Nevertheless he went along to the Sheriffs. “Where the devil is this marvellous justice of yours,” he snarled, “if you’re going to allow folk to amuse themselves by the same as robbing a man of his soul while he has other things to think about and is maybe doing his damnedest with a ghost? What the hell are the authorities for if they can’t get hold of my money and return it? You funked coming up at Christmas because there was a little drizzle, and it was your fault I lost my eldest boy; he took fright and wandered into the storm while you were busy warming your backside at home here. The Bailiff turned up, lousy as he is, so what about showing some sign of guts now, damn you, and getting hold of my money if it takes every law in your blasted old book?”
The Sheriff, however, stood up for Tulinius Jensen. “The business has failed, man, there’s not the remotest chance of anyone ever seeing a penny, at least for years and years to come yet. I have nothing at all to do with it. The King has appointed somebody to make an inquiry into the whole affair. It’s impossible to do anything when a business has gone bankrupt. You’ll just have to try to understand all the circumstances: Bruni has been losing money for years, and in the end the co-operative had filched all his customers away from him. There you have the whole story in a nutshell. Men like you had plenty of opportunities of clearing out in good time, so you’ve only yourselves to blame if you stuck it out till the whole affair had sunk to perdition instead of joining the cooperative society in time.”
“In time? The annoying thing,” said Bjartur, “is that one shouldn’t have had the sense to cut these bastards’ throats in time.”
“You have only yourselves to blame,” repeated the Sheriff.
“Yes. And the fact that we’re too good-natured to strangle all these thieving swine at birth.”
“Who’s a thieving swine?”
“Who? He and they whom you’re so keen on sticking up for. Not that I consider that you’re very much better, you mealy-mouthed gang of damned officials who hang on to their coat-tails through thick and thin, but daren’t stir a foot across the ridge there in a bit of a drizzle though somebody’s life is at stake.”
“Look here, Bjartur, won’t you take a seat so that we can discuss matters calmly and sensibly?”
“I’ll sit when it suits me.”
“May I offer you a pinch of snuff, then?”
“You may please yourself what you offer. I please myself what I accept.”
At the doctor’s:
“Tulinius Jensen has always had a reputation for the greatest honesty, Bjartur. I knew him well myself. And he never swindled anyone to my knowledge. It was he that was swindled, rather than he that swindled. His troubles started when the farmers started lending their ears to the ranting demagogy of the co-operative chiefs. No one can protect himself against that sort of thing, you know. It was the farmers that swindled Bruni.”
“Yes and I want my money for all that,” insisted Bjartur. “You were Bruni’s member of Parliament, and it was you that I always voted for ever since I first had the right to vote. And why the hell do you think I voted for you? Do you think it was because of your spectacles, blast you? If I don’t get my money back, the Devil himself can vote for you instead of me. And if you as a member of Parliament propose to stand there and tell me that it is legal for a man to be robbed of his property, then I am against the government. I am against the government.”
“Listen, Bjartur my friend, I’m an old man now, and it’s time I went into retirement as far as politics are concerned. But because we’ve always been good friends and staunch supporters of the same party, may I offer you a glass of real corn brandy?”
“You may offer me nothing but my own property.”
“These are difficult times, my dear Bjartur. All the countries abroad are labouring under a severe crisis. Our losses in Iceland are nothing compared with what they are losing in America.”
“It takes a long time to find some people out, but I see now that you’re another of the same damned type as the authorities, a hanger-on of thieves and robbers.”
“Oh, I think I’ve always tried to do my bit for the people, Bjartur, both as a member of Parliament and in my capacity of medical officer. My bills, as you may remember, were never very hard on my own supporters. Year after year I’ve lost hundreds and hundreds on medicine that I’ve let people have. And no one’s conscience seems to trouble them though they forget to pay me. But I never complain.”
“If my memory isn’t at fault, Bruni paid you out of my account for the poison that you made me brew for my own wives. And they both passed on without further ceremony. I shouldn’t be surprised if you had killed them both.”
“Oh, come, come, Bjartur; that’s not a very nice thing to say to anyone. Maybe you’ll have better luck with these new fellows, these co-operative people who are so busy sweeping everything before them just now.”
The Rauthsmyri gang could never be worse than you Bruni people. I thought so once, but I don’t think so now.”
They talked to him as if he was a refractory child, and again he stood like an idiot on the street. There was no one left but the Rauthsmyrians now; all sanctuaries were closed except the gracious embrace of Ingolfur Arnarson Jonsson.
Hitherto this man had sought to express his convictions by nailing wings on Tulinius Jensen’s shoulder-blades and painting Ingolfur Arnarson black. For thirty years he had worn himself out for the Rauthsmyrians, first as a workman, then as the purchaser of a farm, and he had always eyed his freedom in the far-off change implicit in not wearing himself out eternally for the same robber. He had thought there was some difference in robbers. Then Bruni had gone and disappeared with his money, leaving him drifting about in ignorance and uncertainty. There was no difference in robbers after all; whether they lived on the coast or up in the country, they were all tarred with the same brush. But there was one point in the Rauthsmyrians’ favour: they had never fled to a distant part of the country with his credit in their pockets. The freedom and independence of mankind were not founded on Tulinius Jensen after all. And Ingolfur Arnarson could never be worse than Bruni. It was not to be denied, of course, that it would be a severe blow to the soul to have to resort at last to the cooperative society, after being disappointed in the freedom that was built on Tulinius Jensen. Or would he find, when all was said and done, that freedom was really founded on the Rauthsmyrians—the true freedom, the freedom that makes of the lone worker in his valley an independent man?
“Ah, the independent man. It’s high time you came and looked us up in the society here.”
“Oh, it wasn’t out of politeness,” said Bjartur apologetically.
“No, my friend, I know that. You wouldn’t take my advice, but persisted in sticking to Bruni to the bitter end, so now you’re having to pay the penalty, I suppose. But what of it; there’s no ill will on my side at least. How are you all keeping in Summerhouses?”
“How are we keeping? I don’t answer that sort of question. I can’t see that our welfare concerns anyone. I lost a lot of sheep, but that, of course, is only what the country has had to contend with ever since it was first settled. You Rauthsmyri people have also lost sheep, you lose sheep every spring. My sheep stand the winter better than yours.”
“Yes, but I was referring actually to those mysterious goings-on at your place the other day. You lost a boy—”
“Yes. My own boy.”
“Somebody was saying that Kolumkilli had been showing his claws again.”
“Kolumkilli? Oh, of course, hasn’t he something to do with the Persian religion?”
“All right, forget it. What can we do for you?”
“Nothing,” replied Bjartur. “I have been robbed. I want work. I’m not asking anyone to do anything for me. But I am prepared to work for others, for a wage.”
“Yes, Bjartur, old friend, everything that I told you last year has come to pass. But I can’t help it if you wouldn’t believe me. There are two parties in the country, those who seek to prey on th
e farmers and those who seek to promote their economic welfare and raise them to a position of honour and esteem. You believed in the former, and where do you stand now? We, who wish to govern the country for the people—we alone remain.”
“Yes, go on, Ingi boy, go on. But I believe in nothing, and in words least of all. And that’s why I ask for no gifts. I’m not complaining about anything either. Perhaps I ought to have stayed where I was with all that’s left of my sheep, and there are those who would argue that there was nothing I really lacked: it’s only a couple of years since I built fresh accommodation for my stock. And if you think it’s a house with a tower on that I’m after, I can tell you now that you’re wrong, Ingi lad, for I have never envied those who dwell in towerhouses. But,” he added, “when a man has a flower in his life—”
Then he seemed to feel that he had said too much, and he did not finish the sentence.
SPRING DAYS
SOON the lowlands were free of snow, and the ewes were beginning to feed to some purpose on the grass in the marshes. At meal-times, when Father and the boys came in from work, there was their food laid all ready for them on the table. But where was Asta Sollilja? She was down at the brook washing stockings and suchlike, or seeing to the clothes hanging out on the line, or kneading bread down in the entrance; she was very seldom seen in the loft when anyone else was in the loft, and at night she went to bed after all the others had gone to bed; if she washed herself at all these days, no one ever saw her doing it. Once she was in bed, she would draw the coverlet over her head and lie as still as a mouse. She had developed suddenly a habit of hanging her head, as if she wished to hide her face. Long lashes drooped over eyes that looked at no one in particular. If her father addressed her she would answer with a monosyllable, then slip away as soon as possible. He had grown used to seeing her look at him questioningly, with wide, guileless eyes, and he had replied with silence; now it was he that looked at her questioningly, she who replied with silence.
It was possibly no great novelty though no one on the croft knew quite what anyone else was thinking, and it is possible that such a mode is all for the best. One might be inclined to believe that on a croft everyone’s soul would be cast in the same mould, but this is far from the truth, for nowhere are there souls more varied in nature than on a little croft. The two brothers, for example—when had they ever understood one another?—Gvendur, who longed for the fulfilment of reality in a definite place, Nonni, who longed for the solution of dreams in some remote indeterminate distance. Sunshine and thawing snow, the ice in the gully melting, the waterfall in flood—the little boy gazed enchanted out into the spring, and a breeze came away from the south and blew the waterfall back over the mountain, get on with your work and stop glowering into space, said the elder brother. They were busy in the enclosure spreading manure. This waterfall in the gully and its wind from the south, a whole human soul could find its symbol in one small peculiarity of nature and could mould itself upon it; he had discussed it with his mother and she had understood and told him a dream. Now there was no one to understand, but he lived on this dream; and on her wishes. He walked alone whenever he could. In his breast there dwelt a lyrical sadness, a strange sorrowful longing; when he was tending the sheep he sang part-songs that he had never heard. Yes, there was such a wonderful instrument in his breast; and though he could not yet play upon it himself, he toyed with its strings and listened to this note or that note early in the spring, sometimes trembling, often with tears in his eyes, and his eyes were deep and sorrowful and pure as a rill, and like silver deep, deep at the bottom of a rill, silver in a rill.
In spite of the mild weather there was little show of green on the hills yet, and as the possibility of sudden storms could not be excluded, the crofter had little desire to allow his sheep to wander away up to the high moors. He searched the moorland watercourses in tibe south and the east at regular intervals, chasing all the sheep he could find down to the lowlands. The more oppressive the silence at home, the more did he appreciate the freshness of spring with its bewitching intensity, its odour of thawing snow and snow that had thawed, of sunlit space and the promise of eternity; for the moors stand in indissoluble communion with eternity. Little by little the snow retreated before the sun, and soon there was in the air the scent of heather and withered grass and the first fresh shoots as they emerged from the drifts on the slopes. The ewes loitered among the hollows and the gullies, cropping at whatever they could find above the snow. But when least expected they would take to their heels and, rushing to the top of the gully or the hollow, would race off into the wind at full speed, into unlimited space, into eternity; for sheep also love eternity and have faith in it.
For some days a raven had been seen flapping about over the gully. He took a walk along the bottom to see whether it was some prey the bird was so intent upon. The river was in spate, but not so high as it had been previously. All at once the dog came to a halt and stood barking over something that the river had washed on to the gravel. The raven hovered croaking over the gully. Now, the last thing that Bjartur had expected was to find anything dead here, for he had lost no sheep that spring, and anyway, as good luck would have it, it wasn’t a carcass, it was a corpse. It was a boy’s slender body. It had tumbled over the rocks at some time during the winter and, after lying in a drift until the snow had thawed, had been floated off by the river when in flood, then left stranded on the gravel here when the level of the waters sank. No, it bore no likeness to any human being. The bone of the nose was bare and the mouth laughed without lips at the sky, the eyes torn out, the rags that stuck to the body so rotten that the decay had eaten its way into the bones; and then of course beasts of prey had been busy on it, so that all together it was rather a gruesome sight. The man touched it once or twice with his stick, told the dog to shut up, and mumbled: “As one sows, so does one reap.” He took a good pinch of snuff. The bitch went on barking.
“Yes, you can cut out the cackle for all the good it will do,” he said. “You don’t understand these things. Some folks want to lay the blame on Kolumkilli, but it’s more likely that each of us bears his destination in his own heart.”
Nevertheless he found it difficult to absolve Kolumkilli of all intervention in human fate, for it often happens that though one is quite certain that the story of Kolumkilli is not true, or even that it is a downright lie, there are times when this same story seems to hold more truth than any truth. There is some devil or other on the moors who eats people. Ah well, he would have to do something for the body, seeing that he had found it, and that as quickly as possible, for the ewes had taken to their heels and were out of the gully by now. He was wearing a pair of thick, heavy gloves that were practically new, and he took the glove from his right hand and threw it to the corpse, for it is considered discourteous to leave a corpse that one has found without first doing it some small service. A few seconds later he was standing on the brink of the gully: it was as he had thought, the ewes were in full flight. The leaders showed against the sky as they raced across the top of a distant roll in the moors; they were heading for the Blue-fells. He ran off in pursuit, happy to own such ewes as these, which yearned like ascetics for the solitude of the endless wilderness early in the spring.
“Hallbera,” he said that evening, throwing her a glove, “knit me a glove to match that odd one.”
“Hullo, where’s the other?” asked the old woman, for she had never known the crofter to lose a glove.
“Oh, we won’t bother our heads about that, old girl.”
“No?” she said, tilting her dithering head up and away from him, as was her custom when she looked at anyone; and had no need to ask any further questions, had no need to ask.
THE BIG SISTER
THEN there came great rainstorms that seemed to fill the whole world, and a hundred seasonal rills, rushing down the sides of the mountain, washed winter’s snow away to the sea. When next the sun was seen, there was no snow in the valley, the hills green, but
tercups in the home-field, blissful breezes. The brook in the home-field had swelled to full spate and dwindled again without the crofter’s youngest son having noticed it. Only one year had passed, and he was standing no longer by the home brook. He was standing in the enclosure with his rake, spreading manure in perfect aimlessness, like an idiot, he to whom the elves had promised better lands in a dream. The lands that his winter’s books had brought so near to him had drifted away with the spring and vanished over horizons even more remote than before. He had only to look at Asta Sollilja to realize how inaccessible were the countries that once had mirrored themselves in the skies because of the white landlessness of winter. Yet the soul refuses to give up the struggle. Spring, its birds from beyond the blue mountains, its breezes, its sky—spring called and called. Each time that he came out of the low door and halted on the paving it called to him. And went on calling. He listened. The melancholy longing, the sad sympathy with life, awoke in his breast. He had listened to her silence all through the spring, ever since the teacher left at Easter-time. But he had not known that she wept, until one day. It was a Sunday. From where he was standing in the home-field he saw her lying in a green hollow. He went to her. She did not move, for she did not hear his approach. But when he came up to her he saw that her shoulders were shaking. She was weeping, her face buried in the grass. He was well aware that though she was their big sister she was really a more insignificant being than he and his brother, and he was struck with immediate pity. He himself wept more and more seldom now, he had hardly wept at all since last summer, he would soon be a big boy. Finally he spoke her name. She gave a start and, sitting up, wiped her tears away with the hem of her dress. But the only result was that the tears flowed faster and faster.
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