BEARERS
ON Saturday morning the bearers came trudging over the marshes with their dogs. There were four of them, all old acquaintances: the Fell King, Einar, the poet of Undirhlith, then Olafur of Yztadale, friend of the incredible, and lastly the father of the deceased, old Thorthur of Nithurkot. They were walking not in a group, but at a great distance from one another, like men who have set out on journeys of their own to destinations that do not concern the others. The Fell King arrived first, and the others trailed in one by one after him, Thorthur of Nithurkot last. They were all in their Sunday clothes, with their socks turned up over their trouser bottoms.
Bjartur was not the one to harbour his grief; he welcomed his guests in royal style. “Step into the palace, lads,” he cried; “it’s biting sharp today, but comfort yourselves, the womenfolk have the kettle on.” They took out their knives and began scraping the snow from their clothes. It had been terrible going, they said, hard on top, soft beneath, slippery. The old man, groaning and reluctant in his movements, cautiously took a seat on the doorstep, his joints creaking as if he were about to break in pieces. He seemed all shrunk in upon himself, blue in the face, rime in the tatters of his beard, the lids and corners of his eyes inflamed and the iris colourless with old age. On freshly cut turf between the sheep’s mangers stood the coffin, decorated by tufts of wool that had stuck by chance to the tarred planks when the sheep crowded out for their midday drink from a hole broken in the surface of the ice-bound brook. The old man pressed his gnarled blue hands here and there on the coffin, as if to test its strength—or were these his caresses? Carefully and with an innate sense of tidiness he plucked some of the tufts from the wood. This outer part of the stable was reserved for the ewes, the inner part being divided into a pen for the lambs and a stall for the horse. The smell of the horse’s urine overpowered all the other smells in the stable, for the drain was out of order.
The two women on loan from Rauthsmyri were busy upstairs with the baby and the fire. They had scrubbed the roof and the floor clean. The men left their dogs outside as a token of their respect for the dead, but otherwise their behaviour was much the same as usual, no impediment being allowed to interfere with their wholehearted discussion of the weather, no fastidiousness to temper the special frame of mind sacred to that topic. The snuff-horns went the rounds. Einar of Undirhlith handed Bjartur the usual elegy, written on a tattered piece of paper, and Bjartur gazed at the superscription with a wry face, mistrustful in advance of the tenor of his friend’s poetry, then stuck it indifferently up under a rafter. The old man from Nithurkot wiped the moisture from his eyes with his snuffed-stained handkerchief. When the company had decided that the wind looked like settling in the southwest, Thorthur gave it as his opinion that it would stay there for the winter. This was his only contribution to the discussion, for he had reached an age when one begins to lose all faith in the weather, and there was really so little left to him in the world, except the mill-cot by the brook at home. It was not that he felt bitter against anyone, it was only that he found it difficult to speak. Whenever he opened his mouth to say anything, it was as if something suddenly gripped him by the throat; he looked as if he might burst out giggling on the spot. Something idiotic would appear in his features, some dissolution, as if his face were cracking from inside and would fall in pieces at the slightest exertion—even that of making a trivial little remark about the weather.
Olafur of Yztadale declared that a frosty winter was easy enough to understand after a showery summer: the wet and the dry must balance in nature.
The Fell King considered that since the hard weather had begun so early, surely it would thaw before Christmas and then give them a long period of mild weather, like, for instance, the winter six years ago. He was, on the whole, of the opinion that it would prove to be no worse than a fairly good winter and said that there was certainly no need to despair even though it did show its claws early.
Einar of Undirhlith said that in general his prophecies were based on intuition and dreams, and that he had a feeling, in spite of what the Fell King had just said, that it would be a severe winter and that they had better not be too generous with the hay. But he felt sure they would have a fine spring, for in a dream he had seen, at a great distance from him, a beautiful young girl from the south-country.
‘Well, personally I never had much faith in these dreams of women,” said Bjartur, refusing to be infected with such ill-founded optimism. ‘They’re little enough to be relied on when you’re awake, bless them, but still less when you’re asleep.”
“But surely if you could only interpret dreams, you’d find the sort in which women appear just as reliable as any other kind,” protested Einar.
“You’re quite right,” interrupted the housekeeper with great heat. “Certainly they’re reliable; and he ought to be ashamed of himself, the way he talks, and his wife lying there.”
“Let’s forget about dreams for the moment, then,” suggested the Fell King, who was always prepared to act as mediator between these two noteworthy poets. “Well, to turn the conversation to what we were discussing earlier in the autumn, I want everybody, while I remember, to know that I have now received a new physic from Dr. Finsen. I referred to him the complaints made by several of our local worthies, yours among them, Bjartur, and he wrote for an absolutely special preparation for us. And according to what he said himself, the makers give an out-and-out guarantee that it will cleanse the dogs thoroughly, not only as regards tapeworm, but as regards the blood and the nerves of the whole body as well.”
They said that it wasn’t before time; a fox was a curse and tapeworm a damn sight worse. All of them had the same story to tell of their dogs, every single one infected. Men and beasts were in danger. They demanded that the Fell King strike a decisive blow.
“Of course,” said he, “and you’ll receive from me as soon as possible the annual circular dealing with the subject. My idea was to administer the treatment about the same date as the parliamentary elections, so that you could bring your dogs along with you on your way to vote and get everything over on one journey. It’s a help to the smaller farmer, with no one to do his bidding, to have to make only the one trip.”
“What happened about the assistant dog-doctor?” inquired Olafur of Yztadale, who perhaps, like many another, had dreamed of a morsel of food and honour in this connection. “Didn’t you say in the autumn that the Sheriff was half-thinking of appointing an assistant for the district?”
“Yes, but there are one or two things to be taken into consideration first,” replied the Fell King with some gravity. “These are difficult times, you know, and the county is hardly in a position to increase its expenditure to any great extent. And then again, well, I’ve always been of the opinion that to appoint an assistant in the parish here, when I am supposed to fulfil these duties, would be to pass a sort of vote of no confidence not only in me and Dr. Finsen, but in the government as well, for it is the government that supplies the physic. I would be only too pleased, on the other hand, to resign at any time. And that was what I told the Sheriff; that either I handed in my resignation or I did the work on my own responsibility.”
“Well, it’s the same as I’ve always said,” declared Olafur, whose disappointment had not been so very great. “If the physic was scientific from the beginning, then the dogs wouldn’t be constipated.”
“As I said before,” rejoined the Fell King, “it is the authorities that provide the medicine.”
(“Oh, the authorities will never cheat you,” interposed the old man from Nithurkot, full of gratuitous trustfulness.)
“Quite right,” agreed the Fell King. “I personally consider that the government we have had in the country for the past few years has served the people well. And in the person of the doctor we have had a most public-spirited gentleman to represent our constituency in Parliament, a man who has ever been willing to do everything possible for us, both as a doctor, a man, and a member of the Althingi.”
There was silence for a while, and the crofters, feeling that the conversation was verging on the political, thoughtfully studied the broad, calloused palms of their hands.
“I shouldn’t be surprised if some people didn’t look at the doctor with rather different eyes,” remarked Einar of Undirhlith at last. “And one thing is certain: those who don’t deal with the merchant in Fjord won’t vote for the candidate put up in Fjord.”
“Yes, I think we all know our good Bailiff,” said Bjartur. “If the government was for sale he would buy it up, stick on a percentage, and peddle it round to see if anybody would be fool enough to buy it.”
(The housekeeper muttering to herself in front of the range: “It’s shameful to hear the way he talks about his benefactor, almost, you might say, his foster-father. No wonder misfortune dogs such a person.”)
It was obvious that Einar’s political opinions were not of the healthiest, so the Fell King proceeded in a helpful spirit to show him where he erred. “I don’t suppose, for instance, Einar,” he said, “that you ever had a bill from Finsen for all the medicine your poor mother had a few years ago.”
Einar could not deny that it was still owing the doctor—there were about two hundred bottles of it.
“Yes, it doesn’t take much medicine to add up to the price of a cow,” observed the Fell King.
This silenced Einar of Undirhlith for the moment, because he knew that the others must all be acquainted with the fact that he had mortgaged his cow and half his stock to pay off a debt owing to the Bailiff in Utirauthsmyri; but he added finally that a cow was a cow, medicine medicine, a government a government, and actually he was thinking of sitting at home during the next elections.
But whenever the conversation turned to politics, Olafur of Yztadale was apt to let his attention wander, for his interests lay in other directions. The baby had waked up and was now crying, so the housekeeper left what she was doing to attend to it. Olaf ur was of the disposition that marvels at these little human creatures, if creatures they can be called, which come thus into the world to replace those that disappear. “It’s marvellous, you know, when you come to think of it: there you have a new body and a new soul suddenly making their appearance, and where do they come from and why are they always coming? Yes, I’ve asked myself that same question many a time, both night and day. As if it wouldn’t have been more natural to let the same folk live in the world continually; then there would have been at least some likelihood of ordinary people like you and me working their way up into a comfortable position eventually.”
But even the housekeeper was unable, or unwilling, to solve this problem. So Olafur of Yztadale continued:
“To me the strangest thing about these little whippersnappers is this, though: that they say it has been proved that new-born children can swim absolutely of their own accord, if you put them in water. Have you ever tried it, Gudny?”
No, the housekeeper had never tried it, and advised Olafur dryly not to advertise it too widely if he ever thought of trying it on his own children—such an experiment might be variously interpreted.
Olafur said there wasn’t much danger of that, he was the type that wasn’t much given to messing about with new-born babies. “But,” he added, ‘I’ve sometimes had occasion to do away with new-born pups, and I can tell you something that’s extremely interesting about them. I’ve lopped off their heads on the river bank at home there, with the clasp-knife, you know, and then flung the bodies out into the river, and now there’s one question I’d like to lay before you: what do you think the bodies do; do you think they float, or do you think they sink?”
This question switched the minds of the assembly away from all consideration of politics and the dilemma that these two candidates, the one from Fjord, the other from Vik, imposed upon the troubled electors. The women thought that naturally the pups’ bodies would sink, Einar was of the opinion that they might conceivably float on top, while the Fell King favoured the theory that they would float under water.
“No-ho,” cried Olafur triumphantly, proud of having diverted everyone’s interest into scientific channels. “They swim; they neither more nor less than swim exactly the same as any grown-up dog complete with head and everything, and that’s as true as I’m sitting here.”
But at that moment the beloved coffee arrived, to put an end to this instructive discussion of the stranger phenomena of nature. It was good coffee; no one need have been ashamed of such coffee, however high he stood in the social scale. Such coffee made you sweat like a horse. Drink up, lads, drink. And there were also lovely cakes with the coffee, thick slices of Christmas cake with big raisins, fat doughnuts, and pancakes loaded with sugar. Eat up, lads, eat up. Happily they fell upon these luxuries; to the devil with personal opinions and interests. Cupful after cupful they swilled, without making a sound other than guzzling and crunching and the snuffling of nostrils charged with tobacco.
‘It may be a while before I invite you to another feast,” said Bjartur of Summerhouses.
Finally each had had his fill and had wiped his mouth on his sleeve and the back of his hand. Then there was silence. It was the silence of the occasion, the silence that sooner or later must impose itself on all funerals, broken occasionally by a churchlike clearing of the throat and accompanied by a vacant staring of the eyes.
“Had you thought of any ceremony here in the house?”
“No,” was Bjartur’s reply. “I couldn’t persuade that mule of a parson of ours to drag himself up into the valley here, all because of his blasted whimsies. Not that it makes any difference.”
“Her mother would maybe like it better if we sang something nice while she is being taken out,” said the old man apologetically, “—so I brought the Passion Hymns with me.”
“Why man, what difference do you think that will make?” asked Bjartur.
“She was our own Christian child,” said the old man dejectedly.
When Bjartur saw how determined he was, he allowed him to have his own way.
Blesi was standing ready-saddled, tethered to the doorpost, a heavy horse, long in the head, twitching his nether lip a little now and again as if he were talking to himself, moving his ears in turn, the events of the house mirrored in his receptive, introspective eye. The dog whined, shivering behind the stairway with its tail between its legs and fawning on no one.
Most of the sheep had returned from the brook home to the croft. A few wiggled their way past the horse into the house and after sniffing at the mangers gave a disappointed bleat because they had not been replenished. More and more trickled into the house to meet with the same disappointment. Others thronged about the doorway or faced defiantly up to the visitors’ dogs. They helped to give the funeral the appearance of a good following, much sympathy, and the increased warmth that is so much appreciated on such a day in the midst of the marsh’s frozen snow, the high moor’s glacier-covered reaches. The folk had all arranged themselves round the coffin. Old Thorthur of Nithurkot unfolded the handkerchief from his wife’s volume of Hallgrimur Pjetursson’s Fassion Hymns and started looking for the place he had marked with a dog’s-ear.
“Wouldn’t somebody with a good voice like to begin?” The book was passed round from one to another, but it seemed that no one knew the tune: it was so seldom that anyone went to church, and they had forgotten all the hymn tunes long ago. So the old man took the book himself and began trying to reach the note. A ewe looked at him and gave vent to a full-throated bleat. Then the old man began to sing over his darling. He sang of when the Redeemer is led out, hymn twenty-five: “So many wounds that I may rest in peace.” He knew it all by heart, without looking at the book, but his voice was toneless and husky and could not keep to any definite tune. Even the men around him felt that he did not sing well.
And so the angels of the Lord will say: Look upon this man.
The horse pricked its ears and snorted. Again and again the dog gave a pitiful howl, as if someone were torturing it, and th
e ewes bleated on, like a long funeral procession, both outside and in, because they had not been given their fodder. He sang the last verse in a tuneless screech: “Truly art thou Son of God,” and the tears streamed unending from the inflamed lids down into the scraggy beard. His pronunciation too was difficult and lisping, because of his missing teeth; sometimes his song was nothing more than a feeble tremor of the throat and jaws. He was like any speechless child that has long wept. Then there was silence.
‘Wouldn’t it be better to say the Lord’s Prayer?”
The Fell King took the old man by the arm so that he should not fall, and whispered: “Gudny here wants to know whether it wouldn’t be better to say the Lord’s Prayer.”
So the old man wept the Lord’s Prayer, without ceasing to tremble, without lifting his head, without taking the handkerchief from his eyes. More than half the words were drowned in the heaving of his sobs; it was not so easy to make out what he said: “Our Father, which art in Heaven, yes, so infinitely far away that no one knows where You are, almost nowhere, give us this day just a few crumbs to eat in the name of Thy Glory, and forgive us if we can’t pay the dealer and our creditors and let us not, above all, be tempted to be happy, for Thine is the Kingdom”—perhaps it was difficult to imagine a place equally well chosen for this engaging prayer; it was as if the Redeemer had written it for the occasion. They stood with bowed heads, all except Bjartur, who would never dream of bowing his head for an unrhymed prayer. They they lifted the coffin out. They lifted it on to the horse and tied it across the saddle, then laid a hand on each end to steady it.
“Has the horse been spoken to?” asked the old man; and as it had not yet been done, he took an ear in each hand and whispered to it, according to ancient custom, for horses understand these things:
“You carry a coffin today. You carry a coffin today.”
Then the funeral procession moved off.
The Fell King walked in the van, keeping as far as possible to the patches that were bare of snow, so that there would be less danger of mishap. Einar of Undirhlith led the horse, Olafur and Bjartur walked at each end of the coffin, and the old man limped along in the rear with his stick and the huge mittens with the flapping thumbs.
Independent People Page 18