Of course the house where she lived was not anything like the real house of his hopeful dreams; on the doorstep he felt he had lost his way and that his dream-mother was not only better but also truer than reality. The shadow of the house convinced him that the woman he had dreamed about did not exist. But he had already knocked on the door, and all forebodings were too late.
He was shown up long, narrow stairs where the permanent smell of boiled fish from years gone by assaulted him. In an untidy attic under a sloping ceiling he was directed to the apartment of the woman he had asked for.
She was short and bloated, her face with its plump, shiny cheeks reminded one of enameled clay; her eyes were like fractures in old iron. Never had Ólafur Kárason suspected that he had a fat mother. He asked if he had the name right and she said Yes, and then he offered his hand and said Hullo, and she replied curtly and asked who this person might be.
“My name is Ólafur Kárason,” he said.
“Ólafur Ká . . . ?” she said, wide-eyed with surprise.
“Yes,” he said. “I am your son.”
“Well, I never!” said the woman, and there was no doubt that she almost fainted at the visitor’s unexpected news; but she recovered quickly and gave him her hand. “Do come in,” she said.
“Many thanks,” he said.
She shut the door and looked at him.
“Well, I’m absolutely flabbergasted!” she said. “Do have a seat.”
“Thank you,” he said and sat down, and brushed the hair from his forehead.
“I would never have thought you looked like that,” said the woman. “How old are you?”
“I’m thirty-one,” he said.
“My God, was I only seventeen when I had you!” she said, and the words seemed to him to be a blend of self-reproach and excuse. “Am I seeing right? Are you red-haired?”
She came right over to him and ran her fingers through his hair and had a good look to see if he was red-haired all the way down to roots. “Yes, you really are red-haired! My God, no one in my family has ever been red-haired! I’m simply speechless!”
“How is your health?” he asked.
“Health?” she said. “Don’t even mention it. I haven’t any health at all.”
“Haven’t you been to see a doctor?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I’ve been to every doctor I can get hold of. Whenever I hear of a new doctor somewhere I either write to him or go there myself. They’ll soon have tried on me every mixture there is, but nothing helps. I’ve often thought of having an operation. It’s no life at all.”
She had a bed, a sofa, a chest of drawers, and a broken-down sewing machine. There was no sign of any work in hand; but there was a picture on the wall of a noble lady in a broad-brimmed hat meeting a huntsman at a gate in the road, and there were some other foreign pictures in color, but no family portraits. On a corner-shelf there stood an oil stove and some tin jars and ladles.
She did not ask him any personal questions, which he interpreted as meaning that she knew his circumstances and did not want to know any more. The silence was fraught with embarrassment on both sides.
“You’re a seamstress, I’m told,” said Ólafur Kárason.
“That’s all over,” she said. “Some are in fashion, I’ve never been in fashion. I’ve always been misunderstood all my life. Nobody has ever been so misunderstood as I’ve been. Actually, I’ve never been anybody at all.”
“Yes, you’re not the only one,” said Ólafur Kárason.
“Your father was the one who misunderstood me first. My God, how that man misunderstood me! And everyone else. Yet he misunderstood himself most of all.”
“I’ve no way of judging that,” said Ólafur Kárason. “I have never seen him. What news can you give me of him, by the way?”
“News? Of him? Me? No, I can’t give you any news of him, for the simple reason that there has never been any news of him; and never will be. He really wasn’t a person at all. I never knew what he was. I think he wasn’t anything.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, perhaps,” said the poet.
“It’s at least twenty years since I heard his name mentioned,” said the woman. “He must surely be dead long ago; or else gone to the north.”
“He sometimes sent me writing materials when I was small,” said Ólafur Kárason.
“Yes, of course, that’s right,” she said. “You’re said to be a poet. Won’t you have some coffee?”
“Thank you,” he said. “There’s really no need.”
“You’ve never sent me a poem,” she said when she had put the kettle on. “I really would have loved to get a poem!”
She had false teeth, like a woman of importance, and that helped to widen the gulf between them.
“I often thought of sending you a poem,” he said. “I was even thinking of coming myself. I was often in distress.”
“You should use the opportunity to write a poem about me while you’re in town. How long are you thinking of staying?”
“I’m going home tomorrow,” he said. “If I only knew where to stay the night.”
It was noticeable that she did not need to ask where he had been staying the last few nights. In his shoes, she said, she would stay at the Salvation Army; she had heard that a bed cost twenty-five aurar.
“I have a poetry book,” she said. “You ought to compose something for it while I’m making the coffee; a lot of poets have written something in it.”
He said it took him a long time to compose poetry, and that he had to be in a very special mood for it.
“I know lots of poets who can make poetry wherever they are,” she said.
“Just so,” he said.
“I’m so terribly fond of poetry,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve inherited your gifts from me and my family. You should go and see the editor of The Alfirðing at once tomorrow, he’s got a black beard, and get him to publish a book of your poems so that you’ll be famous. He has a big printing plant.”
The visitor made no reply to this suggestion but stared vacantly into the blue, and she looked at him sideways, half furtively; how pale he was and haggard, and though his eyes were almost unnaturally bright, there lurked in them such grief that it was difficult to imagine that this man had ever known a moment’s happiness all his life.
“It isn’t really enough just to be a poet, I suppose, far from it,” she said at last. “Why have you never thought of being something?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“You should have become something,” she said.
He was very hungry because he had had nothing to eat except coffee and hardtack biscuits in the prison that morning before the court hearing. “Mummy, give me a piece of bread” was really the only thing he wanted to say, but between him and this woman were thirty years with thirty winters of snowstorms and innumerable mountains. The kettle was coming to the boil, and she had started to crumble the chicory into the coffeepot.
They heard noises on the stair and in the attic, coming closer and closer; then the door was thrown open and an unsightly drunk appeared in the doorway. He growled a little at the visitor at first, then lurched across the room, cursing, turned to Ólafur Kárason, grabbed him by the lapels and started to shake him.
“Who the devil are you, eh? What the devil d’you want, eh?”
“My name is Ólafur Kárason,” said the poet.
The newcomer lost control of himself so completely now that he might have been called a comparatively peaceable and courteous man hitherto. He started to heap on the poet the worst abuse and the most obscene insults imaginable, and ended by saying that a man who had brought upon his mother’s name such everlasting disgrace should get out of her sight at once. He did not stop at mere words, but hauled Ólafur Kárason out of his seat and across the floor, and threw him out of the room; then he threw him down the stairs as well.
And the Ljósvíkingur’s old dream of having a mother came to an end.
1
1
Next morning he went to see the editor, a short man with a generous paunch, an underhung jaw, a black goatee beard and foxy eyes behind pince-nez. He greeted the editor and said that his name was Ólafur Kárason, but the editor was in some doubt about the attitude he should adopt toward this voter and went on writing for a while behind the shelter of his pince-nez. When it suited him, he laid his pen aside, having decided to be amiable to Ólafur Kárason, said that he knew him by repute, said that he was a poet himself and had had books published. He said he had heard some of Ólafur Kárason’s poetry and rather liked it, but that it would do him no harm to spread his wings a little more vigorously and also, perhaps, apply himself a little more to Egill Skalla-Grímsson’s discipline of form.
“A f–friend of mine suggested to me yesterday that I should call on you and ask how much you think it would cost to publish what I have written,” said Ólafur Kárason.
The editor asked the poet to give him some idea of his works, and Ólafur started to enumerate them: novels, collected poems, biographies, stories of strange men, registers of poets—scores of written volumes, thousands of pages. Finally the editor assumed an extremely mathematical mien and started calculating; the calculations were accompanied by deep sighs and groans and a grave air of quite exceptional responsibility, but eventually he laid aside his pencil, leaned back in his chair, and asked: “Can you put two hundred and fifty thousand krónur on the table?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t find much difficulty in raising that,” said the poet.
“If you really are going around with masses of money in your pocket,” said the other, “then I, as an older and more experienced man, would point out to you that this cash could be used in a much more rational way than for having books published. For two hundred and fifty thousand krónur one could at the very least secure oneself six medium-sized constituencies, build both churches and fish stations, apart from all personal guarantees of loans, and still have money left over. And even if you had brought your gold here in casks to ask me what to do with it, I would advise you to get a boat and row your casks far out to sea and sink them there, rather than to have books printed. To have books printed is to throw money in the fire and lose everything except your shirt. I once had to print two books, a book of poems and a collection of short stories, because I had been given an author’s grant by the state, but if I hadn’t had so-called ownership of a printing plant, I still wouldn’t be free of debts because of these books, even though I am well known not just here in this part of the country but down south too. No, my friend, to have a book published is the last thing you want to do with your money. Would you like a cigar?”
“Thank you,” said the poet, “but I’m afraid I don’t know how to smoke cigars. But there’s something else I’d like to say to you if you’ll allow me to sit with you for a moment. I have come to you in all sincerity, and therefore I beg you not to scoff at me; and I shall not try to hide anything from you. The fact is that a grievous calamity has befallen me; I have been accused of a crime. To be sure, I denied it for a long time, for fear of bringing disgrace and unhappiness upon my wife and children, and upon my mother, apart from the fact that I myself take the view that what I did wasn’t really any more of a crime than anything else I have done in my life. But last night I lay awake and was thinking that if I am found guilty and thereby branded for all time in the eyes of the nation, like Sigurður Breiðfjörð who was sentenced to twenty-seven lashes, it would perhaps help somewhat to rehabilitate me a little in the eyes of posterity if I had a book published just about now, however small.”
At this confidence, the editor’s mathematical mien vanished entirely, and over his face there spread the fat smile of the politician: “Since we’re both poets and therefore brothers,” he said, “I can tell you that in my opinion it’s only natural that men should grow tired of their old women when they reach a certain age and start fancying young girls; but on the other hand I think it was quite unnecessary of you to bother the sheriff for nearly a week with these damned trivialities. Because it isn’t crimes or breaches of the law that cause people’s downfall nowadays, as you know; people fall by being on the wrong side in their views and turning against the National Movement. By the way, Ólafur, how are the prospects for Our Movement up in Bervík?”
“I can’t speak for others,” said the voter, without quite knowing what this was leading up to, and beginning instinctively to feel his way, “but for my own part I can assert that I have always had a very strong desire to be on the right side in my views and support the National Movement to the best of my ability, and to the best of my conscience.”
“As you know,” said the editor confidentially, and leaned forward into the shaft of sunlight with butter in his smile, while the raven-black beard, the underhung jaw, and the pince-nez all glistened—“as you know, we editors and party leaders can whitewash anyone at all if he has the right perception of the right powers.”
“The right perception of the right powers,” said Ólafur Kárason. “That has always been my deepest longing.”
Not only butter but honey as well dripped from the editor’s smile; he patted his visitor on the shoulder, almost kissed him, and said, “Sometime soon you must send me a poem—about the right subject. It doesn’t need to be long—three verses would do—but if I like it, I’ll have it printed in a good position in the paper. And we’ll both be doing ourselves a favor.”
“I have,” said Ólafur Kárason solemnly, “been thinking for a long time of writing an ode to the sun.”
To love the sun, and to praise it above all other things—Ólafur Kárason thought that no one, neither man nor poet, could get much further in having the right views about the right powers here on earth. “But unfortunately,” he added, “I can’t say whether I can get everything I would like to say about this subject into three verses.”
What the poet found most surprising was that the editor seemed suddenly to lose all desire to kiss him; the butter and the honey vanished from his smile as if they were no longer friends. He leaned back in his chair and put on a serious expression.
“If I might give you some good advice,” he said rather distantly, “then I think it would be better for you not to compose a poem about the sun.”
The poet looked at the editor, perplexed. It was obvious he had failed to feel his way towards the glimmer of light in that dark forest which can separate two people.
“You mean . . .” he tried to say, “that–that–that the s–sun is perhaps rather far away?”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” said the editor, and started looking out the window.
“But I still think,” said the poet ingratiatingly, “that despite all the coldness that sometimes seems to reign in the world of men, the sun is nearer to us than everything else, all the same.”
It was now the editor’s turn to be perplexed by the conversation, and Ólafur Kárason saw himself suddenly become a strange animal in the editor’s eyes, some kind of odd species of fish, or even a two-headed calf.
“Are you an idiot, or do you think I’m an idiot?” the editor asked at last.
“God help me!” said Ólafur Kárason.
“Shall we agree to talk like people in their right minds?” said the editor. “Or shall we bring this conversation to a close?”
Ólafur Kárason looked at him in alarm for a little while and could not utter a word; he got the impression that further attempts would be fruitless and said, as he got to his feet, “I–I’ll go now.”
But then the editor was undecided about this confused voter and did not want to let him go. “By the way,” he began, in the tone of voice of a teacher who is making one more attempt to explain to a slow-witted child the mysteries of the multiplication table, “aren’t you acquainted with Pétur Pálsson the manager at Sviðinsvík?”
Ólafur Kárason did not deny this, but said it was now five years since they had had anything to do with one another.
“How did you and Pétur get on whi
le you were living on his estate?”
“I always had a tremendous liking for him,” said the poet. “He’s a very fine person. If any misunderstandings ever arose between us, it was always my fault. He was both an idealist and a national hero at once, while I was never anything more than an insignificant poet.”
“I don’t know if you’re aware of the fact that we’re thinking of making Pétur Pálsson the Member of Parliament for that constituency in place of Júel Júel, who has resigned his seat and is now in charge of the National Bank.”
“I am truly delighted to hear this news,” said Ólafur Kárason. “Pétur Pálsson the manager richly deserves to be made a Member of Parliament. Few men have had so many and varied interests as he. If people were measured by the number and diversity of their interests, I think Pétur Pálsson the manager deserves the highest honor that Iceland can bestow.”
“You have presumably heard that Pétur Pálsson has now decided to clothe all the people of Sviðinsvík, from the ankles to the midriff, free of charge?” said the editor.
“Yes, it’s absolutely astonishing what that man can achieve,” said Ólafur Kárason, and tried to see into the editor’s soul, behind the spectacles and the foxy eyes, in the hope of finding some landmark in this desert.
“He’s decided to bury all great men in the pass behind Óþveginsenni, and is now erecting an imposing sepulcher there,” said the editor.
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