Andrea puts down the book and starts heating coffee on the stove. There had been absolutely no coffee that morning, which is truly ominous, and in a short time the aroma of coffee fills the loft, it slips down and overwhelms the odors of fishing gear and unwashed waterproofs. The trapdoor lifts and Pétur comes up with his black hair, his black beard, and his slightly slanting eyes, his face like tanned hide, comes like the Devil from down in Hell up here into the Heaven of coffee, with an almost cheerful expression, it’s no small thing what coffee can accomplish. Pétur smiled for the first time when he was eight years old, Bárður once said, and the second time when he first saw Andrea; we’re waiting for the third time, concluded the boy. The trapdoor lifted again, the Evil One is seldom alone, muttered the boy, and the space appeared to shrink after Gvendur came all the way up, so broad shouldered that no woman could embrace him properly. Einar follows at his heels, half as large, thin but astoundingly strong, incomprehensible whence this slender body derives its power, perhaps from savageness, because his black eyes even shoot sparks in his sleep. So there you are, says Andrea, and pours coffee into their mugs. Yessir, says Pétur, and spent the whole day blathering their brains out. They don’t need an entire day to do that, says the boy, and the mugs in Andrea’s hands shake a bit as she suppresses a laugh. Einar clenches his fists and shakes them at the boy, hisses something so unclear that barely half of it can be understood, he is missing several teeth, his dark beard imposing, grown halfway over his mouth, his ragged, thin hair nearly gray, but then they drink their coffee. Each sits on his own bed and the sky darkens outside. Andrea turns up the light in the lamp, windows at both gables, one frames a mountain, the other the sky and sea, they frame our existence, and for a long time nothing is heard but the surge of the sea and the contented slurping of coffee. Gvendur and Einar sit together and share one of the newspapers, Andrea scrutinizes the English textbook, trying to enlarge her life with a new language, Pétur just stares at nothing, the boy and Bárður both have their own papers, now only Árni is missing. He had gone home the day before yesterday after they had finished clearing the landing, struck out through the downpour from the north, through frost and snow, couldn’t see a thing but still managed to find the way, a six-hour walk home, he’s so young that the woman pulls him in, Andrea had said, yes, follows his goddamn dick, said Einar, seemingly furious all of a sudden. I know that you neither believe it nor can imagine it, she then said, speaking to Einar yet glancing partly at her husband, but there are men who are a bit more than muscles and longing for fish and women’s crotches.
Maybe Andrea knew about the letter that Árni had been carrying. The boy wrote it for him, and it wasn’t the first time Árni had asked him to write a letter to his wife, Sesselja, she reads it when we’re lying in bed together and everyone’s asleep, said Árni once, and reads it over and over when I’m away. I miss you, wrote the boy, I miss you when I wake, when I grab hold of the oars, I miss you when I bait the lines, when I flatten the fish, I miss hearing the children laugh and ask about something I can’t answer but you certainly can, I miss your lips, I miss your breasts and I miss your loins—no, don’t write that, Árni had said as he looked over the boy’s shoulder. I can’t write miss your loins? Árni shook his head. But I just try to write what you think, as always, and surely you miss her loins? That’s none of your business, and besides, I would never say it like that, your loins. How would you say it, then? How would I say it . . . I would say . . . no, that’s none of your goddamn business! And the boy had to cross out the words your loins and wrote your scent in their place. But maybe, he thought, Sesselja tries to see what words have been crossed out, she knows I write the letters for Árni, she peers at the word and when she finally manages to read it, and read it she does, she thinks of me. The boy sits on the bed, peers at the paper and tries to push this image away: Sesselja reading these warm, soft, moist and forbidden words. She peers at and reads the words, whispers them to herself, a mild current flows through her and she thinks of me. He swallows, tries to focus on the paper, reads stories about Members of Parliament, reads about Gísli, the schoolmaster here in our village who had not felt well enough to show up at school for three days due to drink, a lot of pressure on the man, to have to teach in addition to his drinking, and Émile Zola had published a novel, a hundred thousand copies sold in the first three weeks. The boy looks up quickly and tries to imagine a hundred thousand people reading the same book, but it’s hardly possible to imagine such a throng, particularly not when one lives here, at the world’s northern outskirt. He gazes thoughtfully but looks hastily back down at the paper when he realizes that he has started thinking about Sesselja reading these words, thinking about him, he opens to another page of the paper and reads: SIX MEN DROWNED IN FAXAFLÓI BAY. They were on their way from Akranes to Reykjavík in a sixereen.
Faxaflói Bay is wide.
How wide?
So wide that life cannot cross it.
Then it is evening.
They eat boiled fish with liver.
Einar and Gvendur tell the news from the fishing huts, the thirty to forty buildings huddled in small groups on the gravel bank above the broad beach. It is Einar who speaks, Gvendur grunts every now and then and laughs when he thinks it appropriate. Forty huts, four to five hundred fishermen, a mass of humanity. We wrestled, Einar says, hooked our fingers together and pulled, Einar says, damn straight, Einar says, and this one’s sick, goddamn intestinal complaint, will hardly survive the winter, this one’s a shitty mess, this one’s going to America in the spring. Einar’s beard is nearly as black as Pétur’s and reaches down to his chest, he scarcely has need of a scarf, and he speaks and tells of things, Andrea and Pétur listen. Bárður and the boy lie head-to-toe on the bed, they read, close their ears, look up briefly when a ship sails into the fjord and in the direction of the Village, no doubt a Norwegian steam-powered whaling ship, it sails in with a rumble and a racket, as if complaining about its lot. And the goddamn merchants have raised the price of salt, Einar says, suddenly remembers the most important news and stops telling about Jónas, who has composed ninety-two verses about one of the custodians, some of them quite lewd but so well composed that Einar can’t help but recite them twice, Pétur laughs but not Andrea, men seem generally inclined toward the coarser things in this world, whatever unveils itself in a rush, entirely, while women desire whatever needs to be chased, whatever reveals itself slowly. Raise the price of salt?! Pétur exclaims. Yes, those villains! Einar shouts, and his face darkens with anger. Soon we’ll be better off selling the fish wet, straight from the sea, as soon as they’re caught, Pétur says thoughtfully. Yes, Andrea says, because they want it that way, and that’s why they raise the price. Pétur stares at nothing and feels melancholy spreading through his mind and consciousness without fully realizing its cause. If they stop salting the fish then it’s finished for the stack out in the salting house, then where are Andrea and I supposed to go, he thinks, why does everything need to change, it’s not fair. Andrea has got to her feet, starts to tidy after the coffee, the boy looks up momentarily from Eiríkur’s travel diary, they catch each other’s eye, as sometimes happens, Bárður sunk in Milton’s Paradise Lost, which Jón Þorláksson translated long before our day. The stove heats the loft, it’s cozy here, the evening condenses against the windows, the wind strokes the rooftop, Gvendur and Einar chew tobacco, rock in their seats, sigh well and mmm hmm alternately, the paraffin lamp gives a good light and makes the evening outside darker than it is, the more light, the more darkness, that’s the way of the world. Pétur stands up, clears his throat and spits, spits out his melancholy, and says, we’ll bait the lines when Árni gets here, then he goes down to make hasps and packsaddles and buckles, furious that the men aren’t working. Dammit, to see grown men and tools lying around, reading useless books, what a waste of light and time, he says, it’s only his head protruding from the floor. The boy looks up from Eiríkur at the black head poking out of the floor like a messenger f
rom Hell. Einar nods, gives Bárður and the boy a sharp look, stands up, spits red, goes down after his skipper, who says to Einar, but loud enough for it to be heard upstairs, everything declines, and in a certain way he is correct, because we are all born to die. But now they’re waiting for Árni, he must be coming, Árni never fails.
I need to get going, says Árni to Sesselja.
Don’t let the sea swallow you up, she pleads. He laughs, puts on his boots and says, are you crazy, woman, I won’t drown while I’m wearing American boots!
Many astounding things happen.
Nowadays Árni hikes in dry clothing over wet heaths and meadows, over moors and streams, without getting his socks wet; this most resembles magic. Árni bought American boots just over a year ago, made a special trip down to the next fjord in order to do so, rowed out to a smack and bought the boots as well as chocolate bars for the kids and Sesselja, the youngest started to cry when he finished his chocolate and was completely inconsolable. What is sweet through and through often makes us sad in the end. American halibut fishermen come here in March or April, catch halibut off Greenland but outfit their ships from here, buy provisions and salt from us and pay cash, they sell us rifles, knives, biscuits, but nothing comes even halfway close to the rubber boots. American rubber boots are more expensive than an accordion, their price practically amounts to the yearly wage of a female farm laborer, they are so expensive that Árni needed months on end of denying himself brennivín and tobacco to save enough to afford them. But they’re worth it, Árni says, and wades through moors, he walks over streams but always has dry feet, trudges on, in wet and snow with bone-dry feet and the rubber boots certainly the best thing that has ever come from the American empire, they knock everything else sideways, and now you understand why it would have been unforgivable to drown in them. Unforgivable carelessness, Árni says, and kisses Sesselja and kisses the children and they kiss him, it’s a thousand times better to kiss and be kissed than to fish in open cockleshells far out upon the sea. His wife watches him leave, don’t let him drown, she whispers, doesn’t want the children to hear, doesn’t want to scare them; nor do we need to raise our voices when we pray for what is most important. She goes in, reads the letter again and now dares to have a better look at the words that have been crossed out, just something the boy was unhappy with, Árni had said, she peers at them for a long time and then manages to read them. There you are, Pétur says, because Árni has arrived in dry socks, they can go and bait the lines, will likely row out to fish tonight.
II
It’s different sleeping on the open sea than here in the Village, at the head of the fjord, between high mountains, actually at the bottom of the world, and the sea sometimes becomes so passive that we go down to the foreshore to stroke it, but it’s never passive beyond the huts, nothing seems able to ease the sea’s swell, not even the still nights, the star-strewn sky. The sea floods into the dreams of those who sleep on the open sea, their consciousness is filled with fish and drowned companions who wave sadly with fins in place of hands.
Pétur always wakes up first. He is also the skipper and wakes when everything is still dark, barely after two a.m., but he never looks at the clock, and anyway it’s kept downstairs, under some rubbish. Pétur goes out, looks up at the sky, and the density of the darkness tells him the time. He fumbles for his clothing, the stove doesn’t burn at night and the cold of March has sifted its way through the thin walls. Andrea breathes heavily by his side, sleeps soundly, she is at the bottom of her dreams, Einar snores and clenches his fists in his sleep, Árni sleeps head-to-toe with him, the boy and Bárður do not move, the giant Gvendur so incredibly lucky to have his own bed yet it’s too small for him, you’re two sizes too big for the world, Bárður said once, and Gvendur became so sad that he needed to step away for a moment. Pétur puts on his sweater, his pants, totters down and out into the night, a slow, gentle breeze from the east and the outlines of a few stars just visible, they twinkle with their age-old news, their thousands-of-years-old light. Pétur squints, waits until his drowsiness leaves him completely, until his dreams have vaporized and his senses gained clarity, stands bowed, crooked, like an incomprehensible beast, sniffs the air, peers into the dark clouds, listens, perceives messages in the wind, half grunts, half growls, goes in again, lifts the trapdoor with his black head, says, we’re rowing, doesn’t say it loudly yet it’s enough, his voice reaches down into the deepest dreams, sunders sleep and they are all awake.
Andrea dresses beneath the bedcover, gets up and lights the stove and the lamp, it glows, a gentle light, and for a long time no one says anything, they simply put on their clothes and yawn, Gvendur rocks sleepily at the edge of his bed, so muddleheaded on the border between sleep and waking that he doesn’t know where he is. They scratch their beards, except for the boy, he’s got nothing, one of the few who spends time scraping it off, of course not a great deal of work, it’s both thin and sparse, you need some manliness, Pétur said once, and Einar had laughed. Bárður has a thick brown beard, trims it regularly, he’s damned handsome, Andrea looks at him sometimes and then just to look, really, as we look at a beautiful picture, at the light over the sea. The coffee boils, they open their boxes, spread butter and pâté on rye bread with their thumbs, a lot of butter and pâté and the coffee is boiling hot and black as the darkest night but they put rock candy in it, if we could only put sugar into the night to make it sweet. Pétur breaks the silence, or rather the slurping, the smacking and the occasional fart, and says, the wind is from the east, gentle, slightly warm, but it’ll turn to the north sometime today, not until later, so we’ll row out deep.
Einar sighs happily. Row out deep, it’s like a hymn in his ears. Árni says, yes, of course, he actually expected this, I’m sure we’ll row out deep, he had said to Sesselja, who then said, oh, don’t let the sea take you.
The fish had been slow to bite in the shallower fishing grounds before the bad-weather days and it would be natural to try the deeper ones now, they all reach into their boxes for another slice. Row deep, that means up to four hours of continuous rowing, the wind too quiet for the sail, and at least eight or ten hours out on the sea, maybe twelve, which means there are exactly twelve hours until they eat next, the bread is good, the butter is good and it’s likely impossible to live without drinking coffee. They drink the last cup of coffee slowly, enjoy it, outside a half-dark night awaits them, it reaches from the bottom of the sea up to the sky where it kindles the stars. The sea breathes heavily, it is dark and silent, and when the sea is silent, everything is silent, even the mountain above them, alternately white and black. There is a dim light from the lamp, Andrea had turned it down a touch, one doesn’t need much light to drink one’s last drops of coffee. Each lost in his own thoughts, staring straight ahead, Pétur thinking about the voyage, goes over all the tasks in his mind, prepares himself, he always does this, Árni has become impatient, enthusiastic, wants to get to work, Einar is also thinking of the rowing, about the sheer toil of it, he sighs deeply and feels the serenity, the blood that is frequently too hot, which runs so uncomfortably fast through his veins that he’s itchy all the time, has changed into a river placid between grassy banks. The coffee, the hard slog ahead, Einar is thankful and almost feels affection for the men sitting there in the loft, half bowed over their last drops of coffee, he can even look at the two blockheads, Bárður and the boy, without feeling angry, sometimes they drive him completely crazy with their eternal goddamn reading, eternally quoting some poem to one another, a goddamn disgrace, goddamn psychological rot that makes you soft, but no, this doesn’t make his blood boil at all just now, it’s a placid river. Einar smacks his lips over his coffee and life is good.
Now comes evening
and a cowl the color
of dusk casts
over all,
accompanied by silence,
reads Bárður in Paradise Lost, tilting the book in such a way that the gleam from the lamp reaches it, light that ca
n illuminate a good line of poetry has surely achieved its purpose. His lips move, he reads the lines again and again, and each time the world inside him becomes a bit larger, expands. The boy has finished his coffee, shakes out his mug, puts it in his box, watches Bárður out of the corner of his eye, sees his lips move, affection passes through him, and yesterday returns with all the brightness and intense presence that accompanies Bárður, that accompanies friendship, he sits on the edge of the bed and yesterday is within him. He fumbles for the bottle of Chinese Vital Elixir, which is a powerful, good digestive, a refreshing and strengthening medicine, which works well against tiresome wind in the intestines, heartburn, nausea, uneasiness in the diaphragm, everyone knows this, we read about it in the papers where it’s confirmed by foreigners as well as Icelanders, doctors, parish administrators, sea captains, everyone recommends this elixir, it has saved lives, children at death’s door after a bout of the flu have regained complete health after several spoonfuls, it also works perfectly for seasickness, five to seven tablespoonfuls before leaving shore and you’re totally free from seasickness. The boy takes a drink from the bottle. Hell is being seasick in a sixereen out on the open sea, needing to work and many hours from shore. He takes another drink because seasickness returns, many times worse than before after long stretches on shore. Andrea has taken her dose against the cough that weighs her head down unnecessarily, drink the elixir and the discomfort disappears or never finds you. Our existence is a relentless search for a solution, what comforts us, whatever gives us happiness, drives away all bad things. Some travel a long and difficult road and perhaps find nothing at all, except for some sort of purpose, a kind of liberation or relief in the search itself, the rest of us admire their tenacity but have enough trouble ourselves simply existing, so we take cure-alls instead of searching, continually asking what is the shortest path to happiness, and we find the answer in God, science, brennivín, Chinese Vital Elixir.
Heaven and Hell Page 2