World Light

by Halldor Laxness

  “Don’t worry about that, old boy,” said the manager. “The one who always pays for everything in Sviðinsvík will pay. The main point in this business, from my point of view, is that God should forgive us as we forgive our debtors.”

  So it was decided by both the spiritual and temporal authorities that both God and men should forgive Satan and Mósa in accordance with the Lord’s Prayer; it was proclaimed that it was not in the power of humans to judge those who lived in the vale of sorrow.

  One day late in September Pétur Pálsson the manager set off on an expedition up the mountain with three laborers from the estate. They took with them pickaxes, spades, crowbars, and brennivín. There are no reports of their journey except that they were away all that day. That evening they did not return from the mountain. People waited up for them far into the night, and some people began to get certain ideas. Some voiced the opinion that the ghosts’ theological drivel about forgiveness at the Psychic Research Society had been nothing but lies and deceit—all that the couple had wanted was to lure people up to their cairn and murder them.

  But those who were up early next morning had the consolation of seeing Pétur Pálsson come riding down off the mountain, admittedly somewhat the worse for wear, extremely muddied, without his hat, his teeth and his pince-nez, but undeniably in a comparatively unmurdered condition. And though he had lost his outer emblems of dignity and was so worn-out that he could scarcely sit on his horse, his journey had not been in vain. Across the pommel of his saddle he was carrying the bones of Satan and Mósa in a bag. Although his outer dignity had gone, his sight, hearing, sense of smell, taste and feeling all gone, the body’s sense of balance disturbed, the laws of gravity in disorder, and heaven and earth threatening to disintegrate, there was nothing which could make the manager part with this ultimate treasure of the soul, this symbol of forgiveness and current, spiritual maturity and light. The last seen of him that morning was when he clambered off his horse at his door, crawled to his bedroom with the bag and locked himself in with a key. He was not seen for the rest of the day. That evening the coastal steamer called at the harbor on her way to the capital, and then the manager was observed to embark, accompanied by the pastor and the secretary, who bade him an affectionate farewell and wished him a good and successful journey.

  As for the gravediggers, they came straggling back to habitation one by one as the day wore on, two of them on the other side of the mountain, the other on this side, and had lost their horses. They were in poor shape; they had spent the night in the open in slush and autumn darkness, crazed with drink and very ill; but they had little to report about the opening of the cairn, whether it took a long time or not, except that one of them had a very vague recollection of having caught sight of a horse’s tooth. On the other hand, the pastor gave notice on the church door and the telegraph pole, by agreement with those properly concerned, and by leave of the bishop, that next Sunday, from this parish church, the funeral would take place of the luckless bones of the late Sigurður Natansson and the late Móeiður, which had in accordance with their own wishes been disinterred and brought to Sviðinsvík.

  22

  But while all this was going on, there was one person who was walking about the estate with fifty krónur in his pocket and did not care at all—the poet Ólafur Kárason. When it came to the bit, he had not thrown this large sum of money out of the window after all. Certainly he knew in his heart that there was something odd about slaving away all summer without anyone mentioning payment, and then getting a vast sum of money as a reward for maltreatment, but all the same he was determined to get himself a pair of boots. If footwear were available in accordance with justice, then who would be wearing shoes?

  The secretary was leaning against the writing desk behind the counter, poring conscientiously over a large, closely written ledger filled with the gravity of the world. The shop occupied a small room at one end of the Privy Councillor’s palace, with entry through an uninviting door. There was no sign, either on the door or the window, to indicate that activity of any kind went on there; indeed it was late in the summer before Ólafur Kárason discovered this modest commercial enterprise in his own palace. He had never set foot across its threshold before now.

  “Good-day,” he said.

  Most of the shelves were empty, but the stocks that were visible to the eye were limited to crumpled strips of moldy shoe leather, a few packets of five-inch nails on a shelf, a few cups and saucers with incredibly colorful raised roses on them, gray-white gossamer-thin corpse stockings that could also be used by women, all bundled together in a heap on the counter, and three extremely broadbrimmed straw Mexican hats. Judging by the smell, most of the trade seemed to consist of petroleum and creosote.

  After a long pause the secretary looked up from his serious reading, swallowed so that his Adam’s apple took a steep dive; he pushed his rusty spectacles higher up his nose, looked at the poet for a long time and finally said, “Mm—good-day.”

  “Do you have any boots here?” asked the poet.

  “Mm—not that I know of,” said the secretary.

  “I would very much like to buy a pair of boots,” said the poet, and smiled apologetically.

  “Mmya, just so,” said the secretary. “That is undeniably a rather peculiar desire. Or at least, as far as I can see, you are wearing shoes on your feet. Mm—on the other hand we have here some quite good pieces of leather for those who have no shoes.”

  “Aren’t there any clothes for sale in the shop here, then?” said the poet.

  “Clothes?” asked the secretary. “Might I ask what you mean, young man?”

  “Clothes to wear,” said the poet.

  “Clothes to wear?” echoed the secretary. “Not that I know of.”

  “I don’t suppose one could buy a scarf?” asked the poet.

  “A scarf,” said the secretary. “I don’t know what that is; I’ve never owned a scarf. Mm—on the other hand we have some light-colored women’s stockings here as you can see. Mm—and there should be some shoelaces somewhere, if they haven’t rotted, so we’ll say no more about that. But anyway I have a little business with you on behalf of the manager, so it’s just as well I saw you.”

  The business was that since other poets were not back yet from their summer jobs or the herring, apart from those who had fallen prey to hysterical whims and eccentricities, the committee of the Psychic Research Society had agreed to get Ólafur Kárason to compose a hymn on the occasion of the funeral next Sunday. If the hymn turned out well, the secretary himself was to write it out on duplicating paper and make several copies of it and have it distributed, so that the congregation could sing it at the church service.

  “I wrote a poem once this summer, but when the time came no one wanted to hear it,” said the poet.

  “It was the sheriff who decided that,” said the secretary, “and it didn’t really matter, because that was an unimportant occasion compared to the ceremony which is to take place next Sunday. The whole nation will be watching what happens here in Sviðinsvík on Sunday. And it’s also extremely likely that various foreign countries will be taking notice of it, too, at any rate, Great Britain.”

  “Really,” said the poet, without enthusiasm.

  “Mm—you say ‘Really,’ young man?” said the secretary. “That is undeniably a rather peculiar reply. Might I ask what you mean by that word?”

  “I mean that I’m such an insignificant poet that it isn’t worthwhile getting me to compose a poem,” said Ólafur Kárason modestly.

  The secretary gave the poet a stern and searching look and finally said, “I no longer understand young people nowadays. It’s as if nothing serious or important makes any impression on young people any longer. The modern craze seems to be to squander money needlessly if possible. But luckily it isn’t possible. Even you, young man, who are said to have a poetic bent, yes and some say you even possess a modicum of intelligence, you just say ‘Really’ when you’re invited to take part
in a ceremony which is destined to revolutionize the religious, scientific and moral life of the nation.”

  “I have so little education,” said the poet.

  “It doesn’t need any education to understand the glad message of forgiveness, young man,” said the secretary. “Judge not, that ye be not yourselves judged—these words weren’t spoken to the educated, but to the human heart. Nor does it need any education to understand the science of the afterlife; all that is needed for that is a human soul.”

  And before this young poet realized what he was saying, in his ignorance and lack of conviction, he had blurted out the words which were at once the most utterly forbidden and the most unforgivable of all words which the human tongue could utter in Sviðinsvík; he said, “If I am to tell you the honest truth, I have grave doubts about whether I have a soul.”

  The Adam’s apple of the man behind the counter seemed about to plunge below his diaphragm, and the spectacles also came right down to the tip of his nose. First he looked at Ólafur Kárason absolutely rigidly, then he turned aside abruptly as if he were going away, then he opened his mouth and screwed up his eyes as if the stars were hurtling down from the firmament, finally he coughed weakly into his hand. He looked like a frightened puffin which was trying to do everything at once to save its life—swim, fly and dive. Eventually he assumed a cold official expression and asked in an impersonal voice, “Might I ask, isn’t Pétur Pálsson the manager your benefactor?”

  “Yes,” said the poet.

  “Is he perhaps familiar with the mm—independent and undeniably rather peculiar views you have acquired for yourself on important matters here this summer?”

  “I don’t know,” said the poet.

  “You presumably don’t feel you owe any debt of gratitude to the manager?” said the secretary.

  “Yes,” said the poet. “And indeed I’m quite prepared to compose in his honor as fine a poem as I am capable of, any time at all, for instance for his birthday, or at Christmas. But to compose a eulogy in honor of ghosts like Satan and Mósa—I’m not enough of a poet for that.”

  “Mmmmm—you need say no more,” said the secretary. “This is the second time today I have received the same answer; on the first occasion it also came from a person not far removed from the generous hand of Pétur Pálsson. One begins to understand who have been conspiring together all summer at his expense. This isn’t the first time that Pétur Pálsson has nurtured snakes at his breast. But fortunately there’s no need to explain to him in what direction materialism is bound to lead the individual.”

  An unhappy tobacco addict came into the shop and begged, almost in tears, for a little tobacco to soothe his soul. But the secretary had no knowledge of any poison being available there, although there were some cigarette papers left over from the Privy Councillor’s time, somewhere up in the loft, but he was afraid the damp had got at them. The poet used the opportunity to sneak away.

  In this shop there was really nothing for sale except the soul and what pertained to it—forgiveness, the afterlife, and so on. The poet stood on the shingle with a warm fifty-krónur note in his hand and a troubled conscience as if after a murder. He knew in his heart that something had just happened which would bring in its train an irrevocable judgment on his future. He had not been content with saying that terrible word “really,” but had also cast doubts on the soul and had called the two saints “ghosts.”

  Gradually, Ólafur Kárason began to understand that it was more difficult to be a poet in the world we inhabit than many people think. One can see things this way, one cannot see things that way; speak this way, not speak that way, entirely according to who gives one food to eat. How did Jónas Hallgrímsson* and Sigurður Breiðfjörð manage to be poets in such a world? What did they say if they were asked to write a eulogy to a ghost? Poets should drink to make them mad, the station owner had said, and had sat down astride the poet’s chest with a bottle in his hand; but they should not get anything to eat. What was the position in regard to Jónas Hallgrímsson and Sigurður Breiðfjörð? Did they get enough to eat? Or did they get too much to drink?

  The anger of Pétur Pálsson the manager and of other good men menaced him; remorse for these ill-advised, light-hearted words to the secretary assailed him. Perhaps, despite everything, he ought to try to cobble something together about the late Sigurður Natan and the late Móeiður, in order to buy himself peace. In Rome one must do as the Romans do. He sat down on the beach and tried to think about this subject for a poem. But no matter how hard he tried, he simply could not derive any inspiration from this dreary couple. They remained the two most insufferable ghosts he could imagine. Could he then not forgive Satan and Mósa like the manager, like the pastor, and the secretary, like all good men—probably the sheriff, too—since they had been dead for two hundred years and there was no way of punishing them more than had been done already? Why was it that he could not be good, could not love them and understand them and forgive them and take them to his bosom, these two unhappy departed souls? Why was it that he felt sick?

  23

  A pitch-dark autumn night, without a moon.

  He had been allowed to sit in the kitchen and read a book by the woman’s lamp; her husband sat at home with the newspapers, without a drink; nothing was said. Then the evening was over. Ólafur Kárason got to his feet and said Good-night. But no sooner was he outside the door than someone came up to him from the shelter of the house, seized his arm in a fierce grip, and uttered his name in a breathless whisper: an agitated woman; he thought he could sense her heartbeat in the darkness, unnaturally fast, her manner unbalanced and ethereal.

  “I have so much to say to you,” she said. “I thought perhaps I wouldn’t find you.”

  “What do you want with me so late?” he said.

  “Why have you stopped believing in me?” she asked, without any preamble.

  “Was that all?” he said.

  “That all? Really? Was it so trifling, then, to lead you out into a homefield, fully recovered, this spring? Have you forgotten the night we sat among the sheep and understood one another utterly, even though we had never met before?”

  “No, órunn,” he said. “I’ve told you already that I shall never forget it.”

  “Shall I tell you, Ólafur—it was the only time I’ve felt deep down, deep inside myself that Jesus Christ was right. Believe. Believe. Believe. Tell me now, do you think it’s all a lie?”

  “I have difficulty in thinking as quickly as you, órunn,” he said. “You think too quickly. I don’t understand how you think.”

  “D’you know that I’m going to England?” she said.

  “Really,” he said, and bit his tongue a little afterwards.

  “I’ve never known anyone to become so corrupted in one summer!” she said. “You don’t believe anything any more.”

  Silence.

  “It’s quite possible that my psychic phenomena aren’t all genuine, Ólafur, but what am I to do when there are spirits with horns and cloven feet all around me?”

  Silence.

  “Why don’t you say something? Am I such a wicked person, then? What a damned fool you are! I can tell you that I have every right to talk to you, because I’m many thousand times older than you are. I could almost be your mother.”

  Silence.

  “I know perfectly well what you’re thinking even though you don’t know anything about what I’m thinking. But tell me something. How is one to have any respect for a world where nothing else matters except who can lie the most plausibly and steal the most?”

  Silence.

  “You don’t believe me, but can I ask you something else? Do you perhaps think that Júel J. Júel owns all the fifty-krónur and hundred-krónur notes he carries around in his pockets? No, he has stolen them all. I don’t care what you say. I’m not yielding to anyone. I’m going to England. Am I a pig?”

  “órunn,” he said at last. “You’ve been drinking.”

  “Yes,” she
said, “I’ve been drinking water. Mad people drink water. Wicked people drink water. Pigs drink water, worse luck.”

  “I desire nothing so much as to understand you, órunn,” he said. “I know that there is something very great in you, and I can well believe that you are destined to become world-famous. But the more famous you become, the harder I find it to understand you.”

  “It’s said that people will always hate those who save their lives, and I know perfectly well that you hate me, whatever you say. And yet, yet, I’m standing here in the roadway tonight to save your life for all eternity, all eternity . . .”

  “órunn, I wish I knew what to say to make you stop talking the way you talk. In the first place, I don’t hate any living person; in the second place, I don’t know what hate is; and in the third place . . .”

  “Yes, and in the third place you’ve always got something to say for yourself when you want to,” she said. “But if you care for me at all, why wouldn’t you compose a poem? Why did you answer the secretary with mockery?”

  “Mockery?” he said. “I may well have answered stupidly. Can I help it if I have no education? But to call it mockery to say that one doesn’t know what the soul is—that’s being more touchy than I can understand.”

  “D’you think I don’t know that the two of you are conspiring to work against us and humiliate me, that cow queen and you? You pretend you don’t have souls. You talk about ‘ghosts.’ But have a care, say I. I utter this curse and lay this spell, that one fine day you shall have souls. And that day you will both come crawling on all fours like ghosts to órunn of Kambar!”

  To be sure, he had stopped being afraid of her curses and spells, but nonetheless he felt uncomfortable in her presence and valued neutrality and peace more highly than ever before.

  “Let’s meet again tomorrow in broad daylight, órunn,” he said. “People talk more reasonably in the daytime than at night.”