“Nothing but good,” said the farmer. “Helga dear, show the man inside and ask mother to make some coffee.”
The daughter was somewhat taciturn, with a rather simple expression and eyes like a scared animal; it was hard to guess which of them was the more hostile to the visitor—the girl or her son on the doorstep.
“The summer mornings are nowhere as bright or long as in this nook of the glacier,” replied the old woman, when the poet asked politely about their health. “We can feel the fragrance of the forest in our sleep.”
The couple’s other daughter was paralyzed. She lay bedridden under the window, silent, and was called the Invalid, and had a little mirror which was hanging from a nail on the bedpost.
“Our daughter lost the use of her limbs when she was fifteen years old,” said the old woman. “But God has given her patience, and patience is stronger than might. The mirror is hung in such a way that she can see the glacier in it. She sometimes watches the glacier all day in the mirror. The glacier is her life.”
“Forgive me, old woman, if I make an observation. Isn’t it the beauty of the skies that is her life?” said Ólafur Kárason.
“I’m told you are a poet,” said the old woman. “How lovely it is to be a poet.”
“Tell the little boy that he has no need to be afraid, my dear,” said the poet. “I am a child myself, even more of a child than he is. I am still in swaddling clothes.”
“Little one,” said the old woman, “we only need to look into the man’s eyes to see that he is a child like us.”
After the coffee he asked the old woman for permission to lie outside on the garden wall and look up at the sky.
The glacier was no more than a few feet above the top of the wooded slope; its presence was the image of pure divinity, lovely but merciless. The poet felt that those who lived in the presence of such a magic whiteness must be preternatural; this was the realm of mythology.
The old man mowed his field until evening. He neither swung the scythe nor disturbed the grass, but did everything smoothly and effortlessly, with barely perceptible movements. He let the sharp edge of the scythe do all the work; he cut the grass at the roots without felling it; his working methods were those of Nature herself. The old woman came out with her rake; the little boy fell asleep on the mown grass beside the dog and the lamb. The late-afternoon work went on under the still glacier. Then the day was over. At suppertime the poet still lay on the garden wall. They said it would not be much but invited him to have supper with them.
The daughter had gone to bring home the cows, the old woman put on the porridge, the farmer seated himself on his bed, took out his clasp knife, and began to whittle some brazilwood for rake teeth, taking care not to let the shavings spill from his palm to the floor. They did not say much unless spoken to, but dealt with all questions most conscientiously and always spoke as one. When the farmer was asked how long he had been farming there, he looked at his wife and said, “Mother, how many years has it been?”
“We’ve been crofting here for fully forty years, Father,” said the woman.
Then the farmer answered the visitor and said, “Oh, forty years we’ve been scratching a living here.”
The visitor asked if they had had many children, and the farmer looked at his wife as if he expected her to answer the question direct.
“It was sixteen children we had, Father,” said the woman.
“Yes, sixteen were the children we had,” said the farmer.
The children had all scattered to the four winds long ago, of course, apart from these two girls, the one paralyzed physically, the other morally. Half of them had died in childhood; some of the sons had been lost at sea; some had settled down as farmers in far-off places. The most the old couple had managed was two cows and twenty sheep.
“Have you always loved one another?” asked the poet.
The farmer stopped whittling for a moment and looked at his wife in some embarrassment.
“We have always loved God,” said the woman.
It was as if the poet awoke from a dream; he looked up in astonishment and asked, “God? What god?”
“We have always believed in the one true God,” said the woman.
“Yes, the one God we have believed in,” said the farmer.
They looked upon their lives as a living example of how God loves people and is good to them. The poet said Thank you and prepared to take his leave.
“Patient girl,” he said, “if your mirror should ever break, will you allow me to give you a new one?”
“Poor dear man,” said the old couple, and the little boy was no longer frightened but brought his toys—sheep’s leg-bones and shells—and laid them at the visitor’s feet in farewell. In the faces of these people was the image of the long, bright summer mornings with the fragrance of the woods through their sleep. Not only did they have souls, but so did the things around them. Although everything was on its last legs—the little cottage, the farm implements, the household utensils—every object was in its place, everything clean and polished. It was not thanks to the cohesion of the material that the articles here did not fall apart. What would happen to this wooden bucket if they stopped milking into it morning and night? It would fall apart. The cottage would cave in the day they stopped walking in and out, turning the door handle gently, and with careful, kindly steps on the floorboards. It was unknown here to treat things as if they did not matter. Even the ladle in the pot was an important, independent individual with duties and rights; nothing seemed ever to have been done here haphazardly or casually. Every humblest task was carried out with a rare respect for Creation as a whole, with affection, as if each task had never been done before and would never be done again.
He threaded his way down the sheep paths alongside the ravine; in some places they were extraordinarily close to the edge. The fragrance of the grass and the heather blended amiably with the smell of the path. He met the farmer’s cows, grunting with repletion, their udders bulging, curiosity shining from their eyes, ears and noses, but not unmixed with the disdain of the sated. He stepped politely off the path so that they would not have to inconvenience themselves for him.
The girl was sitting on a jutting rock, staring down into the ravine. She had taken off her head scarf, the curls of her auburn hair were bleached by the sun, she had red cheeks and a not-very-intelligent face, and had lost her happiness all summer. She pretended not to see the man approaching. The lamb lay innocently at her side with its head held high, chewing the cud with rapid jaws, while at the other side lay fidelity itself, the old farm dog, and it could not be bothered barking at the same man twice in one day. The merlin in the ravine was still flying round in circles, calling, and its cries went on echoing from the cliffs.
He raised his cap and said Good-evening, but she scarcely acknowledged his greeting.
“Don’t look down into the ravine for too long, little girl,” said the poet. “There’s a bird of ill omen in that ravine. But in the glacier there lives a divine nature; you should look at the glacier instead.”
She made a reply, but glanced for a moment at the glacier to see whether the man was speaking the truth. Then she looked down into the ravine again. It could not have been because of wantonness that such a girl had had a baby; on the contrary, it must have been from an excess of modesty.
“Perhaps you don’t dare to talk to me because you think I’m crazy?” he asked.
She looked at him, and an attempt to answer flickered in her eyes; then she shook her head and gave up trying to say it.
“I’m one of these madmen who do no one any harm,” he said. “I’m in search of peace. That’s all.”
This time there came a suggestion of warmth into her eyes, like a warning of tears to come. But she did not know how to weep, either. She looked down into the ravine.
“The day comes when one forgets those one has loved,” he said. “On that day one can die in peace. The deepest wounds heal so that you’d hardly notice.”
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Then the girl said, “It’s no use talking poetically to me; I don’t understand what you say. And there’s nothing wrong with me.”
“There’s no point in being so formal with me,” he said. “I’m neither a major poet nor a national poet, not even a district poet, and I’ve never had anything published. If I’m a poet, I’m my own private poet. Apart from that, I’m just a person near a glacier, like you.”
“I don’t understand you,” said the girl. “Don’t talk to me.”
“But what if I have business with you?” he said.
“Business? With me? That’s impossible.”
“A message.”
“A message? For me? From whom?”
“From a man,” he said. “A man you knew not so long ago.”
“Leave me alone; you’re crazy,” she said.
“He asked me to remind you that whenever people’s lives appear to be harmony itself—perfect love, an ideal family, comfortable circumstances—life isn’t real, either, and certainly only half a life. A whole heart—half a life. He asked me to tell you that life is governed by opposites and is always in conflict with itself, and that’s why it is life. To have lost what one loved most is perhaps the only real life. At least, anyone who doesn’t understand that, doesn’t know what it is to live; doesn’t know how to live and, what’s worse, doesn’t know how to die. That’s what your friend asked me to pass on to you.”
“As if he’d talk nonsense like that!” said the girl. “He never talks nonsense.”
“Yes,” said the poet. “A lot of people think he’s become a bit funny of late. But I think, on the other hand, that he’s become more experienced and mature than he was.”
The girl forgot her shyness for a moment and now looked him full in the face; the lamb and the dog had also raised their heads sternly and were looking in the same direction as she. He felt as if he were standing before three judges.
“Are you lying to me? Yes, you’re lying to me,” said the girl.
“No,” he said, looking as sincere as he could. “I call all good spirits to witness that I’m telling the truth.”
“Then didn’t he give you any other message for me?” she asked wide-eyed, from the depths of her heart.
“Yes,” said the poet. “He asked me to deliver this poem.”
If my poor heart is all that is most fickle,
That’s how I’m made,
And I must be as destiny has shaped me,
As fate ordained.
Yet never since the gods of old, my darling,
First came down here,
Has any girl so sweet as you, my darling,
Been loved so dear.
But understand my fickle heart, my darling—
How hard it is
To love, and hope, and trust, and wish, my darling—
And then know this:
That my half-heart, inconstancy’s true symbol,
And my whole life,
Will never disappoint, nor harm, nor hurt you,
Nor cause you strife.
2
But when the summer had passed and autumn weather was raging, and the grassy slope with its expanse of sky was no longer a sanctuary for other people’s animals or for anyone who longed to live in luxury, the householder at Little Bervík realized that he had forgotten to lay in supplies for the winter. As a children’s teacher, the poet was to get free kerosine from the parish, but the rumor got around at once that he was using a light in the evenings after bedtime, and the bailiff called on him officially and solemnly announced that the parish council would not be responsible for paying out money for such extravagance in these critical times for the nation. In the first snowstorms the snow came in through the eaves, in rainy weather the roof leaked, and on top of that there was no fuel. One evening during a snowstorm, the poet and his wife were intensely cold. At his wife’s request, the poet then went to see the bailiff in Greater Bervík and said they needed fuel and matches, and asked for the loan of a few peats.
The parish office replied promptly, “You’ll get damn all peat from me! Those who can’t make provision for themselves in the autumn can stew in their own juice.”
But after some moralizing, he said that the poet could go out to the moor and take twenty-five peats from a stack he owned there— against payment. Thereupon the poet asked the parish officer if he would be so good as to sell him a box of matches for cash.
“No,” said the bailiff. “If one knows one has fuel, there’s no need to light a fire.”
That evening the poet and his wife had to burn the mattress from their bed to cook their porridge, since it was impossible to fetch the peat from the bailiff’s stack because of the weather.
Some time later the education committee called on the children’s teacher to discuss the start of a school term. There were three of them: the bailiff, Pastor Janus, and órður of Horn—old Bervíkings every one, coarse-tongued and practically fossilized. The pastor was a totally godless man, living entirely in ancient learning, with only a limited interest in modern times and none at all in everyday life. órður of Horn sat rocking to and fro, his mind full of disasters and other catastrophes which he wanted to have taken down in writing, including the life of his mother-in-law. The bailiff was endowed with official dignity and social conscience. When these three men were all together, it was as if three deaf men had met; they did not appear to see one another, either. In the same room, they talked as if they were in different corners of the country and had never met, and would never meet, had never heard one another, and not even heard of one another; and yet they all gave the impression of being the same person. Ólafur Kárason was the fourth deaf man in this gathering, the fourth sightless man, the fourth corner of the country.
“My men tell me that not just twenty-five peats are missing from the moor, but a whole stack,” said the bailiff. “What have you to say to that, Ólafur?”
“I wouldn’t like to swear to it that the occasional lumps of peat weren’t frozen together; it was freezing hard and I couldn’t always break them apart.”
“If one wants to steal, dear boy,” said the pastor, “then for God’s sake one should never steal from the rich. A rich man has a hundred peats, and then suddenly he has only ninety-nine left: one of them has been stolen. He won’t forget that even on his deathbed. A poor man has only one peat and is just as poor if it’s stolen; and by the next day he has forgotten all about it. The wealthy man will inevitably get you into trouble if you steal from him; the poor man doesn’t even bother to mention it. That’s why all genuine thieves have the good sense to steal from the poor. The only really dangerous thing to do in Iceland is to steal from the rich, and the only really profitable thing to do in Iceland is to steal from the poor, dear boy.”
“I shall pay in full for every single peat,” said the poet.
órður of Horn: “My wife and I have wanted so much to meet someone who could compose a nice elegy for my late mother-in-law who perished in the great snow avalanche at Eyrarfjörður a few years ago, and preferably someone who could write up her whole life story. I’m a bit short of fuel myself, of course, but one can always spare a load of sheep-droppings if there’s a chance of a good poem, lads.”
“What we need in this district above all isn’t poetry,” said the bailiff. “We need honest people, not intellectual people and not educated people either, but truly Christian and industrious people; people who are content with little. We need people who don’t indulge in amusements in these critical times; people who don’t go to the moor and burn other people’s peats. That’s what has to be impressed on our children. We want a serious society. We don’t want to have the sort of society they have at Kaldsvík over on the other side of the mountain: at the last Faroese Ball there, two men had their noses bitten off, a third had his ear torn off, and women were lifted up by the legs in the middle of the dance floor and various other offenses.”
“Hlaupa-Halla had nine children in twelve parishes over more
than thirty years, and was forgiven everything until she became a sheep-stealer, dear boy, but then she was sent to prison,” said the pastor. “No crime has ever been recognized in Iceland except sheep-stealing.”
“I really think there’s an urgent need to write a poem about the snow avalanche in Eyrarfjörður while there are still people alive who remember it,” said òrður of Horn.
“The most important thing in life is not to be a burden upon others,” said the bailiff. “Not to be dependent upon anyone, never to need to ask anyone for anything—that’s as good as being given every human virtue as a christening gift.”
“If one wants to become somebody,” said the pastor, “it’s a good idea to start early collecting useless bits of string, rotten sticks, rusty nails, old whetstones, dried dog muck, and so on. But some people have grown rich from killing the survivors of shipwrecks. Many people favor witchcraft in order to acquire wealth. For instance, the late Finnbogi Bæringsson always went about with a pocket in his shirt where he kept a few krónur that had been stolen from a poor widow, as well as a heron’s claw, a mermaid’s purse, a wishing-stone, an orchis and an abracadabra. Others reckon that using a wren is an infallible way of becoming well-off: you have to catch it alive, then it’s split in two, dear boy, and the one half is placed in the chest where you keep your money, while the other half is buried in the ground according to certain prescribed procedures. Actually, the person who catches the bird catches ill luck, too, but there’s a way round that. You only have to get someone poor to do it for you, dear boy.”
“Four farms were destroyed in that avalanche,” said òrður of Horn. “In Syðrivík one eighty-five-year-old man suddenly woke up with snow in his mouth—he was the only one on the farm to survive. At Steinar only a cat survived. At Hólm a woman in confinement christened her newborn baby in the darkness under the avalanche, and named it after her husband and son, both of whom perished. I don’t know what’s worth writing about if it isn’t that sort of thing, lads.”
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