They have all come outside.
There is a considerable amount of snow around the huts but the beach is black. They turn the boats over. Light work for twelve hands to put a sixereen onto its keel, a heavier task to overturn it, then twelve hands scarcely suffice, they need an additional six, at least, but the other crew is fast asleep, the bastards, resting their tired hands in a dream-world, they always head out to the deep-sea banks and thus never leave before dawn. Guðmundur will wake up soon, of course, the skipper called Guðmundur the Strict, his men have to be at the hut before eight in the evening, the loafing and endless prattling poison in his veins, and they heed him unconditionally, all of them giants, have made it alive through the storms of the world and are so insolent that they could kill a dog with their language but turn into modest, fearful fellows if Guðmundur gets riled. The Custodian there is called Guðrún, short and dainty, with such bright hair and radiant laughter that it is never completely dark where she is, she is the equivalent of many bottles of elixir, she is beautiful, she is frisky and her cheeks so white and convex that they can make one’s heart ache, she sometimes dances a few peculiar steps and then something cracks inside the men in the hut, these rough and weathered men, affection and wild lust internal knots that are impossible to unravel. But Guðrún is Guðmundur’s and they would rather cool off in the deadly cold sea than try anything with his daughter, are you crazy, even the Devil himself wouldn’t dare touch her. She seems entirely unaware of her influence and perhaps that’s the worst, unless it’s the best in fact.
They work in silence.
Carry what needs to be carried down to the boat, the rigging, the baited lines, the waterproofs, the weather too mild to put them on immediately, the skin pants reach up to under their arms, the wool in their sweaters well fulled, ahead of them three or four hours of heavy rowing. Each man with his own specific task during the night, if only existence were always so direct and easily readable, if only we could escape the uncertainty that reaches out over graves and death. But what softens uncertainty if death does not? The snow will soon become densely packed from the hut down to the black beach. Andrea comes out and empties the chamber pot, the ground is stony around the hut and receives the liquid, urine, or rain, it disappears into the ground and it’s just as well that the roof of Hell doesn’t leak, unless one of the punishments is in fact to have wastewater and rain constantly pouring down on one. Andrea stands for a moment and watches them work, hardly a footstep of theirs can be heard, the sea sleeps, the mountain dozes and the sky is silent, no one awake there, the hour no doubt approaching three and Bárður gives a sudden jump, disappears once more into the hut. Andrea shakes her head but also smiles weakly, knows he is standing on the ladder, reaches into the bed, opens Paradise Lost and reads the lines he wishes to memorize and recite for himself and the boy out on the sea, now comes evening,
and a cowl the color
of dusk casts
over all,
accompanied by silence
and already are
beasts in burrows
and birds in nests
for the night
reposed
Bárður had been the last one out. Sunk in a verse by a blind Englishman that a poor priest rewrote in Icelandic when time went by another name. He reads the verse again, shuts his eyes briefly and his heart beats. Words still seem able to move people, it is unbelievable, and perhaps the light is thus not completely extinguished within them, perhaps some hope yet remains, despite everything. But here comes the moon, sailing slowly into a black hole in the sky with white light in its sails, it is just barely half, waxing to the left, yet the night will still be bright for a time. The light of the moon is of a different family than the light of the sun, it makes the shadows darker, the world more mysterious. The boy looks up, looks at the moon. It takes the moon just as long to make one rotation as to revolve around the Earth, and because of that we always see the same side, it is just over three hundred thousand kilometers away, it would take a very long time to row there in a sixereen, even Einar would be put off by the distance.
The boy’s mother had written to him about the moon. About the distance to it, about its mysterious far side, but she never mentioned a sixereen in that context, nor Einar, didn’t even know of his existence, neither his beard nor the anger that boils like an eternal engine inside him. But Einar isn’t angry now. The tranquil moonlit night seeps into the six men and the woman watching them. No, Andrea isn’t watching any longer, she has gone up to the hut, hurrying to meet Bárður in the narrow doorway. Am I crazy, thinks Andrea, there are twenty years between us! But why deny oneself the chance to gaze into such brown eyes on a March night, think about the soft and supple movements beneath his clothing, white, straight teeth between his lips, free from brown tobacco stains. Bárður doesn’t chew tobacco, they’re strange some of these young people, to deny themselves such delights as accompany tobacco. They meet in the doorway, his head full of poetry and loss of Paradise, oh, how beautiful you are, my poor thing, she says, and strokes his beard with both hands, then down his bare neck, strokes harder and tighter than she intended and feels the warmth of his body streaming up from his neck. Just for you, Andrea, he says, and smiles. Are you sleeping, you little shit?! Pétur calls out in the night. They are startled, Andrea jerks her hands back, looks at the boy and sees him confused beneath the moon.
Moonlight can leave us defenseless.
It causes us to remember, wounds tear open and we bleed.
His mother wrote to him about the moon and the heavens, about the ages of the stars and the distance to Jupiter. She knew many things, despite having been raised by folk outside her own family, had had it hard there, was reprimanded for thirsting after knowledge but learned to read by following along when the boys on the farm were at their lessons, then read everything she could lay her hands on, which was a great deal despite the poverty and indifference of the household. It was reading and the desire for knowledge that drew his parents together, both of them lacking means but managing to scrape their way up from working as farm hands to purchase their own farm, although it is perhaps too ceremonious to refer to the little cottage by such a big name, but all right, the tenant farm was theirs; one cow, fifty sheep, not much for a family. A small home field and so tussocky that it was no doubt quicker to gnaw it down than to mow it, and the pastures were wet. The sea kept them alive, it keeps all of us alive who live here at the outer limit of the world. His father went to sea from fishing stations, four to five months of the year. My Lord, how I missed him! is written in one of the letters she sent the boy, of course I had you three but I still missed Björgvin every day, and even more in the evenings when you were asleep. The months that he was away from home were packed with work, the struggle to live and to keep poverty at bay, while free time went into reading. We were hopeless. We thought continuously about books, about being educated, became fervent, frantic, if we heard of some new and interesting book, imagined what it might be like, spoke about its possible contents in the evenings, after you’d gone to bed. And later we’d read it in turns, or together, when and if we managed to get hold of it, or a handwritten copy of it. But what can we say, his father was out on a sixereen, they are common here, just over eight meters, and he was certainly not the only one to drown that night. That March night, the boy looks again at the moon and counts in his mind, ten years and seventeen days ago. No, no, two boats lost and both their crews, twelve lives, twenty-four hands groping in the sea, a southeasterly flared up and the sea drowned them all. A whole week passed before they received the dark tidings. Is it cruelty or comfort that he lived seven days longer in the minds of those most important to him, dead yet still alive? It was a neighbor who came and extinguished the light of the world. The boy sat on the floor with his legs stretched out in front of him, his sister between them, but his mother stood and stared straight ahead, her hands hung down at her sides, as if dead, Hell is having arms but no one to embrace. The air quivered
as if something great had been torn, then a crashing sound was heard when the sun fell and landed on the Earth. People are alive, have their moments, their kisses, laughter, their embraces, words of endearment, their joys and sorrows, each life is a universe that then collapses and leaves nothing behind but a few objects that acquire attractive power through the deaths of their owners, become important, sometimes sacred, as if pieces of the life that has left us have been transferred to the coffee cup, the saw, the hairbrush, the scarf. But everything fades in the end, memories are wiped out after a time, and everything dies. Where once was life and light are darkness and oblivion. The boy’s father dies, the sea swallows him and never brings him back. Where are your eyes that made me beautiful, the hands that tickled the children, the voice that kept the darkness away? He drowns and the family is broken up. The boy goes to one place, his brother to another, five hours of vigorous marching between them, their mother and a sister just over a year old end up in a completely different valley. One day all four of them are lying in the same bed, it’s crowded but it’s good, almost the only good thing in the midst of the regret, then a seven-hundred-meter-high mountain rises between them, steep and barren, the boy still hates it, boundlessly. But it is so feeble to hate mountains, they are larger than we are, they stand in their places and do not move for tens of thousands of years while we come and go quicker than the eye can focus. Mountains, however, seldom stop letters. His mother wrote. She described his father so he wouldn’t be forgotten, so he would live on in the mind of the son, a light by which to warm himself, a light to miss, she wrote to save her husband from oblivion. She described how the two of them spoke together, read together, how he was with the children, what pet names he used for them, what he sang to them, how he was when he stood alone on the slope by the home field and looked out into the blue . . . your sister is growing up, is proud to have two big brothers. I know you won’t forget her. Are you brothers able to visit each other? You mustn’t neglect to do this. You mustn’t let the world tear you apart! Next summer we’ll certainly come to visit you, I’ve already received permission and have started to gather shoes for our hike. Your sister asks nearly every morning, are we going today? When are we going?
When are we going?
Most likely the moon was formed at the same time as the Earth, but it could be that the Earth captured it in its gravitational field and now it hangs over the boy, it is made of rock, dead stone.
When never came. But the flu came, as always. They caught the black cough and died two days apart, the sister first. Where are you, God? was life’s final question, his mother just barely managed to scribble, live! following that question: live! Your loving mother. The final letter, the final sentence, the final word.
The boy lifts the whey keg into the boat, how much can the human heart endure?
The boat is fully loaded.
Einar, Gvendur, and Árni have put stones into the boat so it lies better in the sea, they make the sign of the cross over each stone. The heart of a grown man is the size of a clenched fist. The heart is a hollow muscle that pumps blood through the body’s blood vessels, the arteries, veins, and capillaries that are nearly four hundred thousand kilometers long, reach the moon and just a touch out into the black space beyond it, it must be lonely there. Andrea stands between the boat and the hut, looking at them, her veins reach to the moon. The clock approaches three and they may not push out from the landing any earlier, there are laws, we’ll follow the laws, especially those that make a bit of sense. Gvendur and Einar are already in the boat, seated on the fore thwart, only powerful and durable oarsmen sit there, the others take their places along the planking and wait for the trumpet to sound. Not, however, the one that old books and fairy tales say signals the Last Day, when we will all be called before the Great Judge, no, they simply wait for the trumpet that Benedikt will raise to his lips below the main huts when the clock strikes precisely three. Benedikt has huge lungs and can blow hard, the signal to go carries to the brothers’ huts even in a sharp headwind. The first winter after the rules prohibiting sea voyages before three in the morning took effect, Benedikt had simply blown quickly and unwaveringly, his only goal to hit a great note that carried far and proved the strength of his lungs, then he threw down the trumpet and joined the great race to be the first to go. But now, two years later, he has himself an old trumpet, bought from an English sea captain, and blows not simply to blow but emphasizes tenderness instead and tries to change the dark night sky into one of the melodies he heard from the merchant Snorri here in the Village, and Benedikt doesn’t throw the trumpet into the boat and bring it with him on the voyage—lashing wind and rain, Snorri pointed out, are very bad for the instrument and can spoil its sound—instead hands it to the Custodian waiting by his boat. Surrounding Benedikt are nearly sixty boats and almost three hundred men waiting for the signal to go, mostly sixereens, two men in each boat, four to the sides and every muscle taut. But it doesn’t cross anyone’s mind to leave before Benedikt lowers the trumpet from his lips, he is one of the better-known skippers here, a hero, has saved men’s lives, always fishes well, and no one is even half a match for him in pushing through the breakers to land, everyone heeds him and the Custodian waits patiently on the foreshore after being handed the instrument, even though the cold sea wets her sometimes and both her feet are well into their fifties.
Andrea stands below the two huts.
Waits to hear the signal; to see her men rush off as if fleeing the destruction of the world. Afterward she goes in, tidies up, and tries to read a bit in another book that Bárður got from the blind sea captain who lives with Geirþrúður, Niels Juel, Denmark’s Greatest Naval Hero. Why is he called a hero? What has he fished? Has he fought for his life in an open cockleshell the size of a coffin, perhaps in a northerly gale when the land has disappeared, the sky as well, the howling of the wind on the verge of blowing your head off your shoulders?
Now he’ll blow, mutters Árni so quietly that the word is lost in the beard covering the lower part of his face, he holds onto the boat with both hands, every muscle taut. Einar squeezes his oar, Gvendur stares cheerfully into space, it’s good just to exist. The boy looks at Einar over the gunwale, if any man could be a taut string at this moment it’s Einar, Gvendur like a giant next to the string, a gentle, contented, submissive giant. They both work as farmhands for Pétur and have done so for a good ten years, although Pétur sometimes gets the feeling that the giant first heeds Einar and then him. Right, the bastard should start blowing any minute now, murmurs Árni again, slightly louder this time. Benedikt stands with legs spread in the middle of his boat about two kilometers from the brothers’ huts, raises his trumpet to his lips, fills his lungs with dark night air and blows.
The note resounds above nearly three hundred skin-clad and impatient fishermen below the main huts, and carries far into the still night air. Andrea stretches, turns her head to hear better. Pétur, Árni, and Einar have grown impatient, cursing Benedikt under their breath, while Bárður and the boy listen, try to learn the melody, its essence, something to improvise on during the long voyage and the life that will hopefully be longer yet. The giant Gvendur even closes his eyes furtively for a moment, music usually reminds him of something good and beautiful, and he feels it most when he’s alone. He is, however, half afraid that Einar will see him, he certainly isn’t happy about men closing their eyes while they’re awake and Gvendur isn’t one to offend Einar knowingly, life is tough enough as it is.
Right! shouts Árni when the sound dies out, and they push with all their might, as one man. The boat creeps off down the landing, the boy lets go, grabs the rollers that come out from under the keel, runs with them to the front of the boat and lays them in front of the prow. He’s quick, we’ll give him that, can run fast and so far in one shot that it’s questionable whether the country would be large enough if he wanted to run somewhere at full tilt. The prow slips into the sea. Árni and Pétur are the last ones into the boat, they jump abo
ard out of the sea and then the rowing begins. Bárður and the boy share a thwart in the middle, the energy flows through their veins, they clench their teeth, six oars, the sea is quiet, no resistance, neither wind nor waves, the boat dashes forward, but when they have rowed for just under a minute and have torn themselves completely away from land, are on the sea, they pull in the oars, Pétur takes off his sou’wester, his woolen cap underneath it, takes that off as well, and recites the Seafarer’s Prayer, the other five bow their heads with their sou’westers in their hands. The boat rises and falls, just like the throng of boats below the main huts, a scant minute after the great outburst released by Benedikt’s note, when nearly three hundred men rushed shouting and screaming with just under sixty boats into the sea, but now the boats rise and fall in silence while the skippers pray. The voices ascend to Heaven with their message, their request, and it is simple: help us!
The sea is cold and sometimes dark. It is a gigantic creature that never rests, and here no one can swim, except for Jónas, who works in the summers at the Norwegian whaling station, the Norwegians taught him how to swim, he is called either the Cod or the Seawolf, the latter more fitting, considering his appearance. Most of us have grown up here by the sea and have lived scarcely a day without hearing it, and the men pursued seamanship from the age of thirteen, that’s the way it’s been for a thousand years, yet no one knows how to swim except Jónas, because he kisses up to the Norwegians. Still, we know a few other things, we know how to pray, know how to make the sign of the cross, we cross ourselves as soon as we wake, when we put on our waterproofs, we cross the fishing equipment, the bait, we cross each action, the thwarts upon which we sit we entrust to you, Lord, protect us with your loving kindness, silence the winds, still the waves that can become so terrifying. We place all of our trust in you, Lord, who are the beginning of all things and the end, because those who end up in the sea sink like stones and drown, even in dead calm and such a short distance from land that people standing with their feet firmly on the blessed Earth can see their expressions, their last ones before the sea claims their lives, or bodies, those heavy loads. We trust in you, Lord, who created us in your image, created the birds with wings so they could fly in the sky and remind us of freedom, created the fish with fins and tails so they could swim in the depths we fear. We can of course all learn to swim like Jónas, but Lord, would we not then be expressing our lack of faith in you, as if we thought ourselves capable of correcting something in creation? Besides, the sea is very cold, no man swims long in it, no, we trust no one but you, Lord, and your son, Jesus, who could swim no more than we, nor had any need to, he simply walked on the water. Imagine it, if we had the true faith and could thus walk upon the sea, simply stroll out to the fishing grounds, haul in fish, and then home again, perhaps just two together, carrying one handbarrow. Amen, says Pétur, and they all throw on their sou’westers, saving their woolen caps for later, the night is mild, silent night, holy night, the sou’wester is enough, its brim reaches down to the shoulders, and now they row in the Lord’s name, put their backs into it, the Devil with it! No, not the Devil, we let that black name slip out by accident, didn’t mean anything by it, we’ll cross our tongues for safety’s sake. The oars nearly bend beneath the exertion, twelve highly trained arms, taut muscles, considerable strength combined, but there the fjord opens into the Polar Sea and we are nothing in the face of it, have nothing but faith in the mercy of the Lord, and perhaps a minuscule amount of ingenuity, courage, longing for life. The boat rushes on. Einar’s eyes gleam, his anger has changed into pure energy that fills his entire body, every cell, and spreads out into his oar, Gvendur has to pull hard to keep up with him. For a long time no one thinks anything and they do not look at anything, they just row with all their might, their entire being goes into rowing, the land draws further away, they come further out onto the sea.
Heaven and Hell Page 3