World Light

by Halldor Laxness

  A fight was the only way of reaching a satisfactory conclusion; to win a fight was to have been proved right. She was determined to get him down and annihilate all his Christianity; she gritted her teeth and grimaced. Her father had not taught her any other wrestling holds than a trial of strength by bear hug; if all else failed, it came quite naturally to her to use her teeth, and she bit. But when he tripped her she lost her balance, fell backwards, and pulled him down with her to the floor.

  Later, he often thought about whether this fall had not been the beginning of the misfortune: could he not have prevented it; did he have to let her pull him down with her? He could argue about it with himself for a long time, but perhaps it was a minor detail. The main point was that all of a sudden he felt her young, brawny body pressed hard against him, her life against his life; and astonishingly enough, at this point she no longer put up any resistance. On the contrary, her body yielded to his body as naturally as she had earlier taken his child and comforted it. Just as it had been her spontaneous reaction to defend herself when he had cuffed her, it seemed just as natural for her, now that she was down, to abandon her defenses and expect him to take advantage of the fall. One moment—and then the door in the passage was opened. He leapt hurriedly to his feet, picked up the catechism from the floor, and sat down.

  The schoolgirl Jasína Gottfreðlína stood in the middle of the floor, scarlet in the face, out of breath, her eyes hot, and had just smoothed her skirt down when the housewife, Jarþrúður Jónsdóttir, came in. There was dust from the floor on her back; but she did not say anything and was not ashamed of anything.

  Next day the ice on the river was bearing.

  5

  By tradition, Ólafur Kárason got three days’ leave from the school to enable him to do some Christmas shopping at the trading station like all other good men. The route lay across the valley, over the river, up the mountain, through the Kaldsheiði Pass, and through another parish to Kaldsvík-undir-Kaldur, which was a big place. He was leading a packhorse. When he had a full load he set off homewards. It was two days before Christmas. A storm was blowing up and rapidly getting worse, torrential rain and gale-force winds and dreadful conditions underfoot. He had the wind against him. Darkness caught him on the mountain. But when he got down off the mountain at last that evening he shrank from tackling the Berá. He knew how much it rose in that kind of weather, and since he was not much of a traveler himself, he decided to seek shelter for the night on this side of the river. He made for the place where he thought he was most likely to be given refuge, and that was with the widow at Syðrivík, the aunt of his pupil Jasína Gottfreðlína.

  The teacher was received with open arms in this little cottage and was treated with all hospitality. The cottage was only a shack, with two wooden walls and two of turf, standing on a grassy bank down by the sea, with seaweed spread on the homefield. The widow lived there with her half-grown son and a fifteen-year-old daughter and two younger children. They had some sheep and a cow, but the greatest luxury of the place was the surf with its eternal cadences of coming in and flowing out.

  The poet was drenched to the skin, because he did not have much in the way of protective clothing; there was not a dry stitch on his body. The woman’s children stabled the pony and brought the baggage in to the porch, while she made the poet go to bed at once and waited on him herself, spread his clothes to dry on the cooking stove, and gave him strong coffee laced with brennivín. Gradually the chill went out of the poet’s body. Before long she brought him meat and soup, fresh milk and scones. She was a talkative woman, and she chatted to him from behind the stove and thanked him for her daughter Dóra, who had attended his school and learned some fine poems. She said that fine poems were the best capital any youngster could be given before starting out in life, rich and poor alike.

  “Yes,” said Ólafur Kárason. “Poetry is the Redeemer of the soul.”

  “So long as God gives the Icelandic nation poets, we shall never have cause to despair,” said the woman.

  Even though the house was small, the conversation contained the murmur of the farthest ocean.

  The schoolgirl, Jasína Gottfreðlína, and her cousin Dóra sat side by side with their soup bowls in their laps, Dóra rather anemic and flaccid, talking in undertones and leaning against her friend and giggling, whereas the pupil did not know how to speak in undertones, and when she laughed it was open laughter, physical and straightforward, with moist gleaming teeth as if one were looking into the maw of a cub. The widow’s young son came of the same giant line, insensitive to anything around him; he sat near the door, sunk in a heavy stupor over his soup and meat. The younger children had been put to bed. There was a fire in the stove, and the living room was warm. The widow recited some beautiful poems she said she always recited when things were difficult—shortage of food, illness, family bereavement— and when life smiled on her she also recited fine poems.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s absolutely true; poetry is the Redeemer of mankind.”

  As time passed, the poet became slower and slower to respond. It was so wonderful to be staying the night in a warm, dry place after the storm on Kaldsheiði, and to hear poetry appreciated properly, with everyone eating soup and meat, and the din of distant oceans reigning in the house. The present and the everyday, the remote and the eternal, merged into one in an almost supernaturally blissful way; and then he was asleep.

  It was the sleep of a tired man, peaceful and deep and long. When he opened his eyes, there was a dim light burning in the living room. There was no fire in the stove and the room was rather cold, the storm had died down, no wind on the roof, and quiet apart from the desolate sound of the surf. He took his watch out from under the pillow and saw that the time was a few minutes past six. The two youngest children were fast asleep in a bed farther along the wall, but on the other side of the room the schoolgirl, Jasína Gottfreðlína, was half sitting up in bed and spelling her way through the Children’s Christian Primer by the feeble light of the little lamp. There was no one else in the living room. He looked around carefully and was debating with himself whether to reveal that he was awake or pull the eiderdown over his head and go back to sleep. For a while he did not draw attention to himself and listened to the girl muttering; her method of reading was to say the words half-aloud to herself. He felt he would not be able to go back to sleep.

  “Good-morning,” he said.

  But Jasína Gottfreðlína did not know how to bid someone Good-morning.

  And then a strange thing happened; for when Ólafur Kárason had been lying there quietly for a while, he began to have a strange feeling in his nerves—later, he compared it to hanging by a thread—he was gripped by a strange trembling that started in his groin and then spread right through his whole body and became a steady shivering, and he could hardly breathe. He half sat up in bed in the hope of being able to shake it off, gasped for breath, and asked: “Where’s the woman?”

  “She’s in the barn,” replied the girl.

  “And the older children?”

  “They’ve gone to see to the sheep.”

  There was a short silence, and Ólafur Kárason went on shivering and the girl went on learning Christianity. Then he asked: “Are the people coming back soon?”

  “No,” she replied. “Not for ages yet.”

  “What about the little ones?” he said.

  “The kids?” said the girl. “Can’t you see they’re asleep?”

  “Do you think they’re fast asleep?” he whispered.

  “They sleep like hogs,” said the girl. “They’re always allowed to sleep until breakfast. I’m always woken up very early to do my lessons while the children are sleeping and the people are out.”

  “Yes, you’re a good girl,” he said.

  “No, I’m not a good girl at all,” she said.

  “Soon you’ll understand everything in the catechism,” he said.

  “I’m a simpleton and don’t understand anything,” she s
aid. “Least of all the catechism. No matter how I go about it, I can never apply my mind to it. I’ll undoubtedly never get confirmed.”

  “Yes, Jasína dear,” he said. “You will be confirmed. When have I ever said that you’re a simpleton? I say you’re a good girl. If there’s anything in the catechism you don’t understand, I’ll try to explain it to you.”

  “Just now?” she said.

  “If you like,” he said.

  “I don’t know how to ask,” she said.

  “I’ll show you,” he said.

  He got out of bed, turned down the lamp so that the room was almost in darkness, and got into bed and under the covers beside her, took the Children’s Christian Primer from her, and kissed her. At first she did not know what this was; then she opened her mouth. She was wearing tattered knitted drawers and she let him tear them off as if nothing were more natural. On the whole she made no attempt to prevent anything, she received him without any resistance, she just winced for a moment and bit her lip as if at a sudden and relatively harmless attack of gripe which was over before there had been time to cry out. She laid her young, strong arms round the poet’s shoulders. A few minutes later he got out of her bed again and turned up the lamp. He said nothing, but the girl said, “What did you do with my catechism?”

  He picked up the catechism off the floor and handed it to her, and she started spelling her way through it again in the same way as before, saying the words out loud as she read them. He went back to his own bed and waited for the woman to come back and give him his clothes which had been drying. He was no longer shivering, and felt very well. The children slept as before. The drowsy sound of the surf went on being the voice of the place. Then the widow came back, said Good-morning, asked how the visitor had slept, and began to light the fire.

  Outside the weather was calm and it was freezing again; the river was bearing, the thaw had been too brief to affect the ice. The woman gave the visitor his clothes, dry and warm, and brought him steaming coffee to his bed. He wanted to leave at once when he was dressed, but she would not hear of letting him go before he had had breakfast. It was not so often they welcomed good visitors. The younger children got dressed, and the schoolgirl, Jasína Gottfreðlína, was also up. The two girls helped each other make the beds and clean the house. The woman went on talking, but Ólafur Kárason was now somewhat restless and quite a different person from the night before. He noticed that over Jasína’s bed the girls began whispering as if they had found something unexpected, and next moment they had both vanished from the living room. When they came back, Ólafur had the impression that the widow’s daughter was in a state of excitement and looked at him strangely, but Jasína Gottfreðlína was her usual self. The poet did not have much appetite. He managed to get hold of Jasína alone in the doorway when he was leaving, and was quick to whisper to her these words: “You must keep quiet about what happened; it can be a matter of life and death for us both. Remember that nothing happened.”

  She looked at him in amazement, slow on the uptake, almost nonplussed, but he had no opportunity to say more to her. The woman and the children came out into the yard and helped to put the pack-saddle on the horse, bring out the baggage and load it up. Then they said Good-bye to the poet and bade him farewell, grateful to God for such a visitor.

  6

  Early on the morning of Christmas Eve a man passed the homefield at Little Bervík leading some packhorses, heading towards Greater Bervík. The poet was standing in front of the house; it was his custom when he saw travelers in the vicinity of the cottage to go to meet them and offer them coffee.

  “Good-day!” he shouted.

  It was Jason the lighthouse keeper at Taungar. He did not return the poet’s greeting. Ólafur Kárason said Good-day again. At that the traveler halted and shouted back: “I’m not in the habit of greeting criminals! You have grossly harmed my daughter! This insult shall be avenged!”

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” said Ólafur Kárason.

  “I’m talking about the disgrace you have done me and my family. My family and I, we are of royal lineage; my genealogy goes back to Sigurður Fáfnisbani (Fáfnir’s-Slayer). When Icelanders were worthy of the name, it was considered an accepted duty to avenge with a sword the sort of crime you have committed against my family. It’s a bitter thing to be living at a time when one may not challenge to single combat the man who has disgraced one’s family, and carve a blood-eagle on his back!”

  “Your way of talking condemns itself, sir,” said Ólafur Kárason. “I shall make no reply.”

  “If there is a trace of justice left in this land, your deeds will bring you to the gallows!”

  “No fear of that, sir,” said the poet. “We’ll all end up where we belong in good time. That’s why there’s no hurry. So let’s talk about this calmly and fraternally, like men.”

  “I would be ashamed to be descended from the men of old if I talked fraternally to a scoundrel,” said the man, and went on his way.

  Ólafur Kárason remained standing on the doorstep for a long time after the visitor was out of earshot. Then he went inside.

  His wife pulled her long, pendulous breast out of her cardigan and started feeding the child. The poet paced about the room for a long time. Finally he brushed his hair from his sweating brow and addressed her.

  “Jarþrúður, I have something to tell you that weighs heavily upon me,” he said.

  “It must be quite something if you’re taking the trouble of telling me about it!” said his wife.

  “I must ask you to try to wear a human expression on your face, Jarþrúður,” he said.

  “Dear Jesus in Heaven!” she said. “Are you going to frighten me?’ ”

  “If you put on that kind of expression, as if you’re on intimate terms with the deity, I cannot talk to you, Jarþrúður,” he said.

  “I’ve always had the feeling you would one day bring down some terrible calamity upon me!” she said.

  “Very well,” he said. “In that case I’d better not tell you anything, and let you hear it from others instead.”

  “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost!” she said.

  “Yes, of all the imperfect things that man has created, the gods are the most imperfect,” he said impatiently.

  Then the woman removed her breast from the infant’s mouth and asked simply, “What has happened?”

  As soon as she stopped invoking the Holy Trinity, they calmed down, and he began to talk. He told her about his difficult journey over the moor the day before yesterday in the teeth of the wind and the rain, and how it was dark by the time he came down off the mountain, with the river unsafe, so that he sought shelter for the night at Syðrivík. He was exhausted and in a bad state, and the widow made him go to bed at once. To get the chill out of him she gave him some brennivín in his coffee. But when he woke up in the morning he was feeling very odd, he did not really know what it was, there was such a feeling of strangeness about everything, a feeling of desolation, he felt as if he were hanging by a thread, and the pounding of the surf was the heartbeat of this place. He felt as if the ocean were reigning in this house, and he had no control of himself any more and began to shiver. He had not the slightest idea what it was that was affecting his actions, but one thing was certain. He got out of bed and into another bed, and in it there lay a young girl who was learning her catechism, and he turned down the lamp and took her catechism from her.

  “And then what?” asked the wife.

  “She was practically naked,” he said, unnaturally calm.

  “And then?” asked the wife.

  “It’s really extraordinarily simple to be human,” he said. “I’ve never understood how it’s possible to think of guilt and sin and suchlike in connection with human life; and yet I think it’s even more ridiculous to imagine the god being angry in connection with it.”

  “What did you do?” asked the wife.

  “Do?” he repeated. “Wha
t does anyone do? One lives. That’s all. Is there anything more natural? Is there anything more simple? On the other hand, it certainly wasn’t very prudent of me to go to the girl. The Conscience of the Nation passed by just now and wanted to carve a blood-eagle on my back.”

  “Who was the girl?” asked the wife.

  “One of my pupils,” he said. “Jasína Gottfreðlína.”

  “I knew it!” said the wife. “Do you think I hadn’t noticed those mare’s eyes of hers? Creatures like that should be flogged beforehand.”

  “There’s no point in speaking ill of this young girl,” he said. “And there’s no question of flogging anyone, before or after. To do something is just as right as not to do something; to be is just as right as not to be. Let’s not concern ourselves with the fact that the gods that man has created are stupid and imperfect, and their laws likewise. The problem is to know how to behave prudently in conformity with human society; and that’s something I have never known how to do in anything. This ignorance has often cost me dear, but seldom have things looked as black as they do now. A dark shadow may fall over this little cottage of ours, Jarþrúður.”

  What surprised the poet most was that when he had confessed to his wife she did not rage or storm or invoke the gods, but received this information with the same kind of stoical calm as the natural death of a child. After some thought she asked if he suspected that something would be done in the matter.

  He told her that the lighthouse keeper must have spent the night at his sister’s, on his way home from the trading station; and he had just passed by on his way to the bailiff’s.

  The wife was silent for a while, and then asked, “How’s the river today?”