World Light

by Halldor Laxness

  “It mustn’t be allowed to confuse ships and make them sail onto the rocks on shore,” said the poet.

  “You’re not so stupid, my lad,” said the manager. “You’re quite smart. We’ll have the cultural beacon of Sviðinsvík beside the church so that ships aren’t endangered. We must do everything for our dear seamen. The main thing is to have ideals, as well as a blazing, seething faith in life, man. ‘On wings would I float,’ my lad. The morality of modern times demands not only a healthy life but also a holy life, as in days of old: spiritual maturity, light. One must keep the aura pure, as Skarpheðinn Njálsson* said to me at a seance in the south the other day. So that damned girl from Veghús was also hanging around there this evening? That’s news, I must say. She has undoubtedly got syphilis. She had better watch out. Keep away from her, my lad.”

  “My God, dear Jesus!” said the intended. “What people are these you’re hobnobbing with, Ólafur?”

  “Er,” said the poet, and blushed to the ears.

  “I think I have the right to know what people you meet,” said his intended. “You’re the father of my child, after all.”

  “Oh, let’s not go into that now,” said the manager, “it would be too long a story; it’s difficult to be unfaithful in the right way. What I wanted to ask you now, my lad, was whether you didn’t need new clothes? And underwear? Have a word with my right-hand man tomorrow. And tell me now, briefly: what was the main subject of discussion at the meeting while you were there?”

  Despite his lofty ideals, the manager had a remarkable ability to come down to earth occasionally, not unlike a seabird which in a twinkling swoops down from the sky and dives for a sprat.

  “Oh, it wasn’t anything important,” said the poet. “They were arguing about the usual thing that mustn’t be mentioned but which everyone’s talking about: people keeping body and soul together on margarine and chicory, houses falling to bits, scarcely a whole pane of glass in the windows, last winter no one but the gentry could afford a piece of coal. They were talking about how much the powers which rule Sviðinsvík must hate the people. And they were being amazed at how incredibly resilient a creature a man has to be not to be completely exterminated in this struggle . . .”

  “Unpatriotic creatures are too resilient; they should all be thrown off the end of the pier,” interrupted the manager. “And what else?”

  “They were also talking about how strange it was that the people of Sviðinsvík couldn’t catch the fish in the way the foreigners do. They were wondering why it was that the Sviðinsvík ships should either be lost on account of rats, rust and revenants here in the anchorage, or their crews dragged down into the deeps by the fish, while foreign millionaire enterprises go on robbing the people of their plenty before their very eyes.”

  “It’s quite clear that these men are under orders from the Russians,” said the manager, who had got to his feet, rather swollen in the face. “In other words, there is a party in the making here which obviously intends to fight against the nation. I am in no doubt at all that propaganda is reaching this place in letters from a man who doesn’t even belong to this parish according to the new residence qualification laws and has therefore no right to meddle with whether I hang my people or cut their throats here on my own estate. But he’d better watch out. Did I give the child the two krónur; did I give the child its two krónur, say I!”

  “Yes, and there’s no one but Jesus who can reward that,” said the intended.

  “Listen, my good woman, it occurs to me that you might need a new hymnbook,” said Pétur Pálsson the manager, and put his hand in his coat pocket and took out a new hymnbook with gilt edgings and gave it to her.

  The tears were not slow in coming to the intended’s eyes.

  “It’s a pity we don’t have a harmonium here,” said the manager. “How appropriate it would now be to say good-bye by singing one hymn together.”

  The intended gazed at her new treasure with tears in her eyes and could not utter a word, but flung herself like a grateful child into the manager’s arms and kissed him.

  “We shall sing ‘Praise the Lord, the King of Heaven,’ ” said the manager. “No other hymn lifts the mind so quickly and completely to the heights.”

  Pétur Pálsson took the book, looked for the hymn and found it, and at once his face had taken on a strange pious expression.

  “I am afraid the child might wake up,” said the poet, “she’s so ill, poor thing, and those moments she manages to rest are precious.”

  “Whoever awakes to a hymn awakes in heaven,” said Pétur Pálsson, and started hunting for the note. Then he thrust his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, took up position in the middle of the floor with his legs astride and his Júel-hat down over his eyes, distended his paunch, and sang so that he swelled up and went blue in the face. His voice was very powerful. The intended tried to pipe up as well. It was a church ceremony of the highest order. But as Ólafur Kárason had foreseen, the child woke up and started to cry, and he had to take her in his arms and rock her to soothe her terror. At last the hymn was over. The manager took off his pince-nez so that the tears could course more freely.

  “How good and true one hymn can make you!” he said. “I always feel that the day is lost in which I don’t sing a little hymn.”

  He embraced the poet’s intended and kissed her with all his might as he said Good-night.

  “I think I gave the child her two krónur,” he said. “The poor thing’s not very well; it comes from eating sweets. Children should live a wholesome and natural life and go about with a mussel in one corner of their mouths and a shrimp in the other instead of sweets; that’s what French children do. But I hope the poor thing will soon get better. Vitamins are the life-giving substances of modern times. But on the other hand if she dies, then never mind that, because death is just a vanity and a delusion; we all become reincarnated, and children who die with their auras in order are dealt a better hand next time.”

  “Yes, what a dear, wonderful man!” said the intended when Pétur Pálsson had gone. “I never thought it would be my lot to talk to a great man and a noble man as a friend. And to think that he was penniless to start with and on the parish! Yes, it’s certain-sure that those who never lose their faith in the victory of Goodness will be exalted by Jesus in this life and the next.”

  “I can hear from the way you speak, Jarþrúður dear, that you are a true Icelander,” said the poet.

  “I know that well,” said his intended. “And it’s just like you to take sides with loose-living harlots and scoundrels against your benefactor. Give me the child at once; it’s my child.”

  But the poet did not give his intended the child; he laid the little girl carefully into bed and tucked her in. She had almost recovered from her fright. She had fair curls. Her face was too hot, her eyes were half-closed, her breathing too rapid; he bent over her and looked at her, and felt that here was his house.

  “Is someone not coming to bed?” asked his intended after a while, and was under the covers already.

  “Yes,” he murmured absently, and went on gazing at the child without moving. His intended had started muttering her evening prayers. Soon she had settled down to sleep, but she had not stopped muttering. He stayed where he was, sitting beside the child’s bed. His intended fell asleep. Now night had come, and he was free. He tiptoed over the floor and brought out his writing desk, sat down with it on his knees by the head of the child’s bed, took out his manuscripts, and began to write.

  6

  Jóhann beri (the Naked) was a fugitive for twenty years from his mistress. The story began when he was a married man with a farm in the north. Then came the mistress; at the mistress’s arrival, the wife left home. But after a short while Jóhann beri began to hate his mistress and tried to resurrect a corpse to set upon her, but conjured up his mother by mistake. His mother flew at him and wrestled with him in the churchyard for most of the night until she overpowered him. She laid a curse on her son, that
he would be a fugitive wandering all over the country for twenty years, pursued by the creatures of darkness; they would tear every piece of clothing off him so that he would never have a stitch to cover his body. Of all his journeyings about the country, the most memorable was when he crossed the hinterland in the middle of winter, and was eighteen days in the uninhabited wastelands. He could not bear to listen to God’s Word being read. He had a little knapsack with him, containing a pair of socks, a pair of tattered shoes and the Passion Psalms. Jóhann beri was a taciturn man.

  The poet’s Strange Men were in general all distinguished in that they had no possessions other than the clouds in the sky or, at best, the sun. But it was noticeable that the author never referred to anyone in his stories, no matter how wretched they might be, without proper respect. Just as he never referred to Jarþrúður Jónsdóttir in everyday life without adding “my intended,” he always took great care to give everyone he wrote about a proper title, and in some cases two titles: “rhymester and horseman,” “poetess and seamstress,” “singer and housemaid.” Simple titles for men were: “book lover, diarist, widower, coffee-seller”; simple titles for women: “housewife, house-help, housekeeper”; a man who owned only one goat would be titled “goat-owner.” Jóhann’s title was Hinn Beri, written with initial capitals, like His Majesty.

  The poet’s courtesy drew no distinction between people by position, occupation, appearance or character—or had irony become second nature early in childhood to this orphan, who had been brought up at the feet of powerful sheep-farmers and boat-owners? He was never biased against anyone in his stories, he never passed moral judgments on a deed or its doer, any more than when Snorri Sturluson* recounts the exploits of kings or gods. This man who himself could do no harm to any living creature—in his stories there never appeared any hint of indignation over so-called misdeeds; he told about them simply because he thought them worth telling. Nor did he ever use exaggerated terms about so-called good deeds or edifying attitudes, and nowhere in his writings was there any enthusiasm for conventional morality or any propaganda for accepted orthodox behavior—the classic ideals of the common man. The person who wrote the books was quite different from the meek adherent to conventional orthodox behavior who went around every day eager to please everyone he met.

  Of all his destitute people, Ólafur Kárason was fondest of Jóhann beri. His story would soon be a whole book, and this book would surpass the Stories of Strange Men in that here the author had entirely parted company from the scholar who uses natural uncut stones as toys, and identified himself completely with his hero’s fate, lived it and experienced it as his own struggle with the Creator, as a poet does. That was why he would stay up many a night over one sentence which he would then cross out at dawn and go to bed cold, tired and disappointed like a man who had lost his all and would never see a happy day again.

  A few days went by. He put off going to see Pétur Pálsson to write a play with him over a bottle of cod-liver oil. He passed the time indoors at The Heights as much as possible, and let his intended go down to the fish yards. He got the impression that party strife was at hand, and did not want to know about it. If there were thieves and robbers everywhere lying in ambush for the poor, he did not think it worthwhile to form a union to put a stop to their highly enjoyable activities, because it might simply provoke them to steal the last drop of blood from people as well. Just let them think up new ways of stealing by ever more cunning methods, and new laws to protect themselves against those they had fleeced. Everything, everything was better than having anything to do with them; the thought of being called upon to exterminate them was just as intolerable as having to take their side. The individual’s finest fortune in Iceland is the clouds which cluster together in banks and then drift apart again.

  He spent a whole day trying to compose a love poem to Faroese-Jens, but no inspiration came, probably because he did not know how deeply the girl loved the man. Perhaps he had not been shrewd enough to interpret her replies concerning this question. He labored and labored, but to no avail. Time and again he started up from his doggerel like a man overtaken by fog on a mountain path, and asked in despair—“Does she love Faroese-Jens, or does she only want to toy with him?”

  “Daddy,” said his little daughter.

  She just wanted to know if she was so wealthy as to have a daddy still. “My little darling,” he said. There was a red-checked cover on her eiderdown. The head of the bed had been raised so that she would not have to look at the ceiling all the time but could look out into the world as well, and she gazed with half-closed eyes at this little world which was in reality such a large world, and clutched in her hand a bird carved from a haddock bone, the symbol of human life; but she had not the strength to play with this symbol. But when her father had stood at the foot of her bed for a while and looked at her, a tiny gleam of a smile kindled in her face, like an enchanting message from a higher world, and yet just an earthly smile—that is how happiness reveals itself in the midst of suffering. In her smile there lay a suggestion of delightful teasing, with a dimple in one cheek; formerly, when she had been well and had smiled at him with all the magic that the face of childhood can contain, he had often said to her, “The boys had better watch out when she grows up!” And in her face he had seen a whole woman’s life with exciting romances and endless escapades. Gradually the smile died out and the poet was overwhelmed by grief. That was how simply the sorrow and happiness of life met in the house. This little house, which could scarcely be called a house at all, became both wider and higher until it was as large as the whole world.

  But when a few days had passed and Jórunn still had not come to fetch the poem, he began to fear that he had worked in vain. He was thinking of taking it to her, and yet not—that could lead to a misunderstanding. Instead he put the paper in his pocket and sometimes went out in the evening in the hope that he might meet her on the road. But he did not meet her. He felt a little annoyed with her for having asked him to compose a poem and then not coming for it. She should surely have realized that this was his occupation; this was his money. He was often restless, particularly late in the evening, and sneaked out of the house time and again, and walked rapidly along the seashore looking all around like a criminal; but he did not meet her.

  “Well!” said his intended breathlessly one evening when she came home from work. “From tomorrow, everyone is forbidden to work here on this estate unless they join the Idlers and Riffraff Union.”

  “Is that so?” said the poet. “I’m sure that no one would join a union with such an ugly name for the fun of it.”

  “But I say for my own part,” said his intended, “that I shall never betray my homeland and become an Irish slave.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the poet.

  “I do,” she said. “Those who live outside human life can afford to talk. But I’ve been told that if I arrive for work at the fish yards tomorrow, I shall be beaten up.”

  “Well, well,” said the poet. “No one would surely want to start beating you up, Jarþrúður dear; there must be some misunderstanding.”

  But his intended stormed on and talked about industry, true Icelanders and the victory of Goodness, all of which was to be pulled down now. She said that now they would see what stuff the poet was made of, and challenged him to fight for his benefactor Pétur Pálsson tomorrow, and not to allow unpatriotic men to trample underfoot everything good and noble they had ever been taught.

  “In my world there is peace,” said the poet, and had only one wish—to be able to sneak out. Then one of the women from the fish yards called, and the poet had a chance to disappear while they talked; he flew away as if his shoes had wings, reached the road in a twinkling, and walked for a long time along the shore. The weather was calm and the evening had brought fog; a fine drizzle was falling which settled like hoarfrost on the hairs of the back of his hand.

  On his way back he thought he saw a giantess coming towar
d him, but despite the fog the evening was not so dark that he did not recognize her when she came closer. He raised his cap. She shook him by the hand, and once again he felt that warm, strong grip going right through him, instantly filling him with pleasure.

  “Where have you been?” she asked.

  “Where have you been?” he said.

  “You’re walking like someone a little drunk,” she said.

  “That’s because when I rose from my childhood sickbed,” he said, “I thought my legs weren’t the same length.”

  “Walk a little with me,” she said. “Don’t let’s stand here. I need to talk to you.”

  They set off, and she touched him.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said. “I’ve got something for you. Why haven’t you called for it?”

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “A poem,” he said.

  “Ach, I’d forgotten all about it,” she said, and took the poem and folded it carelessly and put it in her coat pocket but forgot to say thank you, let alone bring out her purse.

  “Will you sign a vote of censure on Júel with us?” she asked.

  “What for?” he said.