The women stood at the door with tear-swollen faces, watching the procession disappear in the whirling snow.
DRIFTING SNOW
THE GOING was slow over the ridge, for it was often impossible to find a clear path however far they deviated from their route. They sank repeatedly into deep snowdrifts on the hillsides and had to be on the watch all the time lest the coffin roll off the saddle. The body did not arrive at Rauthsmyri till late in the afternoon. Dusk was beginning to fall. The minister had arrived some time beforehand; though his face was completely inscrutable, he was obviously pressed for time. A few other visitors were also waiting for this funeral and the coffee that would follow it. The coffin was carried straight into the church in compliance with the minister’s request and the bells were rung. Feeble was the sound they made, feeble their intrusion on frozen nature’s winter omnipotence, their peal reminiscent of nothing so much as the jingle of a child’s toy. And the folk came trailing out of the drifting snow and into the church, timid in the face of death, which never seems so irrevocable as when bells of such a kind tinkle so helplessly in the cold, white spaces of declining day. The Bailiff’s wife had not come to the funeral, not even as a mere spectator. On such a winter day not even she felt very well; she had caught a chill apparently and was sitting at home in her room snuffing hot water and salt up her nose, guaranteed to kill any cold. The Bailiff himself, however, had turned up, and if he was wearing his old trousers that were giving way round the patches, he had at least thrown on another jacket in recognition of the occasion, and took his seat in the chancel as usual and was careful not to open his mouth throughout the service. Blesi had been tied to the gate, and as the dog was not allowed inside because of the rites, it waited outside on the threshold, shivering.
The minister entered, wearing his crumpled parish-of-ease cassock and a pair of white bands round his neck because the occasion was not important enough for a ruff. Some of the crofters began singing: “I live and know,” each to a tune of his own. The old man was sitting at the back, no longer weeping, as if his emotions had dried up. During the music the minister pulled his watch out twice in front of the coffin, as if he had no time for this sort of thing. When the music was over, he put on his spectacles and read the prayer from his tattered old book. It was an old prayer, as was only to be expected in such weather, and besides, the man was hoarse. Then, instead of the long one he had threatened, he delivered a short sermon, in which, after declaring that evil spirits lay in ambush for mankind, he proceeded to discuss unbelief in terms that were none too complimentary. He said that many people had neglected their Creator while they were chasing stupid sheep over the mountains. “What are sheep?” he asked. He said that sheep had been a greater curse to the Icelandic nation than foxes and tapeworms put together. “Sheep’s clothing disguises a ferocious wolf that has sometimes been referred to in this district as the Albogastathir Fiend, whom others name Kolumkilli. People run after sheep all their lives long and never find them. Such is the lesson we may learn from the parting that oppresses us today.”
The sermon over, he spared a few words for the dead woman’s career; no career, really, but a proof of how insignificant the individual is as he appears in the parish register. What was the individual considered as a separate unit? “Nothing—a name, at most a date. Me today, you tomorrow. Let us unite in prayer to the God who stands above the individual, while our names rot in the registers.” No weeping or wailing or gnashing of teeth, no emotion, no flirting with the heart-strings—a sleepy Lord’s Prayer and a clipped amen. In his contradictions he was as much an enigma as the country itself: a religious devotee out of spite at the soullessness of men who thought of nothing but dogs and sheep, a scientific breeder of sheep because of his contempt for sheep, the Icelandic pastor of a thousand years’ folk-stories, his presence alone was a comfortable reassurance that all was as it should be.
The coffin was now borne out.
It was lowered into the grave by means of two ropes, and the mourners hung about near the edge for a while longer. Three crofters with bared heads sang “As the one blossom” in the drifting snow; it was a sort of commemoration day for Hallgrimur Pjetursson, a cold day. The dog stood whining near Bjartur, its tail between its legs as if it had been whipped, and still shivering. The minister threw a few handfuls of earth on the coffin in silence, then with noisy gusto sniffed up a couple of good pinches of snuff from the box offered him by the Fell King, his parish clerk. The bearers eagerly grabbed their spades and set to work with a will. One by one others trailed off.
FIRE OF FROST
BJARTUR did not make the journey back to Summerhouses till die following day. The dog padded along beside him in blissful anticipation. It is lovely to be going home. And whenever she was a few yards ahead of her master, she would halt and look back at him with eyes full of an unwavering faith, then return to him on a big curve. Her reverence for her master was so great that she did not presume even to walk ahead of him. A dog finds in a man the things it looks for. He leaned into the gusts of driven snow, leading Blesi by the reins and casting an occasional glance at his dog—poor little thing, lousy and wormy, but where is fidelity to be found if not in those brown eyes—where the loyalty that nothing can subvert? Misfortune, dishonour, the pricks of conscience, nothing can quench this fire—poor little bitch, in her eyes Bjartur of Summerhouses must always be highest, greatest, best; the incomparable. Man finds in the eyes of a dog the things he looks for. Hell, but Blesi is heavy on the lead today. And yet there is a living creature on his back. A living creature? Who? It is the old woman from Urtharsel, riding sideways on the saddle and muffled up to the eyes in sacks and shawls. Her belongings and those of her daughter dangle from the saddle. Finna follows in their tracks, her face weatherbeaten, her gait clumsy, her skirts kilted above her knees.
Nothing was said. And on crawled the little procession in the direction of Summerhouses, men and animals, men-animals, five souls. The pale red sun grazed the surface of the moorland bluffs on this northern winter’s morning which was really only an evening. And yet it was midday. The light gilded the clouds of snow flying over the moors so that they seemed one unbroken ocean of fire, one radiant fire of gold with streaming flames and glimmering smoke from east to west over the whole frozen expanse. Through this golden fire of frost, comparable in its magic to nothing but the most powerful and elaborate witchcraft of the Ballads, lay their homeward way,
The women from Myri greeted the new arrivals with dumb courtesy, but were none the less importunate in their demands for the milk which Bjartur had promised to bring back with him; they had had to give the baby thin gruel in its sucking bag. When they had made coffee for the newcomers their task was over, so they gathered their belongings together and made ready to go. Bjartur offered to accompany them over the ridge, but they declined with thanks and took leave of both him and the newcomers with the same kind of politeness as that with which they had welcomed them. Finna was left with the baby in her lap, to give it its bottle for the first time. And the old crone began fussing about in the house.
Though it was still early in the evening, Bjartur went to bed as soon as he had seen to the livestock. He felt really that he had had no rest since the last night he had spent at home with Rosa. He was glad that he had at least said good-bye before he left. It had been an adventurous round-up, and it was only this evening that he felt he had really returned. Every time that he had gone to bed since his return from the deserts he had felt, just as he was dozing off, a sudden storm of snow beating in his face and a voluptuous torpor stealing up his legs, up his thighs, all the way up to his stomach. And he had jumped up in a panic, certain that if he let himself fall asleep he would die in the blizzard. It was for this reason that he always slept so badly afterwards. In the middle of the night he would start up with a bawdy verse on his lips, or some scurrilous old lampoon ridiculing bailiffs or merchants, and would be on the point of jumping out of bed to thump himself warm before he recollected himse
lf.
But tonight he felt he was no longer in any danger.
The light in the wall lamp had been quenched for economy’s sake, but there was a glimmer from the little dip flickering on the shelf above the old woman’s bed. Mother and daughter sat for a long time together, murmuring in the gleam from the little dip. From down below, a sheep could be heard belching occasionally, or Blesi in his narrow stall would shift his feet and give a little snort into the manger. The dog, lying against the wall under the range, would rise now and then to scratch itself, its hind leg thumping the wall in the process, yawn, curl up again. From the bed on the other side was heard the child’s shallow breathing, and an occasional whimper as if it were going to cry. However, it did not start crying, but fell asleep again.
At last the whispering was over and Finna came to take off her clothes. He heard her unbutton her coat and step out of her skirt. She drew a tightly fitting underskirt over her head with some difficulty. Then she got into bed beside the baby and removed the rest of her clothes beneath the coverlet. He heard her unfasten two or three buttons more, then wriggle out of her underclothes. She stretched herself out and scratched herself here and there, yawning sleepily and noisily.
The old woman still remained sitting on the edge of her bed in the glimmer from the dip, with her elbows in her lap now and a finger between her toothless gums. She was gazing down the hatchway, muttering something occasionally. Twice she went forward to the hatchway, cried shame on something and spat. On the second occasion she stood rocking herself backwards and forwards for a while, staring down and mumbling:
“Fie upon thee, false fox,
Fare from my dwelling;
At this door Jesu knocks,
Flee hence at His telling.
Out Kurkur, In Jesus, Out Kolumkel,
In Gods angel,
Out Ragerist,
In Jesukrist,
OutValedictus,
InBenedictus—”
When she had recited this holy old prayer she crossed herself and said: “We give ourselves all into God’s hands and good night” Then she closed the trapdoor and went to bed. And with that they all composed themselves for sleep.
PART II
Free of Debt
WINTER MORNING
SLOWLY, slowly winter day opens his arctic eye.
From the moment when he gives his first drowsy blink to the time when his leaden lids have finally opened wide, there passes not merely hour after hour; no, age follows age through the immeasurable expanses of the morning, world follows world, as in the visions of a blind man; reality follows reality and is no more—the light grows brighter. So distant is winter day on his own morning. Even his morning is distant from itself. The first faint gleam on the horizon and the full brightness on the window at breakfast-time are like two different beginnings, two starting-points. And since at dawn even his morning is distant, what must his evening be? Forenoon, noon, and afternoon are as far off as the countries we hope to see when we grow up; evening as remote and unreal as death, which the youngest son was told about yesterday, death which takes little children away from their mothers and makes the minister bury them in the Bailiff’s garden, death from which no one returns, as in grandmother’s stories, death which will call for you, too, when you have grown so old that you have become a child again.
“Is it only little babies that die, then?” he had asked.
Why had he asked?
It was because yesterday his father had gone across to the homesteads with the little baby that had died. He had carried it away in a box on his back to have it buried by the minister and the Bailiff. The minister would dig a hole in the Bailiff’s churchyard and sing a song.
“Shall I ever be a little baby again?” asked the seven-year-old boy.
And his mother, who had sung him remarkable songs and told him all about foreign countries, answered weakly from the sickbed on which she was lying:
“When anyone grows very old he becomes like a little baby again.”
“And dies?” asked the boy.
It was a string in his breast that snapped, one of those delicate childhood strings which break before one has had time to realize that they are capable of sounding; and these strings sound no more; henceforth they are only a memory of incredible days.
“We all die. Later in the day he had broached the subject again, this time with his grandmother:
“I know somebody who’ll never die,” he said.
“Really, my pet?” she inquired, peering at him down her nose with her head tilted to one side, as was her fashion when she was looking at anyone. “And who might he be?”
“My father,” replied the boy resolutely. Yet he was not absolutely certain whether he might not be making a mistake, for he kept on gazing at his grandmother with questioning eyes.
“Oh, he’ll die, he’ll die all right,” snorted the old woman remorselessly, almost gloatingly, and blew sharply down her nose.
This answer only roused the boy’s stubbornness, and he asked:
“Granny, will the pot-stick ever die?”
“That’ll do,” snapped the old woman, as if she thought he was making fun of her.
“But, Granny, what about the black pan? Will that ever die?”
“Nonsense, child,” she retorted. “How can anything die when it’s dead already.”
“But the pot-stick and the pan aren’t dead,” said the little boy. “I know they aren’t dead. When I wake up in the morning I often hear them talking together.”
How foolish of him: there he had gone and blurted out a secret known only to himself, for he alone had discovered that, during what was perhaps the most remarkable of all the morning’s expanses of time, the pots and pans and other kitchen utensils changed their shapes and became men and women. Early in the morning, when he lay awake long before the others, he could hear them talking away to one another with the grave composure and the weighty vocabulary that is proper to cooking utensils alone. Nor was it merely by chance that he had referred to the pot-stick first, for the pot-stick, after all, is a sort of aristocrat among utensils; rarely used, and then as a rule for meat soup, that most appetizing of dishes, it spends most of its time hanging on the wall in spotless cleanliness and decorative idleness. Once it is taken down, however, the part it plays in the pot is most noteworthy. The boy therefore regarded the pot-stick with particular respect, and felt there was no one he could liken it to but the Bailiff’s wife. The black pot, which was so often full to the brim and sometimes had a burnt crust at the bottom and a lot of soot underneath, the black pot was no other than the Bailiff of Myri, whose mouth was always crammed with tobacco. He could easily be seen simmering at times, and it was quite certain that there was a fire in his inside and that he had a Bailiff’s wife to stir him up so that he didn’t boil over on official occasions. The other cooking things were all the same: in the dark they changed into men and women, some rich and important, others poor and of little account. The knives were ugly peasants whom he loathed and feared, the cups dumpy young women with roses on their aprons who made the boy feel shy with their roses; and at meals in the bright light of day he avoided touching these people, avoided giving them so much as a sidelong glance even, lest they read in his face all that he knew of their adventures. By night they were complacent and full of self-assertion, by day slatternly and soiled, abject as sheepish visitors who sit and sniff and dare not move—he who knew so much about them in the liberty of their night felt sorry for them in the bondage of their day.
But one there was among them independent of night and day, of the freedom of the dark, of the bondage of the light; one that eclipsed the others with its splendour and made them look like so much trash. Such was the value attached to it that it was kept stored away at the bottom of the clothes-chest. The children saw it only if important visitors came at Christmas or on Summer Day, and even then they were never allowed to touch it, so precious was it. It was mother’s cake-dish—a gift from the Bailiff of Myri’s wi
fe. It was the most beautiful dish in the whole world. On it there was a picture of a marvellous house half-hidden by flowering bushes. Leading up to the house lay a smooth winding path with green grass and smiling bushes on either side. And who was that standing on the path in a blue dress and a white hat, with flowers in her hand and the sun in her heart? He knew very well who it was, but he had never told a soul. It was the Bailiff’s daughter, Audur, who had gone abroad in the autumn and who would return in the spring like a bird. And the house half-hidden by flowers was Audur’s house in far-off countries. Some day little Nonni would no longer be a little boy who slept in his grandmother’s bed.
For a while he was silent as he sat beside her on the bed, busy with his knitting. But presently he could contain himself no longer.
“I know something,” he said, letting the needles droop as he gazed at his grandmother. “I bet you I know something that can never, never die.”
“Oh?”
“Never,” he repeated.
“Well, tell me what it is then, child. Out with it.”
“No,” he said with great resolution. “I’m never going to tell a soul.”
Taking the wool with his right index finger, he looped it ready for the next stitch. It might be that now and then he did let out a secret or two, but one thing was above life and death, above the freedom of the dark, the humiliation of the day. What it was not a soul would ever get to know. The secret of mother’s cake-dish.
There are few things that fill the soul of man with greater disappointment than to wake up when everybody else is asleep, especially if it happens to be very early in the morning. Not before one is awake does one realize how far one’s dreams have transcended reality. Often the youngest son would dream of a dime, a quarter, even two quarters, but he would lose it all as soon as he woke up. He would drink meat soup, not from a bowl, but from a tub, and eat meat so fat that the grease trickled down to his elbows. He would eat huge slices of Christmas cake from a cake-dish without horizon, slices so thick that he could pick raisins out of them easily as big as a man’s eye. Such is the benefit that the human soul has from its dreams. But however hard he tried he could never fall asleep again to these delicacies, nor to the coins he had had in his hands, which were always of silver, like the money his father paid the Bailiff on the land, and which in his dream he had been going to spend on raisins and biscuits, as well as a pocket-knife and some string.
Independent People Page 19