Hell is to be dead and to realize that you did not care for life while you had the chance to do so. A person, by the way, is a remarkable creation, living as well as dead. When it winds up in trouble, if its existence is cut in two, it starts involuntarily to review its life, it seeks its memories like a little animal seeking shelter in its hole. And that’s how it is with us. It’s something of a relief to follow along with your life, a comfort that yet becomes bitter when you treat your life badly, do something that will torment you eternally, but it is first and last our own memories that we try to reach, they are the thread that connects us to life. Memories of the days when we so truly lived, when it snowed and rained over our lives and the hours were warm with sun, dark with night.
But why tell you these stories?
What terrifying powers, other than despair, fling us over the unnameable in order to tell you stories of extinguished lives?
Our words are confused rescue teams with obsolete maps and birdsong in place of compasses. Confused and profoundly lost, yet their job is to save the world, save extinguished lives, save you, and then hopefully us as well. But we will put off further reflections and weighty questions and return once more to the night and the storm, find the boy and try to save him in time from sleep and death.
The Boy, the Village, and the Profane Trinity
I
The boy did not fall asleep in the snow hole. All the same, sleep offered to take him in its downy-soft arms, to ease the fatigue that was so heavy that each of his eyelids weighed at least half a kilogram, sleep was actually an offer he could not refuse, but he tore himself away from its succor, tried to keep himself awake by thinking of Bárður, because sorrow has deprived so many of sleep. He also thought about Andrea, who had allowed him to set out into this snowstorm, or rather, in into it. If he fell asleep here in this hole, if he gave in to the soothing voice of sleep, he would not reawaken, at least not in this life.
It was thus conscientiousness that kept sleep and death from the boy. He needed to return a book, he could not let down Andrea, could not let down Bárður, his memory, could not let down his mother and his sister who never got to grow up and died before her childish admiration for her brothers behind the mountain managed to fade, to fall asleep here would be to let them all down, and thus he pulled himself up from the hole.
Stood up quickly and was once again in the dense snowfall, the night and the frost-hardened world.
He gasped for breath because of the storm and started off.
He hikes up from the valley. Up onto the heath and the plateau into which it turns, barren and nearly level: the glacier planed off the top of the mountain ages ago. The boy has the arctic wind mostly at his back and the night surrounds him, it is within the snowfall, within the white snowflakes. The boy has never before come so high, never made it so close to the sky and at the same time never been as far from it. He inches forward, abandoned by all but God, and there is no God. It’s so cold. His head is frozen and his brain has changed into an expansive tundra, hoarfrosted and frozen earth as far as the eye can see, completely lifeless on the surface, but underneath are hidden weak embers, memories, faces, sentences, nothing is sweet to me, without thee. These embers could conceivably melt the hoarfrost, call to birds, waken the fragrance of blossoms. But up here on the plateau nothing is fragrant, there are just the frost and the night, he walks on, time passes, morning comes. And the morning passes as well. He no longer sustains a thought, his feet keep going like a machine, which is very good, yet he must be careful because everything ends, even plateaus, and in some places they end abruptly, simply cease to exist, and the dizzying fall begins.
It is actually amazing that he did not walk off the edge and plunge to his death. As indifferent as he was, giddy from the frost, fatigue, numbed by sorrow. But perhaps he senses a slight change in the air, some can feel it when the ground ends and the sky begins. He hesitates, walks cautiously, feels his way, a long time passes, then finally he finds a passable way down. Certainly not the best, scrapes his skin on rocks, falls, hurts himself, but he is alive and it is seldom possible to ask for more. He has come down into the valley, Tungudalur. Where we go in the summers when the sun is warm in the sky, the grass is green and things such as flowers exist, we even go in large groups with picnic lunches, smiles, and happiness, call it an excursion to the forest since there is a decent stretch of trees in Tungudalur, an accumulation of gnarled birches. The stoutest branches easily hold birds but not people, the boy leans momentarily against a tree, he has put the plateau behind him, overtaken day and night, sleep and death. He walks down the valley and heads toward us, toward the Village, and it is the first day of April.
Words vary.
Some are bright, others dark; April, for instance, is a bright word. The days grow longer, their brightness comes like a spear-thrust into the darkness. One morning we wake and the plover has arrived, the sun has come closer, the grass appears from beneath the snow and turns green, the fishing boats are launched after having slept throughthe long winter and dreamt of the sea. The word April is composed of light, birdsong, and eager anticipation. April is the most hopeful of months.
But, God help us, how incredibly long it still seems to the greenness as the boy plods down Tungudalur, his packed lunch long gone and with the expansive tundra in his head, stiff extremities and a terribly heavy burden on his back, a book that killed his best, no, his one friend. It was such a short time since they had walked together out of the Village, side by side, the boy whimpers a bit as he walks, although he scarcely has the energy to do so, it is afternoon and the snow has stopped falling from the sky. The boy walks along the beach wherever possible, otherwise on the tussocky moorland that lies between the mountains and the beach, several dozen meters wide at best. He stops at a little river and regards the iron pipe that Friðrik, the Factor at Tryggvi’s Shop, the Village’s largest shop, had installed in it; a long pipe and a large trestle, half buried in the ground, under one of its ends, the water runs pure and clear there and never freezes. Friðrik’s men row daily across the Lagoon to fetch water for the shop and the boats when they’re ready to go. Of course the Village does not lack wells, but the water in them is not particularly good, blended with seawater and sometimes filth, some people think it’s fun to throw rubbish into the wells and even to piss in them, some people are so strange it’s as if the Devil has bitten them in the ass. The boy gulps down ice-cold water. He looks out over the Lagoon and at the old Danish trading houses on the Point, the oldest buildings in the Village, from the early eighteenth century. Two storehouses, now used for the same purpose by Tryggvi’s Shop, and the Factor’s house, which has been used in recent years as the residence of the shop’s head assistant. The house is very haunted; the assistant and his wife are the only ones who have stayed there for more than one year, some say it’s only because the couple lack the imagination to perceive the haunting. The boy squints to see the buildings better, they are dark, it’s as though the air is hazy, it’s bright enough but difficult to see fine details from a distance. He resumes walking. The water has done him good, given him the strength to move his feet, and it’s also good not to have to wade through the snow, the beach is empty and quite easy to traverse, not covered with large rocks and uneven as it is around the fishing station, where it is shaped by the vehemence of the ocean. Then he recalls how it was only forty-eight hours ago that they sat together on the bed, read, and waited for Árni. He is so overcome that he walks up the mountainside, sits down between two large rocks and stares out with empty eyes while the afternoon air grows heavier and turns into evening around him.
Why go on?
And what is he doing here?
Shouldn’t he have stayed on at the fishing station, to keep an eye on the dead body and then bring it to its home, what were friends for, and shouldn’t friendship overcome the grave and death? He sighs because he has betrayed everything. He sits there for a long time and it starts to snow again. Would it snow over the valley
where so many people think about Bárður, or is there a moon in the sky, wading in clouds, and has Bárður’s betrothed come out to gaze at it? Bárður always went out at eight to gaze at the moon and at the same time she stood outside the farmhouse and watched as well, there were mountains and distances between them but their eyes met on the moon, precisely as the eyes of lovers have done since the beginning of time, and that is why the moon was placed in the sky.
The boy has started walking again. He threads his way along the beach until he comes to the church, where he has to turn and wade through the snow again. He leans for a moment against the churchyard wall and looks out into the snowfall that hides the Village, catches a faint glimpse of the houses next to the church, dim lights in one or two windows, many people having presumably gone to bed, but not sleeping as soundly as those behind him. He can still make out the path of the priest, Reverend Þorvaldur, from the church and down to his street. The boy threads the path, it makes the going easier, but not by much. The street where the Café is located is covered with snow, and Þorvaldur’s path dwindles there and disappears. The boy stands in the middle of the street, snow falls on him, his left foot weighs a hundred kilograms, his right foot three hundred, and there is far too much snow between him and the Café. He could just stand there in the same place until morning in the hope that Lúlli and Oddur would come along here to cut a path with their shovels, but that isn’t what he does, doesn’t know that Lúlli and Oddur exist, even less that they work in the winters shoveling the streets of the Village, so incredibly lucky to have steady jobs from September until May, goddamn dogs, why does luck stick to some and not others? There are eight houses on the street, all stately. The boy wades through snowdrifts and approaches the houses and Geirþrúður’s café. The life he has lived until now is past, before him is utter uncertainty, and the only certain thing is that he plans to return the book and report the news of Bárður’s death, announce that the only thing that mattered is gone and will never return. Then why continue to live, why, he mumbles to the snowflakes, which do not reply, they are just white and fall silently to the ground. Now I’ll go in and return the book, thanks for the loan, this is magnificent writing, nothing is sweet to me, without thee, it killed my best friend, the only good thing that was possible to find in this damned life, that is to say, thanks for the loan, and then he would say goodbye, or no, forget that, just turn on his heel and walk back out, struggle down to the hotel, the World’s End Hotel, take a basement room, pay later or, in other words, never, because tomorrow or tomorrow evening he is going to kill himself. This suddenly comes to him, the solution appears, just like that. Kill himself, then all the uncertainty is behind him. He thought of thanking God, but something held him back. Bárður had told him about Suicide Cliff: he would go there, easy as air to walk off it, the sea would take care of the rest, it knows how to drown people, is highly trained, the boy would go immediately if he weren’t so damned tired and horribly hungry, and then he also needs to return a book. He wades through the final meters of snow, slowly, with difficulty.
No one is out and about in the entire Village except for this boy, who is too tired and hungry to die.
II
How many years fit into one day, one day and one night? It is a middle-aged man, not a nineteen-year-old boy, who opens the outer door to Geirþrúður’s café more than forty-eight hours after he walked through the same door for the first time with his friend Bárður, the boy misses him so much that he needs to rest his forehead for a long time on the wall inside the entrance, or whatever we ought to call this little space where Jens the overland postman usually keeps his boxes and bags until Dr. Sigurður fetches them, or sends someone after them, while Jens forgets the difficulties of life by drinking beer. The boy stares into the wall for a long time with wide-open eyes, then looks down at several pairs of shoes made of seawolf skin. Guests are expected to take off their boots here, if they’re covered in filth and mud, and slip on these fish-skin shoes instead. Many people find this an unnecessary ostentation, no doubt extreme, and some people stubbornly resist but have to give in if they wish to be served, and who doesn’t remove his footwear if there’s hope of a beer? I’m not taking off anything, the boy says quietly to himself, but, on the other hand, he needs to open another door to go all the way inside, the inner door opens into the Café itself, thus ensuring that the cold from outside does not follow guests in unhindered, life is a struggle to hold the cold at bay. Thirty years, mutters the boy, thirty years since I was here with Bárður. He looks at the door, so that’s how it looks, and that’s how the door handle is, remarkable, he thinks, but then everything becomes hazy, tears appear in the corners of his eyes and they muddle his sight. The boy doesn’t cry for long, several tears, several small boats that run down his cheeks heavily laden with sorrow.
The boy takes a deep breath, opens the door and is startled by the jingling of the bell above it.
He immediately sees three men in the corner farthest from him, of course he sees them, there are no others here, just these men and eight to ten empty tables. The men look up, they all look at him, then the thing occurs that he finds so unbearable and that he despises himself for: his shyness sweeps sorrow and grief from him, deprives him of thought, he becomes nothing but nervousness, uncertainty, and he has no idea what he ought to do. The only thing that comes into his mind is to sit down, which he does, sits down at the table as far from the men as possible, turns sideways to them and sits straight-backed, white with snow. It’s dim inside, two paraffin lamps glow on the walls and a candle on the table of the three men, a heavy chandelier hangs above the center of the room. He had been transfixed by it on his previous visit, but now he simply stares at nothing and then the snow starts to melt off him. He looks out the window as if he has walked for thirty-six hours in storm and darkness for the one purpose of sitting down and looking out the window. In that case he would have enough to keep him occupied for the next several hours, there are six windows in the Café and all of them dimly reflect the light within, dim mirrors. The boy sees little of the evening that fills the world outside, more of the idiot sitting there by himself at his table, the snow melting off him. I’m such a small character that I’ll more than likely melt with the snow, change into a puddle that dries up, change into a dark spot that then disappears. He looks at himself in the window with disgust, punishes himself by looking, but finally looks down at the tabletop, so the tabletop’s like that, one can easily spend one’s time looking at a tabletop, but if he makes an effort he can catch a glimpse of the three men, recognizes Kolbeinn and his blind eyes, grumpy as a seawolf, Bárður had said with a grin, yet liked him very much. The boy finds it highly unlikely that he will ever be like Kolbeinn. In the first place he’s malicious as hell, in the second place a dirty dog, and in the third place I’ll be dead tomorrow. But he has a lot of books, real books at that, not rhymes and ballads, Bibles and hymns and sermons and things like that, but poetry, instructional books, why does a bad man have so many books, books should make men good, thinks the boy.
He’s so naïve.
The men have started talking together, probably to make fun of him, but the boy unfortunately doesn’t understand a word of what they’re saying, it’s actually just completely unintelligible noises coming from them. At first he listens in surprise but finally realizes that this must be Cod language, very strange that he’s never heard it before. He raises his head slightly and glances over, no longer needs to roll his eyes as if he were being strangled. Has never seen the other two, both big men and undoubtedly fishermen, from a ship, he thinks, otherwise they would be at a fishing station, I hope the Devil takes them tonight and shoves red-hot pokers deep up their asses. Refreshing to think like that, refreshing to be bad, one isn’t being shy when one is being bad, he’s no longer a wretch melting with the snow. Now he sits and simply stares at nothing and couldn’t care less about anything or anyone. Wonder if their dialect is called Coddish? Then he notices that the snow is melt
ing quickly and a large puddle has formed on the floor. Dammit. Should’ve brushed myself off at the door. Bloody hell. This Helga can’t stand folk bringing dirt and water in with them. I wouldn’t want to mess with her! Bárður had said, damn me if I’m not sometimes half afraid of her.
If Bárður was afraid of this woman, then I’ll probably be terrified, thinks the boy in his wet seat.
The men laugh Coddishly, and of course at him. It must be useful for fishermen to understand Coddish, it would be enough for them to stick their heads into the sea, shout something and their boats would be filled. What is death in Coddish? Probably omaúnu, and that with a capital O: Omaúnu. It hurts his eyes to look sideways so intensely. The other two are perhaps old shipmates of Kolbeinn and have started to grow old like him, one broad-shouldered, bald and with terrifically large eyebrows, the other with short gray hair and a strikingly large potato-nose, it would fill the palm of a medium-sized man, both are fully bearded, unkempt beards that reach down to their chests, making them appear even bigger. Maybe I should grow a beard, thinks the boy, it would take me just under a month to cover my cheeks, but then he remembers that he had thought of dying tomorrow and completely gives up on the idea of growing a beard. Suddenly he is standing up. It happens almost without his realizing it. Stands between the tables, perplexed. They stop talking and look at him, except for Kolbeinn, the blind one, who sticks out his chin and cocks his left ear toward him as if it were a malformed eye. Bottles of Carlsberg beer in front of them on the table, one of them nearly full. The boy takes three steps, reaches for a bottle, pours the beer down his throat, and then sees Helga, who is standing next to the counter, staring at him. Incredible what a big man he suddenly was. The boy turns on his heel, opens his bag, pulls out the book, unwraps it and holds it up, holds onto it as if it were a declaration, or a symbol, and says to Kolbeinn, Bárður asked me to convey his gratitude for the loan.
Heaven and Hell Page 8