World Light

by Halldor Laxness

  But then she could go no further. The book fell shut and sank into her lap and slipped all the way down to the floor. “Dear God, I’ve actually read that aloud, I thought that was something I could never do aloud for any living soul. I must be out of my mind. Let me come into the warmth beside you for a little so that I don’t catch pneumonia.”

  She did not waste any time, but slipped off her shoes, lifted the bedclothes, and was in bed beside him, and the whole bed groaned as if every plank would break; she was like an army in herself and there was scarcely any room left over for him, and though she only lay half on top of him he felt as if a whole nation were lying on him. She was almost sobbing for breath, as if she were drowning. He felt sorry for her, and hoped and prayed that she would stop shivering and recover. She lay there twitching, this big, heavy person, and every now and again she flowed over him in huge billows, like surf.

  But when he touched her he found that she was bare above the knee, and then he realized at last that all those stockings had nothing to hold them up—poor girl, no wonder those broad thighs of hers were always cold. But the more he tried to squeeze up against the wall, the closer she pressed against him. There was no escaping her, she was everywhere around him, her smell filled his senses, one of his cheeks was wet from her lips. In reality it was just like the world itself which is everywhere about you and even inside you; he was no longer aware of her as the individual, Magnína, but in some way as his atmosphere and reality, and he himself was actually only a small part of her, as a fish is part of the sea, suddenly he was living her in the same unconditional way in which a fish lives the sea, nothing was more straightforward, this was the natural life. He had loved Guðrún of Grænhóll and Concordia of Felsenburg before, in daydreams when he was alone in the loft; that was the love that begins in the soul and gradually spreads outwards, it had never been essentially natural; this time the love started in the body and spread inwards, so that in a flash he thought this bulky girl to be everything the soul yearned for, everything he had had to miss in life, the world itself—at last he was no longer alone. But after all it was just like any other flash of lightning which touches the soul in the midst of melancholy; it was gone again, and she was all around him once more like a wall of treble thickness and threatened to suffocate him, her smell was stronger than ever before, she hurt him and he winced, and she rose up on one elbow, her face gleaming with sweat and her hair disheveled, and looked at him angrily and said, “What’s this, then?”

  “I can’t help it,” he said miserably, then turned towards the wall and pulled the bedclothes over his face.

  “I suppose it was obvious,” she said. “I should have known. A useless wretch and weakling and pauper like you!”

  She got out of bed and snorted; she was no longer shivering; she was hot and bedraggled.

  “Luckily I haven’t made much of a habit of going to bed with men until now, and I’m still innocent of men. And I hope to God I always will be.”

  “It wasn’t my fault,” said the boy from under the bedclothes.

  “No, I suppose it was all my fault that I felt faint and had to lie down for a little! Was it perhaps my fault that you couldn’t leave me in peace? No, I should have known, one is never left in peace by these male wretches, no matter how useless they are. But let me just tell you this, that if you ever touch me again, I shall tell my mother.”

  “I couldn’t help it,” he protested, almost in tears. “I didn’t mean it. It wasn’t my fault.”

  “I only wish that all miserable wretches were buried thirty feet underground, who can’t even leave a girl in peace on a Savior’s Easter Sunday itself,” she said, then bit her lip, grimaced, and snorted.

  She struggled to put her shoes on, picked up her book off the floor and vanished down the stairs; that evening and the next day she was ill.

  17

  When all was said and done, Magnína did not understand the spirit after all—or rather, she misunderstood it to an essential extent. She did not read world literature in order to allow the soul to hover freely in those higher spheres which an invalid parish pauper held to be the ultimate degree of perfection in life, but only to soothe or to arouse one heavy, malodorous body. He knew quite well she could not help it. She had not given herself that body, it was others who had done that; it was, in fact, an alien body which she would willingly have got rid of if she could, and he was not angry with her, either—only sad at life. Both Christianity and literature were primarily physical needs which could only find fulfillment in organs situated below the midriff. How could he, this slender parish pauper, ever become a Christian and a poet in the eyes of someone so fat? She had never despised him so much as she did after this Easter. Whenever she passed through the loft, she could not help showing her contempt for the wretch who lay there stuffing himself and pretending to be ill, year after year, making innocent people in another parish slave for his upkeep while upright, truth-loving and well-born people had to wait on him hand and foot. Every Christian person with any self-respect was bound to class such wretches with thieves, liars and scum—and in any case they would end up in prison sooner or later, thank God.

  This was the sort of diatribe he had to listen to, racked with headaches as he was, in his unquenchable yearning to escape from himself and his own worthlessness—so hard-hearted was this Magnína who had risen from his bed on the Easter Sunday of Our Savior, determined never to read to him from her book again. And sometimes when he lay sleepless at night, trembling with anguish about himself and about life itself, he would ask, “Isn’t it true, then, that God created men and will redeem them?”

  Yes, it is hard to be a poet by the farthest northern seas.

  At dusk one evening when he was feeling very low, he suddenly heard someone whispering beside his bed; he had not heard anyone coming, and it startled him.

  “It’s only me. I was only going to give you a piece of sugar. It’s for that other thing, you remember. Everything’s all right now.”

  “It can’t be right for you to give me so much sugar, Kristjána,” said the poet. “And I don’t deserve it anyway.”

  “Yes,” she said, “it’s absolutely right, because soon I’ll own all the sugar in this family, and old Magna will have to ask me for it. You see, I got a letter from him today, and we’ll be getting married soon. Thank you a thousand times for the poem and let me kiss you for it. I’ve never heard such a beautiful poem in all my life, but I didn’t want to thank you for it until I knew whether or not he was in earnest. And now he’s in earnest and I’m quite certain that you’re the best poet in this parish. I don’t care in the least if they all say you’re a deranged bloody wretch; I say it’s all a lie because you composed the poem.”

  “Thank you, Kristjána dear, I’ve always known that you were a generous girl and spiritually minded,” said the poet.

  “Listen, did you honestly mean it; do you think I’m really as pretty as it says in the poem?”

  She was bending right down over him and speaking very intimately, she was so close to him, moreover, that he himself felt that nothing in the poem had been exaggerated, and he vowed and swore that he thought her just as pretty as it said in the poem.

  “Let me kiss you,” she said, and kissed him a little. “You see, I’m quite sure that if you hadn’t been poor and everyone bad to you, you could have learned to dance and have the makings of a fine gentleman; you’ve got the sort of blue eyes and lovely hair and you’re so pale and clean and only slightly freckled, but that doesn’t matter and I’ll never forget you all my life.”

  Then she kissed him once again, and their mouths tasted sweet.

  “I can always feel within myself if a poem is well composed or not, and the moment I heard it I made up my mind to accept Jónas; and anyway that damned Júst was never really serious about proposing to me, and now the sugar won’t be spared, I can tell you, and now old Magna’s going to catch it. And even though Jónas is crazy he’s ten thousand times a better man than Júst
, and I’ve never really loved Júst very much, and it serves him right that he isn’t getting me, because he didn’t propose to me soon enough.”

  She stuffed the poet’s mouth cramful of sugar so that he could not speak, but it did not matter—it was she who was talking; this was her day.

  “So when we’re married,” she said, “we’ll take you in and you can stay with us as long as you like and lie in bed all day, and it won’t even occur to me to take a single penny for you from the parish; and you’ll have plenty of paper and plenty of books from me, and when my husband Jónas isn’t at home you’ll be my sweetheart, because I’ve always known that you’re the only person who understands me. Yes, and even if it costs me my own life I’ll repay you for your beautiful poem, as God and Jesus Christ are my witnesses.”

  In reality it was he who had conquered in this long-drawn-out and tangled love story in that house; in his very hopelessness and worthlessness he had achieved the distinction that his poem had managed to sway the right heart. It was a great encouragement, and he felt he could live on this success for a long time. When all was said and done, there was still justice in the world and a healthy common sense in life. And though Magnína insisted to her mother that Júst was the father of the child and should consider himself lucky to have escaped, it did not affect the matter at all; the main thing was that Ólafur’s poem had won a total victory and swayed the heart, which is the proper party in affairs of this kind, whoever might have fathered the child. Perhaps she had taken up with Júst because of the poem stolen from the Núma Ballads; but it was Jónas who got her finally and married her in a Christian way on the strength of an original poem by Ólafur Kárason of Ljósavík.

  18

  They married at the height of spring, and the birds were singing. Guests arrived from far and wide, the farmyard and the house were crowded, there were dogs barking in the homefield and out in the meadows. Everywhere there was talking, in the living room, in the passages, and on the paved doorstep, and women blessing this and that and everything. People also came crowding up to the loft where the parish pauper lay, and one man asked whether he would not like to sniff some tobacco, and he took a pinch of snuff and sneezed. One fat woman came and said, almost in tears, that God laid the sorest burdens on those He loved, and Ólafur Kárason was almost in tears himself because he felt that this woman understood him; but then she vanished when word came that the wedding was about to begin, and everyone went down into the living room. In reality no one had meant anything by talking to the parish pauper, none of them cared at all, no one even thought of carrying him downstairs to let him see the wedding like other folk; he was not allowed to see the wedding that he himself had brought about with his poetic talent—such is the lot of poets. He heard only the distant murmur of the singing; the fjord outside the window was blue in the sunshine with green slopes on the other side, and the birds flew past the window again and again, and he could not help thinking with bitterness of Kristjána who had said she was ready to lay down her life for him but had now forgotten him and did not have him carried downstairs, and was going away to live in another district.

  But when all was said and done he was not alone after all; almost as soon as the murmur of the psalm began, he heard someone weeping. He had thought he was alone in the loft, but perhaps one is never alone, perhaps one is never so distressed that there is not someone else weeping at one’s side, visible or invisible.

  It was a woman. She was sitting motionless across the room from him when the people downstairs began to sing, and he had not noticed her; and even now when he noticed her, he had to examine her carefully to make sure she had any actual appearance at all. Youth had faded from her cheeks and her eyes were brownish and moist like seaweed, and they began to weep soon during the first verse of the psalm, probably because whatever happened here on earth touched her or because life was so important to her—to anyone who weeps, life has some importance. She was wearing a tasselled cap, but her hair was unkempt, and she had on an old pleated skirt but not the formal costume bodice, much less a silken bow; instead she wore an old cardigan, but the patch on the left elbow was neat, and she had a new shawl over her shoulders which was obviously her Sunday-best. On the other hand she had no handkerchief with which to dry her eyes when she wept, but had to cry into her best blue apron, and it was obvious at once that she was one of those people whom God particularly loves; she went on weeping. By the time the last verse had ended she had finished crying; the pastor began the prayer, and the birds flew past the window as if out of curiosity. She looked at them flying past, and went on staring at the window for a long time; and a long time after they had flown by she said almost inaudibly to herself, “Poor blessed birds.”

  “What’s your name?” he asked in a low voice.

  She was flushed with weeping and looked younger. But she did not dare look at him because she was ashamed of having shown that she was so sensitive to what happened in the world and cared so much about life that she had started weeping. After a little while, however, she told him her name and where she lived—Jarþrúður, from Gil—and also that she had been in poor health since she was young, but that God had always been good to her.

  “Then we are both Our Lord’s crossbearers,” he said gratefully.

  “Yes, but you’re said to be so brave always,” she said. “You’re an example to everyone in distress. But what am I? I’m nothing but sin.”

  She was almost in tears again because of her conviction that she was one of the greatest female sinners of our time. “I’m sure that there is no one in the whole world who is so laden with sins as I am.”

  “Be of good heart, Jarþrúður dear,” he said. “I can see in you that you are one of those people whom God loves most particularly.”

  “Do you think so?” she asked, and looked at him with those large, distant, seaweed-moist eyes glowing with gratitude. “Oh, it does one so much good to listen to you talking to one, because everyone says you’re a national poet, like our late Hallgrímur Pétursson, who had leprosy. Now I’m sure I’ll feel well for many days. Even though I’m the worst person in the land, I’ve always known that Jesus is good. And forgive me for having begun to talk to you and defiled this blessed holy hour.”

  “No one can forbid us to talk together about God under any circumstances,” said the poet. “Perhaps we’ll never have a chance of talking together again.”

  “No, don’t say that,” she said, and was nearly in tears again. “Say something instead that I can keep in my heart every night. You’re such a great poet.”

  “Whether or not this is the last time we can talk together,” he said, and he felt a divine power swelling in him with every word, “one thing is certain—that Providence lets those who are in distress come together at the last and have something to talk about as a result. It may well be that they aren’t allowed to see each other except the once, just the one day, before they die. The loveliest flowers on earth don’t blossom for more than one day, either. I think it’s something if a person is allowed to flower, even though it’s only for one day in his or her life. How many others there are to whom God gave no sensitivity and who therefore were never unhappy and never talked together, so that their lives never flowered for even one single day!”

  “Yes,” she whispered, “now let His wise, almighty hand extinguish my life forever!”

  “For two years I’ve never raised my head from this pillow,” he said, even though this was not strictly true.

  “Yes, but you’re so young,” she said. “The Lord can easily raise you up when least expected. You’ve no idea what He might have in mind for you in the future. But I—how old I am! I’m ashamed to say it. I’m so terribly, terribly old! I could be your mother.”

  “I am seventeen,” he said.

  She lifted her apron to her face again and sobbed, “I, too, was once seventeen.” She peeped out from behind the corner of her apron and would not believe it. “No, I can’t understand at all how you can possibly
talk to someone as old as me, no, don’t look at me, and don’t look at my clothes either because I have no clothes, my mistress just lent me this old pleated skirt that belonged to her late mother-in-law.”

  “I’m not looking at your clothes, Jarþrúður,” said the poet. “I’m looking into your eyes.”

  She took her apron away from her eyes and gazed at him for a long time with a foolish look of amazement; but when she had stopped being surprised and had begun to believe that this was all true, she became frightened and asked in agitation, “But if you recover your health, then you’d never talk to me again, would you?”

  He said, “Only those who are alone and those who are distressed understand the spirit, and you are the first person who has understood me.”

  And thus they carried on their sage and pious conversation as long as the wedding ceremony lasted; about the spirit; and Jesus; and those in distress, and how God loves them above all others; and she knew various things he had never heard, and had read the whole of the psalmbook backwards and forwards for more than twenty-five years; the psalmbook was not only her sole possession here on earth, but also her sole consolation and hope, not just the book of books but almost the most precious thing in all creation. When she was feeling most distressed she laid God’s psalmbook on her weak and grief-stricken breast; it soothed the pains of body and soul. “Yes, soon they will all be gone,” she said, and smiled foolishly.

  But just then the pastor’s sermon came to an end, and during the second psalm she became so grateful and enraptured that she said she felt she had become his real mother now; and she sat down on the edge of his bed and did not cry at all during the second psalm, and said that all her life she had wanted so much to have a child and had begged Jesus with burning tears to grant her wish, but from now on she did not want to have any other child than Ólafur Kárason.