World Light

by Halldor Laxness

  “Will you forgive me?” she asked, and stroked his hair, then took her hand away again.

  She spoke softly, not loud and shrill, and she did not laugh at all. She was flushed and breathless from running, her feet were wet from the sea, and there was sand in her footprints. She stared at him with large, wild eyes as if in anguish, and that cheerful, saucy expression was gone from her mouth.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she whispered.

  He murmured her name, sat up, and put his arms round her, and when she felt him touch her she quickly moved right up against him.

  “I wish I didn’t exist,” she whispered, and buried her face in his shoulder. “Didn’t exist.”

  “What has happened?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing. Nothing. I couldn’t sleep. Will you forgive me?”

  “Will you kiss me?” he said.

  When they had kissed for a while, she said, “You haven’t got a crush on that spirit-girl, have you? Say no.”

  “No,” he said.

  “Well,” she said, “that’s all right then. A phony, pretentious angel-woman like her! When I get some flour I’ll bake you a hundred thousand times better pancakes than at Kambar. But I haven’t any boracic acid.”

  “It isn’t very kind of you to speak so badly of the poor girl,” said Ólafur Kárason. “If I hadn’t been cured at her hands, I might never have got to know you.”

  “If she can cure one single person of so much as a cold, then I’ll save the whole world from death and the devil!”

  “It still wasn’t very kind of you to jeer at us when we were walking innocently along the road, and to call me a freak. . . .”

  “Will you forgive me, or do you hate me?” she asked.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “What did she want with you?” asked the girl.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “She didn’t want anything with me. Just to talk to me about something, be–because I stayed the night at Kambar the other day. Don’t ask any more about it. Just kiss.”

  But the girl in the doorway did not want to kiss any more: “So you know how to lie after all? Who would have believed that of those blue eyes?” she said.

  “No,” he said, “I don’t know how to lie. But I don’t know what truth is, either. I always try to speak the way I think will cause least trouble to God and men.”

  “Oh, I know well enough what she wanted; there’s only one thing she wants, that spirit-girl! I’ve known her to leave a Churchyard Ball here at Sviðinsvík with a man in a snowstorm and darkness at night.”

  “Leave?” he said. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Of course she wanted to sleep with you!” she said.

  “How can you think such a wicked thing of any girl?” he asked.

  At that she nestled closer to him and said, “I really must be out of my mind. Oh, Jesus, I wish I didn’t exist,” and kissed him.

  He loved her with all his heart, eternally, and was ready to sacrifice his life for her and walk through fire and sea, and nothing, nothing, would ever, ever separate them, but she had become anxious again, even frightened, and moved away from him with a start, opened her eyes wide and asked, panic-stricken, into the blue—“Is it wicked?”

  “No,” he said, without knowing what it was he was answering. “It is beautiful.”

  “Why do I exist?” she asked.

  “To love,” he said.

  “Oh, Jesus!” she said.

  “No,” he said blasphemously. “Just you and I.”

  “Tell me I’m out of my mind,” she said. “And I’ll go.”

  “Love is always right,” he said. “Everything you do is right.”

  “I wasn’t even thinking about you. I had got the children to bed and wasn’t thinking about you at all, and daddy had started snoring long ago, and I wasn’t thinking about you at all; you didn’t even cross my mind. I was in bed and had been lying in bed for a long time. And all of a sudden I was up. Had I then been thinking about you all the time?”

  “You were thinking of making this haven of the winds the Palace of the Summerland,” said the poet.

  “I thought to myself that since the whole village says that he comes to me at night, then it’s best that I go to him one night for a change! I opened the window above my bed and jumped out, so that daddy and the children wouldn’t wake up when I went to the door. I ran straight down to the beach with a sack as if I were going to gather seaweed. Who was talking about wading through the sea? It was me who waded through the sea. I crawled round beneath the cliffs when the tide was coming in so that no one should see me, and waded through the water, can’t you see that my feet are all wet, man? I really must be out of my mind, doing that on a bright spring night!”

  “You came to bring me the greatest treasure in life and make me king over it,” said the poet.

  “No,” she said. “I came to hear you breathe. Breathe for me.”

  “Oh, you who hasn’t even wanted to laugh for me for days on end, and told me to go home instead,” he whispered in her ear.

  “You don’t laugh when you’ve got a crush; if you laugh, then you don’t have a crush,” she said, and added hahaha from old habit, but it was not laughter.

  “And today you jeered at me and set the children on me.”

  “Oh, you’re such a great poet that you understand everything, and yet you haven’t the faintest idea about anything. There’s no one like you; I can’t help the effect you have on me. I’ve never known anything so stupid, and I know perfectly well that I shouldn’t and don’t want to and won’t. You’re only seventeen and I’m eighteen, and where’s the money to come from, and yet I love you so much that I hate you, yes, God help me. Love is such a wild beast, I’m not even myself; I waded up to the knees in seawater beneath the cliffs so that no one should see me. When you’ve got a crush you’re like a criminal, God help me; I could kill someone and steal; that’s how wicked I am—can’t you feel I’m not wearing anything under my dress, man?”

  The poetess gave him his morning coffee in silence and busied herself with her housework. He did not dare to look at her, but heard her clearing her throat in that high-pitched, silver-strung voice, it was as if she were far away. All the same he felt her nearness more than ever before. He had gained new perception from his experience of the night. The world was different from what it had been; he saw no man, no woman, in the same light as before. Suddenly he was beginning to think of how this woman would be, and was at once seized by a feeling of guilt. Her face, that indefinable blend of distance and nearness, yearning and denial, curiosity and indifference, that insolubly bewitching discord of to be or not to be—all at once he felt that no face had ever mattered so much to him, that this face really mattered more to him than his own face; and he had betrayed it; betrayed her; and he was convinced that she knew it, that she knew everything.

  Yes, it was true; love was more precious than anything else. The supernatural was frankly ridiculous in comparison with the natural, in the same way in which miracles are contemptible in comparison with deeds. The living form of a young, loving woman—that is the key to beauty itself, the undertone of the world’s poetry. And the sun shone on the face of this young man, and the clamor of the gulls was carried through the open window on the fresh sea breeze; but nevertheless in his consciousness there lingered a certain sense of loss, as if he had betrayed something that was more precious even than all this.

  14

  The trawler Númi, the property of the Regeneration Company of Sviðinsvík, had been allowed to lie rusting in peace in the anchorage, collecting rats and, some said, ghosts, because they thought they had seen a blue light flickering about on the ship on winter nights. During the years when she had been operating for the Regeneration Company’s account on the best fishing grounds in the world, just offshore, she had only succeeded in amassing higher and higher debts at the bank, tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands in debts, sums which, together with the other d
ebts of this powerful company, would have sufficed to make every single villager a count or a baron. On the other hand, it so happened that all the fish fled the sea as soon as the ship appeared on the scene. Two years ago, the board of the Regeneration Company had finally hit upon the brilliant idea of laying the ship up and letting her collect rats in the anchorage instead of debts at the bank. It was now the general hope that some good man or other would want to buy the estate from the Regeneration Company, just as it stood, debts and all; but buyers were not rushing to come forward. Finally the bank had made it clear that it had exhausted its Christian forbearance, which is such a hallmark of these institutions, and was going to sequestrate the ship for unpaid debts and accumulated interest, and sell her off by auction in the near future.

  Then one morning at the start of the haymaking season, when people happened to look out toward the anchorage as the fog was lifting (for there had been a very heavy fog), the people’s trawler had disappeared completely. It was little wonder that everyone was a bit surprised—what had happened to the people’s trawler? Had she been stolen? Or had the bank come for her? People went to see the manager and asked why their trawler had vanished, but the manager only replied, in Danish, that he was no Icelander, s’help him. But later that day word came that a rat-bitten life belt with the ship’s name on it had been washed ashore farther down the fjord, and then it was thought unnecessary to make any further guesses about the ship’s fate. Rats and rust had combined to gnaw through her, and she had sunk.

  Strange as it may seem, the loss of the ship caused considerable emotion in the village; on the other hand it did not affect Ólafur Kárason at all, for he had no memories bound up with the ship, much less any hopes for the future. But he could not avoid hearing all sorts of things about the ship’s disappearance, some whispered and some uttered openly. Only now did the people realize that they could probably have lived off this ship instead of carrying rocks for the government, year after year.

  At least there had been some vague security in seeing the ship lying there, even though she was red with rust and manned only by rodents and revenants. While the ship had been afloat, it was as if the people nurtured in their hearts some obscurely reasoned hope that one day she would put out to sea with a brave crew from the village, determined to bring in a million-krónur catch from the inexhaustible stocks of the fishing grounds just outside, where other ships, some of them from distant parts of the country and others from foreign lands, harvested wealth and plenty before the very eyes of the local inhabitants. But now the ship had sunk. And when the ship had sunk, it was as if the village woke up halfway down a precipice.

  The parish officer wanted to call a meeting of the board of the Regeneration Company at once and come to some decisions, but there were difficulties involved, because the directors were not available: the sheriff lived in another fjord, Pastor Brandur was making a visitation to the remoter parishes, the doctor had been mortal drunk every night for a week, and the manager, Pétur Pálsson, was no Icelander. No one on the board cared in the least, except the fifth member, the parish officer. And since it had proved impossible to arrange a board meeting immediately after the loss of the ship, he set off nonetheless to see the sheriff, leaving no one in doubt about the nature of his errand: he was going to demand a court of inquiry into the whole matter, and call for Pétur Pálsson to be sacked as manager and preferably arrested and taken south in fetters. No one doubted that he himself would be more than willing to undertake the management of the company, especially since the parish was now on the county.

  Time passed. Finally word came that the sheriff certainly intended to come to Sviðinsvík at a suitable opportunity and hold a court of inquiry into the trawler case, but getting Pétur Pálsson sacked and taken south in fetters was reckoned to be much more difficult to arrange. Pétur had been appointed manager for five years and enjoyed the boundless confidence of the sheriff and the government, quite apart from the fact that he was the pastor’s sole supporter in spiritual matters and by far the largest purchaser of brennivín from the doctor. In certain newspapers down south he was constantly represented as one of the most notable and capable socialists in the country. And although the village never tired of flaying him behind his back, he was nevertheless the only person the village turned to and trusted when the pinch came, not least the mothers and widows, because he was a man who could not bear to see misery and was always ready to do everything he could for other people.

  What was the parish officer to do? This worthy boat-builder and crofter-fisherman, who was as honest as gold and did not know the meaning of fickleness, even though he was totally incapable of thinking and talking like an educated person, had now had enough of a good thing. When all else had failed, he hit upon the good idea of turning to the villagers, to the Regeneration Company’s ordinary members, the small shareholders and those who had mortgaged their possessions to the company for provisions, and trying to get them together for a meeting. He enlisted the support of a few interested villagers, sent out notice of the meeting, and nailed an advertisement to the telegraph pole at the crossroads, in which he explained that since the majority of the board had other things to do, he himself, as the parish’s representative to the Regeneration Company, was calling a public meeting of that company in the village hall tonight at eight o’clock, in order to combat criminal activity and autocratic conduct in the community and to pass a resolution to destroy the weeds and vipers that had been allowed to grow and flourish among the people here on the estate.

  Fortunately, this tedious wrangle for the most part passed Ólafur Kárason by—this man who thought only about spiritual values and adored beauty and worshiped love as far as it was possible. And now a love affair had been added to all this, with the special experience it brings when it happens for the first time; his outlook, in a word, was lyrical. He got his friend, Örn Úlfar, to explain to him the mysteries of the sonnet one calm night when the sea was all gold and velvet, and now he felt that no other verse-form mattered.

  But when his friend sided completely with the parish officer, that cold-hearted man who had no compassion for poor poets in delicate health who had to carry rocks, and suddenly started going from door to door to summon people to a meeting arranged by this unspiritual, obstinate man against Pétur Pálsson the manager, that friend of the spirit, Ólafur Kárason could not understand his friend any longer. “It’s probably because he always sees his little sister on her bier and feels that she was murdered,” the poet thought to himself, and was sorry for his friend and forgave him. “Perhaps I wouldn’t write poetry either if I had brothers and sisters who had been murdered.”

  Haymaking: and over the village there lay this strong fragrance of new-mown hay that one only finds on the first days when the grass is put to the scythe. He was brimming with poetic sympathy for the young grass that was being mown by a scythe, and he himself was the mower—very stiffly at first, to be sure, but improving with every day. All experience is wonderful while it still retains the freshness of novelty and is material for a poem. It is poetic to mow hay—just a little, not for too long. When any experience has lost the novelty of freshness, the poet is no longer happy. It is intensely tedious to mow for a long time.

  After a week he had begun to hope that the summer were over, so that he would not have to think about hay but could have the day to himself to compose sonnets. Sometimes inspiration seized him so powerfully in the meadow that he had to write the poem down on the handle of the scythe. Luckily the foreman was drunk and the pressure of work not so demanding. Often, early in the morning when the weather was fine and he had not yet become tired of mowing, he would recall his poems and be quite convinced that he was now a major poet even though he had not yet received any public recognition. He was determined to make his way to Aðalfjörður that autumn and have his collection of poems printed there, so that the public could enjoy the noble thoughts of a young man who had not only borne a heavy cross but had also been allowed to drink from
the cup of joy. He was sure that as soon as he was recognized as a major poet his mother would ask his forgiveness for having sent him away in a sack in winter, and he decided to forgive her and stay with her if she so wished. Perhaps she would help him to go to secondary school, and he would not only be a major poet but a man of learning as well.

  Recognition as a poet first came to him without warning one day, after great travail. That is how every poet’s major victories come about. He was standing in the meadow one morning, little suspecting that fame was now on its way. It was the same day on which the parish officer had nailed his advertisement to the telegraph pole. One of the manager’s children suddenly appeared in the mown field in front of the poet and handed him this note:

  “Present yourself tonight as a living witness to contacts with the next world and compose a good poem about the necessity of science in human society, particularly spiritualism, and bring it to the Psychic Research Society of Sviðinsvík which intellectuals and educational pioneers are due to inaugurate tonight in my drawing room. You will be permitted to read your own poem aloud in your own name in the presence of myself, the sheriff, the rural dean, the doctor, etc. P.S. Bring your hymnbook with you.”

  Was it any wonder that this orphan poet was excited, this man who had until now been the outcast of humanity because of his loyalty to the intellect? That is how the wheel of fortune can turn. He, who in spring had been lying like mouldy meat-paste in a corner in a remote valley, was now, at harvest time, being summoned by the most important man of a great estate to help establish a society; yes, and what’s more, a genuine and public scientific society of learned men and gentry to conduct psychic research, and there he was to be allowed to read a poem of his own in his own name. Often he had been on the point of giving up his chosen road. For two years he had lain helpless in bed after suffering the blows of beasts, men, and gods. But he had never given up. Now he was beginning to reap his reward; the time was at hand at last when, as he had always suspected, the spirit would be properly appreciated and would be victorious in men’s lives. Everything, everything one had had to suffer in the battle for one’s self, for the desire to exist, this one thing one possessed—everything, everything, everything was forgotten in the moment of victory, was forgotten and ceased to exist, like the baby’s first tears, the mother’s first anger, the first snowstorm. He laid his scythe aside and praised God.