World Light

by Halldor Laxness

  As things stood, it was little wonder that people did not worry very much over one poet who wandered from house to house with his corpse, his writing desk and his intended; no, the times were too serious for that. The most remarkable thing that happened that day, however, was that Ólafur Kárason of Ljósavík himself forgot that he had to bury a child. Of course, no one would suggest that much would be lost if the Danish warship were persuaded to reduce to ruins this little fjord village which unfortunately could not boast too many True and Freeborn Icelanders. “Worse things have happened,” would have been its epitaph. On the other hand it could not honestly be denied that Icelanders, whether true or untrue, had been under the Danish yoke for the last four or five centuries, a flogged, robbed and cheated people; and it was now only a few years since these true and untrue people had succeeded in throwing off this foreign yoke once and for all. But though the hearts which beat in a little village under high mountains could only in a limited sense call themselves truly Icelandic and freeborn, and were only run-of-the-mill Icelanders, if that, there was no heart so indifferent that it had not been uplifted when the Danish yoke was thrown off. And therefore things had come to such a pass today that even the poet Ólafur Kárason, who had only a run-of-the-mill Icelandic child on the bier, had had enough when True Icelanders tried to persuade Danes to fire cannons at this dead child.

  He had left his corpse and his intended behind, and before he knew it he was standing as a recruit in the ranks of the anti-patriots on the quayside by the fish houses. The prospective M.P. for Sviðinsvík, Örn Úlfar, was making a speech, and the people were packed all round him. It was clear from people’s expressions that they believed what he was saying; many of them nodded at one another, others could not tear their eyes from his lips. It gave them great confidence and pleasure to have him among them, so unlike them and yet flesh of their flesh. They all felt themselves grow greater by having him for a friend, and when he was present they felt they had the measure of their enemy, and when he spoke they felt that now for the first time they understood their own thoughts, now at last they saw who they were and where they stood. Ólafur Kárason, too, was in a state of exaltation. There was a throbbing in his temples and a lump in his throat, and although this condition made it difficult for him to understand the spoken word and appreciate rational arguments as they were delivered, a certain faculty of mind asserted itself which absorbed the mood of this meeting and had a deep-rooted understanding of its soul.

  Örn Úflar said that our banner symbolized the lifeblood of all mankind. He said we were the representatives of all men on earth who yearned for liberty and fought for liberty. The others, he said, the others think that your cause would be lost if I were removed from here by force. What shortsightedness! No, it is not my image, nor the image of any single individual, which will decide the outcome of this struggle. My image will soon be obliterated; it was only an illusion. But, he went on, even though I may fall, even though my image may be obliterated, there is one thing that will never fall and can never be obliterated, and that is the yearning of those in chains for liberty. It could well be that the ideal of liberty is not a particularly remarkable ideal, but it is the noblest ideal of the fettered, and as long as there is a single slave left in the world it remains valid in the same way in which the ideal of repletion remains valid as long as there is a single hungry person left in the world. He said that the history of mankind was the history of the struggle for liberty, and in that struggle nothing could be lost because mankind was by nature triumphant. He said that mankind was standing on a firmer footing than ever before. The law of life was on our side. He said that the enemies of the people could never bring any charges against us which were not first and foremost ridiculous; and even though these enemies of mankind fired cannons at us, he said that did not matter. He also said it made no difference how many individuals among us were killed on the field of battle or how often we had to retreat; our defeat could never be anything but an illusion, because we had nothing to lose and everything to gain, and our victory is an inevitable law of life, whatever the others do, and on the basis of this law the whole world rests.

  The poet no longer recognized his friend as the man he had known. That somber, taciturn expression had disappeared like a discarded mask. The look in his eyes and his features had been freed and exalted to a quality which did not concern this man alone but was stronger than any one man, the quality of human harmony—impersonal, unfettered and prophetic, exalted beyond place and time. He was the hidden, undeclared thought of them all, spoken out loud, both those who happened to be there as well as those who were dead and those still unborn. Such was his secret; he awakened this murdered people from death.

  Under the red banner that symbolized the lifeblood of mankind stood a young girl, fair and enraptured, with a high strong bosom and the light breeze of spring ruffling her hair; and the poet said to himself, “She is the Living Image of Liberty,” and suddenly he understood her image to the full. On his lips still burned the hot kiss she had given him in the frost, as the sun kisses the earth in spring, and he felt he might blossom forth at any moment.

  But suddenly in the middle of his speech Örn Úlfar fell silent. He gasped as if he were suffocating, then bent forward and clutched at his chest with one hand and his face with the other, and sank to the ground. Something had happened to him. People crowded round him in agitation. In a fever of haste Ólafur Kárason pushed his way through the crowd, slipped through like an eel until he reached the center of the ring where Örn Úlfar was being supported by Faroese-Jens and someone else, pale as death, eyes closed, with blood at the corner of his mouth.

  “Ólafur, take the banner,” said the girl, while she herself started policing the crowd, calming people down, keeping them away, sending for a blanket; and the patient was carried away by four comrades. Ólafur Kárason was left standing by the banner.

  A moment later the girl came back and said, “It’s not too serious. But Faroese-Jens is nevertheless going to start up the engine of his boat and take him to hospital in Aðalfjörður. Now I’ll take the banner again.”

  “May I carry it a little for you?” said the poet.

  “No,” she said. “Not for me, but for those who will overcome their enemies because the law of life is on their side.”

  Örn Úlfar was carried to Faroese-Jens’s boat and made comfortable in the cabin. A few stalwarts had been called in, and not a moment was wasted. But as they were about to cast off, a girl came running down to the quay. She was bareheaded and her dark-brown curls were unkempt; she had just thrown a coat over her shoulders and pulled on a pair of rubber boots over her pale silk stockings.

  “I’m coming, too!” she shouted breathlessly, and waved to the men. “Don’t leave without me!”

  The men paused for a moment and looked suspiciously at the manager’s daughter, and pretended not to understand what business she could have in their boat.

  “Someone has to look after him,” she said.

  “You least of all,” said Faroese-Jens.

  She did not wait for his permission but jumped on board and disappeared down into the cabin in a flash.

  “The damned girl’s mad,” said one of the deckhands.

  Faroese-Jens peeped into the cabin and saw her sitting on the edge of the bunk, leaning over the patient.

  “Is she out of her mind?” said the deckhand, ready to chase her out of the cabin.

  “We’ll cast off,” said Faroese-Jens, and bit off a chew of tobacco and grinned as he went to the engine room. “The goddess of love has made her a hostage.”

  A few quick puffs from the engine, and the boat was under way.

  At the same moment, Pétur Pálsson’s motorboat ran onto the beach in front of his house. People now assumed that the secretary would shortly be given a signal to ring the bells; but things turned out differently.

  The manager asked where Faroese-Jens was off to.

  “He’s gone off with Örn Úlfar and your
daughter,” someone said.

  “Where to?” said Pétur Pálsson the manager.

  “I don’t know,” said the man. “Some say they’re going to get married.”

  At first the manager looked blankly at the other for a while and said “Eh?” But he was not angry; he was speechless. He walked out to the end of the little pier in front of his house and waved his hat idiotically at Faroese-Jens’s boat, and called out three times “Dísa!” loudly at first and then in a whisper. But no one paid any attention. Faroese-Jens’s boat receded rapidly into the distance. The manager stayed there at the end of the pier for a while, his legs apart, bowlegged, looking anything but a military commander, with his Júel-hat in one hand and his pince-nez in the other, and went on gazing after the boat, and the wind ruffled his thin, graying hair and flapped his coattails.

  If he had gone out to the Danish warship like a lion, he stepped ashore like a lamb. It was obvious that the Danes neither wanted to shoot at Sviðinsvík nor lend the True Icelanders any cannons. Instead of climbing the church steeple and making the shivering secretary announce that the sword of the Prophet had been drawn from its scabbard, Pétur Pálsson went into his home and made a telephone call to the capital.

  “Well, my dearest Júel, Grandmother’s in a bad way now.”

  The station owner in the south: “Shut up!”

  Pétur Pálsson the manager, in Sviðinsvík: “She’s a corpse. She’s dead and gone.”

  The station owner: “Oh, go to Hell!”

  Pétur Pálsson the manager: “Icelandic nationality is up against it in Sviðinsvík.”

  The station owner: “Yes, you’ve always been a damned blithering idiot.”

  Pétur Pálsson the manager: “They would rather shed their blood than work for the True Icelanders’ wage rates. Can you send reinforcements from the south?”

  The station owner: “I’ll send men straight from here to give you such a thrashing there won’t be a bone left unbroken in your carcass.”

  Pétur Pálsson: “Are we then to surrender Icelandic nationality unconditionally to the lash of the anti-patriots?”

  The station owner: “If you cost me the constituency, I’ll murder you myself with my own hands.”

  Pétur: “All right then, good-bye my dearest Július, and may God always be with you.”

  The station owner hung up without replying.

  And with that the great war over wages in Sviðinsvík was over, and the secretary, stiff with cold, was recalled from the steeple. Next day, preliminary work on the station was started at the Trades Union rates.

  That evening the poet found himself alone in his resurrected house, a new man, and thought back over the events of the day while his intended slept. In two days’ time his daughter was to be buried; and as soon as the first earth had been sprinkled on the coffin, what would there be left to tie him any longer to this wretched house which had been pulled down the night before? There were hail showers blowing straight at the window; there were cracks in the panes and the hailstones were trying to get in; in between squalls the wind dropped and the clouds parted and there was clear, green sky; and he saw one star shining. He closed his eyes, but without wanting to sleep, and felt this star stepping down to him from heaven, and between sleeping and waking he heard its dancing footsteps outside, blended with the memory of the historic tumult of the day that had passed; and to a music that streamed forth in sad delight he heard deep in his breast a song being sung about the girl he called the Image of Liberty:

  Oh, how light are your footsteps,

  And how long I awaited thee;

  There is hail at the window

  And a cold wind that whines.

  But I know of a bright star,

  Of a bright star that shines,

  And at last you have come here,

  You have come here to me.

  These are difficult times, dear,

  There is squabbling and strife;

  I have nothing to o fer,

  Not a thing I can give,

  Except my hopes and my life, dear,

  Every moment I live:

  This one thing you gave me,

  That’s my all, dear—my life.

  But tonight the winter is over

  For every toiling hand,

  And the sun will shine tomorrow—

  It is their summer sun.

  It is our summer sunshine,

  It is our life begun;

  And for you I shall bear the banner

  Of this our future land.

  16

  Jón almáttugi (the Almighty) came from the south originally, and was said to be of good stock, but born out of wedlock. He quickly became highly accomplished in mind and body and could turn his hand to most things, but he was unsettled and thriftless. He was at home in every part of the country, and everywhere he went he did skilled work which few were capable of doing, both out-of-doors and in. He was a smith in wood and iron, he had an intimate understanding of all machinery, he was a fish-breeder, a weaver, a fox-hunter, a midwife, an accordion-player, a vaccinator, a singer, an animalgelder, a fine skier, and a swimmer; he could reckon the calendar on his fingers, he knew Danish and orthography, and could improvise verses. Needless to say, Jón almáttugi was enormously popular with the ladies. The years went by, and Jón almáttugi went on having the whole of Iceland as his home, and was a welcome visitor all over the country. He would stay for a week in the east and the next week he would be in the west; it was here, there and everywhere as far as he was concerned. In many places Jón almáttugi was awaited with longing, and sometimes was seen off with regret.

  But one day, when Jón almáttugi was well into his thirties, misfortune overtook him in the guise of good fortune. A young and handsome daughter of a pastor in the north brought about Jón almáttugi’s downfall. They got married and settled on one of her father’s farms, and rebuilt the farmhouse in their very first year, because the wife had ample means. The farm yielded produce from both land and sea. But it quickly became apparent that the woman loved her husband to excess, and accordingly disliked most people who came near him, but in particular hated all other women. She could not bear to let him out of her sight for even an hour. Jón almáttugi was as capable a fisherman as he was at everything else, but the woman became so afraid for her husband that she had hysterics on the beach each morning she thought the weather not good enough for going fishing.

  In some seasons his boat caught only half as much fish as others did; indeed, there was many a day of reasonably good weather when she would cosset her healthy husband in bed with egg punch, hot pancakes and pickled lamb’s flank. Often she sat numb-fingered with him as he baited fishing lines on autumn evenings, and in spring when he was out herding his sheep she followed him up to the moors and chased every ewe with him. In summer she forbade all other women to rake behind his scythe. If he had business elsewhere she would accompany him or would soon be on his heels. Should he need visit the outside privy in the middle of the night she would get out of bed with him and stand scantily dressed outside the privy door, even in a storm.

  That was how matters now stood for this man who once had owned the whole country and belonged to it. Pale and withdrawn, dull-eyed, not daring to look anyone in the face, Jón almáttugi wandered round his house and yard a shadow of his former self, weighed down by the burden of the great and true love this young and wealthy woman bestowed on him.

  It is said that one night, as usual, the housewife brought her husband the finest steaks and other delicacies with loving tenderness, and took infinite care as always to serve him to perfection. Jón almáttugi ate his meal quietly and without saying much. But when he had finished all the delicacies he took out his razor-sharp clasp knife and cut off his genitals, then handed them on a plate to his wife before staggering off to bed, castrated.

  While Ólafur Kárason the poet was preparing to write down the story of this Strange Man, his thoughts kept dwelling on his own problems. The young girl who had han
ded him the banner of mankind, this strong, noble, burgeoning life which was ready to embrace him with all her richness, occupied his mind throughout these long days as well as the short nights which would soon be ending.

  In a poem he had composed subconsciously one night he had said that his life was hers every moment he lived, but as usual what he said as a poet was far removed from his life as a man. The poet’s visions were subject to no fetters; but outwardly the man continued to be a prisoner of the life he had once chosen for himself and called his destiny, continued to sacrifice his life to his loyalty to the partner to whom he had once pledged himself, despite the fact that he had long been a different person to the one who had made the pledge, and she a different woman, the world a different world. This fidelity to those who depend on you, this contradiction of Love’s instability, duplicity, unsociability and dishonesty—perhaps there would be no human society without it.

  But sometimes the poet roused himself from his thoughts and asked himself: “Isn’t this fidelity contrary to manliness if one lives for it at the expense of love? Isn’t fidelity first and foremost the characteristic of a dog? Can it be reconciled with the land of the future? This fidelity—isn’t it, along with the pity from which it springs, the very opposite of virtue, a lack of courage to be a real man? But when is a man real, then? To lack courage—isn’t that precisely the same as being a real man? Does one belong to oneself, or does one belong to others? To what extent was Jón almáttugi within his rights when he resorted to that despairing operation to spite his wife? Or is the only solution to the problem to drown oneself, as was for a long time the only way out for men who were too much loved by their wives, in accordance with the old fundamental principle that it was best that a man and his manhood went together?”