elder.”
Steinar tittered, as was his custom when faced with a problem, and replied after a little thought that neither his father nor his mother was among those he thought needed baptizing in the world of light they inhabited now, because he knew of no couple more patient than they in adversity nor more constant in giving to everyone his or her due; he reckoned they had been a particularly unpretentious couple. He said he had a long way to go before he would be competent to improve such excellent people’s circumstances with God.
“But,” he added, “there are others of my kinsmen I am more concerned about than mother and father and for whose sake I would gladly let myself be immersed again once or twice. First of all there is my progenitor Egill Skallagrímsson and my ancestors the Norse kings, and last but not least King Harald hilditönn of Denmark, who was the first of my line.”
Salt Lake City is a place, of course, where the highest truth is a little complicated in parts, as is only to be expected; but the more simple facts are more obvious than in other cities. It is quite impossible to get lost in it. One can see the whole city lying in its basin under the Wasatch Mountains. It is laid out according to the fundamental principles of logic and the first diagrams in the geometry book. One always knows where one is in that city; and one also knows at once in what direction and how far away other places in the city are. It is a city where the cardinal points have been revealed to people through God’s inscrutable power and grace. For a man newly-arrived from a country where the nation had grown bent at the knees from riding too much along narrow bridle-paths—was it any wonder that he was impressed by the fact that God had prescribed in public writ that the streets there should be as wide as the homefields in Steinahlíðar?
Was it likely that the streets of Zion in Heaven were any wider than these streets in Zion on earth? Steinar thought it better to pace the streets out for himself rather than have to rely
on guesswork or hearsay about it. When he and Pastor Runólfur had measured the streets at a few points and found that they were nowhere less than two hundred Icelandic feet in width, they sat down on a kerb-stone, wiped the sweat from their brows, and brought out paper and pencil and began to multiply the width of the streets by their length.
Pastor Runólfur asked whether Steinar did not want to see the house where Brigham Young kept his twenty-seven wives, this man who had laid out the city according to God’s wishes. Steinar agreed willingly and said that, all things considered, he thought it no less a feat to have so many wives than to stake out God’s City of Zion upon earth. They came to a long wooden house, in which there were certainly plenty of doors; these doors were in a row along the whole length of the house. To match them, jutting from the roof directly above each door was a little garret where each wife had a boudoir with a window. The whole house was exceptionally well-built; the outer planking was fitted together with painstaking care and painted grey with a tinge of blue. All the doors had the same fittings and the same doorstep, twenty-seven copper door-handles and as many locks. From every door there breathed coolness without any whiff of human habitation; there were no finger-marks visible on the doors or bolts. The house was imbued with some incorporeal cleanliness akin to frost-work or even mirages. At the garret-windows were the same white clean curtains, twenty-seven times over. And as Pastor Runólfur and Steinar stood out in the street holding their breaths and gazing at this smooth and silent shrine of cleanliness, they had the feeling that twenty-seven women were laughing at them behind the curtains; they even felt a little self-conscious.
Pastor Runólfur whispered, “I am ashamed to say so, but every time I look at that house I am reminded of the monster which came ashore at the Vestmannaeyjar when my late grandfather was the pastor there. It was an enormous, slimy, lump-sucker of a thing. People went for it and stabbed it with twenty-seven big knives, but all that the stabbing did was to open twenty-seven greedy maws. Sometimes I can’t help thinking about Buddha’s belly, which is inhabited by ten thousand women.”
“Although it is as peaceful here as a graveyard,” said Steinar, “and no one seems to want to bite us, it was never considered good manners in Steinahlíðar to stare up at people’s windows without making oneself known.”
“Ought we to knock and ask for a sip of water? No one could find fault with that,” said Pastor Runólfur, and began with clerical elegance to finger his cravat, which in fact had not existed since he ceased to be the pastor for Hvalsnes.
“Although I am thirsty, I think I shall refrain from having a drink in this house,” said Steinar of Hlíðar. I suggest we go on our way.”
When they had set off he continued, “I always pitied blessed Abraham, whom God forced to have two wives, to say nothing about old Solomon, whom God castigated with three.”
“Three hundred,” interposed Pastor Runólfur.
“It makes no difference to me whether it was three or three hundred,” said Steinar. “I always name the lesser number. Many a man with only the one wife is inclined to think that when God instituted the sacraments he forgot one, the sacrament of divorce. I have been married for nearly twenty years, come to that. And yet, when I stood for the first time on Bishop Þjóðrekur’s threshold and was greeted by three sisters, I realised that God is always right—just as much when he ordained monogamy as when he ordained polygamy; twenty-seven wives, one door; one wife, twenty-seven doors.”
When Steinar Steinsson first heard the Tabernacle mentioned, and was told that it was a casket, he had confused the word with “tobacco’’ and thought it was a snuff-mull. On this particular day he stood at last before the doors of this marvel of architecture, the greatest in the Western hemisphere. It was built to measurements that God intimated to Brigham at a time when nails had not yet been seen in God’s city of Zion, or any other devices for holding a building together. This building is lower in relation to its length than any other structure of comparable size. Icelanders call it God’s Word-Hall, meaning God’s mouth, because its proportions are the same as the inside of the human mouth. The faithful say that with such a mouth did God speak to the Church Fathers. The acoustics are so remarkable that if the name of the Lord is whispered at the altar it can be heard as a shout at the door. Steinar and Pastor Runólfur borrowed a pin from a distinguished-looking lady who was studying God’s miracle with a very patronizing air; and when they dropped the pin at the innermost part of the chancel everyone jumped and thought an iron bar had fallen on the altar. Pastor Runólfur went over to the lady and returned the pin to her with thanks and asked rather smugly whether she were not now convinced that Holy Wisdom, as it was called in Greek, was more present here than in other kingdoms. Steinar had now obtained permission to climb up into the roof of the building and clamber along the cross-beams and rafters to investigate for himself exactly how the All-Wisdom had built it without having to make a seventy-day trek across the wilderness to buy nails; and he was rather impressed to find that the learned architects had been inspired with the idea of using thongs of ox-hide. There was also an organ there with wooden pipes whose timber had been gathered in some far-off magic forest. While the two Icelanders were in the Tabernacle the organist came in and played on it so beautifully that they said afterwards that while the music played they had stood there as if rooted to the floor, unable to move a muscle. Although they had never heard music before, they were so impressed by the extent to which God had finally managed to lead mankind on the road to perfection that tears were still streaming down their cheeks after they were out in the open again.
In a yard a stone’s throw to the east they caught sight of a string of oxen that had just arrived with some sledges loaded with gigantic granite blocks. Pastor Runólfur said that the main temple of mankind was being built on the other side of the street there. Already, its steep walls were soaring heavenwards. This granite, which was unique in the world, was brought from a quarry in a mountain far away in the wilderness. It took a month to haul each block to the site, and teams of oxen had toiled at this task night and day for many years. The oxen stood there slavering in their harness, and still wearing their Biblical expressions as before. It was not the first time that this cloven-footed species had hauled the materials required for praising God in the way He deserves; Pastor Runólfur mentioned in this connection the Pyramids, Borobudur in Indonesia, the Ziggurat, St. Peter’s Cathedral and many other structures.
These two Icelanders stood for a long time looking at the oxen standing there with eyes half-closed in divinely exalted rest while they waited for the cud to pop up through their gullets. The builders were arranging pulleys and tackle and getting ready to unload the granite blocks.
Steinar Steinsson could not resist saying, “It’s amazing how far man’s wisdom has led him. It would be difficult to do anything but follow such chosen leaders who have shown themselves as practical as the late Joseph Smith and his successor Brigham Young.”
Pastor Runólfur did not take his eyes off the oxen. Just like the time earlier that day when they had been staring at the house with many garrets, and the pastor had alluded to the Vestmannaeyjar monster, he now made a comment which came rather like a bolt from the blue (and this perhaps was the clue to the enigma that few could explain, why such an excellent clergyman in this community of saints should be allotted no other task than that of looking after fifteen sheep which had no other merit than the fatness of their tails):
“I am not at all impressed,” said Pastor Runólfur, “at how far man’s wisdom has managed to lead him; besides, it is not very great. What does surprise me, on the other hand, is how high their folly, their downright stupidity even, not to say their complete and utter blindness, has managed to raise them. Other things being equal, I prefer to follow the folly of man, for that has brought him farther than his wisdom.”
The oxen had started to chew the cud.
20
Learning to understand bricks
In the ba
ptismal register of the temple he is entered as Stone P. Stanford. No one is very sure where that curious P came from; some think it was one of Pastor Runólfur’s notions. In the bricklayer’s yard, as it is called, clay is mixed with straw; the straw binds the clay together. When the bricks have been moulded they are baked in the sun, that sun which the Lord of Hosts has given to people of correct opinions. Under this sun the porous lumps of clay are transformed into bricks. The stones that tumble down off the mountains of Steinahlíðar on to the home-fields are as froth compared to the hand-made Utah stones sun-baked by the grace of God. This particular brickyard lies east and a little to the south of the present monument to sixteen Icelanders who were among the first to trek across the wilderness. With Bishop Þjóðrekur’s permission, Ronki took Stanford to the yard and summoned the necessary people who could teach him the fundamentals of brick-making and provide him with the materials. Steinar walked around the place and studied the bricks and fingered the alien walls like a blind man. He introduced himself to the various kinds of clay. A brick-maker must be up early in the morning and have a supply of moulded bricks ready before dawn so that the sun has enough work to do when it rises.
“The Passion Hymns say it is only the ungodly who get up early,” said a dawn passer-by, only a moderately saintly person, who said he was on his way home to bed. “In fact, only those who cannot sleep for wickedness, like Pastor Runólfur,” he added.
“I find it distressing,” said the bricklayer, “to have nothing for the sun to shine on immediately it rises. And so I am kneading a little clay.”
Paradise Reclaimed Page 15
