Yes, where was Helgi? Wasn’t he here a few minutes ago? Oh, he won’t be long, it’s his turn to muck out the horse today. No sign of the Bailiff waking; oh well, it’s none of our business, I suppose he can sleep as long as he likes, the old owl. This has finished it good and proper, the Sheriff won’t have laid foot on the heath in this weather, the snow’s coming down thick as soup now and you can’t see your hand in front of your face. If you look out from the drift at the door, you would think the world had disappeared, no vestige of line or colour, no world left, one might be blind or falling into a deep sleep.
Where can the boy have got to? Gvendur, pop down and have a look, sonny. He can hardly have gone out to the stalls. Presently they had all had their fill and Bjartur himself went out to look for the boy. The Bailiff woke up and rose yawning and dishevelled.
“Eh?” said the Bailiff.
“Our Helgi,” said Asta Sollilja. “We don’t know what’s become of him.”
“Helgi?” asked the Bailiff, who knew no one of this name on the croft.
“Yes,” she replied. “My brother Helgi.”
“Oh,” said the Bailiff, bemused with sleep and the search for his tobacco, “my brother Helgi. Listen, pet,” he added, “you should tell Bjartur he ought to sell the croft. You can come along to us whenever you hke, you needn’t ask anyone’s permission. You have my mother’s mouth.”
“What?” said the girl.
“You must be fifteen or so by now.”
Yes, she was fifteen just over a month ago.
“Yes, it’s a shame, but what can a fellow do? We ought to have taken you right away. But what was I going to say again, did I see you with a bite of fish there, girlie?”
“No, meat”
“Yes, of course, meat’s the thing in Summerhouses this Christmas.”
“I’ve made you some pancakes,” she said.
“Oh, to blazes with pancakes. My stomach won’t stand that sort of thing any longer now; I’ll champ a bit of meat instead. It’s just like the Sheriff to fool me into coming down here, and lie snoring in bed himself, damn him. I don’t see how I’m going to get very far from here tonight.”
But Asta Sollilja’s ears were far away from the conversation, for she did not understand what could have happened to Helgi. Gripped suddenly by a misgiving that verged almost on terror, she neglected even the Bailiff’s needs and fled down the stairs and outside on to the snowdrift. So the Bailiff was left sitting alone upstairs with the old woman and the youngest brother, to consider his tobacco and stroke himself and scratch himself and yawn. Time passed, and he felt no doubt that he ought to say something.
“Well, well, Bera,” he began, “what have you to say to all this accursed nonsense?”
“What?” she asked.
“Don’t you think that everything’s gone completely crazy in heaven and earth, Bera old girl?”
Though he addressed the old woman in a voice that was very far from being unfriendly, he did not seem to be awaiting her answer with any great interest, for he followed up his question with a succession of tremendous yawns.
“Oh, I don’t suppose I’ve much to think or say at all, except that I always knew this was bound to happen some time. Or worse still. It isn’t by any means God’s angels that swarm around this hut, let me tell you. Never has been. And never will be.”
“No, never has been and won’t ever be,” endorsed the Bailiff, “and have you any objections to having a chimney corner found for you on a nice farm up-country if the Sheriff should ever bestir himself sufficiently to clear Bjartur out of here by order of the law?”
“Oh, I don’t suppose I’ll have much to say against the authorities, whatever they decide to do, and in any case it doesn’t matter very much what happens to me. As the Bailiff knows, poor Ragnar and I lived for forty years in Urtharsel, and nothing happened in all that time. Our neighbours on the moors there were good neighbours. But here it seems as if something always has to be happening all the time. Not that I mean that anything has ever happened except what Providence has willed; for instance, that I should be allowed to live on, if you can call it life, while my poor daughter is called away from house and home in the first sunshine of the haymaking; not to mention the loss of sheep last spring, and now this latest outbreak of devilry.”
“Devilry, yes,” agreed the Bailiff, “a hell of a damned outbreak.”
The old woman went on muttering to herself for a while.
“What?” asked the Bailiff.
“What?” asked the old woman.
“Yes, I mean what do you think about it,” said the Bailiff “—this so-called devilry?”
“Well, since the Bailiff condescends to ask me,” she replied, “may I tell you this, Jon my good man, that in my time it was the custom, and often stood people in good stead, to sprinkle these restless beings with stale urine, and many a fiend was glad to flee from a soaking when every other means had failed, but the master of the house here won’t hear of anything that has to do with the Christian religion, he’s a very queer person, this Bjartur, and anything sacred is spurned and flouted and trampled on the same as everything else nowadays.”
“Quite,” agreed the Bailiff. “He can neither be pulled nor pushed, the pigheaded lout. And never could be. The children ought to be taken away and settled on some nice farm, by order of the law if necessary. And as for us, grannie, I’m sure Markus Jonsson of Gil would take pity on us, the state we’re in, he’s looked after old folks for me for more than twenty years now. He’s a harmless soul, I’ve never known him lift a hand to old folk yet.”
“I would be the last to complain about anything,” mumbled the old woman, “and anyway I know that my Maker will do with me as suits Him best I’m more or less nothing at all, as anyone can see, and though I don’t seem able to die, I can hardly say I’m alive. Sometimes it takes me all my time to know which I am. But I would like it much better if I knew that little Nonni here was somewhere near me, because he’s a promising boy in word and deed and doesn’t deserve to wander among strangers; he’s slept in the corner here beside me ever since he was in diapers.”
“Yes, I’ll mention it to the Sheriff, should steps ever be taken to sell out the place.”
“The Bailiff will naturally tell the Sheriff whatever he thinks fit, as he has doubtless always done. But if I might only choose, it would naturally be Urtharsel rather than anywhere else. But its never been a habit of mine to expect anything special, not even when I was younger. Nor have I ever been afraid of anything, either man or fiend. And if it is the Maker’s will to lay waste this farm for good and all, well, it’s nothing but what everybody has been expecting; everybody knows what sort of place this is. And as for what becomes of me, Bailiff, I just don’t bother about it at all, blind and deaf as I am; as I most certainly am; and I can’t say I’ve any fingers left, they’re all dead, look. And my chest gone. But they were very nice, the sunsets in Urtharsel.”
The Bailiff stared at her for a while as if rather at a loss. What could be done with a being like this, who was actually a being no longer and, according to her own story, neither dead nor alive? How was he to keep this conversation going any longer? So he stroked his jaws, yawned, and bit off a nice quid. ‘Won’t you have a chew, old lass?” he asked charitably.
For long enough she neither heard nor understood what he was referring to, but finally it dawned upon her that it must be tobacco. “To freshen you up,” he added. But she declined the offer courteously. “No, dear dear no,” she said, “I’ve never needed tobacco. And the reason is that I know the Lord arranges everything as pleases Him best.”
THE RIGHT CHEEK
ONE boy’s footprints are not long in being lost in the snow, in the steadily falling snow of the shortest day, the longest night; they are lost as soon as they are made. And once again the heath is clothed in drifting white. And there is no ghost, save the one ghost that lives in the heart of a motherless boy till his footprints disappear.
What n
ews of the soul’s welfare on the day after the longest night?
This was by no means the first time that there had closed down upon heart and heath that gnawing weight of fear which makes happiness a phenomenon so noteworthy in the eyes of the nation. But, on the other hand, there was plenty of meat, more meat than anyone could remember, meat both in round tubs and square cases, dead meat no doubt in the opinion of the parish, but, damn it, it wasn’t dead meat at all, though no one could be found to buy it and the folk were forced to eat it themselves; it was just the same as any other Christmas meat from a nice fat sheep, and such a thing was a novelty on this croft, where tough old ewes had been eaten to mark a festival. Everyone was now red in the cheeks, heavy in the head, and limp with stomach-ache; meat with breakfast, meat between meals, soup more often than porridge, gravy more often than water; and when even the dog is helpless with overeating, what more can the soul of man desire?
And now Christmas began with all its ritual.
That evening, when the old woman laid aside her needles long before bedtime and said to Asta Sollilja: “Now then, girl, you’ll be able to give yourself a wash”—then, and then only, did Christmas begin. She believed of course that Asta Sollilja never washed except on that one particular evening, and that she would not wash even then were she not ordered to do so. She herself had given up washing long ago, and besides, people no longer believed in stale urine, either for one purpose or for another.
But was this the whole of Christmas? No, the old grandmother also took out her kerchief that night. She unfastened her ragged old shawl and bound the kerchief about her head. It was a relic of the Monopoly, the middle part still whole, a black silken cloth handed down from grandmother to grandmother, smoothed through the centuries by the caress of stringy old hands, like a fragment of a fragment of the world’s riches, or at least a proof of their actual existence.
But that was not everything. When the old woman had donned her kerchief, she proceeded to take out her ear-pick. The ear-pick was the symbol of world civilization on the moors. Like the kerchief it was an heirloom many centuries old, fashioned of expensive silver, turned, black with age in the grooves, polished with wear on the curved ridges between. Presently she began to pick her ears. And when she had begun to pick her ears, with all the mumbles and grimaces that were reserved for that task, Christmas might enter in all earnest, for then only was the consecration over.
On this occasion Bjartur had ordered a whole ewe’s leg to be boiled. Soon the ewe’s leg was boiled. The crofter, surveying it as it lay, fat and fragrant, in the trough before him, felt it impossible not to give some vent to his admiration in spite of everything that had happened of late. “God, this is a hell of a Christmas all right,” he remarked enthusiastically.
Never before had the children heard him refer to Christmas as anything special, yet now he was saying that it wasn’t everybody’s ewes that could show so fine a leg at Christmas-time. They chewed away in silence, with sullen, listless faces; there were only three of them left now, and those that were left could not help thinking of their eldest brother’s disappearance and of how the parish had searched for him in vain these last two days. But Bjartur of Summerhouses never thought of anything he had lost once he was certain he had lost it, and he wasn’t very pleased with the children for not showing any signs of cheerfulness at Christmas of all times; and in such a fashion did bedtime draw nearer and Christmas Night take over with its stomach-ache and its restless sleep; or its silent tears.
Though it was after bedtime, Asta Sollilja went on combing her hair and heating water and messing about in the glimmer of the candle. From his bed he lay watching her long after the others had laid themselves to rest; her water heated little by little in the quiet of this Christmas Night. She was careful not to look in his direction. Was it because she was a bad girl—oh, why must she begin thinking of it again? And yet it had risen repeatedly to the surface of her mind this winter, and always she had associated it with the death of her mother, as if she felt that she had been an accomplice and that it was her blame that Father had not bought enough medicine, that he had not given Mother a coat—and yet, yet there had been no evil in her heart that night out in the world when she was little, it was just that she had not been able to help it. Even when, as on this Christmas Night, everything was quiet and blissf ul in the midst of the world’s mid-winter, she would suddenly be gripped by the fear of it; the fear of the fear of that which had really been nothing; the fear that she had not been forgiven yet; the fear that something had not forgiven her for something; and that that something would remain always so horribly unspoken between her and him; between her and it. Possibly they were both fighting the same thing, without understanding it, each with his own soul, he strong, she weak. Yes, there was quite certainly an utterly impassable ocean between them. His life was poetry too complex to rhyme with her mute, unmetrical existence, his strength with her sensitiveness. Even when her brother had been lost, he who had lived here and breathed only a few nights ago, even then he had ordered them all to shut up; and she had wept all night long while he slept, perhaps not so much because she grieved for her brother as because the darkness was so big in which he had disappeared; and because she felt so profoundly stirred at the thought of having forgiven him his frequent ill-treatment of her when they had been brother and sister—but her father, how were they ever to understand each other, he and she; he who slept while she wept? And what was more important, how were they ever to be guiltless of each other if they did not understand each other? Though she were to take off every single single stitch and wash herself and wash herself and wash, time and time again without end, she would never manage to wash away the shadow of the vague, incomprehensible guilt that lay between them, the shadow that brooded over body and soul. And while she was thinking he was resting the back of his head against the bedpost, gazing in wonder at the steam and the shadows, how restlessly they played about this youthful figure.
She had the sort of right cheek that was never the same at any hour of the day. Its thoughts were determined between dread and anticipation, like the summer skies of the land with their living weathers, their fugitive patches of sunlight, and their shadows which pass away. Such a cheek is in reality like a living being, helpless in its over-susceptibility to what lies without and what lies within. It is almost as if its life-nerve were exposed, as if its body were all one continuous soul that cannot endure evil, and encounters perhaps nothing else; anticipation it is that saves such a soul, never happiness itself. Where would this girl be if she did not have her evil left cheek to help her?
He called to her and bade her listen. No, she had not misheard. She stood up and went across the room to him. He wanted her to sit down a moment. Yes, he was going to have a little talk with her, seeing that she had arrived at years of discretion. She said nothing. Then, without further warning:
I am going away after Christmas and leaving you behind. I will not be back before about Easter-time.”
She looked at him with great questioning eyes, and there was something that fell in her face.
“I have lost many sheep,” he went on. “It is as Odin said: Sheep die.”
“Yes,” she said, and was thinking of saying a great deal more; that she hoped she and her brothers could help him to get more sheep; but he was going away, and she found she could say nothing.
I’m not grumbling at all,” he continued. I’m not by any means the first to suffer loss in this country. I say as the proverb says: There’s room in bed, the goodwife’s dead. What matters, girlie, is that I’m not dead myself yet, not yet. Not that it isn’t the same to me if I die myself. But I’ll stand as long as there’s anything to stand on.”
She looked at him with palpitating heart and knew that he was talking of serious matters though she could not understand him; two human beings have such difficulty in understanding each other, there is nothing so tragical as two human beings.
“I told you last year, lassie, or was it the ye
ar before, that with time I would build a house. What I have said, I have said.”
“A house?” she asked vacantly, for she had forgotten all about it.
“Yes,” he said, “a house. I’ll show them,” and added in a milder voice as he touched her shoulder with his paw: “When a man has a flower in his life, he builds a house.”
She had thick chestnut hair which fell naturally in waves, eyebrows curved in a questioning bow, and eyelashes that fostered great tears. He looked once more at her cheek and saw into the sensitive mobility of its life; then she breathed low into her bosom: “Are you going away?”
“I’m thinking of putting you in charge of everything, indoors and out,” he replied, “and tomorrow I’ll explain all about the sheep’s feeding to you and little Gvendur.”
Then she began to cry, for the dread in her heart was swelling to mountainous proportions. She was in utter despair and surrendered herself to the power of that strange voluptuousness which in perfect despair penetrates body and soul. She did not know what she was saying, for it was despair that was talking in her heart, despair that said it didn’t matter if she fell ill and died like her mother in mid-winter and glaciers over the heath, and oh, I wish to God they had never revived me never to live a happy moment and it’s my fault my foster-mother died, because I didn’t love her enough, but my poor little brother Helgi, he was so fond of her that he thought of her night and day, and I heard him say on the paving that he was dead, and it should have been I that was lost in the dark and died in the snow on the heath, oh I am sure it must be so good to be dead, because if you leave me, Father, there will be no one to help me—and thus she continued for a while, nestling up to him as she wept, her head shaking on his chest in despair.
Independent People Page 39