World Light

by Halldor Laxness

  “Could I perhaps have a word with Pétur?” asked the poet.

  “If it’s the manager you’re referring to, I don’t know whether he’s ready to receive visitors,” she said, as if the manager were some kind of duchess.

  Eventually the poet was allowed in to see the manager as he sat in his private office poring over large documents and muttering figures in an undertone, with his new hat on his head, sucking a cigar with a lordly expression of hauteur which seemed to have been borrowed from the south because it did not really belong on his own face. The poet felt he did not know this man; he was almost becoming afraid of this new manager in advance. Finally, though, he had the nerve to clear his throat, take off his wet cap, brush his hair from his forehead, and say, “Good-day.”

  The manager went on for a long time mumbling tens and hundreds of thousands and writing these figures down on various sheets of paper with an authoritative and responsible expression and groaning. The poet counted up to two hundred. Eventually the manager laid down his pen and said sharply, “Good-day.”

  “Good-day,” said the poet again.

  “Yes, have I not just said Good-day, man?” asked the manager. “As far as I’m aware I’ve already said Good-day. Where are you from? And what d’you want?

  “D–don’t you recognize me?” said the poet. “My name is Ólafur Kárason. I’ve been with you this summer.”

  “Ólafur what?” asked the manager. “With me? What’s all this drivel; no one’s been with me this summer. Tell me what you want quickly; I haven’t any time.”

  “Have you then forgotten that you’re my benefactor?” said the poet.

  The benefactor sucked at his half-chewed cigar and let out a cloud of smoke.

  “I was going to ask you if it was possible for you to do something for me this autumn, as you did in spring,” said the poet.

  The manager replied, “I have always been prepared to sacrifice everything for a good cause. But those who have no soul, I reckon it’s best to bury at once. That’s always been my opinion, my lad.”

  He stuck the half-cigar into his mouth and pulled again with all his might so that the smoke lay like a fogbank round his head.

  “I composed a long poem this summer, but no one wanted to hear it, so I thought perhaps the same thing would happen this autumn,” said the poet, who realized at once which way the wind was blowing.

  It then transpired that the manager recognized the boy perfectly well. He said that all excuses were unnecessary—“I know exactly what words you used in front of my right-hand man about this matter. Those who work against the cause of the estate have to support themselves. I’m no idiot, if you must know.”

  Until now, Pétur had been speaking in a rather impersonal managerial style, but now he abandoned this boring tone, banged the table, and went on: “D’you think I don’t know that you and that p–person I’ve been keeping off the parish for two years have been conspiring to make me look ridiculous here on my own estate and to mock my most sacred ideals, and using the opportunity while other poets who are a thousand times better poets are not yet back from working at the hay harvest or the herring, like for instance Reimar Vagnsson, and refusing to compose an ode in honor of those whom God has forgiven, and calling them ghosts and saying to my right-hand man that the soul doesn’t exist? You must think I’m just one of these damned small fry! But you’ll find out that those who won’t use their poetic talents for the spiritual rebirth of the nation, and who betray me at a sacred hour—they’ll learn what it’s all about. I hold you on a par with that wh-whore and her drunkard who didn’t even have the energy to spread dung on the homefields, to say nothing of making people work. It was reckoned an achievement this summer if you were seen straggling into the meadow before midday, while he himself was lying in bed with a hangover. No, from now on there won’t be any kid-glove treatment on my estate, if you must know, my lad. And incidentally, since you’ve got the effrontery to show your face in front of me, let me ask you one thing—who set fire to the house?”

  The poet felt giddy and replied in falsetto, “I don’t understand it; it’s quite incomprehensible. I was out for a walk along the seashore with órunn of Kambar . . .”

  “I’m not concerned about any órunn of Kambar, and anyway that girl’s left this estate and is going abroad. I ask, what do you know about it, as the only person who went near the building that night?”

  “I didn’t go near the building that night.”

  “That’s a lie!”

  “I swear it. I sat all evening in the loft with Hólmfríður, and was reading a book.”

  “Yes, d’you think I don’t know that you’ve corrupted one another with lies, slanders, insinuations, and gossip about me, that wh–wh . . .”

  Then the poet interrupted with a sob in his throat and tears in his eyes: “That’s not true, Pétur; I’ve never known a more honest person in word or deed than Hólmfríður in the loft.”

  Pétur Pálsson removed the cigar from his mouth, absolutely flabbergasted, and sat open-mouthed for a moment. “It isn’t true?” he asked in amazement. Then he went on with growing force: “So what I say isn’t true? Here? In my own house? Then what is true, may I ask? No, if a fellow like you is going to tell me what’s true and what isn’t true at home, here in my own private house, then the time has undoubtedly come for the sheriff to have a word with you in court, and with a vengeance, so that no one is left in any doubt where materialism leads the individual. You can stop thinking, you so-called intelligentsia who are nevertheless the most useless riffraff of all the riffraff, that I’m such small fry and such an idiot that you can tell me this is true or that isn’t true at your pleasure. It’s I, and not you, who owns this estate, and it’s I, and not you, who decides what’s true and what isn’t true here on this estate; and those who don’t want to sacrifice anything for me and my own cause on my own estate, they’ll sooner or later get to hear the voice of the law, and with a vengeance. Who knows but that the law will look with different eyes on my cause than you so-called intelligentsia, my lad.”

  “I see,” whispered the poet, and leaned back exhausted against the wall like a man about to be shot. “So perhaps I set fire to the house, too.”

  “I won’t express any opinion about that; it’s the law that determines that,” said the manager and was not angry any longer, because he saw that the poet was on the point of collapse. “Here’s two krónur, and out you go.”

  He took the poet by the arm, opened the door, and steered him out through the doorway.

  29

  So he had set fire to a house, too, then.

  The autumn rain was of the kind he had once written about in a poem: “In autumn tears our love was drowned.” He felt that the end must be approaching.

  In his mind’s eye he was already standing before the judge, his hands and feet manacled, with an indelible crime on his conscience, because crimes are only the misdeeds which others believe you have committed; he was the enemy of his benefactors, an arsonist and a thief, and probably a murderer. As the day passed, the more it rained and the more hunger assailed him, the more of a criminal he felt himself to be; his difficulties seemed insoluble. To be sure, he was walking around with fifty-two krónur in his pocket and was probably the wealthiest man in the village in ready cash, apart from the mysterious Jón the snuffmaker, the pastor’s example, and could have bought himself porridge and probably fish, too, for cash in any house he chose, if such a thought had occurred to him. Instead he wandered around the wet streets of the village or the yellow moors round about or explored the beach, and drank the rain as it fell.

  Yes, the end was approaching inexorably. But it was not until nightfall that evening that he finally made up his mind. He walked to the doctor’s house and knocked on the door. He was shown into a long passage and told to wait. There were doors on both sides. He waited for a while and wrung his cap out on the floor. Eventually the doctor’s wife appeared and asked him what he wanted.

  He
said, “I’d like to have a word with the doctor.”

  “The doctor’s busy,” said the woman.

  Then she caught sight of the water on the floor and asked, “What’s that puddle on the floor? Are you ill?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “How disgusting, that’s what I say!” said the woman, and looked at the puddle on the floor with horror.

  “It’s from my cap,” said the poet.

  “I hope there’s nothing seriously wrong with you?” said the woman.

  “Yes,” said the poet. “I’m extremely ill.”

  “Oh, you can hardly be so ill that I can’t deal with it,” said the woman. “Tummy ache or a cold?”

  “No,” said the poet.

  “Headache, toothache?” asked the woman.

  “No,” said the poet. “Insomnia.”

  “Oh, just insomnia,” said the woman. “I don’t call that an illness. What do you want me to do about it?”

  “I want to buy a sleeping draught,” said the poet.

  “How much money have you got?” said the woman.

  “Fifty krónur,” said the poet.

  “A sleeping draught for fifty krónur?” said the woman. “Do you think I’m crazy? Or is this meant to be some sort of a joke?”

  “Two krónur,” said the poet.

  “Two krónur,” she repeated. “There’s something very odd about you; I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t have any money at all.”

  At that the poet brought out both the two-krónur piece and the wet fifty-krónur note from his pocket and showed them to the woman.

  “Where did you get that fifty-krónur note?” asked the woman.

  “I got it from a man,” said the poet.

  Then the woman told him to go into the waiting room, while she herself disappeared into the pharmacy to look for medicine for insomnia. She came back after a moment and handed him a pint bottle of medicine; it cost only two krónur. She told him to take one spoonful before going to bed—“but anyway it’s quite unnecessary to suffer from insomnia,” she said. “Insomnia comes to people having no aim in life and therefore not enough to think about; I never suffer from insomnia.” The poet thanked her, stuck the bottle in his trousers and said Good-bye.

  But as he was walking down the passage on his way out he thought he saw one of the doors being stealthily opened, and as far as he could make out there was someone spying through the chink. He paid no attention but went straight on toward the exit. But as he walked past this open door it was suddenly thrown ajar, a hand stretched out through the gap, took the poet’s arm in a firm grip and pulled him in over the threshold.

  He found himself in a room with bookshelves on the walls, a writing desk, deep armchairs, a cupboard in one corner, and in the other a medical instrument cabinet and a rifle, all shrouded in cigar smoke. In front of him stood the doctor himself; he was laughing. Then he peered out carefully through the chink again and put his finger to his lips to indicate that the poet was to keep quiet. When the doctor had made sure that there was no particular danger lurking outside, he closed the door again and whispered to the poet in explanation, drawing one eyelid down in a wink: “I thought they were perhaps in the passage, the two old ones with the twisted horns.”

  He turned the key in the lock and put it in his pocket, then walked over to the poet and greeted him with strange talk and a handshake that seemed never-ending. In his expression and behavior there was some blend of strange glee and anxious unease, even fear, which so affected the poet that he felt anything but safe.

  When the doctor had talked very rapidly and in the oddest manner about all kinds of things, without Ólafur Kárason managing to make head nor tail of anything, he pushed the patient down into an armchair under the window, put before him a tumbler full of brennivín and told him to drink, while he himself went over to the cupboard and drank, turning his back on the poet as he did so. After that he started another handshake with his visitor and went on talking. He said that he was well aware that Ólafur Kárason was a poet, and what is more a major poet, that is to say a man who imagined he had caught the end of the lightning. “But by God,” he added, “it doesn’t alter the fact that you’re a fool. Everyone who thinks he’s a major poet is off his head. I’ve been thinking of getting hold of you all summer and having an evening with you to let you hear a novel I’ve written. Drink up, I say. Shall I show you my gun? All major poets have guns. Arms and the book, that’s always been my motto. Both Pushkin and Lord Byron died with a gun in one hand and a novel in the other. Drink up.”

  The doctor opened his drawers to look for his novel and rummaged about for a little, until he drew out a bunch of papers covered with sprawling handwriting so large-lettered that on some pages there was no room for more than four or five lines. Then he took the gun out of the corner, checked to see that it was loaded, let the poet look down the barrel for a moment, and then sat down facing him with the gun in one hand and his novel in the other, and started to read. The poet was extremely frightened, not least because the gun was pointing menacingly in his direction.

  It was a grim description of a storm at sea. A ship which had lost its sails and rigging was being tossed from one huge wave to another, waiting for the one that would finish it off completely. Finally came the long-awaited wave which sank the ship, and the poet was beginning to hope that the story was over, but far from it; now there began a series of long natural history descriptions of various whale species, walruses, sharks, monster halibut species and other deep-sea fish, but particularly those of the leviathan family that have a long tusk, a horn, or other form of snout. The relationship of these creatures to one another or to the fate of the ship or to other phenomena was not made clear from the content, and Ólafur Kárason listened to this obscure composition, ill with hunger and sweating with fright, with the barrel of the gun looking at him. It was hopeless to think of going out, because the door was locked and the key in the doctor’s pocket, but when he shot a glance at the window to one side of him he noticed that one of the lower panes was fastened with two hooks, so that a daring man in peril of his life could open the window and squeeze through.

  “As I say,” said the doctor, “the ship is sunk and the whales are ruling the sea. What do we do next?”

  “I don’t know,” said the poet.

  “Think about it,” said the doctor. “If you’re a major poet you’re bound to know what to do next. What would you do?”

  “I simply haven’t any idea,” said the poet.

  “My God, no one can be a major poet if he doesn’t know what to do when one gets stuck,” said the doctor. “I’ll give you three minutes. I’ll put the gun here.”

  He took out his watch, got to his feet, set the gun like a doll in the chair facing the poet, went over to the cupboard, mixed himself a drink, looked at it against the light, and turned his back while he drank it.

  The sweat continued to run down the poet’s brow. He racked his brains about whether it would be any solution to the problem to let another ship sail the same course and reach land, or whether the readers would accept it if one of these wide-mouthed whales of the sea swallowed the ship’s crew at the last moment and spewed them all out on land somewhere, unharmed, after three days. But neither this solution nor any others seemed satisfactory, as the story now stood. Finally, the poet clasped his hands in despair and stared straight ahead with infinite stupidity and saw no way out of this terrible novel but to let the doctor murder him. The three minutes passed.

  “Well then?” said the doctor with an ambiguous grin. “The time limit I gave you is up. What do you do?”

  “I don’t know,” said the poet.

  “Drink up, by God,” said the doctor.

  “Thanks,” said the poet, and raised the glass to his lips.

  “Your glass is still full,” said the doctor. “Perhaps you’d rather have cognac?”

  “No, no, no,” said the poet, with a start. “I’d much prefer brennivín.”

  �
�Well, then, by God, get some brennivín down.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What d’you do next?”

  “I—I’m such a small and unimportant poet . . .”

  “You’re a fool and a good-for-nothing,” said the doctor.

  “Yes,” said the poet.

  “At first sight,” said the doctor, “it seems that there’s nothing that can be done, the way things stand. As you can see, everything’s sunk and gone to hell ten times over. But then I do what is actually the most remarkable thing in all this, although it’s so simple that any child could have said it once it was told. I save the cook.”

  “Really,” said the poet.

  “Really?” repeated the doctor. “Are you saying Really? What d’you mean? What a damned fool you are, boy. It can cost you dear to say Really, let me warn you. Drink up, or I’ll tie you up and pour it down you throat.”

  “Thanks,” said the poet. “I’ve had enough to drink now. I’m afraid I must be getting on my way. I’m in a bit of a hurry, actually.”

  “No hurry,” said the doctor. “I’ve got a lot of things to talk to you about still. I’ve got a lot of other things to show you. To tell you the truth, I always want to talk to rational beings every now and again. It’s no life to have to listen to the creaking of one’s own coffin all the time.”

  “It’s terrible,” said the poet, and a shudder went through him.

  These reflections made the doctor distinctly uneasy; he put his ear to the door for a moment, then tiptoed over to the poet, leaned over him and whispered, “Listen, friend, I don’t suppose you noticed anything strange around the house when you came here?”

  The poet said No to that.

  “No goats or anything like that?” asked the doctor.

  “No, I didn’t notice any goats,” replied the poet.

  “And no animals with horns at all?”