After a few moments, however, she could be heard muttering away to herself; it was like the first sighing of a gale that would soon be raging in full blast. Her stories were cast all in the same mould. In the famine after the Eruption folk ate scraps of leather, they were so thin that the lice ate their way into them, her grandmother could remember the time. There was once a French cutter, this happened when I was in the south, they were wrecked on the sands in a terrible gale, the crew all perished on a sandbank, a rich farmer stole everything that drifted ashore, including a cask full of money and a barrel of claret. The captain walked again and the cook as well, they followed the thief to the ninth generation, they aren’t free of them yet, many stories about it. Two brothers went to market, one set off home again in the morning, the other wanted to stay a day longer. It was a long way, over the mountains. A terrible storm came on, but the brother managed to reach a hut. The hut was haunted a lot. During the night the ghost started pounding on the walls and the door, but the brother pulled some stones up from the floor and piled them up against the door. Outside, the ghost was screaming horribly. The brother piled more stones against the door and bade him never thrive. In the morning there was a keen frost, but the snow had stopped. The brother clears the stones away and opens the door. But as he opens it, in tumbles his brother, frozen to death. He waked again and haunted his brother. Endless space with bottomless drifts of snow, precipices over which men stepped blindly to their death, frozen rivers where people fell into holes and were carried under the ice and out to sea, walked again, knocked at windows, and chanted poetry. Sea-monsters attacking people at tibe foot of cliffs, destroying the houses of women who were alone at home. The fiend Kolumkilli, they say, is immortal and the witch Gunnvor lived on this croft and made a pact with him and murdered folk, there are many stories about it, endless stories, at last she was broken at the lichgate at Myri Church on Trinity Sunday and her limbs cut off, guest of Gunnvor was no man with God or good grace, she has broken my rib-bone, my leg-bone, my hip-bone; and if Kolumkilli call me should, this is what he’d say, bones and red blood, bones and red blood and dododo—
All at once Bjartur stuck his head up through the hatchway and cried:
“Stick the kettle on, Hallbera, there are visitors coming”
Pushing her spinning-wheel aside in the middle of a story, the old woman grudgingly answered: “Oh, there’s no need to tell me. They’re never off the roads, some of them. And there was quite a crowd of bogles here this morning to announce them, too.”
“Sola will give you a hand to mix some pancakes, and you can make the coffee as strong as you like in honour of a man who never came here yet but he was after something or other. And no dawdling.”
A few moments later the sharply chiselled features of the Bailiff in their frame of strong, grey-streaked hair rose above the hatchway. He was wearing a thick riding-jacket and muffler, sealskin boots, and long snow-stockings pulled over his trousers and up to his thighs. His whip was adorned with three resplendent silver bands. He was on his way to town, and had one of his farm labourers with him for company; he stretched out two or three fingers in greeting and mumbled something into his beard. Asta Sollilja cleared a seat for him on the children’s bed, while Bjartur sat down beside his wife. The smell of the first pancake reached them.
“Well, well, old lad,” said Bjartur as though he rather pitied the Bailiff, “so you’re seeing what your horses think of the roads in this weather, are you?”
“Oh, the roads are right enough,” replied the Bailiff sleepily, caressing his chin and yawning as his eyes wandered about the room.
“Oh? That’s funny. I seem to remember a time when you would have said the moors were too dangerous for horses in this depth of snow,” said Bjartur, who was always in the right in his dealings with the Bailiff, “—particularly if it was me that wanted to use the horses. But naturally a man knows best himself how far to tax his own horses.”
“Oh, it isn’t so very often that I fool around the moors for no reason,” said the Bailiff significantly. “And they’re my horses.”
Bjartur countered this insinuation by remarking that both rich and poor alike always had some purpose in mind, whether at home or in the deserts, and the Bailiff could say what he liked, but there had been no shortage of snow up on the moors here lately, whatever it was like across at Myri.
The Bailiff replied that it was no worse than was to be expected in the middle of winter. Producing his silver tobacco-box, he measured off a nice length of chew with his finger, then bit the piece off and, after carefully replacing the remainder in the box, closed it with great caution. Then he lay back on the bed, unafraid of lice.
“Well, well, old cock,” said Bjartur affably, “just so, yes. And what’s fresh up your way these days?”
The Bailiff said that everything was as usual with him. How other people were faring he didn’t know.
“No sign of worms or diarrhea?”
“With me?” asked the Bailiff.
“Oh, you usually speak for yourself first, if I know you at all well.”
“It’s all one whether they have worms or not, the price that folk get for them nowadays,” said the Bailiff. “The wretched animals are simply a burden on folks these days.”
Bjartur doubted whether the gentry really meant it when they spoke disparagingly of their sheep.
“You can doubt what you like for me,” retorted the Bailiff.
“Are you clearing the snow from the home-field?”
“No. I haven’t been short of hay yet,” replied the Bailiff.
“Nor me either,” said Bjartur.
The Bailiff, now lying at his ease well up on the bed, was sucking away with all his might, and had already accumulated so much saliva that he had begun to avoid long sentences. The half-closed eyes flitted from one thing to another until finally they settled on Asta Sollilja, busy with her cooking.
“There have been occasions,” observed the Bailiff, “when you’ve had to ask other people for what you needed most.”
“Well, it’s your own wife’s fault if she refused to take anything for the few drops of milk I fetched to put in the lads’ gruel when they were little; and I don’t owe you a penny on the land, as everybody knows, my lad, though it did take twelve years.”
“It strikes me you’re still using other folk’s land the same as ever.”
“Eh?”
“Wasn’t there something on your back when you came to see me yesterday? This is the fourth time, if I’m not mistaken. What I can’t fathom at all is why you bought land from me up in the valley here if you intend taking over my churchyard as well.”
“Maybe you folk at Rauthsmyri have managed to get the better of death,” said the crofter, but to this sarcasm the Bailiff made no reply.
“What am I to say if I meet the Sheriff in town?” he asked.
“That the black-face I pulled out of a bog for him last Midsummer Day was rotten with disease,” retorted Bjartur.
The Bailiffs only reply was to mouth his chew a moment or two longer, then squirt it all in one stream at Bjartur’s feet. “How old is that girl of yours now?” he asked without taking his eyes off Asta Sollilja.
“She’s getting on for fourteen, poor kid. I shouldn’t be surprised if she wasn’t born about the same time as I made the first payment on the land.”
“It just shows you what you’re made of: farming for fourteen years and not a cow on the place yet.”
“If it hadn’t been for this scrap of land on my conscience all those twelve years, I would certainly have bought a cow and have had hired help as well. But it so happens that all my life I’ve held the opinion that freedom and independence are worth more than all the cattle that any crofter ever got himself into debt for.”
The Bailiff gave a faint snort.
“What did you say she was called, again?” he asked.
“Oh, Asta Sollilja is her name.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
> “It’s supposed to mean, my friend, that she’ll never need to be dependent on others, either in body or soul, for as long as I live in this hut. And now well talk no more about it, mate.”
But the Bailiff’s contempt of Bjartur’s independence knew no bounds, and he said:
“You can send her along to me with the turn of the year; my wife is rather fond of teaching kids to read and so on. We’ll give her her food for a month or so.”
“There’s plenty of food in Summerhouses,” said Bjartur. “And the soulful drivel you people of Myri call learning is probably healthiest for the children you acknowledge as your own.”
The Bailiff, leaning forward, landed an immense stream at Bjartur’s foot, then sleepily passed a hand over his brow and cheek and suppressed a yawn.
I’m for my folk, you’re for your folk,” added Bjartur without looking at the spit
“Your wife’s much the same as ever, I see,” observed the Bailiff. “How much have you paid for medicine for her this year?”
“That’s another matter altogether. It would never occur to me to deny that I’d had the misfortune to marry women both of whom were troubled with their hearts, which, being nothing but God’s will and malignant fortune, concerns no one, you least of all.”
The Bailiff, who never took offence over a snappish answer, but liked this sort of tone best, clawed himself here and there, for they had started crawling, and said to no one in particular:
“Oh, it’s all right, it doesn’t worry me. But the wife thinks the girl should have some teaching, and a law has been passed about compulsory examinations. Not that anybody need be in any doubt about my opinion: I consider that all this education business will be the ruination of the lower classes.”
“In that case I think it’s best that those who belong to the lower classes should educate their lower classes, and that those who belong to the upper classes should educate their upper classes; and give Madam my best wishes.”
“I don’t gain anything by people being educated,” said the Bailiff. “But it’s what the government wants. And, by the way, the womenfolk up there are all raving and saying you should get yourself a cow.”
“I am a free man.”
“Um. What shall I tell the Sheriff if he decides to inquire into it?”
“Tell him that we people on the moors stand on our own feet”
“Yes; and up to the neck in your own graves,” snorted the Bailiff.
Before Bjartur had had time to think of a suitable rejoinder, a voice, long-drawn and wavering, broke in from the region of the range:
“It is just as his honour says: this is no sort of life for a human being. I lived at Urtharsel for forty years and we always had a cow of one kind or another. I never needed to ask God for anything special in all those forty years.”
“Listen,” said the Bailiff, as if something has just occurred to him. “I can sell you one that’s due to calve in the summer, a fine beast, doesn’t give too much milk, but keeps going a long time.”
Is he at it again? thought Bjartur, who knew his Bailiff from of old; this wasn’t the first of their discussions, it was like beating one’s head against a stone wall. He had the habit of beginning again where he had left off before, the old mule. To try to turn his mind from anything was hopeless. It was difficult to say whether this trait in his character irritated Bjartur more than it excited his admiration. Then something happened to delay Bjartur’s answer for the moment: all at once Finna made an attempt to lift herself up and, looking at the two of them with fevered eyes, whispered blithely:
“I only wish the good God would grant it” And she lay down again.
Only when this sigh had passed away did Bjartur find an opportunity of answering the Bailiff: “You wouldn’t have been so keen on offering me a cow last year or the year before, mate, when it was still uncertain whether I would make the last payment on the land.”
“I could provide you with hay for her, too,” offered the Bailiff.
“God’s blessing on the man,” sighed the woman again from her sick-bed.
“Oh, you get your medicine from Finsen, lass,” said Bjartur. “You’ve never been short of medicine.”
The Bailiff, who had some local repute as a homoeopath, asked if he might see some of the medicine that Bjartur obtained for his wife from the District Medical Officer and Member of Parliament, Dr. Finsen. Finna drew aside the curtain from the corner cupboard by her bed, revealing a large and imposing collection of medicine bottles of all sizes and colours, three shelves full. Most of them were empty. The Bailiff took one or two of them, removed the corks, and sniffed. They had all the same inscription, written in the doctor’s scholarly black-letter: “Gudfinna Ragnarsdottir. To be taken thrice daily at equal intervals. For internal use.” When the Bailiff had taken a disdainful sniff at the contents of a few of the bottles, he replaced them with the remark that he’d brewed his poison too long, the blasted old rogue.
But coffee had now been served and Bjartur generously exhorted the Bailiff and his attendant to fall tooth and nail upon those pancake things or whatever you call them. The old woman, still mumbling to herself, kept on fussing about around the range, but Asta Sollilja, who had followed everything that had been said, about cows and schooling alike, stood sucking her finger and gazing full of respect at the way in which the Bailiff was disposing of the pancakes she herself had cooked. The boys’ eyes widened and widened as the sugar-sprinkled mound grew smaller on the the dish, their faces longer and longer as its roses, its romance, and its damsel reappeared. Weren’t they going to leave a single one?
“By the way,” said the Bailiff, “my son Ingolfur may be up this way on some business or other in the spring.”
“Really,” said the crofter. “I won’t forbid him the road. I hear he’s become quite a big bug down in the south nowadays.”
“Co-operative Secretary,” corrected the Bailiff.
“Oh, so there is a difference, then?”
“I don’t know whether you’re aware that the wool last year reached three times the price that Bruni was giving for it. And the profits he made on the mutton this autumn don’t seem to have been any smaller.”
“As far as I’m concerned,” said Bjartur, “as long as I can pay you and the dealer what I legally owe you, well, it’s much the same to me what you gentry think fit to accuse one another of embezzlement or burglary, it’s all the same to me.”
“Yes, you’re all cravens, the lot of you,” observed the Bailiff. “You live and die in complete trust of the one that fleeces you most.”
“I don’t know, but according to what I’ve heard, you don’t give so very much more for what you buy alive, mate. The dealer was telling me only this autumn that you make a profit of five to eight crowns on every lamb you sell in Vik. And that wasn’t the biggest estimate.”
Now, the Bailiff’s nature was such that had he been accused of theft or even of murder he would have preserved an unruffled exterior and have seemed, indeed, to be quite gratified. But with one crime he would not have his name connected: if anyone insinuated that he was making money, the ice was broken and his tongue was loosened; such a slander was more than he could stand. Leaning forward, he opened his mouth on a flood of words, the muscles of his face twitching passionately, fire in his eyes, his reasoning full of extravagant assertions and discordant similes. In a moment all his sleepiness had disappeared:
“Fortunately enough, I happen to be better acquainted with my affairs than the dealer in Fjord is. And I can provide documentary proof at any time that my dealings in sheep have done more harm to me than all the foxes have to all the farmers in this district and for miles farther afield for the last two or three generations. You let the merchant down there delude you into believing that I buy sheep in the autumn for the fun of the thing. But the truth of the matter is that when I’ve bought sheep from people in these parts, it’s always been out of charity. And what is charity? A fellow goes and gets himself mixed up in the mess that oug
ht first and last to be the individual’s private concern, a fellow lets himself be fooled into saving irredeemable folk from starvation, or debt, or imminent bankruptcy, all for the sake of the taxes, instead of letting them go on to the parish, and the parish on to the county, and the county on to the country. And the whole damned lot to hell. Have I perhaps asked them up for the pleasure of their company? No, I ask no one up, but they come all the same, and there I am. One comes asking for grain, another for sugar, a third for hay, a fourth for money, a fifth for snuff, when I maybe haven’t a chew for myself even. The sixth comes asking for all this at once, the seventh even demands mixed snuff, as if it was my job to start mixing snuff for people, and does Bruni imagine that I’m some sort of gift dispensary, where everybody can come and ask for what he wants and never think of payment? Then why doesn’t Bruni turn his business into an everlasting gift establishment, may I ask? No, mate, you can tell Bruni from me that all the year round there’s a constant stream of penniless men coming to me, men he has fleeced to the skin, then forbidden like murder to charge even as much as a single mouthful for their starving and emaciated tribes of youngsters. And what do you get out of these people in the autumn? A few pitiful rattle-bones that you could lift with your little finger, hardly worth poisoning for fox-bait.”
After this outburst the Bailiff fumbled through his pockets in a furious search for his tobacco-box, but he rarely resumed his chewing before he had either won over his opponent or given him up as hopeless.
“The time has come,” he said, instead of biting off a plug, “and come long ago, when the farmers with any guts in them at all must lay their heads together here the same as in other places and find out where their bread would be best buttered, so that feeble individuals like myself, with small incomes and heavy responsibilities, should not have to look after people that the merchant is bent on starving to death—and then be called a thief for their pains.”
“At one time folk would have said there was something the matter with you if you had considered other people’s interests before your own,” remarked Bjartur.
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