World Light

by Halldor Laxness

  Eventually no more singing was heard from the next room, just a vague mumbling now and again. The husband’s name was called out a few times, but in vain. Pétur Pálsson came out of the living room, blue-black in the face and unsteady on his feet, minus his pince-nez and teeth, with tobacco stains at the corners of his mouth; he still had his celluloid collar on. He came over to the poetess, seized her hands and pressed them fervently, and spoke in a foreign language. When he had talked for a bit he tried to kiss her, but she wriggled out of his embrace.

  “You’d be better to spare a thought for this young man you left hanging about here,” said the woman.

  “My name is Peder Pavelsen Three Horses,” he replied. He talked twice as gutturally as usual, and his voice was very thick as well.

  “What’s happened to your eyeglasses, Pétur?” asked the woman.

  “I’m no Icelander, s’help me,” answered Peder Pavelsen Three Horses in Danish. “My grandmother’s name was Madame Sophie Sørensen.”

  “And where’s your hat and your false teeth?” asked the woman.

  “Don’t you bother about that,” he said. “I’m going to sleep with you tonight.”

  She went in and fetched the manager’s discarded emblems of dignity, wrapped the eyeglasses and false teeth in a newspaper and put them in his pocket, and placed the hat on his head.

  “You are the greatest poetess in Iceland,” said Peder Pavelsen, and began another handshake with the woman, and repeated in Danish, “I’m sleeping with you tonight.”

  “What for?” said the woman.

  “I love you,” said Peder Pavelsen.

  “Is that so, poor fellow?” said the woman.

  “I’m no Icelander, s’help me,” said Peder Pavelsen in Danish.

  “No, thank goodness,” said the woman.

  “That’s the sort of thing you can say because you’ve got no soul,” said Peder Pavelsen. “It’s your fault that I’m no better than a corpse in this locality.”

  He sank down on a bench and wept.

  “Don’t cry, Pétur dear,” said the poetess, and patted him consolingly on the shoulder when he had cried for a while.

  “I’m not your Pétur dear,” he said, sobbing. “You’ll be the death of me. And take from me my afterlife.”

  The words were practically drowned in sobs, and the inflections of his verbs had gone adrift.

  “If you do something for that homeless boy sitting there, you will attain eternal life, Pétur dear,” she said.

  At that the manager stopped crying, leapt to his feet, seized Ólafur Kárason’s hand, squeezed it hard, and said in broken Icelandic, “You who are homeless, walk into my heart. If you are hungry, I shall give you a feast. If you have nowhere to live, I shall give you a palace. Love is the only thing that pays. My name is Three Horses.”

  He hugged the poet to his bosom and started crying again, overwhelmed by the thought of love in general and his own love in particular. Then he shook his fist angrily in the poetess’s face and threatened in abusive and obscene language to drive her away and never let her compose his poems for him again, since she would not sleep with him. “We’ll leave this jade to her own devices, my boy, she’s never understood the Regeneration of the Nation anyway. But you understand me, and you follow me.”

  He lurched down the stairs, and the poet bade the woman good-night and followed him. When they were outside, Three Horses grabbed his arm to steady himself. He discoursed at great length about Love and swayed and hiccuped and spat and wept, but talked for the most part in Danish, so that Ólafur Kárason unfortunately could not understand very much of it. It was past midnight, and the village was abed.

  The shore road lay below a gravel-bank, but on the lower stretches between it and the beach were cobbled pitches for drying and stacking fish on both sides of the road, and at the far end of them there stood a large building right on the seashore, on its own, below the village proper. This building was grander than any man-made structure Ólafur Kárason had ever seen; nor had he ever dreamt any dream so far removed from reality that it had given him any suggestion that such a house could exist.

  What especially attracted his attention at first were the three towers on the building, for he had never seen a tower before. There was a tower on each gable, shaped rather like a giant turnip and painted red, while the midtower was a four-sided pillar with concave walls and a very small roof. But on closer inspection the whole building was equally notable. The front faced out toward the waves of the sea, but right through the center of the building there was an open passage for the winds of the heavens. On the ground floor there was a large number of windows on the side facing the sea, and each window was designed to hold only one pane of glass, even though it was as large as the wall of an average living room. But unfortunately a pitiless war had raged there with such hatred and stone-throwing that all the panes were smashed or cracked or holed; yet there was still enough broken glass left at the front of the building to mirror the afterglow and give seafarers the idea that on this shore there were castles of gold. In the upper story the windows were elongated to a Gothic point, as in superior churches, and had many small panes, which had tempted the rampant armies all the more since they were higher up and made more demands on accuracy of fire and other advanced military arts, and indeed not a single pane was still intact. It was the same story with the cheerful little panes which had once adorned the midtower. But despite the shattered windows, the poet gazed in admiration at this mighty building, and before he knew it he had begun to count the windows in silent veneration.

  “What’s that in front of us?” asked the manager and pointed at the building with a lurch to one side.

  “It’s a house,” said Ólafur Kárason.

  “What house is it?” asked the manager.

  This the young poet could not answer. He could not immediately find words for the strange feelings which gripped him as he faced the building. Even if he had said that this must be the biggest house in Iceland, that was really no reply at all; it was more likely that the house had been built by some higher being for some higher purpose that man’s wisdom was incapable of figuring out, for example as a complement to the ocean, or as an assembly hall for the storms of heaven. And while he was racking his brains for a suitable answer to the manager’s question, an old, mangy rat came crawling out through a crack in the wall, limped painfully over the paved yard, and disappeared among the stones on the beach.

  Then the manager said, “That house was built by Tóti smjör (butter) from the banqueting halls he bought from the government the year after the king came. That house is built of four royal palaces from the government, and how much do you think it cost?”

  The boy thought for a long time, because he did not know whether he ought to say a hundred, thousand or million; but then the manager asked if he were such an idiot that he could not estimate the cost of one house.

  “A hundred thousand,” the boy guessed.

  “Idiot!” said the manager.

  “A million,” the boy guessed.

  Peder Pavelsen had never known such an idiot in all his born days. Then the poet gave up guessing.

  “No, my boy,” said the manager, “when you do business with the government, you say, ‘Not a brass farthing until I’m made a Privy Councillor.’ And when you’ve become a Privy Councillor, you say to the government in Danish, ‘I’m no Icelander, s’help me.’ ”

  The manager bellowed with laughter at this witticism about Tóti smjör and the government, still swaying and lurching.

  “But,” he continued, “there was one thing that Tóti smjör never understood, even though he became a Privy Councillor and was therefore in a position to cheat the government. He never understood the present day. He was a rat. But it’s me, Peder Pavelsen Three Horses, who understands the present day. Education, science, technology, organization, say I; but above all, spiritual maturity, love, light. D’you understand me? Everything for the people, say I. I’m what foreigners ca
ll a socialist. I’m in favor of Christian rationalism. D’you know what I’m going to do with this house that old Tóti smjör abandoned like a rat? I’m going to convert it into a fish meal factory and an observatory for the people, d’you understand me? And I’m going to convert it into a theater, shops, a net-making workshop and a church, because God is eternal, whatever that fellow from Skjól says. And I’m going to convert it into a bait shed, a restaurant, a hotel, a cold store, a scientific research society, a piggery, and a residence for myself, say I. It’s me who’s going to make this building a bastion of Icelandic culture for the people, a cultural center, if you can understand that. Do you want to be my poet?”

  The manager tried to stand as upright as possible in front of the poet and glared at him with one eye at a time.

  “If I can,” said the poet.

  “I like you,” said the manager, and greeted the poet with one of those long handshakes reminiscent of a marriage ceremony. “You’re a hell of a good fellow. You can undoubtedly make verses about the parish officer and others who want to get rid of me and think I’m some sort of small fry.”

  “If I had a roof over my head I would write large books,” said Ólafur Kárason.

  “A roof,” said the manager. “It’s a sin and a scandal that a major poet shouldn’t have a roof. Major poets ought to have a roof. It is I, Peder Pavelsen Three Horses, who says so. Where would Fríða in the loft be if she hadn’t been allowed to tend my cows and support the Regeneration movement? And where would her wretch and fool and idiot be, who planned to set up a shop here and compete with me? They wouldn’t have a roof. They’d be rats. If you’ll swear to be my poet, you shall have a roof.”

  “I don’t know how to swear,” said the poet.

  “Well, in that case you can go to the devil,” said Peder Pavelsen; he let go of the poet’s hand and pushed him away.

  The poet’s upper lip began to tremble at once, and he said bitterly, “It’s easy enough to push me away.”

  “Yes,” said Peder Pavelsen. “You’re a rat. Anyone who won’t raise three fingers in the air for the Regeneration of the Nation is a rat.”

  At that the poet changed his mind and declared that he was ready to raise three fingers for the Regeneration of the Nation.

  Then the manager loved the poet again, embraced him, and wept a little.

  “Now we’ll both raise three fingers and swear in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,” he said.

  They both raised three fingers and swore in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The boy got palpitations, and silently implored God to forgive him if he were swearing a false oath. When they had finished swearing, Peder Pavelsen laughed one of those buoyant toothless laughs, and said, “The Regeneration of the Nation, that’s me, you see, my boy.”

  Then he waved his arm in the direction of the palace and said, “There you are! There’s your house.”

  “Eh?” said the poet, uncomprehending, his voice squeaky with horror in case he had sworn a false oath after all.

  “The house is yours!” said the manager.

  “Is it all mine?”

  “That’s up to you,” said the manager. “You’ve sworn.”

  “Didn’t you have other plans for the house?” asked the poet, his heart still thumping, in the hope of having the oath annulled in exchange for returning the house. “I thought you just said that you yourself were going to use the house for the people.”

  “Am I an Icelander?” asked Peder Pavelsen.

  The boy could not give this question the answer it deserved; he was tongue-tied and could not put the oath out of his mind; he had sworn a false oath. Now it was his turn to feel giddy and to have to make a supreme effort to keep his balance.

  “No, I’m no Icelander, s’help me,” said Peder Pavelsen, and raised his black bowler hat to his poet and marched away with great dignity in an unsteady curve and disappeared round the corner.

  The poet was left behind, standing on the pavement in front of his house. My God, he had sworn a false oath after all! He had developed a severe headache, perhaps his health was failing again. As far as he could see, the front door of his house had been nailed shut and barred. He looked for another door and found it, but that, too, was firmly closed. He stood perplexed and irresolute in front of his house in the night mist, and had sworn a false oath. A gray-striped feral cat came creeping through a cellar window and loped round the corner, but not without stopping for a moment to hiss in the poet’s direction.

  10

  Next morning he told the woman that he had probably sworn a false oath, but did not dare to mention the fact that he had been given the biggest house in Iceland. The woman studied him for a long time with those deep, clear eyes whose depths he could not fathom, and then asked in surprise, “Are you such a child?” At that he thanked his lucky stars he had not mentioned the house; it was obvious that since it was childish to have scruples about perjury, then it was utter idiocy to accept the biggest house in Iceland. A long time later he asked her, out of the blue, just to find out where he stood, “What would you think of someone who became the owner of the biggest house in Iceland?”

  “I wonder if you know old Gísli the landowner?” she said.

  “Yes, but he’s no landowner; he’s mad and he’s withered on one side as well.”

  “Yes,” she replied, “he’s mad and withered.”

  He was really relieved that she should have this opinion of land-owners, and almost managed to put the problem of his property out of his mind for good.

  “I own practically nothing,” he said, and smiled with relief. “I was brought across the mountain on a stretcher like a corpse only the other day.”

  “Do have some coffee,” she said. “And here’s some bread and butter. Today I’ll try to have some better clothes ready for you. When my husband gets up he’ll take you with him to see to the lumpfish nets.”

  These were tranquil early-summer days, some time before the haymaking. The woman’s husband was called Lýður. When he was sober he was usually silent and morose, because the universe, even though God had created it, could not bear comparison with the world which lives in a krónur’s worth of methylated spirits, or a bottle of cough mixture from the doctor. Without drink he treated the boy like an impersonal phenomenon; the people you see with sober eyes had a tedious uniformity. But in the evening, when he had sold a few lumpfish, he went to the doctor’s and bought some brennivín, and when he came back he was sufficiently revived to be no longer indifferent about anyone; in the spectrum of intoxication he saw Ólafur Kárason sitting in the kitchen eating lumpfish.

  “What the devil’s that red-haired lout doing here?” said the woman’s husband.

  “You keep quiet,” said the woman in her cold, thin voice, unemotionally.

  “Jade!” said the woman’s husband.

  “You go to bed,” said the woman, and stared at her husband with that large, cold look from under her high, dark brows. And when he made as if to start arguing, she repeated calmly “Bed!”—and pointed to the bedroom door; and this big, strong man who could have pulverized her merely mumbled a few harmless curses to himself, and went to bed. That was how Ólafur Kárason got a job with the Regeneration Company.

  Sometimes after a meal he was allowed to sit in the white-scrubbed kitchen and read her poetry books and other books, because she always had books in the same way that her husband always had drink. He came to know poets who were closer to the human heart than he had ever suspected was possible, and he forgot Sigurður Breidfjörð in that remarkably painless way we forget those we have loved most ardently. The poetess looked at his face and read there everything that was in the book, and the sun went on playing on his auburn hair. She did not say anything, and he did not say anything either. He was convinced that she could perceive whatever one was thinking, and so he tried to think only beautiful thoughts in her presence. When he looked up he smiled impulsively, but she did not smile back; instead she l
ooked even deeper into his soul. She silently absorbed his enquiring smile without giving an answer to anything. Sometimes he made up his mind to ask her to let him hear some of her own poetry, but when he looked up, her soul was far away; and sometimes he felt, just like the manager, that she had no soul at all, only eyes.

  He composed poetry wherever he was. His consciousness was all in verse, everything his eyes saw craved to be given syllabic shape; the poetry of existence affected him so profoundly that he walked around in a stupor and scarcely saw anything in his eagerness to put into poetic form the little he did see. The poetess gave him paper and exercise books, and then he would sit up late, sometimes all night, writing with all his might as if the end of the world could overwhelm them at any moment and everything depended on getting enough words down on paper before the sun, the moon and the stars were wiped out. He wrote down everything he saw and heard, and most of his thoughts, sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose. It could take him many hours to write in his diary a survey of one full day: everything was an experience, any noteworthy observation which some nameless person might make was a new vista, any insignificant piece of information was a new sunrise, any ordinary poem he read for the first time was the beginning of a new epoch like a flight around the globe; the world was multiform, magnificent and opulent, and he loved it. Fortune smiled on this young poet. He thought it unlikely that the guardian spirits which had opened new avenues for him this summer would begrudge helping him on his way in the winter— perhaps he would even earn some wages this summer and be able to go to the secondary school at Aðalfjörður whose existence he had only learned of recently. And his mother, who was now a person of standing in Aðalfjörður, even though she had once sent him away in a sack, weeping and helpless—she was bound to do something for him if she learned that he was on the way to becoming a major poet. He was more convinced than ever that all people were good, and he was not resentful towards anyone. All around him he heard wonderful harmonies. He saw light.