Later that evening the brothers came in and ate in front of him, smacking their lips enthusiastically, and sucking at their teeth long after they had finished their meal.
“What should one do, exactly, with a lewd blasphemer like this?” said the elder brother. “To Hell with having such a creature in one’s own home.”
“Oh, I should think the best thing is to take our dear friend into the darkness of the barn,” said the younger brother sweetly.
For three days no one spoke to him except for gibes in the third person—“Strange how people who are beaten and bruised and bound in fetters don’t just stand up and go where they would be better treated.” “Extraordinary that someone can be brought up among Christian people and never learn a sense of shame.” “Incomprehensible morality some wretches have, composing filthy lampoons about their benefactors—not content with composing harmless nonsense and rubbish, but mixing in obscenity and heresy with it.”
His supper was withheld from him altogether in the hope that such measures would teach him to write poetry that would commend itself to Christian folk; everyone avoided him as if he were a leper, and in the evenings no one came into the loft and no light was lit, just to help him to realize how wicked he was and to let him experience literally what it was like to lie in darkness; and so he lay there alone and helpless in the darkness, ravenously hungry, racked with unbearable headaches and trembling with agony of soul.
Then the elder brother, Jónas, came up to the loft one evening, lit a small lamp, rummaged behind his bed, brought out his shaving tackle, and began to hone his razor. The boy was seized by ice-cold terror, because whenever he heard a knife being sharpened he always feared the worst. But on this occasion Jónas was not planning to cut anybody’s throat, but only to have a shave. This was only small consolation, however, because the boy knew from experience that shaving, for these brothers, was always performed with the utmost ferocity and accompanied by the most foul language reminiscent of bloodbaths and cattle-slaughtering, if not of downright crime. He could never feel himself to be safe while this butchery was going on anywhere near him; it was as if a great weight were lifted from him when the champion finally sheathed his greedy weapon again. He devoutly hoped that Jónas would slouch off when he had finished shaving; he made himself as inconspicuous as possible, pulled the bedclothes over his head, and pretended to be asleep. There was no one else in the loft. But Jónas showed no signs of slouching off; he went on preening himself in front of the mirror, pulling his face into various horrible grimaces, and cursing and swearing under his breath. Finally he put the mirror back on the shelf—but he did not go out. He began to peer toward the boy at the far end of the loft, clearing his throat and spitting in his direction, as if he were addressing him. Finally he came slouching over to him, right to his bedside. The boy smelled everything that was happening through a corner of his blanket. Now Jónas was right beside the bed. He laid his terrible paw on his shoulder, and for a moment the boy was convinced he was holding an open knife in his other hand, and he let out a scream.
“What are you yelling for?” said Jónas. “I don’t see anything to yell about.”
“Dear, dear Jónas,” he implored tearfully. “Let me live. Don’t hurt me, I’m so terribly ill. In God’s name.”
“I’ll be damned, always composing obscenities and blasphemies.”
“I’ll never do it again, dearest Jónas,” said the poet. “But it seems to relieve my pains when I think about literature.”
“It’s all the same to me,” said Jónas. “The parish pays, not me. And I’ve never beaten you. Or are you daring to suggest that I’ve ever beaten you?”
“No, no, God in Heaven above knows that you’ve never beaten me, Jónas.”
“No—at least, never very much.”
“Never at all, dear Jónas.”
“At least I never knocked you out.”
“I call Jesus to witness that you’ve never beaten me, Jónas,” said the boy.
“Well, then,” said Jónas. “So why can’t you keep your bloody mouth shut instead of composing filthy lampoons about all of us here and accusing us and telling lies about us maltreating you? We who treat you so well that there is no one else in the whole parish who lives in such luxury as you?”
“Would you like me to compose a eulogy in your honor, Jónas?” asked the poet.
“Listen, aren’t you just a bloody doggerel merchant?” asked Jónas.
“Yes,” said the poet. “But when a man is both spiritually and physically ill, one becomes a poet involuntarily; you simply can’t help it.”
“Yes, you’re just a useless wretch like all the others.”
Now there was a short pause in the conversation, until to the boy’s astonishment Jónas asked directly: “Have you ever in your whole life heard a more rubbishy bit of poetry than this?
“ ‘Your love I never sought to buy
With words as precious tokens.
Your heart knew what in mine did lie—
In silence love was spoken.’ ”
The boy recognized at once the verse from Sigurður Breiðfjörð’s Núma Ballads but did not dare to express an opinion, for he understood that Jónas was against the poem.
“Can’t you open your trap to answer, or do you want me to give you a hiding? If you don’t say at once whether it’s good or bad I’ll soon show you what you’ll get for it.”
“It’s good,” the boy whispered in a trembling voice.
“No, to Hell with that, I’m not going to let myself be treated like this in my own house! It would serve you right if I gave you such a hiding that there wouldn’t be a bone left unbroken in your body—to say that this wretched doggerel and obscenity about an honorable girl who is no damned concern of yours is good poetry, when it’s by that lecher and good-for-nothing Júst, what’s more, who’ll never be master of this household!”
“But that poem,” said the boy. “It’s by Sigurður Breiðfjörð; I saw it in print in the Núma Ballads .”
Jónas stopped cursing for a moment and his face became completely expressionless, as if the news had paralyzed him; and finally he said dully, “No, you’re lying.”
“As I live, it’s the truth,” said the boy.
“Never in all my born days have I heard anything so filthy! To think that a wretched swine like that should be called one’s own brother—stealing poetry from a man lying dead in his grave in order to buy his way into her favor! You see, she promised to sleep with the one who first composed a poem about her. And that’s the difference between us brothers, I’m honest but he’s a thief, and if it isn’t breaking the law to steal poetry from a dead man, then I don’t know what stealing is; and stealing’s not the right word for it either. It’s grave robbing, and what a bloody fool I’ve been, I could just as easily have done it myself.”
When Jónas had reproached himself for his folly for a while, he pulled a plug of tobacco out of his pocket, bit off a piece, and then offered the plug to the boy. “I order you to take a bite,” he said, and the boy did not dare to refuse.
“Listen,” he then whispered, his mouth bulging with tobacco, and leaned over the invalid. “Listen, have you ever tried your hand at composing a proposal to a woman?”
Ólafur Kárason was covered in confusion and answered inaudibly. “No, I suppose it’s too much to expect you to have the brains for that,” said Jónas. “Obviously you’re impotent, like all invalids. But it can be hellishly difficult, even though you’re as fully virile as I am, to put together a poem to a woman and get it to rhyme properly—even when she’s more or less offered to sleep with you. To get it to rhyme properly, man, that’s the hardest thing about poetry, even when you’re going mad with frustration, even though you start the moment you get up and try all day and lie awake far into the night. I would rather pay my worst enemy twenty-five aurar than have to toil at that myself.”
“I’d be more than happy to compose a little poem to her for you, if you like, Jónas,”
said the poet. “And it won’t cost you a thing, either. That’s the least I owe you for having been so good to me always.”
“I insist on paying,” said Jónas. “I’m an honest man. I’m no grave robber. At the very least I shall order Magnína to give you some food at once tomorrow morning, like any other person outside the family. But if you put any obscenity into it I’ll kill you; make it so that it’s easy to understand, and remember to work her name into the poem, and mine too, Jónas Bjarnason, sheep-farmer and boat-owner at Fótur-undir-Fótarfæti here in this parish, so that she can see that I composed the poem to her myself, and that my poem wasn’t stolen from a dead man in his grave like my brother Júst’s poem, do you hear me?”
“What’s the girl’s name, if I may ask?” said the poet.
“What’s that got to do with you, you fool? It’s me who’s composing the poem, not you. It’s me who’s the poet, in fact, not the devil Júst, and I command you to put into the poem that Júst is both a reactionary, a thief, a traitor, and a rebel against me and his mother, and that he will never succeed in having charge of this farm. And put into the poem that he would soon ruin this farm completely with his extravagance and improvidence if he was ever allowed to run it. And she’ll soon be for it if she lets my brother Júst take her, lock, stock, and barrel, before his mother’s very eyes, as she did last night, and all for a poem he stole from a dead man; and for God’s sake don’t forget to put it into the poem that she’s a bloody mare who’s been playing merry hell from morning to night ever since she came of age and never given a clean-living fellow a moment’s peace, always biting and kicking; and that my brother Júst is a year and a half younger than I am, and that I’m the rightful head of this household, and that she can have plenty of figs from me, and brennivín as well, but never to excess up in the hayloft until she’s as tight as a tick, as she was with Júst, who will undoubtedly end up on the parish; and tell her that she’ll only have herself to blame if she lets him drag her into destitution, and you can be as coarse as you like to her and say that I’ll kill her stone dead, so help me—do you hear me?”
When Jónas was gone, Ólafur Kárason composed in the darkness this “Poem to the Dearly Beloved”:
I know a girl who far outshines all others,
A lively filly in a herd of mothers;
With lovely eyes and legs so neat,
She neighs and bites and kicks her feet,
Oh, maiden sweet!
Sweet buds of Christian love will flower
Around her bower.
They’ve all been trying hard, I know, to win her,
But none has managed yet, I think, to pin her;
Until she found a man to keep,
A boat-owner who handles sheep,
Both wise and deep.
Sweet buds of Christian love will flower
Around her bower.
He’ll give her brennivín in moderation,
Sweets and figs and fruit from every nation;
If she doesn’t lose her charm,
He will give her Fótur, his farm,
And his strong arm.
Sweet buds of Christian love will flower
Around her bower.
Next morning the pauper was given food to eat, like other people.
12
Shortly after New Year the brothers abandoned their battlefield at home and left for distant fishing stations. There was not much talk about their departure beforehand; their mother saw to their gear herself, and then they were gone, leaving behind the womenfolk and the poet. The older women and Kristjána shared the work in the barn and feeding the livestock; Magnína did the cooking for the household; and the poet lay under the sloping ceiling and waited for the sunbeam. But when Magnína was left alone in the house, she often sat upstairs in the loft on her mother’s soft bed and stared at the frostwork on the window and yawned and sniffed and counted how many pairs of stockings she had, and perhaps changed her stockings or put an extra pair on. She was usually chewing or munching something. Some days she would wash her face, and behind the ears as well. Then she would pull her feet up on to the bed and lie down on her side and fall asleep; perhaps she had left a pot on the stove, and she would wake up at the smell of burning which wafted up from the kitchen into the loft; the porridge would be scorched.
Often when she was preening herself in the loft at midday, the boy wondered whether he should dare speak to her to pass the time. He yearned so much for the company of a living soul. Most of all he longed to talk about the Light and the Spirit. He looked at her furtively, sidelong, and tried to size her up from the point of view of Light and Spirit. He asked himself, Could there be a secret chord lurking somewhere deep in that dark flesh?
After the brothers had gone she made a habit of coming up to the loft at bedtime and sitting at her mother’s bedside; they talked together in undertones, but the invalid was curious and sharp-eared like all those who are on the outside of the world. On Magnína’s side the conversation to begin with was all more or less harmless criticisms of some people, she was never entirely satisfied with some people, probably because she was not satisfied enough with herself.
But one night the tune changed. Something had happened; the boy caught a hint of some long-drawn-out tale of crime, with big, fat, heavy sighs and frequent invocations to Jesus above Who knew it was all true. The mother tried to make little of it for a long time, but in the end she fell silent, so cogent was the evidence. Then Magnína said, “Didn’t I tell you in the autumn that this would happen if you let that hussy stay?”
The mother said nothing.
“Didn’t I perhaps warn you about those whore’s eyes of hers?”
And when the mother still made no reply, the daughter grew impatient and said loudly, “You just say nothing!”
“I don’t see that it’s any use saying very much,” said the mother.
“I can believe that!” said Magnína. “There’s nothing much said to some people. Some people can do anything they like. It’s a different story for other people. Decent people are never allowed to call their lives their own all their born days. Decent people have to live and die like haltered beasts.”
“Which of the boys could it have been?” said Kamarilla thoughtfully.
“Which? As if it was only one or the other? No, if it had only been one of them I wouldn’t be saying anything. But since when have whores like that been content until they have reduced everything in trousers around them down to their own level? My God in heaven, what have I done to deserve this!”
“Oh, it’s just the way life goes, Magnína dear,” her mother said. “We just have to take that sort of thing with understanding.”
“All right, then,” said Magnína, “if that’s the way life goes, then it’s best to let this immorality remain here. But one thing’s certain, I’m going away from here.”
“I don’t like driving these two poor wretches away, mother and daughter, with the fishing season just started and no man on the farm, apart from the parish pauper over there in the corner.”
“Yes, I know, that’s you all over, you gather round you evil-minded harlots and useless parish paupers, but your own children whom you have taught to live a decent Christian life you drive from home, out into the snow in the middle of winter. But to get a decent man on the farm, a clean-living man who’s good with animals and does his work honestly and leaves other people in peace—that’s something you can’t understand. And I’m sure no one bothers to feel sorry for me, my brothers’ own sister, having to cook and serve food to this creature who has degraded them both, yes, and on top of that to have to listen to my own mother finding excuses for her, a harlot, pregnant by any male who comes along, in the middle of the highway so to speak, while other people are made to pine away like some sort of outlaws in their own family home.”
Magnína had now begun to sniff abnormally often; soon she had started to cry, and the boy heard her wailing over and over again between her sobs, “Yes, I’m just like
any other poor, lonely wretch.” He did not dare on any account to sit up in bed and look, but he had a great desire to see how this big, bulky girl went about the business of weeping. At her weeping he felt his heart beat faster; he was strangely sensitive to weeping, and for some mysterious reason he felt affection for those who wept, especially those who wept because they were alone. He felt that all those who were alone were kin to himself, and now he had suddenly begun to feel fond of the daughter, Magnína. It is a remarkable experience when someone we do not love is suddenly revealed in a new light. He had actually never known this girl, and now he knew her. Never understood her, and now he understood her. All of a sudden he realized that they shared the same road, two lonely people; and at the same time he realized that it was not just hardship, loss of parents, poetry, the parish, and a cross to bear that made the individual lonely, but also thighs that were too fat, sugar, rolled tripe, pickled lamb fries, brisket, mother-love, hope of an inheritance, and happiness.
Human beings, in point of fact, are lonely by nature, and one should feel sorry for them and love them and mourn with them. It is certain that people would understand one another better and love one another more if they would admit to one another how lonely they were, how sad they were in their tormented, anxious longings and feeble hopes. Magnína could also find consolation in the spirit, that good refuge for the wretched, the ones who were alone but lacked the courage to be so.
13
She sat in the loft next morning, unwashed and uncombed, and stared at the frostwork of winter, dejected, a little red-eyed, as if she had slept badly; yet she did not yawn, but moved her lips a little every now and again, as if she were speaking. The gray cat came over with arched back and tail on high and rubbed itself, purring, against her leg; she gave a start because she did not realize what it was—but it was only that damned cat.
World Light Page 9
