“Who knows but that I’m a man of substance when everything’s said and done, Jón?” said the poet. “Who knows but that I could pay interest if you lent me, say, ten krónur?”
“Oh, no,” said the old man, “you’re not the man for me. My man has always been my ancestor, the late Sigurður Fáfnisbani (Fáfnir’s-Slayer).* He was really rolling in it, that fellow! On the other hand I reckon that Grettir Ásmundarson was just another damned wretch, and Gunnar of Hlíðarendi* was never anything but a layabout and a good-for-nothing. But if there’s anyone worth calling a man here in Sviðinsvík, it would be poor little Pétur Pálsson, I suppose. I was a shipmate of his father, old Palli, for many years a long time ago. He was both a thief and a liar, and was said to have killed a man, so the family wasn’t particularly distinguished. But it’s better to be a scion of an undistinguished family than a page-boy in a great one, and if I were to give help to anyone in this place, I might possibly help poor little Pétur. You can have one pinch of snuff free of charge, but that’s all you’re getting. And you can tell that fool of a pastor they’re not getting any church before I’m dead!”
It was now late in the evening, and the poet had drunk enormous quantities of chicory-water, but his child was just as far from getting into the ground as in the morning. On his way home that night he thought back over the events of the day. He knew quite well that he had now looked for help in every place except where he was certain of getting it. But he did not trust himself to produce that salty nectar which nourished Pétur Pálsson’s heart, and yet there was one other place where he felt still less able to divest himself of the rich man’s dignity and sybarite’s cloak—Jórunn’s house. The man without a coffin went home. He had no illusions about the reception he would get when he arrived, but he was so dulled after a day-long humiliation on top of his sleepless vigils that he dreaded nothing any more. He saw clearly the same solution for this problem as for many others: tomorrow his intended would go to Pétur Pálsson and cry for a while—and a coffin would come as a matter of course.
In a shed beside the road, at the foot of the hillside, there were often clothes hanging out to dry, which fluttered in the night breeze and made the people of The Heights even more afraid of the dark. The poet walked past unsteadily, defeated, without looking around. Then suddenly a creature loomed up before him from the direction of the shed, well wrapped up and with a shawl round her head, and confronted him.
“I need to talk to you,” she said.
“What do you want with me?” he said.
“Why do you go to everyone except us?” she said. “Are we so much worse than everybody else?”
“I had no business at your house,” he said.
“Don’t be so silly,” she said. “I know perfectly well you need money. That sort of thing gets around. People are glad to see others in need of help—like themselves.”
“We mustn’t be seen here,” he said. “Come into the shadow.”
“I have nothing to hide,” she said. “Here’s some money; I’m sorry it’s so little. And promise me never to go from door to door again if you need something. I can’t bear it.”
“I can go cap in hand to everyone in the world except you, Jórunn,” he said. “Everyone, everyone can despise me except you. Only in your eyes do I want to appear rich. Why wouldn’t you let me live on in the delusion that you thought me rich? By handing me these alms you take from me the last thing I had left. You help to bury my little girl, of course, but into that same grave disappears my last vestige of manly pride . . .”
“You have fettered youself of your own free will, man—break the fetters!”
With this harsh order she broke through his despair, and he felt her strong hands on his thin arms, and her impassioned breathing on his face.
“Pity is man’s nobility,” he said. “Suppose I wanted to cast her out, this woman to whom I am betrothed—call her what you will—do you really think it would make me free? No, I would never see a happy day again. If she were young and beautiful and rich, if she had family and friends and the capacity to get a lover, the capacity to make others feel fond of her, in a word, if she were endowed with all the world’s graces, that would be another matter, because everything is safe that God protects. But she has nothing—nothing. She is the human being in all its nakedness: ill, defenseless, without a friend, without anyone to feel fond of her or give her a helping hand and thrust a nail between her teeth when she has a fit. God and men and Nature have taken everything from her . . .”
“You don’t believe in life!” said the girl. “You think that the Creator cannot keep the world going without your idiotic pity! You— you who are a poet, come down off this disgusting cross!”
At the same moment he felt her lips on his mouth, hot in the frost, almost fierce; only for an instant, and then she was gone.
14
The Laborers’ dealings with Pétur Pálsson the manager had no results. He flatly refused to acknowledge their union as having a right to negotiate and said he would provide work at the wage rates of True Icelanders and not of anti-patriots. The struggle went on all day, and the Norwegian freighter was not unloaded. On the next day, when the True Icelanders tried to go to work and launch the lighters to unload the ship, the anti-patriots barred their way and prevented them from doing any work. These were mostly young men, right down to confirmation age, but there were some middle-aged men there, too, who still had not succeeded in understanding the Soul— including the parish officer, who had always had the parish purse as his God, and believed that it would be better off if people could push their wages up. Here, too, the skipper, Faroese-Jens, was going berserk, but he was first and foremost a Faroese. On the other hand the young men could see their fathers and kinsmen facing them among the True Icelanders, old quarry laborers who had been part of the place for decades on end, owned variously by the Privy Councillor, the Regeneration Company, the Psychic Research Society, and now finally by the station owner who was revealed in the person of Pétur Pálsson the manager. The fellow from Skjól was here, there, and everywhere, issuing instructions and setting father against son. The manager was also out with his stick, morning coat and high-crowned hat. He said he was not really surprised that people with Irish slave-blood in their veins who had let their parents die like dogs were now rebelling against the nation; he could also understand Faroese-Jens, who was a Faroese and therefore wanted to bring Icelanders under Danish rule anew after a four-hundred-year struggle for independence; but he thought it was going a bit far when the parish officer, Guðmundur—who like all other honorable embezzlers and forgers had made out bills for footwear and coffee for bedridden lunatics and had charged twice for the same coffin for skinny old parish paupers—should now find himself in company so far beneath his dignity.
But one thing was obvious: Pétur did not think it advisable to encourage the True Icelanders to attack, and when people had been standing for a few hours on the beach, on the pierhead and on the quay, looking at one another and exchanging sardonic comments, the manager summoned his men to a meeting for a renewed bout of national awakening and hymn-singing in the primary school. A little later it was reported that he did not have enough confidence in the fighting qualities of the True Icelanders, because he mounted the pastor and the secretary on his best horses and sent them up the valley to enlist reinforcements. Peasants who wanted to earn themselves some fame were urged to come to Sviðinsvík and there support the nation’s cause against foreign political extremism. Iceland’s independence was in danger; Russians, Danes and Irish slaves were rampant on the estate and tyrannized all those who wanted to protect their nationality for fifty aurar an hour. The older and more sober-minded farmers snorted into their beards and said they had never heard that Egill Skalla-Grímsson* or Gunnar of Hlíðarendi, who had no need to apologize for their nationality to Pétur ríhross and this Júel Júelsson, had ever allowed anyone to ask them to fight for fifty aurar an hour, and they refused to take part in a battle where su
ch meager booty was offered. But there were a few younger farm workers, of a different temper from their elders and less familiar with the Icelandic Sagas, who thought it more honorable to follow the standard in Sviðinsvík than to bother with the back-ends of cows in the remote valleys.
So it was no easy matter to get the child of a neutral poet into the earth as things stood. When Ólafur Kárason went to see the pastor again, this time with the funeral fee in his pocket, this chaplain of God had gone on a military mission up country; and when the poet tried to ask the parish officer to make a coffin for him for hard cash, he had become a military commander down on the beach. Everyone was intent on shooting people, yes, just shoot them, shoot them, but no one seemed to have any interest in getting into the ground a child who had already been shot.
He walked back home again in the late afternoon after his fruitless efforts in all directions, but, despite everything, feeling grateful and glad that he had a dead child and private sorrows, and with that a deeper understanding of human fickleness, when other people were so committed to the economics of this wretched life that they were hell-bent on shooting. He was disturbed in these reflections by an unexpected sight; around his shack there was a crowd of men with cudgels in their hands, while others were in the doorway, and inside it. At first he was extremely frightened. Since he belonged to neither of the warring parties, and despite the fact that he knew most of these men to speak to, it was impossible to say which were friends and which were enemies of poets in uncertain times like these; perhaps they were lying in ambush for him in his own house, ready to murder him simply because he loved peace—that sort of thing had happened before. But there was no mistaking one thing—the war had occupied his house first, the friend of peace. He stopped and looked irresolutely towards his house in the dusk of early spring.
Then the men shouted: “Come here, poet! There’s no need to be afraid. We’re fighting for you. We’re fighting for all the poetry of the world put together.”
The poet was grateful for this handsome invitation and stepped closer. At that moment his friend Örn Ülfar came to the door and repeated the invitation, saying hospitably that the poet was welcome in this house. The men were sitting wherever they could, and had turned upside down everything with a bottom to use as seats; a few were sitting on the floor. The poet first looked to see that everything was in order in the closet behind, and so it was: the little corpse lay there under its shroud on its humble bier. But when the intended, who was standing tear-stained behind the cooking stove, saw Ólafur arriving, she drew herself up and screamed: “They are disturbing the peace of the living and the dead, they are desecrating my house, they are dishonoring my corpse—heavenly Jesus, let fire and devils rain upon them, they are criminals!”
A few of the men grinned, but most of them paid no attention to her.
The poet was told what was going on. Örn Ülfar was to be arrested and taken to Aðalfjörður for breaking the laws—of TB prevention. He had left the sanatorium without permission. Telegrams from the health authorities confirmed that he was still an infectious case; the district doctor at Sviðinsvík had reported him to the sheriff and asked to have him removed so that he would not infect other people on this healthy estate. The anti-patriots had immediately mounted a guard to protect Örn Ülfar. Could they stay there that night?
“The house is yours, Örn,” said the poet.
At these words the intended let out a wail and started to pray aloud in even more specific language than before. Some of the men looked in rather foolish amazement at this Jesus-crying creature, but many of them turned away because it offended their sense of decency. Those who had tobacco in one form or another brought it out and treated themselves and others to it, then cards were produced, and the friendly cursing and swearing of the visitors took over from the housewife’s prayers. Someone fetched oil, another fetched water, a third coffee, and sugar appeared from somewhere. The poet helped to serve. In the end the intended stopped praying and sat exhausted behind the cooking stove with her knitting.
Late in the evening, when several of the defenders had given up hope of any action and had gone home, they got warning of the manager’s troops: “You in The Heights—be prepared!” Soon afterwards a crowd of men moved up the hillside with lanterns and cudgels. Both doors in the poet’s house had been barred as carefully as possible, the light was put out, and inside the men took up defensive positions at doors and windows. Soon there came a knock at the door, and when the visitors thought there was not a quick enough response, they started hammering on the walls. The poet went to the window, opened the upper pane, and asked who was there.
“Nationalists!” came the reply. “Icelanders!”
“Indeed,” said the poet, for he had not the nerve to utter that wicked word “really.”
Then some stranger declared that he was here by the sheriff’s authority to fetch a tuberculosis patient. “Will you hand him over?”
“My child died of tuberculosis yesterday,” said the poet. “Perhaps you good people will help me to bury her?”
“Open the door and hand the man over,” said the emissary of the authorities.
“I’m afraid I’ve gone to bed,” said the poet.
Now Pétur Pálsson came waddling up; he had fallen behind coming up the hillside, because he was too short of breath for climbing.
“There’s no need to ask anyone to open the door, I own this house,” he said. “It is I who says when and how this door is opened. But first I’m going to say a few words to Ólafur Kárason. Ólafur Kárason, you who call yourself a poet, I’ve come here to tell you that you are no longer a poet at all. You’re a pornographer, a blasphemer and a foul-mouth who poisons the minds of the young. For too long have I tolerated an idiot and a rat like you. I have forgiven you even though you besmirched the name of Sviðinsvík by writing about people who have never been known on this estate, thieves, drunkards, naked vagabonds, and louse-ridden men who maltreated their wives. And though you have turned against God and the Soul both in word and in deed, I have forgiven you and never tired of giving you a chance of becoming a good poet. But all my efforts to make you a good poet have been in vain. And now my patience is exhausted, my lad. We knew one another to speak to before, right enough, but when you become an official emissary for the anti-patriots against the Home Rule movement, against the nation’s independence, against me, we no longer know one another. I’ll just show you all, I shall crush you, I shall grind you, I shall have your guts out! Don’t think for a moment you can hold someone in defiance of my wishes. Boys, if the door isn’t opened, make the ropes fast and pull the house off its foundations.”
Nest morning the poet’s house lay on its side.
During the night the True Icelanders had fastened ropes to the shack and overturned it to have easier access to the nest. But this act of war had not succeeded in its object. The anti-patriots had managed to extinguish the True Icelanders’ lanterns, they had scuffled in the darkness for a while, and in the tumult Örn Ülfar had escaped. The result was that the poet was left without a roof with the corpse of his child in his arms and a Jesus-wailing intended who nevertheless had not been enough of a True Icelander for her fiancé’s poetry to escape the severest criticism. They were allowed to take shelter with the corpse and the poetry in the nearest house. But at dawn the antipatriots returned and put the poet’s house back on its foundations.
15
The day after the failure to arrest Örn Ülfar the state of war at Syiðinsvík-undir-Óþveginsenni reached a higher pitch than ever before in the history of the estate. These were difficult times for the leader of the Home Rule movement, Pétur Pálsson the manager. Throughout the night people had been searching up hill and down dale for the Irish slave, and the guard on the hoyden had been doubled. Early in the morning, after a sleepless night, the manager drew up the troops which had been pressed into service the previous evening and issued them strong cudgels; one or two of the men from up country had brought bre
ech-loaders with them. All teaching came to a stop in the village; the primary school was turned into the Icelanders’ headquarters, the church was converted into a medical center and stocked with first-aid equipment, and the secretary was sent up into the steeple with orders to ring the bells as soon as Pétur Pálsson gave the signal to attack, for this was a holy war. The True Icelanders’ plan was to drive the Laborers off the quay into the sea, and the attack was to be launched from three sides. But now it transpired that the Laborers had not left it to the True Icelanders alone to call out troops; they, too, had been out in all directions raising an army and had not only found good support in the nearby valleys but had also (which was more important) attracted reinforcements from other fjords, and it was quite clear when the armies appeared on the field of conflict that morning that the Home Rule movement would have their hands full in a battle. Indeed, Pétur Pálsson the manager ordered his men not to attack for the time being.
It was a mild spring day with a calm sea. Various guesses were now made about what the manager’s tactics would be next. He was known to be utterly unyielding, and if he failed to come up with a stratagem today, even though he was up against overwhelming odds, it would be for the first time. He was seen to summon two stalwart seamen. Then he had a motorboat launched, and headed down the Fjörður with all the speed the engine could produce.
A few people shouted that the manager had fled the field.
The explanation for this move spread from the True Icelanders’ camp. It so happened that the Danish warship which had been entertained at Pétur Pálsson’s party the previous year had been patrolling the nearby coast for the last few days and was still visible off the mouth of the fjord. This was the ship with which Pétur Pálsson suddenly had such urgent business. It was never possible to establish irrefutably by sworn evidence just what this business was, to be sure, but all the same the purpose of his sortie was on everyone’s lips that day and later; and though it was often denied, sometimes not without a touch of nervousness, there was no one who ever thought this story more incredible than anything else that could happen at Sviðinsvík. When it became clear that the anti-patriots were a match for Pétur Pálsson the Homelander and could easily seize control of the estate and thereby acquire a homeland for themselves, he thought it best to seek assistance from the warship and to impress upon the Danish commander the necessity of bombarding the village with his guns, or at least of lending the True Icelanders a cannon.
World Light Page 49
