The Great Weaver From Kashmir

by Halldor Laxness

  “How did she handle it?”

  “Well, what can I say? As you must surely understand, it is a more painful loss than one can put into words for a young mother to have to see her child buried.”

  But it was a family trait to put little stock in human feelings, and he asked:

  “Couldn’t she always have another one?”

  His grandmother gave him the calmest of looks.

  “It is little comfort for a young mother to tell her that she can have another one,” she answered. “Of course the mother knows that she can have another one; yes, maybe even five or six more, but she can never have the same child again.”

  He kept quiet for a short time and harbored doubts as to whether what his grandmother was saying was rubbish, or whether it might contain dearly bought life experience.

  “Did she cry?” he finally asked.

  “I would have thought that you wouldn’t have had to ask me that,” said the old woman, and she added, unprompted: “She had the little body kept in the room there, behind that door to the left,” and she pointed to the door whence the cat had come. “For a whole month afterward I slept with Diljá in her room, the poor dear, and tried to do what I could for her. It was strange at first: she seemed not to be able to understand that little Úlfur was dead. It was as if she were angry with us for having thought of telling her the truth. Time and time again I had to go and bring her down here in the middle of the night. When she thought that I was sleeping, she’d sneak to her feet. And there I would find her, as she sat with the stiffened corpse on her knees, rocking back and forth. It was as if she always believed that he was still alive. It was horrible, my dear Steinn. But that’s in the past; wounds of grief heal like other wounds.”

  The old woman’s entire bearing appeared to become more gentle in relating this tale, and her grandson asked nothing further.

  “Rest here a little while, my dear. I’m going to wake Diljá and tell her that a visitor has come. I hope that you’ll have morning coffee with us and tell us your news.”

  77.

  They greeted each other like two cousins who are raised in separate countries and meet for the first time today. At the last minute they realized that their relationship was only a misunderstanding resulting from a genealogical error. They were simply two strangers. The smiles on their faces were stillborn. To her his return was no more unexpected than if he’d gone off to Stokkseyri the day before yesterday. All the same she welcomed him back to Iceland. She was wearing a sleeveless pink dress, which hugged her bosom and hips; her hair was cut à la garçonne. Her eyes shone with a fatal gleam; in her bearing there was not a trace of the exultant joy of a happy wife; her face was marked with lines of age, long before she had aged at all.

  She listened to her mother-in-law go on and on about Steinn’s return, and about the unseemliness of his having gone to stay at a hotel; it was out of the question that he should stay at Hotel Iceland – he must have his luggage sent here immediately. What’s more, he wanted to go up to the mountains, which was certainly opportune, since they would be going for their annual summer holiday to the Ylfingabúð, starting next weekend; he would of course have to come with them. Diljá looked at her mother-in-law, then quick as a flash at him.

  “We must have a little party here tonight or tomorrow night, Diljá,” continued the old woman, “and invite some of those blessed artists and writers and others whom Steinn would be pleased to see.”

  “No, Grandmother,” he interrupted. “By all means spare me from such a thing. I can’t stand parties. I’ve long since stopped enjoying mingling with people. I’ve got nothing left to say to anybody.”

  “Nothing to say! Once upon a time you didn’t think yourself too great to grant people the pleasure of your conversation! Don’t you know that you’re renowned here at home as a poet and a celebrity for those poems you published in England? Word would get around, to the family’s shame, if we pretended not to know about this.”

  “Celebrity! Me? Damn it! Great poet! Me? Vanitas vanitatum! They might just as well have written that I’d gotten gastritis. Nor have I published any poems. That’s untrue. They were stolen. I don’t care to see anyone. I’m going up to the mountains.”

  “What is this, child? I thought that you would have been in seventh heaven for publishing a book of poetry in the most widely read language of culture in the world!”

  “Stop it, Grandmother; I’m tired of this. Language of culture! Rubbish! What is a language of culture? Perhaps Aramaic, the mother tongue of Jesus Christ.

  “English is the language of pirates. Where were the English when the Gospels were written? Where were they when Lao-tzu composed the Tao Te Ching or the Indians the wisdom of the Vedas? No, dear Grandmother, don’t invite anyone here.”

  “You’re the same as you were when it comes to exaggeration, dear Steinn,” said Madam Valgerður. And the Director’s wife glanced at him without lifting her head. Her eyes looked outward and inward at the same time; she looked at him as she would a phantom in an insomniac dream, all the while comparing his voice to that of her childhood memories.

  Madam Valgerður poured coffee into their cups and offered them cakes. They sat in the sun-drenched foyer before open doors, surrounded by Keilir and the mountains of Langahlíð. Steinn felt it almost unbelievable that he should have returned home to his fatherland, so cold were the mountains before which he had knelt in his dreams.

  “Where have you come from, Steinn Elliði?” asked the Director’s wife courteously.

  “I’ve come from Belgium.”

  “I see. How did you get on there?”

  “Well.”

  “They speak French there?”

  “Yes, they speak French there. Also Flemish, and actually all sorts of other languages and dialects.”

  “This Flemish is similar to Dutch?”

  “With slight differences.”

  “It often happened that those so-called Flemings stranded their ships out east, not far from where we were living when my husband was a bailiff,” said the old woman. “Sometimes we put up whole crews of them. They were courteous and gracious.”

  There was nothing more that anyone could think of to say about Flemish or the Flemings, and so there was silence.

  “You didn’t spend much time in Italy,” began the Director’s wife again, just as courteously as before.

  “I went there last year, shortly after my mother died.”

  “I’m sure that she couldn’t bear the climate there, down south by Africa, or wasn’t it in Sicily where she died?” asked the old woman warily.

  “Yes.”

  “Was the grave properly looked after?” she asked next in a low voice, full of delicacy.

  “I know nothing about graves,” he answered coarsely, silencing the speakers again momentarily.

  “It must be terribly hot down there in Sicily,” said the Director’s wife; she could not get past geographical locations.

  “Winter there is similar to summer here.”

  “Aren’t people half-savage down south?”

  “The people there are like they are everywhere else.”

  “Do you mean to say that people are the same everywhere?”

  He looked quickly up, in precisely the same way as he always had, and answered as sharp as lightning:

  “You remind me of my mother.”

  Both women felt the tactlessness in this remark, and were reluctant to respond. He had again snapped the thread of conversation with an unwieldy answer, and again they all fell silent. Finally Madam Valgerður said, in a half-cheerful, half-insulted tone:

  “I scarcely recognize you as the same man, dear Steinn, you’ve changed so much.”

  But suddenly the Director’s wife lost control for a moment, and she said without any forethought:

  “Yes, he has changed completely – terribly!”

  As she spoke these words a cold shiver gripped her. She paled.

  “Once I heard that you’d become a Bolshevik
,” said Madam Valgerður. “I hope, God willing, that that was a misunderstanding.”

  “I’m a Catholic,” he said.

  “Catholic?! Catholic?!” repeated mother- and daughter-in-law flabbergastedly.

  “I’ve been baptized sub conditione.”

  Madam Valgerður could not keep from laughing to herself at this nonsense.

  “Well, it’s not worse than being a Bolshevik,” she concluded. “After all, Catholicism is just an innocent sect. Catholic! I do declare!”

  “You don’t believe in saints, do you?” asked the Director’s wife.

  “Why not?”

  “Surely you must know that they’re just men.”

  He glowered at her again and asked:

  “You don’t believe in Örnólfur?”

  The blood rushed to her cheeks, and her mouth quivered slightly. In spite of all appearances she must have been extremely sensitive. But when her mother-in-law saw her biting her lip she butted in and answered:

  “It’s quite a different thing to adore one’s husband than to pray to dead men, as I hear they do in Catholicism.”

  “Or the sale of indulgences!” began the Director’s wife again. “I hope you don’t believe that it’s possible to buy forgiveness for sins from the pope!”

  “No,” he said, still glowering at the pale young woman as if she were his enemy. “I don’t believe it because that is nothing but ordinary Lutheran slander. Only God forgives all sins. On the other hand, it is no mystery that the road to Hell is an easy one.”

  “Do you think that I’ll go to Hell?” she said, and tried to laugh lightly.

  “That depends on whether you wish to see the essential difference between right and wrong,” he answered coldly.

  Madam Valgerður still chuckled to herself and shook her head.

  The Director’s wife, however, was frightened, and could not bring herself to look at the guest. He was no longer a civilized man; he was a shape-shifter. The brilliancy of his youthful years had disappeared from his manner, replaced by something repulsive and dangerous.

  “God Almighty, how you have changed, Steinn!”

  Then she looked at her mother-in-law, tried to smile, and asked:

  “What do you think Örnólfur would say?”

  78.

  Steinn was not able to accept his grandmother’s invitation and instead stayed at the hotel. He gave in, however, to her plea that he come daily to supper.

  In truth he had changed a great deal; it became more and more apparent as the days passed. Before, he had spouted his heart out whenever he had the chance, with an unsteady glance; now he hardly ever said anything and brooded on unspeakable things, his pupils fixed in a stiff gaze; before, he was vigorous and flexible, held his head high, stuck out his chest; now he was slow and looked constantly down at the ground, his movements slight and resolute. He no longer spoke with his hands, no longer fingered a cigarette case nervously; now he listened to others speak without showing any signs of impatience, whereas previously this had been impossible for him to do. Before, his lips had always been open, revealing his two front teeth; now his mouth was usually closed, and this change gave his face an expression of sternness. His face was marked with clear, strong lines, bearing witness to austerity and self-denial. His eyes were even more fleeting than in years past, and were shielded by heavy glasses with light-colored horn-rims. If he looked at a book, he took off his glasses quickly and read with bare eyes. His voice was clearer and fuller than before, but his pronunciation was tinged with a foreign accent. Sometimes he found himself lacking the right word, forcing him to change his sentences around in order to be able to say what he was thinking. Before, he had been a pretentious dresser; now his clothes were not only simple, but also coarse: his trousers were baggy, his boots of thick brown waterproof leather, his shirts and collars of nappy flannel-like material. His hair no longer reminded one of a lion’s mane nor hung down the back of his head in comely waves, as it had in years past. Carelessness had spoiled its color; despite the reddish tinge it was almost ashen, cut badly, combed even worse. His locks hung in disorder upon his forehead. The backs of his hands were hairy up to the knuckles.

  He no longer let himself be enticed into discussing thought- provoking topics, preferring most to add something to the conversation only when it turned to a completely worthless topic, seemed no longer to voice his own opinion about anything except when he insulted the things that most others enjoyed, and then used logic that kept everyone thoroughly confused. When least expected he would come up with questions or comments that were either farfetched or unbecoming. In his presence any kind of weather could be expected: people could not help but feel apprehensive about what he was going to say next. No one was safe when he was around. Although he listened calmly to those who spoke to him and never objected, one got the impression that people suspected him of considering everything that was said to him vanity and idiocy. He hardly ever smiled.

  And how completely different was the woman sitting here than the child to whom Steinn Elliði had said good-bye at Þingvellir one summer night five years ago. What had happened to the lighthearted, thoughtless laughter of the young girl? It no longer sang out; eternity had locked it away. Her countenance no longer shone with naïve expectations and unfulfilled dreams. Her eyes were like silvery velvet or splintered lead. She was a woman, tall and lissome, the shape of her body roundish and soft, causing her smallest movement to become a stylized performance. Her vaulted bosom and thickset, strong hips revealed incessantly in their charming comeliness the copiousness of female fecundity, her bearing was locked in the fetters of habitual kindheartedness, puritan precaution, and anesthetized passions.

  79.

  Once at dinner he was seated opposite the chair of the master of the house. There were no other guests but the Director’s wife’s best girlfriend, whom Steinn had known in his childhood, always called Sigga P., now called Madam Sigríður Geirdal, the daughter of an official in town. Steinn spoke to her informally.

  He was asked how he had spent his first day at home. Thanks very much, he had walked over to Kleppur,111 then had gone to his father’s house and met with old Guðmundur. Finally he had sat in the hotel for three hours and read Icelandic. He hadn’t seen an Icelandic book for five years.

  What had he read?

  “Morgunblaðið.” He had borrowed several of last year’s issues from old Guðmundur.

  “Is that what you call literature!?” said the young women.

  “Ellingsen is advertising patten overshoes and sailcloth,” he said.

  Silence.

  “The firecrackers from Cremona come in countless colors and styles,” he said.

  Madam Sigríður picked up her handkerchief.

  “I the undersigned need a wife immediately,” he said.

  First Madam Sigríður laughed out loud, then Diljá.

  “Didn’t you read anything other than the advertisements?” asked his grandmother.

  No, he hadn’t read anything other than the advertisements. They were the most interesting part of the newspaper. The other stuff was blather.

  “But sometimes there are articles in Morgunblaðið by Sigurður Þórólfsson and Halldór Kiljan Laxness,” said his grandmother.

  When Madam Sigríður had stopped laughing he looked at her and asked:

  “How long ago were you married?”

  “About two years ago. Diljá and I were married at about the same time,” answered the young madam, frankly and innocently.

  “Do you have children?”

  “No, not yet,” and she laughed shyly.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  Both young women reddened and looked ashamed, but Madam Valgerður reminded her grandson that in this country it was not customary to ask women such things in such a way. Then there was a short silence, and Madam Sigríður took a bite of food in a dignified and noble way, as if she were offended.

  “I hope we’re not eating rotten dog,” said Steinn Elli�
�i. His lack of respect for the sensitivity of his table companions seemed to be entirely limitless.

  “You certainly can be terribly rude to the young ladies,” said Madam Valgerður.

  “Is there a Latin dictionary here?” he asked.

  “A Latin dictionary, yes, there’s some sort of dictionary rubbish out on Örnólfur’s shelves. Hopefully you’re not planning to delve into Latin at high summer, child!”

  “Is it forbidden?”

  “You’ve read far too much during your days, Steinn Elliði,” said the Director’s wife.

  “Yes, he has certainly read too much for his own good,” said Madam Sigríður perkily. But the Director’s wife wanted to turn the conversation toward a more harmless topic, and asked:

  “What poet do you regard most highly these days, Steinn Elliði?”

  “David,” he answered.

  “David from Fagraskógur! No, now that’s a new one!” said Madam Sigríður.

  “King David who taught,” he corrected.

  “Hopefully you don’t mean the one in the Bible?” asked the madam.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I can scarcely believe you’ve become attached to the Bible,” she said.

  “The Bible doesn’t really go down very well in my case,” testified Madam Valgerður. “We aren’t what you’d call champions of the faith in this house.”

  “Otherwise I find it hard to believe what I’ve heard, that you’ve become a Catholic,” said Madam Sigríður.

  “Curious people, those witless folk at Kleppur. They were supposed to be mowing the grass. One sat with his legs stretched out in the grass and sang. Another was trying to stand on his head. They don’t believe in bourgeois decorum. It was as if I saw standing before me the incarnation of what Jacques Maritain calls l’avènement du moi, which he considers to be the hallmark of Lutheranism.”

  “But you don’t mean that all Lutherans are crazy?”

  “As soon as you, my dear ladies, stop believing in bourgeois decorum, you will be admitted to Kleppur.”