The Great Weaver From Kashmir

by Halldor Laxness

  He stopped and looked around: the dusky blue peaks peered out over the lumpy, copse-grown lava, through which the crevices branched out like ripples on the sea, shadowy, quiescent, and cool, silver at the bottom, Skjaldbreiður to the east, gentle, cold, and pure.

  “God bless the mountains,” he said suddenly. “What a pleasure it is to be able to spend this night at the heart of one’s country. In this church I would wish to die if all else were to fail!”

  Next he touched her arm to bring her even with him, and they continued on their way. He started right in again where he had left off.

  “Diljá. A man has two natures; there’s nothing one can do about it. One ascends to Heaven, if you can understand that, up into the rarefied space beyond the atmosphere, all the way to God. The other pursues a downward course, down into the Earth, a thousand shovel’s lengths below all diggable ground, all the way down into the fiery and icy depths of Hell. Man has a soul, and man has a body, and what the soul demands is at odds with what the body desires, and the body desires whatever it is that kills the soul. In Latin this is called spiritus adversus carnem. The world contains both good and evil and man is free to choose between them. Man has two choices, perfection or perdition. You might find this to be too commonplace, but it’s not as worthless as the Psalter or Faust. For a little less than two years I thought that everything Christianity had to say about Heaven and Hell, God and the Devil, was a bunch of lying rubbish, and that the Christian religion could be boiled down to the political dodges of old bishops. The threat of damnation seemed to me to be nothing other than an invention used to make the guileless rabble bend beneath the pope. Now it’s my opinion that Christianity is the absolute flat-out truth from start to finish. This suddenly occurred to me one night in the spring. I was taken by the scruff of the neck. I was ripped into. Some higher being spoke to me through the mouth of God. And this happened up on Öskjuhlíð, in that scraggly scrap of a wood where no one has ever had a revelation before. Yes, Diljá, now that I’ve started to speak, it would be best if I were to tell you everything and leave no stone unturned.”

  He spoke with feverish passion, in short sentences broken by quick silences.

  “You must remember the spring when Mother and Father went north for ten days. Gone was the taciturn, destitute rigidity that reigns in the house when Father is at home. You yourself know our house and know how high the ceiling in the foyer is. You remember how murky the foyer is: it’s like a countryside church in Spain, where carnal vices have been satiated with pharisaic blessings, clouds of incense, and Latin chant for many hundreds of years. A gleam of light comes down from somewhere above, and the lacquered craft-work, the burnished chairs and the table, are there for nothing: no one ever sits there, much less eats or drinks; and the creepers stretch up over all the walls, blackish green and ugly. There is no human abode as monstrous as the foyer at home.

  “And for ten days there was no one at home except for myself and Helga, the parlor maid – no one besides the servants in the basement. I was sitting up in my room reading; I hadn’t felt like getting dressed that day, but instead sat in front of the fireplace in my nightclothes and robe. I’d recently bought some voguish novels; I still remember their titles, but we won’t go into that.

  “Novels can make one giddy, because they open one to the expansiveness of human life. I didn’t know what I was doing, Diljá. I went and got the keys, snuck down, and opened the wine cellar. And I took a whole armful of bottles up to my room and started drinking. No, Diljá, I didn’t know what I was doing. I felt so fiendishly great. This blissful devilish determination to sin burned in every last little part of my body. The greatest bliss in the world is to sin. The next greatest is to determine to sin. The saints covet sin. I rang the bell. A few moments passed.

  “Then the door opened.

  “Helga stood in the doorway and waited to hear what it was I wanted, quiet and modest as usual. And when she saw the wine on the table before me she became even shier than usual. That was the first time I looked on her in a different way than as a master on his servant.

  “‘Helga,’ said I, ‘I would like to offer you a glass of champagne, because I have no one to drink with.’

  “But she didn’t want to take it, said that she never drank, had only tasted alcohol twice or thrice in her life and then only a few drops, didn’t dare it, thought she would get drunk. She looked me straight in the eye and said no. But I kept on nagging her until she gave in and promised to drink half a glass, but absolutely no more. It was out of the question that she would take a seat; no, she would just sip from the glass standing, since I of course needed to drink with someone.

  “But before she knew it she was sitting. Yes, she didn’t realize it until she’d drunk an entire glass filled to the brim. She said she’d never tasted wine so good, in general had never thought that wine could be so good–

  “Under my parents’ roof I beguiled this poor girl disgracefully, deprived her of her virginity, in lustful euphoria made her swear that she wouldn’t betray me, and treated her like a harlot for three whole days and nights.”

  He lit a cigarette absentmindedly and peered into the darkness along the road as he exhaled several thick streams of smoke. He let his story be for the time being. They walked on silently, he out upon the farthest edge of the road to one side, and the smoke from his cigarette drifted to her senses in the calm air.

  9.

  “On the morning of the fourth day a message came from my parents. They were setting out from Akureyri.

  “I kissed my mistress’s feverish lips with a last exhausted kiss, threw off the stained and sweat-dampened bedsheets, got up, and opened the windows to let the cold north wind coming over the strait blow through the house. I was jaded and befuddled from the drunkenness of the last several days, but I put on my clothes and staggered out.

  “I stood before the door like a brown beggar dog that has swallowed some filthy thing down on the beach. I pondered whether I in fact could find refuge anywhere on all of God’s green Earth, and whether there was in fact anyone whom I could now allow to look me in the face. And not a single living soul came to mind, not one single creature. Imagine it, Diljá! There come those times when a man actually has no friend at all! This anguish can cut one so quickly to the heart that no comfort can assuage it, no friendly handshake can shake it off, no smile can soothe it, no mother’s tears can wipe it clean, no lover’s heart can conquer it with forgiveness and affection. Who could possibly grant resurrection to a man who has enlisted as a soldier for the enemy of his soul? Only time can wash one’s wounds in the waters of Lethe. Eternity confirms whether the wounds are healed.

  “I sauntered from Reykjavík up and over the fields; the last thing I could think of doing was to head downtown where every other jackass would doff his hat to me, smiling deferentially, as when drunken men say hello to telephone poles and Good Templars, because I felt sure that I wanted nothing to do with looking into the faces of those so-called friends of mine. I rambled a bit southward, over walls and fences, ditches, fens, hills, heaths, and mires, and avoided all human paths. I sat on stones on the hills and in my distress scratched sorcerers’ crosses, concentric circles, and cuneiform runes with the heels of my boots or rolled around in the white withered grass on the slopes and crests of hills.

  “Yes, Diljá, my chest rose and fell like a broken accordion; I rolled and rolled in the gray turf and asked the Lord God to allow me to crumble back into the dust that I once was, never to have to rise up again, not even on Doomsday. My head was like a universal madhouse where the Devil and all the idiots of the solar system press against the windows and stare at God and twist their faces into grimaces because of the glare.

  “I sat in a pub in Hafnarfjörður for the rest of the day without looking up. I sat in a nook behind a door that was constantly being opened and shut, but I didn’t pay attention; I drank coffee as strong as lye from a thick clay cup. And there, around midafternoon, I ate fish and potatoes and r
ice pudding.

  “I walked back home in the evening, just as aimless as in the morning, except for when I skirted the margin of the sea and wasted time taking detours out onto all the spits and tongues as if to discover whether my own corpse had washed up anywhere in the kelp. I took off my clothes and tried to scrub away my wantonness in the cold sea. And when I walked up Öskjuhlíð that evening, it was around nine and the sun shone over Faxaflói.

  “The breeze still blew from the north, clean and fresh, and I left my shirt unbuttoned to air out my heart. And as I stood there that evening and gazed out into blue space, I was spoken to through the mouth of the Lord; truth was poured into my soul. In a single moment I understood the nature of everything, like a character in a psychological work by William James.

  “‘Behold,’ said Almighty God, ‘how this night is sinless and beautiful. Look at the visage of things. Feel how pure the breeze is! Why will you not worship the world that I your God have given you, sink your thoughts into the glory of God, which the world reflects, and forget yourself in the presence of the Almighty like the saints? Do you think that you must sell your soul to the passions of the flesh and the demands of the beast within you? For what reason do you think that I have entrapped you in human form? No, my friend, you should let your spirit rejoice in me! The grass is coming up in the Fossvogur homefield! And aren’t the mountains that I have given you splendid and soft? Here is Esja, and there Helgafell and Mosfell, bare like the mountains of the moon. Now the farmers in the Eyrar district and the Mosfell dale are discussing whether it might not soon be possible to start letting the cows out to graze. Behold the cars on the Hafnarfjörður road, glistening in the nightshine; all day they bring folk back and forth between Hafnarfjörður and Reykjavík for one króna fifty. And there stand the radio towers on Melar; behold how they stretch their slender fingers out into endless space and the eternal blue! They are like supernatural trees of the forest, hiding their crowns in the cabalistic ether and drinking in political news from the east, from Shanghai and Bombay.’ “

  10.

  They had come as far west as the plain, and they stopped; she would not challenge him further on anything. He stood on the edge of the road on one side, she on the other. She looked at him.

  Yes, yes, she should always look at him; look at him with tears in her eyes and a sob in her throat; whatever wickedness he wished to tell her, he should always be able to count on the fact that she was prepared to stop on the road and look him in the eye. He could wind his way through every misfortune, every one; she was supposed to smile at him and the smile was supposed to rise from the depths of her soul; she should take him by the hand if that would be of any relief to him. Yes, even if his hands were spattered with blood, she should always be prepared to wash them with her warm tears. They stood on opposite edges of the road and looked at each other. And she whispered his name so quietly that it could scarcely be heard: “Steinn Elliði”; these two difficult words emerged onto her lips involuntarily, a noiseless groan.

  It might never have been clearer to her than tonight that Steinn Elliði was more gifted than others and more of a man than any other. And if he ran into any trouble, it was not because he was wicked, because no one was better than him. It was because he was more gifted than others and more of a man than any other. Woe to whomever might try to convince her that someone had been found in the world more illustrious or better than him! Steinn, Steinn, she thought. Even if you were to reject your God, you would never reject me.

  They had watched each other grow. Once she had been six years old and he eight. What had changed? They hadn’t been aware of any changes, but even so, they stood here tonight on opposite sides of the road, full-grown.

  And when he beheld her smile, unsteady and weak, he understood that he had not confessed gratuitously; she was raised above all sin and forgave everything. She was too pure to comprehend that there was anything foul in sin. She loved those who were in trouble, that was all. And at that moment the sun rose over Ármannsfell.

  In fact it was unlike any other sun; it was truly more like blood gilded with fire, gushing from a fissure on the mountain. It erupted in all directions. A tall man could easily have stuck his hands into it and let it foam like soap through his fingers. It must have been healthy for a sinful man to wash himself in this blood.

  He quickly took her by both hands, like a man in a poultry shop grabbing two chickens that he wants to buy. They walked down to the grassy plain through Fagrabrekka in order to watch the fire, and sat down entirely unconcerned that the dew would wet their clothing. The air was cold and clear. The morning stepped ever higher; the chaos over the mountain soon changed into sunshine. The dew began to glisten. In an hour a snow-white fog would extend itself over the entire copse. Everything was still drowned in shadow although the sky was radiant. “Chastity is the highest of all blessings,” he said.

  “A chaste man is a holy man; whatever he does is holy. Chastity is the fount and foundation of what old chronicles call virtue. Chaste men, and no others, are possessed of a strong will, unfailing powers of accomplishment, an all-seeing intellect, an affectionate heart, an alien beauty, and a magnetic personality. A chaste man puts a yoke on his flesh for the freedom of his soul. Freedom is formed beneath the yoke and nowhere else but there. No one is free but a chaste man. The most powerful establishment in the world, the Roman Catholic Church, is founded upon chastity. It is thanks to chastity that it has not collapsed. When its monks swerved from its ideal of chastity its success diminished. When the ideal of chastity came once again to the fore it experienced a renaissance. If I believed in even half of all the truth found in the Bible, I would become a Catholic monk and dedicate my soul to God and Joseph, the Virgin Mary, the holy Anna, and that entire household. But no matter what, my life must become a hymn of praise to chastity. Poetry is my lover, the new poem. God himself has told me that if I am pure enough, I can inspire a new era in world literature, like Dante Alighieri.

  “Diljá, this is no phantasm!” he reiterated, and he gave himself over to the power of his inspiration. “Diljá, I am gifted and strong! Powerful! I believe that I can rule a huge kingdom! My childhood dream was to subdue all of Asia to the east of a line from Kamchatka to Persia, and I still feel that I was born to be king over the largest country in the world. Diljá, I love the world and all that is in the world!

  “I could die for the world if I wanted to, let myself be crucified for all that is in the world. I love all men, love them all, love them like infants in white gowns, like French girls on parade, innocent, bright, and helpless. I long to take them all into my arms and stroke their cheeks with my hand, erase struggles, trials, and sins. Come all ye to my breast, my friends! I love the most vicious criminal among you just as passionately as the holiest saint! My Holy God, no one understands better than I why you should have wished to become a man and live among us.”

  He buried his face in his hands for a few moments, and when he looked again toward Heaven his eyes were drenched with tears.

  “I love all of it,” he continued in a passionate, quivering voice, “all that exists, all that there is! The glorious radiance of the universe overwhelms me. I am prepared to kneel before everything, everywhere. God, take me unto you!”

  His rapture was like a flood bursting all riverbanks; he was forced to fall silent. Finally he spoke again, more calmly than before.

  “I love the asphalt street in the evening after rain, the life of the street, the whirling jungle of the pavement, and the lampposts with their shining electric fruits, the streets of the city with all their thousand-and-one-wheeled reality. The huge advertisements that the merchants paste up on the walls along the streets inspire me no less than the oil paintings from Pompeii do the English tourists, who examine them with the aid of three guidebooks. I read the classified advertisements in the newspaper with just as much inspiration as old women do the Bible or the bourgeoisie the masterworks of poetry. And whereas it took no less than a symphony orchestr
a in the Queen’s Hall in London to inspire the old poets, I am filled with blissful admiration for the rhythmless caterwauling of a harmonica down in Melar, and it is an aesthetic pleasure for me to listen to the false notes played on the flutes of beggars on the squares down south in Barcelona. And I am seized with no less mystical joy when paying attention to the hens, which peck dainty, glittering grains from the rubbish on the side streets of Þingholt, than when watching the golden plover or ptarmigan on the mountains, about which the great poets sang glorious odes. Nothing touches me more deeply than the simple and plain, things whose power resides in being whatever they are. My most precious gift is that I have been given an aesthetic soul, the ability to worship the glory on the visage of things.”

  After several silent minutes he pulled the end of one sleeve back from his watchband and looked at his watch.

  “Diljá,” he continued. “I’m leaving and have come to say good-bye. I am for the moment standing at the heart of my country, but within a few hours I will have embarked upon the sea, with foreign shores before the ship’s prow. I feel as if I’m setting out into pitch-black eternity, alone, on foot, over countless seas. I have of course been abroad every second or third summer since I was a child, but this is the first time that I’ve felt as if I were leaving. Now I’m leaving. Who knows, perhaps I shall never return, Diljá. Father and friend of all that is, tend to this green plot!”