World Light

by Halldor Laxness

  “My little darling,” he said, and now for the first time he felt fond of little Margrét; or at least he thought he felt fond of her. While she was healthy and merry he did not care—healthy, merry children do not worry anyone. Leave them be; we have obligations only to those who suffer, we love only those who are in distress. Although he had never even noticed before if she fondled his cheek, he now felt there was nothing he would not take upon himself for her sake. “My little darling,” he said, and hugged the sick child to his breast. “When the weather gets warmer and little Maggie’s strong enough to walk beside her daddy, then Daddy and little Maggie will go down to the beach to look for shells.”

  “A-a,” said the girl, weakly.

  “Broad cockleshells, narrow mussels, fine pink scallops,” said the poet. “Perhaps even sea snails.”

  “And a bow-wow,” said the child.

  “Yes, and then we’ll meet a bow-wow,” said the poet.

  “And a miaow,” said the child.

  “Yes,” said the poet. “And then a pussy will come along and say miaow.”

  Then he saw a man coming up the hillside with his hands behind his back, tall and lean and a little self-important, and not the type of man to go visiting on a spring morning without a purpose; there was frustration in his eyes. The poet went to the door to welcome the visitor.

  “Faroese-Jens! Hallo and welcome,” he said. “It certainly isn’t every day that skippers venture so high above sea level. I hope you’re not bringing the Devil with you up the hill?”

  The visitor offered the poet a plug of tobacco in greeting, and took a chew himself.

  “I walked up the hill here mainly to work off my bad temper,” he said, without any unnecessary banter.

  “I’m afraid Jarþrúður, my intended, isn’t at home, so I can’t offer you any coffee,” said the poet. “On the other hand I can lend you a spittoon so that you can spit out your own tobacco while you’re here.”

  “Oh, there’s no need at all,” said the visitor vaguely, but came in nevertheless.

  “Well,” he said when he had listened absentmindedly to the poet’s inanities for a while. “It now looks as if it’s been decided to take away the people’s livelihood for good and all.”

  “Oh, really?” said the poet. “And none too soon either.”

  “I’m not joking,” said the man. “Do you see these?” And he pointed at three trawlers which were fishing at the mouth of the fjord. “They never move out of the seaweed; they scrape the bottom as if they were scouring a pot. You should be grateful you don’t have them coming into your cabbage patch. Two men had their nets destroyed this morning and have lost everything.”

  “Where are the fishery patrol boats?” asked the poet.

  “They’re down south, of course, ferrying the gentry as usual,” said the skipper.

  The poet did not quite know what to say; unfortunately he could not get very excited about it. “Yes, that’s how it goes,” he said.

  “It’s really no life at all any more,” said Jens the Faroese. “And one can’t even call it an honest war either, dammit. I go out with a dinghy and a bit of net, you go out with a trawler and a trawl. Is that an honest war? If two parties fight, and one of the parties is an unarmed dumb infant and the other is a fully armed berserk biting on the edge of his shield, is that war? No, it’s murder.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that, perhaps,” said the poet cautiously. “But it’s certainly stealing, at least.”

  “And now the fish merchants have conspired to lower the price of fish, and Pétur ríhross flatly refuses to buy a single fin over and above what he needs for his own curing station, to give himself a monopoly over what little employment there is on the estate—and over who gets work. And now he has announced an all-round wage reduction in the government quarry.”

  “Has anyone tried to complain to the authorities?” asked the poet.

  “Are you off your head, man? You surely don’t believe in the authorities!” said the visitor.

  The poet was stuck. Visitor and host sat for a while in silence. What on earth could have driven this severe, pessimistic skipper to visit a poet? Finally the visitor broke the silence and said, “And yet these are just trifles.”

  Was the visitor not unnaturally pale? Was there not a white gleam in his eye? Surely he had not turned to Jesus? The poet began to feel a little uneasy; he could feel his heart beginning to beat faster. Granted that powerful thieves were scooping up the catches that could save the lives of the poor and the humble; granted that they were scouring the bottom of the fjord and ruining the bits of nets and lines which these little folk had acquired through unbelievable sacrifices; granted that the fishery patrol boats were being used for pleasure trips for the gentry while all this was going on; allow that the people were to be robbed not only at sea but on land as well, by means of all the price cuts and reductions and frauds which can be used against the poor, and that the authorities themselves no longer deserved our full confidence—but if all these were just trifles, dear God, what more was there to come?

  But Jens the Faroese was unwilling to elaborate, and turned the conversation to unimportant matters. The poet did not know what to think. Finally Jens the Faroese said, “Hjörtur of Veghús—there’s a great man for you.”

  “Oh, yes, he’s always fiddling around with something, that fellow,” said the poet.

  “Yes, you’re a poet and therefore you don’t look at what’s happening on earth,” said the skipper. “The rest of us, on the other hand, look at what’s happening on earth. And for my own part, I regard Hjörtur of Veghús as a real man.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that, perhaps,” said the poet. “But at least he has introduced hens to the place.”

  “There are many people here who make fun of hens,” said Jens the Faroese. “But what birds are more useful than hens, may I ask? None that I know of.”

  “That’s quite true,” said the poet. “Hens are very remarkable creatures even though they can’t fly.”

  “But apart from that, Hjörtur hasn’t stopped at hens. Didn’t he bring a cow as well? Hasn’t he shown and proved that little folk can own a cow even after their souls have been mortgaged and their fjord cleaned out? I call that a downright stroke of genius. Previously people had to be at least Privy Councillors and ríhross’s before they could even think of having a cow. Now everybody’s talking about cows.”

  “Moo-moo,” said the little girl, weakly.

  “Yes,” said the poet. “Moo-moo; perhaps Mummy will be bringing some milk from a moo-moo.”

  “And in addition, Hjörtur of Veghús has raised some sheep. In his hands, every beast seems to have two heads. Who ever thought of keeping sheep here on the estate before him? And have you heard what he’s thinking of doing now? He’s going to re-seed the Privy Councillor’s old fish yards where the terns have been nesting for the last few years.”

  On reflection, the poet felt that his visitor’s enthusiasm for Hjörtur of Veghús was not entirely misplaced. This man who had come to the estate by chance a few years back, empty-handed after losing everything he owned in another village, and had managed to squeeze a patch of gravel slope out of the manager—he signified in his own way the strange ups and downs in the history of mankind: the Creator’s inventiveness knows no limits. In the beginning God created the world, then came the Privy Councillor, and then the Regeneration Company, then the Psychic Research Society, and finally the terns took over the fish yards and foreign poachers occupied the fjord. But in spite of that, the history of mankind was not finished; a new man came, a new woman, new children; and poultry came. But the new man did not stop at hens; he could make grass grow on the land. This was the greatest and most astonishing miracle that had ever happened at Sviðinsvík-undir-Óþveginsenni.

  Out of the blue, the skipper now told the poet that Hjörtur of Veghús had been twice married. His first wife had died many years ago; he had had a daughter by her, who had been brought up by her mother’s
people in the south. But her foster parents were now dead, and she had come to stay with her father a few days ago. She was twenty-three years old, and her name was Jórunn.

  “Is that so?” asked the poet.

  There was a reverberating silence, as when one raps a pitcher while holding it by one lug. Finally, however, the poet said, “And is she a promising girl?”

  “Promising?” echoed the skipper. “I don’t know about that. But I’ve just been telling you that even though everything has been stolen from everyone here on the estate, these are just trifles. I’ll say no more. Here are five krónur in cash. And I would like you to compose a poem to this girl for me.”

  Ever since the poet Reimar had had to leave on account of an ill-chosen epitaph he had penned for twelve Sviðinsvík voters who had been drowned on trawlers down south, the poet Ólafur Kárason had been to all intents and purposes the only focus and switchboard for the emotions here on this estate. He composed love poems and letters of proposal on behalf of enamored suitors, and poems of requital and letters of acceptance in reply from lucky maidens. A love poem or a rhymed letter of proposal cost from a króna and a half to two krónur, often with a small percentage if the suit succeeded. A letter of proposal or an ordinary love letter—“Honored Miss, my most cordial greetings. It is not unlikely that you will be surprised to receive a letter of this kind from me. But I have resolved to write this to you and to none other. I love you in spirit, I adore you”—high-flown piffle of this kind, on the other hand, cost only half a króna. He also composed for people congratulatory poems, birthday poems, marriage poems and epitaphs; but he refused to compose lampoons, even if he were offered ten krónur, and he always took care in his poetry not to criticize those who owned the estate, or other property; that was the mistake the poet Reimar had made in his epitaph for the twelve voters and, indeed, Pétur Pálsson the manager had declared that this Reimar was a pornographer who defiled the hearts of the young. Reimar had been dismissed and evicted with all his brood in the middle of winter from the shack in which he had lived.

  “Yes, it’s just like you to loiter at home like a mare over a dead foal and scrawl godless rubbish on a piece of paper instead of trying to give a little help to the parish which has supported you all winter,” said Jarþrúður Jónsdóttir, his intended, when she came home after a day’s work at the fish yard.

  “Someone has to stay with the sick child,” said the poet.

  “That’s something new, if you’re now wanting to stay with the sick child, when hitherto you’ve scarcely wanted to know the child existed! It couldn’t be that this sudden concern for the child arises from the fact that you were offered work at Pétur Pálsson’s today?”

  “Didn’t I stay up every night with little Kári last year before he died?” asked the poet.

  She was preparing to cook some porridge, but the cooking stove would not kindle. Whenever she had difficulty in lighting the fire she always talked to the poet in the second or third person plural or the third person singular neuter—you, they, it.

  “Though I live to be a hundred I shall never understand people who can look at other people without it ever occurring to them to want to become something. Nowadays when everyone’s copying Hjörtur of Veghús with his beasts, there isn’t even any attempt to acquire some hens, not to mention anything more ambitious.”

  “I don’t really feel that hens are birds at all,” said the poet.

  “Yes, that’s just like you!” said the poet’s intended. “To the best of my knowledge you never believed in the victory of Goodness, neither in small things nor great.”

  “Jarþrúður,” he said. “I feel that birds ought to fly in the air. I repeat that I can scarcely call any creatures birds if they cannot fly in the air. Do you remember, Jarþrúður, when we first met, there were birds flying past the window at Fótur-undír-Fótarfæti? They were free birds. They were birds that could fly in the air.”

  “In the eyes of those who love God, hens are the most beautiful birds on earth,” said the poet’s intended. “When I first saw you, I was stupid and ignorant and thought you were Hallgrímur Pétursson reincarnated. But when all’s said and done, you think you’re cleverer than both the Heavenly Father and the Savior put together, and you look for excuses to sit idly at home on your bed when you’re offered work, and I’m not even allowed to call a hen a bird.”

  “Little Maggie and I are going to go down to the beach to look for shells when we’re better, and perhaps even sea snails,” said the poet. “Then we’ll meet a bow-wow and a miaow-miaow. Jarþrúður dear, in the five years we’ve lived together I’ve always wanted so much to have a dog and a cat . . .”

  “Yes,” his intended interrupted, “it’s not enough to be on the parish yourself, you have to have a dog and a cat on the parish as well! Wouldn’t it be more to the point to have a few sheep, and try to provide one’s own meat?”

  “Excuse me, Jarþrúður dear, I hadn’t finished what I was saying— you can see I’m sure little Maggie would enjoy having a dog and a cat, and I myself think a house isn’t complete without a dog and a cat; a dog and a cat are part of man himself, you see. But if I’m to tell you my honest opinion of sheep, then I don’t think it’s nice to have sheep except at the very most one or two sheep for one’s own enjoyment inside and around the house. And I think one ought to allow them to die a natural death when they’re old. I think it’s a sin to raise animals around one in order to kill them; it’s like making friends with people in order to make it easier to murder them. But when you say that I look for excuses to sit idly at home on my bed, I would permit myself to point out to you that I have earned five krónur today in cash by composing a poem for somebody. And when everything’s said and done, I doubt whether many poets have produced more than I have in such a short lifetime. I’m only twenty-three years old, and yet my poems now top the thousand mark and a bit more if I count everything I’ve composed for others. In addition, there’s my novel, The Outer Isles Settlement, which I wrote in my twentieth year. Further, there’s the Register of Poets in this county for the past hundred and fifty years, with the fullest biographies possible, which is a work of nearly eight hundred pages; and at present I’m in the middle of the Stories of Strange Men.”

  At this the poet’s intended, Jarþrúður Jónsdóttir, buried her face in her sooty hands, near to tears: “That’s not much consolation to me, who has been allotted nothing but sin and remorse and the righteous anger of God while others have been pretending to write famous works! You still refuse to make an honest woman of me; instead you leave me to burn in this terrible sin, and the child’s obviously caught the same disease as the boy had, what’s more, and nothing but damp seaweed to put under the pot. How can any person who nevertheless believed in God fall into such terrible sin? What was I being punished for, dear Jesus, to have got to know such an awful person, yes, and even think he could be Hallgrímur Pétursson!”

  When the little girl saw that her mother was starting to cry, she started to cry, too.

  If it ever happened that the poet felt a little obstinate and complacent, perhaps even touched with a certain arrogance at being a poet, such feelings vanished the moment his intended started to cry—not to mention if the little girl started crying as well. It was hard to say which was strongest in the poet’s soul—the desire to please or the fear of hurting. When happiness came to this poet in his solitary moments, he was free and did not have a house. When he saw before him their tear-stained faces, he suddenly had a house. To be alone, that is to be a poet. To be involved in the unhappiness of others, that is to have a house. He took the little girl in his arms and repeated foolishly that now we shall be going down to the sea to collect shells, mussels, cockles, scallops, even sea snails. And then a bow-wow will come along and then a miaow-miaow. Dearest little darling. He put his arm around his intended’s shoulders and said, “Jarþrúður dear, remember that Hallgrímur Pétursson had leprosy. And his wife was a Mohammedan. Aren’t we perhaps happier
than they?”

  And thus the poet went on consoling them in turn, until they stopped crying.

  “And you’re going to make an honest woman of me, then?” she asked, and looked at him imploringly, and the tears still shone in her dark eyes. “And we’ll put an end to this living in sin?”

  That night he sat at the window very late and imagined to himself that he was alone. He was composing in his mind, revising lines over and over again without being satisfied. Eventually he lit a small lamp and wrote down a few verses. Underneath he scribbled the words, “Love poem for Jens the Faroese, paid.” Then he put out the lamp again, and sat at the window for a long time and looked at the mountains on the other side of the fjord outlined against the sky of the spring night.

  Here where our late Privy Councillor

  Once dried his fish on pegs,

  Now grow only weeds and wild madder,

  And the tern now lays her eggs.

  Helpless in his homeland

  The sturdy patriot grieves,

  Since all that he owns and works for

  Is secretly paid to thieves.

  While some people worked for the catches

  And others stole their part,

  A third one came sweet from the southlands

  And stole away my heart.

  Oh, where is the champion to strengthen

  These wretched people’s hand,

  Who are fighting a desperate battle

  Against this robber band?

  It was here that the late Privy Councillor

  Once tried to shape our part.

  Oh, where is the champion to strengthen

  My trembling little heart?

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