Independent People

by Halldor Laxness

  “We have so much to thank poor Bukolla for,” protested his wife.

  “Yes, I know that,” he said. “And we’ll probably have more to thank her for before she’s finished. Especially if she manages to kill off all that’s left of my sheep.”

  “If it was only a truss or so of good manured hay,” begged Finna.

  “No power between heaven and earth shall make me betray my sheep for the sake of a cow. It took me eighteen years’ work to get my stock together. I worked twelve years more to pay off the land. My sheep have made me an independent man, and I will never bow to anyone. To have people say of me that I took the beggar’s road for hay in the spring is a disgrace I will never tolerate. And as for the cow, which was foisted on me by the Bailiff and the Women’s Institute to deprive the youngsters of their appetite and filch the best of the hay from the sheep, for her I will do only one thing. And that shall be done.”

  “Bjartur,” said Finna in a toneless voice, staring at him in distraction from the impassable distance that separates two human beings, “if you are going to kill Bukolla, kill me first.”

  DEATH IN THE SPRING

  THE SAME weather, no sign of improvement, ugly skies, frequent hail-showers. The whole croft stank with the putrid smell of maggoty dung, the worms were growing more virulent, the rattling cough of the ewes blended with the moaning of the cow. The maggots wriggled out of their nostrils and hung like threads from the matter about their noses; every morning one or more would be lying trodden in the muck, sometimes still faintly breathing, and he killed them, dragged them out to a turf grave, wiped his knife on the moss, swore. Twenty-five gone, all of his own rearing. He had known each one’s pedigree, had been able to recognize every one of them from the day of its birth; a picture of each was graven on his mind as sharply as the features of any close friend, both appearance and personality. Beyond his memories of these animals he saw the passing of many seasons; he remembered them healthy and heavy-fleeced as they came down from the mountains on autumn days, proud of their frisky sons; he remembered them in the spring as they licked their lambs, new-born and helpless, in some green dingle. Each of them had had its own characteristics, its own temperament. He remembered minutely how each one’s horns had been, tufted on one, grey-spotted on another, yellow-streaked on a third; one was as timid and as shrinking as the shyest maiden, another would spring impudently on to the walls or swim out into impassable rivers, a third liked to slink about in the gullies—and he had had to cut their throats. The worms had writhed out of their bleeding trunks, their lungs had been as riddled as rotten carrion. Hringja, Skella, Skessa, and the others—these creatures had been the mainspring of his existence and its strongest support. Twenty-five. Which will be next?

  Heavy snow, not a chance of letting the sheep out to graze today, three ewes doomed to death this morning, Kupa, Laufa, Snura. Not a word spoken in the croft; the last of the hay broached; the cow had refused to stand on her feet. As day advanced, the intervals between showers grew shorter and shorter till once more a blizzard was raging. There was darkness on the little window, and the smoke blew down the chimney to add its discomfort to the stink of polluted dung from below; it was almost impossible to breathe.

  And elsewhere in the world there was an orchard and a palace.

  Then had the world quite forgotten this little croft in the valley? Had it, then, abandoned it altogether with its anxious hearts, its heroism unchronicled, unrecorded in books? No; oh no. There were visitors at the door, the snorting of horses in the storm, the champing of bits, strange voices—sudden expansion of mind from its mute, congested fear, unexpected pleasure for man and dog.

  Through the hatchway there emerged a snow-beaten girl whose generous curves were accentuated by her close-cut riding-breeches; whose grey-blue eyes were complacent, and comely cheek ruddy with the wind. She dusted the snow from her clothes down through the opening, showed her healthy teeth in laughter, and swore here and there, hahaha. Her riding-whip gleamed expensively in these surroundings where not a single article would have fetched more than a dime, Audur Jonsdottir of Myri. Her escort, one of the Bailiffs men, followed her up into the loft. He was taking her down to Fjord to catch the mail-steamer south tomorrow, to Reykjavik and a happier clime.

  “Dear little lady, how she spreads amidships!” cried Bjartur, clapping her courteously on the buttocks. “Still fed on the fat of the land, I see. Make her coffee good and strong and don’t spare the sugar. She wasn’t reared on dish-wash, bless the darling little head that hardly reached my middle when I married the first time.”

  Lining up shoulder to shoulder on the floor, the children stared at her in admiration, greatly impressed by her size, her self-confidence, the length of the journey she was undertaking, and the expert manner of her swearing; and presently she had finished dusting off the snow and was standing there like some ripe, fertile plant that bows beneath the weight of its newly opened flowers, soon to seed.

  No, to set out across the heath in this weather was unthinkable, a blizzard like this would be the end of any woman; she would have to stay here until it cleared up. She looked around for a seat, but the coverlets on all the beds were equally uninviting. Finally she was persuaded to perch on the foot-board of the parents’ bed. She didn’t want to trouble them at all, hoped the weather would clear before evening, asked politely about the sheep.

  “There was somebody or other afoot here at the end of February who ear-marked a sheep for me. But that will be nothing to what you have to report from up your way, I imagine.”

  Yes, there was gloomy news from up-country, confirmed the escort, gloomy news. Olafur of Yztadale had lost forty or so in spite of all his science, and Einar of Undirhlith over thirty, though possibly they would find greener pastures in the next world. Thorir of Gilteig wouldn’t even say how many he had lost now that his youngest daughter also had gone and given birth to a bastard (the Bailiff’s daughter: “Why don’t they marry the fellows decently?”); but Bjartur said that as you sowed so must you reap, and laughed. “It’s all the cows’ fault,” he said. “They end up by eating a man’s soul out of him, the bloody parasites; their bellies are as bottomless as the Mediterranean.” Things were not too bad with the Fell King, however, continued the Bailiff’s man, and at Myri they were giving them dough, but some of them were very listless, as so often in the spring, and they had had to cut an occasional throat.

  Quite, Bjartur knew all about it; it was an old custom at Myri. One black pudding more or less at slaughter-time never had made much difference to the Bailiff as long as his saddle-horses were well fed.

  The blizzard refused to abate and the girl grew restless. Again and again she went downstairs to look outside; the snow blew straight in through the door, straight into her face; blizzards are never so biting as in the spring. She cursed for some time, then stopped cursing and grew thoughtful, then had a fit of hysterics, which culminated in her losing all control of herself. “My brother Ingolfur’s expecting me tonight,” she cried. “He’s certain to think I’ve been lost in the hills. Heavens, if I miss that ship!”

  “Oh, its bound to clear up tonight.”

  “Merciful heavens, if I miss that ship!”

  “It’s letting up a bit now.”

  “God Almighty help me if I miss that ship.”

  “Oh, there’ll be another ship.”

  “But if I miss this ship!”

  “Reykjavik will still be there though you miss one ship and catch the next.”

  “Yes, but I must go with this ship,” she insisted. “Even if I do die in the hills. I must get to Reykjavik on Saturday.”

  What was all the hurry?

  No answer; despair. She complained that she was on the point of suffocating, refused to eat or drink. But she stayed the night in spite of all the stench; there was nowhere else to go. She did not undress, but lay down on a couple of boxes after wrapping herself in one of her own horsecloths. She would not hear of lying in bed. Through the night she could be hea
rd sighing and groaning; time and time again she crept down the ladder in the darkness and out. Did she want a pot? inquired Bjartur. No, she had only been looking at the weather. And being sick. She would have to reach Reykjavik by Saturday.

  There was little sleep for anyone on the croft that night. What was she after in Reykjavik? Who could it be she was going to meet? Had not Asta Sollilja a high brow and full-curved eyebrows as well as she? Asta Sollilja was no longer slim either, she also was a young girl full of longing and despair. His house stood by itself in a wood, not with a girl in front of it, as on mother’s cake-dish, but by itself in a wood, as on the calendar that fell downstairs the year before last and was trodden into the muck under the sheep’s hoofs. She had had him first, he had been a guest on their land, not hers. Dear God, what dreams she had dreamed all winter through and into the red death of the spring; she too was lying awake tonight and wishing just as passionately as ever before, more passionately than ever before. Some are left sitting behind in the death of spring, when others are on their way south.

  Asta Sollilja was awakened early next morning after a short doze by the sound of clear joyful laughter; the storm was over and the Bailiff’s daughter happy and wolfing down her sandwiches with plenty of time to catch the ship. Her escort, it was true, maintained that the outlook was none too good, but the Bailiff’s daughter laughed and asked what the hell that mattered, and having recovered her powers of swearing, went out to her horses, and shouted up to her escort at frequent intervals: “Oh, come on there, isn’t it time we were going?” But he happened to be busy upstairs drinking coffee with the family. “What a damnable row she makes!” he said.

  “She’s not long of one temper, bless her.”

  “True,” agreed the guide, noisily swilling his coffee. “These womenfolk are all on edge when they’re getting married.”

  “Am I wrong, or is she fattening in that direction?” asked Bjartur.

  “It doesn’t take much of an eye to see that.”

  “Someone or other has passed that way, I suppose?” said Bjartur.

  “Huh, do you think they try their rods out only on your land, these co-operative heroes from the south?”

  “Oh-ho, so he was one of that gang, too, the swine,” said the crofter. “I might have known.”

  But in spite of that he showed his visitors as far as the road.

  The wind was raw, probably more snow in the offing. To hell with it all. “Isn’t it time those lazy little devils were out of bed yet?” He took down two butcher’s knives in a piece of sacking, unwrapped them and laid them on the bed at his side, took a whetstone from the shelf, spat; the noise of whetting clawed through living and dead.

  “Helgi, up with you, boy. I want you.”

  The lad got sullenly out of bed, pulled on his trousers, began searching for the rest of his things. Bjartur went on whetting. The other children peeped out from under the bedclothes. He kept on whetting for a while longer, then, plucking a hair from his head, tested the edge. Next he took a rusty screwdriver from the lumber-box, wiped it on his trouser-leg, and sharpened it.

  “Haven’t you got into your clothes yet, boy?”

  “What have I to do?”

  “What have you to do? You have to do what I damn well tell you. Down with you.”

  He drove the boy downstairs before him while Finna stared with frantic eyes at her husband as he stood by the hatchway with a knife in each hand. Did she perhaps think, this worn-out woman who believed in the ultimate victory of good and who had made a whisk according to the teachings of Jesus Christ, that she could do anything to deflect that uncompromising will to conquer on which the nation’s freedom and independence have been built for a thousand years? Iceland’s thousand years. She threw her arms round her husband’s neck as he stood by the hatchway with a knife in either hand. “It’s the same as killing me, Gud-bjartur,” she moaned, “I can’t bear to see the children starving any longer,” and shook from head to foot with her weeping. One eternal flower with trembling tears. But with a jerk of the shoulders he threw her off, and she watched him with her frantic eyes as he disappeared down the stairs.

  For a while there was nothing to be heard but wordless movements. He untied a rope’s end and made a halter; then the cow, more dead than alive, was prodded on to her feet, groaning with the exertion. He unfastened her stall-rope; she lowed piteously through the open croft door.

  For Finna of Summerhouses, that silent, song-loving woman who had borne many children both for the independence of the country and for death, this moment marked the end of all things. She was good. She had friends among the elves. But her heart had long beaten in terror. Life? It was as if life at this moment once more sought its source. Her knees gave way and in perfect silence she sank into old Hallbera’s arms; like insignificant dust she drifted down upon the withered bosom of her mother.

  Book Two

  PART I

  Hard Times

  ON THE PAVING

  WHEN there is death in the spring, summer passes with a funeral, and the soul—the soul? What thoughts does the soul harbour, in a new autumn, at the onset of winter?

  “And if it happened to be a long winter,” says the eldest boy as he sits on the paving in front of the croft in the dusk, “if there happened to come the sort of winter that keeps on stretching out and stretching out and spinning round and round in a circle from there on, senselessly, like a dog running in circles because somebody’s taken hold of its tail; and then keeps on spinning, round in a circle, on and on, always in the same circle, till at last it can’t stop, whatever anyone tries to do—what then?”

  And answers his own question: “Nothing could happen any more.”

  The youngest brother: “There couldn’t be such a long winter. Because if there was such a long winter—a hundred years, for instance—I for one would go up the home mountain.”

  “What for?”

  “To see if I could see the countries.”

  “What countries?”

  “The countries my mother told me about, before she died.”

  “There aren’t any countries.”

  “There are, I tell you. In the springtime I’ve often seen the waterfall blowing back over the top.”

  The elder brother naturally did not deign to answer reasoning so inimical to all common sense, so obviously emanating from the world of wishes, but contented himself, after a pause, with continuing from where he had left off.

  “But suppose there was a long funeral,” he said. “Suppose there was a funeral so long that the minister’s sermon kept going of itself, like a leak, for instance, drop after drop, you know, and suppose it never ended. Suppose he said about a hundred and fifty amens one after another. Suppose he kept on saying amen for a hundred and fifty years. What then?”

  “There couldn’t be such a long funeral. The folk would stand up and walk out.”

  “But the coffin, you fathead. Would that stand up and walk out?”

  The folk would take the coffin with them,” replied the youngest brother.

  “Are you daft, man? Do you think anyone would have the nerve to pick the coffin up and take it away with them before the minister had said amen for the last time?”

  “When my mother was buried, the minister went on talking and talking, I know; but he did stop in the end. When the minister begins to feel like a cup of coffee, he stops of his own accord. I always knew he would stop some time.”

  The elder brother moved nearer still to the younger where they sat together on the paving and laid his hand on his shoulder like a protector. “You’re so little yet, Nonni lad, you can’t be expected to understand.”

  “But I do understand,” objected young Nonni, and would not suffer his brother’s protecting hand on his shoulder. “I understand everything you understand, and more.”

  “All right, then,” said the other, “since you’re so clever, what is a funeral?”

  The youngest brother bethought himself awhile, because he was determined
to give the right answer, then he bethought himself a little longer, and still without finding a completely satisfactory answer, and finally he bethought himself so much that he couldn’t for the life of him discover any sensible answer to this simple question, and so the elder brother had to answer it himself:

  “A funeral is a funeral, you idiot,” he said.

  And young Nonni was half surprised at himself that it should never have occurred to him, and it so obvious.

  Then the elder brother continued: “And it never ends from then on. Though the people go away; though the minister says amen for the very last time; even though the waterfall runs backward over the mountain, as you say it did last spring, which actually isn’t true, because no waterfall could ever run backward over a mountain—it never, never ends from then on. And do you know why?”

  “Don’t be so silly, you great fool.”

  “It’s because the corpse never comes to life again.”

  “Oh, why must you always be on top of me? Can’t you leave me alone?” and the younger brother moved away a little.

  “Are you frightened?”

  “No.”

  The dusk over the paving grew heavier and heavier; freezing; dark banks of cloud on the horizon; maybe it was coming on for something, Grandmother was expecting a new moon.

  “Listen, Nonni lad, would you like me to tell you something?”

  “No,” said the little boy, “you needn’t bother.”

  “If we sat here on the paving for a hundred years, maybe a hundred and fifty years, and it was beginning to get dark like it is now, and Father was always feeding the same sheep with the same hay from the same truss, and—”

  “If Father was at home he would give you a good beating for sitting there blathering like idiots when you know you have to keep on doing something “—it was the middle brother, Gvendur, who had come stealing into the mystical conversation, like a thief in the night.