The Greenlanders

by Jane Smiley

  After this Margret went to her chest and opened it and drew forth a piece of red silk and a spindle whorl and she began to pull threads from the silk and spin them together into sewing thread. Such work was easily done in the half light of the spring night, and her hands worked quickly, sometimes spinning and sometimes winding the spun thread onto a length of reindeer antler. Once or twice she got up to put away the pieces of silk that she was not spinning from, but each time she sat down again with the tissue in her hand. After she was done, and had spun all of the threads together, she sat with the roll in her hands. Just before Olaf got up for the morning work, she put everything away again.

  As usual, Olaf went out while Margret dished up his morning meal. There were many things she could say to him when he returned, about how Asgeir had loved him, and how familiar and necessary he was about Gunnars Stead, and about her gratitude at the way he had saved them from starvation before, and the way they depended on him to do so even now. Some of these things she formed with her lips, trying out how she would say them when he was sitting before her. But when he was sitting before her, scooping up his sourmilk with a piece of dried sealmeat, she said none of these things, for these things could not be said to this Olaf, who tied a band of wadmal around his head to keep the sweat out of his eyes, and whose shoulders hunched over his trencher as if to protect it from polar bears. Soon enough, telling her he would be manuring the homefield for the rest of the day, he pushed himself to his feet and went out, carrying a skin bag full of cheese and dried reindeer meat.

  Margret ran to her chest and drew forth the pieces of silk. It seemed the only virtue now to sew them together as quickly as possible. She took fine stitches with Skuli’s finest needle, and the thread she had spun pulled through the silk as if it were water. Birgitta and Gunnar arose late, laughing, and she had sewn a long seam.

  One day not long after this, she went into the mountains wearing her cloak, although the sun was warm on the scree of the mountain sides, and then she lingered here and there in some of the clefts where Skuli had a habit of meeting her. Now she saw him at the bottom of the hill, looking back over his shoulder toward Undir Hofdi church. Then he turned and began again to climb the path. He was wearing simple blue clothing that she had seen many times before, and an ornate band of blue and white tablet weaving around his hair, which hung luxuriantly to his shoulders. He climbed confidently, knowing where to step without looking. From time to time he picked up twigs and threw them down again. No wood in Greenland except driftwood was satisfactory for carving, but Margret smiled that he liked to handle bits of it anyway. Now he looked up, and perhaps caught sight of her, for he seemed to smile and quicken his pace. Margret stepped out of sight into a copse of willow brush, removed her cloak, and waited. The red dress was too long, and fell in folds over her shoes, a good fashion for court ladies with nothing to do, of little use in Greenland, but it pleased her, the flow of the red silk and the cool sway of it against her skin.

  Now came the crunch of Skuli’s foot on the scree, a foot she could see, shod in blue, then another one. He spoke her name. She reached forward and pushed aside some branches of willow brush and his face was so close that it startled her and she snorted. He turned toward her, and at first his face had no expression, and then she saw his jaw drop and his eyes widen into perfect admiration and surprise, such as she had never seen on his or any face before in her life, and at the same time that she knew this as sin and vanity she also fell into the terror of never seeing such a look on his face again.

  On this afternoon, the two stayed together much longer than usual, walking back and forth along the side of the hill and talking of many things. Skuli told Margret of two or three men of the court, who had fallen deeply in love with ladies who were married to other men, and one of these men was the brother of the king of Sweden. By subterfuge, the knight and his lady saw one another two or three times during the year, and the rest of the time the lady stayed with her husband and children and the knight governed his estates, and it was said by all that the good sense with which he did all of his works was the direct result of the love that he felt for the lady, and the way in which that love showed him the proper love of God, so that he was never cruel toward his tenants, and was always hospitable and openhanded to strangers and visitors. And she, too, was without anger or pride or envy or sloth, and was considered an excellent wife and loving mother, and this love between the two lasted many years, until the lady’s children were grown and her hair was gray. But when, at last, the Great Death came upon the world, and the lady was lying ill and ready to repent of all her sins, the only sin she could not repent freely of was her love for the king’s brother, and so she held this in her heart, and died unshriven of that sin, and her maids feared for her soul, until not long after her death, when her corpus lay on its bier and the maids were washing it, there arose from it a great fragrance, as of the purest flowers in spring, so that it filled the lady’s steading with a pleasing odor, and this fragrance continued in the lady’s chamber for many years after she was buried, and was seen as a sign of her virtue. And no one who was about her during her last days died of the contagion, for the fragrance served to repel bad airs from the steading.

  There was another story, said Skuli, of a poor man who went on a crusade against the Turks, and he, too, was much in love with the wife of a fellow knight, who stayed home. And this man was made very bold in his crusade, so that he slew great numbers of the infidel, and was rewarded with many lands back in Denmark, where his concubine lived, but his love for the lady moved him to give away these prizes to the Church, and keep for himself only his horse and a sufficiency of plunder so that he could provide for his manservant and himself. It so happened that after twenty years of fighting, he was grievously wounded and near to death when his servant carried him from the field, but he grieved more over the knowledge that he had nothing to send back to his lady as a reminder of himself and a keepsake except a fragment of a green banner that he had won in the day’s battle. This the servant vowed to take to the lady, and he did so, traveling for five more years. But when he had made his return, he discovered that the lady was dead, and when he found her tomb near the church, he saw that she had died on the selfsame day as the knight had died, and that hanging from her tomb was an unfaded sleeve of the same color of green as the banner, and the fragment of the banner fit into the sleeve as if they had been cut from the same cloth. Margret could not hear enough of such stories, and when Skuli came to the end of the ones he knew, she begged him to repeat them, which he gladly did. When she returned to Gunnars Stead, the evening meal was finished, and all the Gunnars Stead folk were asleep. Margret was not a little pleased with this great piece of luck.

  Now Skuli persuaded Kollbein Sigurdsson to allow him to lodge at Undir Hofdi church, in order to help the old priest, Nikolaus, with the summer work. Kollbein was not a little reluctant to do this, since he had great plans of his own for Skuli’s time, but Skuli pointed out to him that Nikolaus’ steading was within easy visiting distance of all the farms in Vatna Hverfi, and it would be convenient from there to judge the wealth of the district. Kollbein declared that indeed this was so, and allowed Skuli’s departure. Even so, Skuli put off the move for a few days, and seemed to himself almost afraid, and yet he found the thought of Margret Asgeirsdottir irresistibly alluring, as if she had changed into a person he had never seen before. In the red dress, she seemed to burst forth like a phoenix, burning up everything around her, more beautiful than any court lady he had ever seen, and yet not proud at all, as frightened by him as he was by her. The stories he told her came out of him willy-nilly, ones he knew fairly well and ones he barely remembered hearing, and they gave him a feeling of intoxication that he had never had in Greenland before, for the lack of beer and ale. If she showed the least mote of doubt, he felt himself swell with the knowledge that everything he said was perfect truth. But then it seemed to him after a while that she never showed any doubt at all.

  In thi
s same spring, Pall Hallvardsson the Priest and Jon the Priest had a disagreement about some of the revenues of Hvalsey church, where Pall Hallvardsson was now living and preaching. With the great snows of the past two winters, the church and especially the priest’s house had fallen into disrepair, so that rain and wind came in upon the parishioners as they knelt at their prayers, and in addition, three of the six rooms of Pall Hallvardsson’s house were unusable most of the time. Gunnar Asgeirsson agreed to supply three beams of wood and some men in Hvalsey Fjord agreed to work at repairing the church and at least one room of the priest’s house, if these services could be applied against the tithe and the Peter’s pence that were owed to Gardar. But Jon declared that the bishop could not afford to forgo these revenues, for Gardar itself was in poorer straits than it had been before the sickness. Jon said that the most important endeavor was to rebuild Gardar to the same degree of richness and splendor as two years before, for the greater glory of God, and that temporary repairs of Hvalsey church would do until the following year. The men of Hvalsey Fjord were greatly angered by this, for they said that it showed in what little esteem they and their families were held by the men at Gardar, and in addition to this, it showed how little Jon, and perhaps others, had learned about Greenland since coming, for it took no time at all for a Greenland building, once the wind and windborne sand got in, to be utterly laid waste, and at least those at Gardar had four solid walls about them when they worshiped.

  One day Pall Hallvardsson got on his horse and rode to Gardar, and met with Jon, for although he was accustomed to bowing to the other man, he was also much disturbed at the complaints of his parishioners. Now when Pall Hallvardsson was announced, Jon retired to his cell and put on a red monsignor’s gown and the ring and the other paraphernalia of his rank, so that Pall Hallvardsson would know that it was permissible for him to seek redress, but that the power for giving or withholding lay with Jon, especially now, when the bishop was weak and ill. When the servant showed Pall Hallvardsson to Jon’s working chamber, Jon was sitting very upright in his seat. Pall Hallvardsson went to him and kissed his ring, and asked politely after his health and that of the bishop.

  Jon looked down upon him. “The bishop finds it difficult to throw off his illness of the spring, and keeps mostly to his bed and is often dozing. It is in our power these days to make all but the most important decisions.” He closed his eyes once, in exasperation. “We have not seen fit to disturb his peace with the unreasonable demands of the Hvalsey Fjord farmers.”

  “A day’s row from Hvalsey church is a long row, and once inside the solid walls of Gardar, a man might find it difficult to see how a church could be in such disrepair as to drench the worshipers in a sudden shower or to render them windblown and uncomfortable in a stiff onshore breeze. Gardar is low and warm and damp, but St. Birgitta’s is higher and more exposed, and closer to the open sea.”

  “Gardar does indeed look rich to some, but those who left before the vomiting ill cannot know how the daily life of the place has changed. So many have died off that copying manuscripts and singing have ceased altogether. Services in the cathedral are stark and poor things, and shameful offerings to the glory of God and His Son. The bishop is not so aware of this falling off, thanks be to God.” He fell silent abruptly, and then went on, “As much wealth as possible has to be gathered at Gardar before the summer’s end. In fact”—he looked Pall Hallvardsson full in the face—“we do the Hvalsey Fjorders a favor in not requiring more revenues than usual of them, but allowing them to use the extra that might have been required for repairing their own church. And your house is very large, whether it have three rooms or six.”

  “Do the Greenlanders have extra to give? Every farm is hard pressed, it seems to me.”

  “No more is being required than the farmers are able to pay. The bishop, in his generosity, gave a great boon before Yule when he allowed the farmers to hunt reindeer on Hreiney. Every farm that participated is rich in meat and hides. But even if this were not true, we have noticed more than once that the farmers of Greenland pay great attention to the wealth of the earth, but little to the riches of Heaven. More than one farm is nearly as wealthy as Gardar, and every farmer schemes to get more goods for himself. Almost no one gives freely to the church, or the king. All live as if they were their own men, here and in eternity.”

  “This is true, that the Greenlanders are much accustomed to holding their own opinions and doing as they please.”

  “Now when they have the chance to glorify God in His earthly temple, they grumble and mutter more even than the French, although they sacrifice themselves far less than the French, and although, in fact, the building they dare to call a cathedral would be as nothing among the French, or among the English or the Germans, or any people you could name on the face of the earth.”

  “The Greenlanders are much unlike the French.”

  Now Jon stood up, and his visage was dark with indignation. Pall Hallvardsson raised his hand and said quietly, “Brother, it seems to me that you have persuaded yourself that these Greenlanders deserve your anger, and that you are about to speak in haste of things that should be considered carefully, especially in light of the fact that it is likely that you and I will die here among the Greenlanders, and never again visit or live among the French or the Germans, or even the Norwegians.”

  Jon seated himself again and was silent for many minutes, and then at last he said in a low voice, “Brother, it is many weeks since I have been confessed,” and together the two men went into the cathedral.

  Now Sira Jon knelt behind the gray wadmal curtain of the confessional, and he spoke in low, passionate tones. “It seems to me,” he said, “that there are two sins that rise like twins in my heart, and that these are anger and pride. These demands of the Hvalsey Fjorders touch me closely on these two points, for what they withhold, it seems to me, will end in the humbling of Gardar and of the bishop himself, and I am his steward these days.”

  Now he was silent for a long while, and Pall Hallvardsson listened to him shift and groan at his place. “Whatever our feelings, the bishop is fixed in his views on the proper wealth of the Church, is he not? He deplores the heretical meanness of such as the Franciscans, does he not? It is true that the peculiar place of the Greenlanders on the face of the earth has spared them that baneful influence, but it also gives them such pride in themselves!” And now he groaned loudly, and declared, “You see in my tones this anger that mortifies me? That I wrestle with every day? Every time I have aught to do with a Greenlander? It is given to me, of all the bishop’s men, to gather goods for the tithe, and so it is given to me to witness the trickery and reluctance and stubbornness of the farmers. Indeed, they become deafer and deafer when I name to them the sums they really owe, and more forgetful as the day of payment approaches. I am not taking these gifts for myself, am I? Is not God Himself the recipient? Why think they that they are losing something? Know they not that they are building up treasure in Heaven?

  “But such anger is not my deepest sin, rather this sin is something I know Greenlanders see in me, and are right to despise.” And now his voice rose: “For I am humiliated to be here, at Gardar, when I should be at Nidaros or even Paris. I have been trained for that, not this. Oh, brother, what means it that just before sleep, or just waking, I often see myself in such a cathedral as at Rheims, as if from on high, a tiny insect carrying a taper from light to light, and simultaneously I see the huge vault of the ceiling, the interlaced fans receding and disappearing into the gloom, and there seems in such a place no room for pride, and the great space of the cathedral is filled with the glory of God, and I am as a fly in this space, happily attending my functions, and thinking only the simplest of thoughts. This picture comes to me unbidden. Though I push this picture away, it comes to me, driving out whatever better thoughts are there, and the result is that the stony gloom of Gardar and its turf smell seem paltry to me, a shame to God and His Son, this crude altar and these ragged tapestries! Thus p
ride and humiliation partake of each other, and the thing that I long for seems at times pure and at times defiled by my longing.”

  “In the fertile soil of the Greenland fjords, there is an eighth mortal sin that sprouts, and that is the sin of yearning. A man’s only resource is to turn his yearning more and more toward God and death.”

  “Oh, I am but a young man, just twenty-nine winters old. Is that not too young to be yearning for death? Most men care for women or riches or good food, but through long habit I care not for these. May I have no pleasures of the simplest sort? no glimpses of orchards in bloom nor of the carved faces of the saints? nor the feel of leather and parchment volumes weighing in my hands? nor the sound of sacred music in my ears, but only the everlasting noise of sheep and of the wind whistling around the buildings, and with this the complaints of the Greenlanders, who think that God and His Son live far away in Rome, and cannot see them?”