World Light

by Halldor Laxness

  “No,” she said. “Truth belongs to the night. The day is nothing but excuses. I won’t be wicked any longer. I’ll be good. Let’s be friends. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to write a poem about a ghost, ghost, ghost. It doesn’t matter if we rot like the damned corpses we are when we die, die, die. Come on, let’s run away, away, away.”

  She seized his arm and ran off as if she were fleeing. Her frenzied restlessness infected him and he, too, took to his heels; they ran through the pitch-darkness along the wet road, up to their ankles in mud, splashing through puddles, heading up the fjord, away from the village. Then she suddenly stopped.

  “What are we running away from?” he said.

  “I’m frightened,” she said, panting, and came right up to him and put her arm round him and breathed all over his face.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said bravely.

  “Yes,” she said. “Everything one does is a sin. Can’t you see anything?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Let’s go on,” she said.

  They went on.

  “Everything one says is a lie,” she said.

  Silence.

  “Everything one wants is evil.”

  “I would give so much to be able to understand you,” he said.

  “All your life is a crime and a disgrace, crime and disgrace, if you can’t steal money,” she said. “A lot of money.”

  “My life?”

  “Everything you say is a lie while you’re not stealing money. Money is truth. Everything you do is evil if you haven’t stolen money. Money is beauty. You are a wicked man if you don’t steal money. Money is love. How I loathe this damned penniless dog’s life that makes a person less valuable than fish offal and whale oil! Can’t you see anything?”

  He thought then that he saw a sudden quick glow over the Privy Councillor’s palace, as if someone were walking outside it with a lantern.

  “Come on,” she said.

  “Where to?” he said.

  “I’m going to show you something down by the shore here,” she said. “Something that concerns only you.”

  “It’s past midnight,” he said. “Shouldn’t we rather say Good-night and go to bed, in the hope that we shall understand one another better tomorrow morning?”

  “No,” she said. “Don’t leave me, I’m alone. The manager’s old woman has forbidden the children to talk to me, and would undoubtedly kill me if she knew how to kill anyone. My mother, who’s an invalid, has been farmed out with some wretches away out on Outer Ness, and Daddy, who’s old and infirm, wandered from place to place all summer looking for work and found nothing anywhere. Yesterday he wrote to me and asked me to recommend him to the high-ups at Sviðinsvík for quarry work. You remember my sisters, how close the three of us were; we were inseparable. They’re now wandering about somewhere in the south, one of them with a two-year-old child. And my friend Friðrik, who made my days at Kambar a festival and a romance, he’s now in a higher sphere and doesn’t come to me any longer. And you, you whom I raised from the dead, you won’t even talk to me, and you say that no one has a soul.”

  “If it’s any comfort to you, órunn dear, I shall walk with you all night,” he said, and tears came to his eyes, for he now saw that this was not as complicated as he had thought; she was just a lonely girl, penniless and in distress.

  “Are you feeling sorry for me?” she asked then.

  “No,” he replied, afraid of having offended her again. “But when I was small, I heard a strange music behind the universe. Whoever has heard that music never forgets it again, but understands everything in the light of that music.”

  “I know that you’re not like anyone else,” she said. “Thank you for being willing to walk with me. We’ve now nearly arrived at where we were going.”

  “Where were we going?” he asked.

  “To the house on the shore,” she said.

  “What house is that?”

  “The house on the shore,” she said, as if thinking of something else.

  He didn’t know of any house that far up the fjord and went on asking what she meant, but she was preoccupied and did not reply for a long time. Finally she put her arm around his shoulders and leaned against him and whispered into his face: “You know, of course, the blue palace that the heaven has held in its embrace all summer?”

  At first he had no idea what she was talking about, but when she began to describe this building in more detail, he half felt he recognized the description and that he had seen this house before, but whether it was in a book or in a picture or in a dream he could not be sure. One thing was certain—a secret shiver of pleasure went through him when he heard her talking about this house; the girl’s voice had suddenly changed register, and she was now talking in a quiet, deep, warm tone with a suppressed excitement, as when someone is starting a long story.

  “There is a lantern on the balustrade, so that you can see your way up the steps,” she said. “Then you walk up the steps. You come to a huge oak door such as you find in foreign story books. And when you press a button on the doorpost, the double doors open wide without your seeing anybody, and you step across the threshold. You come into a large and silent antechamber where only one light is burning. Then you go on through the next door, and then suddenly you’re standing in a vast hall. It is hung all around with red velvet, but here and there you can see carved dragons’ heads protruding between the drapes. And your footsteps drown in the softness of the carpet. And there is a scent of flowers you don’t recognize, as in a dream. And you see a long decked table, the whole length of the hall, laden with choice food and wines. You can hear the heavy, autumnal roar of the sea, and you can feel a cool draft from outside through the open balcony doors, and see how the wax has formed into icicles on the candles beneath the charred wicks because the draft makes the flames flutter. You look down at your feet and see that the floor is covered with heavy, dark-red roses. And you stop in the middle of the floor and look around you in awe and whisper, ‘There has been a great feast here.’

  “And the old, silver-haired woman dressed in black who looks after the house curtsies to you, without a flicker of expression, and whispers back, ‘Yes. There has been a great feast here.’

  “And you hear her whispered words echoing from wall to wall throughout the house; it’s as if the roar of the breakers carries it in off the sea, as if the draft breathes it through the open doors: ‘There has been a great feast here.’ ”

  And now the poet suddenly recognized the house. He stopped in the roadway and said, “It is the Palace of the Summerland!”

  But at that very moment it was as if a flash of lightning flared behind them, with a sudden glow over the whole sky. They both looked round. The big building of the Regeneration Company, the Privy Councillor’s palace, was ablaze. In a very few minutes the whole building was on fire from end to end. The flames were shooting furiously from every window, the air around was filled with glowing embers. They watched in horror for a moment, and then Ólafur Kárason of Ljósavík remembered his poems, and in the same instant he was running away from the girl towards the blazing house.

  24

  “Why wasn’t I allowed to burn with my poems?”

  He came to his senses again with this question on his lips. There were some men standing round him, pouring seawater over him. The building was still burning. They had caught hold of him as he was rushing into the flames and had dragged him unconscious out of the smoke with his clothes smoldering. They thought at first that he had suffocated, but the freezing seawater brought him round.

  “Is the boy mad?” they asked. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he had set fire to the building himself.”

  He was shaking violently in their hands after the drenching, and they did not know what to do with him. Finally they let him go, with the warning that they would not rescue him again if he tried to run into the flames a second time.

  Everyone who could move had run to the scene
, men and women, children and decrepit old people, many of them still in their night-clothes, some with buckets, others with jugs, one woman with a tiny mug. All of them were greatly excited and ran to and fro in disorder, many of them shouting meaninglessly or giving one another orders that were not obeyed, some of them quarreling about how the firefighting should be organized.

  Eventually the poetess came out of the crowd and took Ólafur Kárason by the arm, and said, “What’s this I hear, boy! Come home at once!”

  “My poems are burnt!” he said.

  “You’re shivering,” she said. “Here, take my arm.”

  “Don’t you understand that I’ve lost my poems?” he asked.

  “You’re all wet,” she said. “And probably burnt as well. What were you doing in the fire? Come on.”

  “No,” he said. “Leave me alone. I’ve no poems left. I haven’t got anything left. My whole life is burnt. Why wasn’t I allowed to burn with my own life?”

  “Stop this nonsense,” she said. “Come on.”

  She led him away, and he reeled dully beside her.

  “A poet’s like a cat,” she said. “He has many lives. What does it matter if one of them is gone with the wind? You’re eighteen years old.”

  “My poems,” he said, “they were all my lives. In times of adversity I fled to them; if someone tried to harm me I consoled myself with them. And now they are burnt.”

  “Didn’t I tell you once, this summer, that poems were best in ashes? I burnt all my own poems myself,” said the woman.

  There were burn marks on his clothes, and a spark had singed his skin and it was sore and she put ointment on it. She told him to take off his clothes and throw them into the firewood box, and gave him a blanket to wrap around himself. Then she gave him hot coffee.

  “Örn Úlfar also burnt all his poems,” he said. “Am I then that much less of a poet than all the others?”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “You are reborn. You’re in swaddling clothes.”

  “It’s no use trying to humor me; I cannot smile,” he said.

  “I didn’t expect you to have learnt to smile yet,” she said. “When one is born, one only knows how to cry. It’s only very gradually that one learns to smile.”

  He looked in amazement at his naked feet sticking out from the blanket, and let himself be convinced by her, and felt he was a child who was discovering his toes for the first time.

  “You’re my child tonight,” she said, unemotionally. “But since I didn’t have you by my husband, I don’t properly know what I’m to do with you.”

  “Put me out to die of exposure,” he said dramatically. “I won’t return to haunt you.”

  From the passage one could get to the hay barn through a trapdoor under the rafters; she placed a ladder against the opening, removed the hatch, and crawled onto the hay, and told him to follow her. It was pitch-black. She removed the damp top layer of hay and made a bed for him, and told him to lie down there with the blanket around him.

  “Tomorrow I’ll have some clothes ready for you,” she said. “Try to sleep now.”

  “Don’t go,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Talk to me a little. I’ve got no one now except you.”

  “What nonsense,” she said, but nevertheless she sat down beside him in the hay so that he could feel her presence. “Tonight you own a fortune that is the first and last wealth possessed by everyone on earth, all their wealth put together, their only true wealth.”

  “I don’t understand you,” he said.

  “You have your naked life,” she said, and he thought she came even closer to him so that he felt the warmth from her loins, and yet her voice, that characteristic sound of a muted G string, seemed to come from far, far away.

  But when she started talking about his wealth, whether she did it to console him or to mock him, or both—for where is the dividing line to be drawn?—he suddenly remembered another man of wealth, and he gave a start in the darkness and clutched her arm in horror.

  “Dear God in heaven, Eilífðar-Daði Jónsson has probably been burnt with the house!” he said.

  “Old Eilífðar-Dauði?” she said. “Well, perhaps he’s been burnt, the poor old fellow.”

  In the darkness, the poet saw the contorted, helpless face of the person who for the past few nights had told him so much about how difficult it was to be a man here on the estate: “Even though he could only say these three or four words, I felt I understood him better than most others,” said the poet. “He was my friend, yes, probably the only one.”

  At this declaration, which came quite unbidden to the poet’s lips as if born of a sudden inner illumination, he was so moved that the tears streamed from his eyes. He buried his face in the poetess’s lap and wept with grief.

  It lasted a long time. She laid her hand on his head and stroked his hair and wet cheeks and let him cry himself out. Then he had finished weeping. When he had finished weeping, she raised his head from her lap and said, “Now I don’t need to be with you any longer. Your new life has begun to burgeon at once. Tonight when I am gone you will compose an immortal poem about your only friend, who was burnt to death.”

  She made ready to stand up.

  “Don’t go,” he said.

  “Good-night,” she whispered, and stroked his hair once, very quickly, as she stood up.

  “I implore you to stay,” he said, and caught hold of her leg and tried to stop her leaving.

  But the poetess whispered Good-night again, and slipped out of his grasp.

  25

  On the road our life goes with the light,

  Empires and great lands go speeding past;

  Summer has bidden you good-night,

  And all your sunshine days are gone at last.

  The palace that brought you luck and health,

  Music and scent of roses late at night,

  Tapestries and carpets of unimagin’d wealth—

  It died in autumn’s ghastly bonfire bright.

  You flotsam of the shore, forgotten freight,

  Oh, happy Jesus-lover, drunk in bed;

  Heave-up, my brother, my cough-mixture mate—

  Our palace is burnt down, and you are dead.

  Tomorrow, oh, and ash, alackaday,

  And ha and tcha and pooh and tut and see,

  And wheest and amen, ho and hey,

  And rags and toil and pain, and oh, dear me.

  26

  And now Pétur Pálsson the manager stepped ashore with his pince-nez, teeth and a hat. Until now, he had always worn a black bowler hat, but now he was wearing a grey felt hat which resembled Júel J. Júel’s hat, except that the station owner’s hat had been an extremely unusual hat whereas Pétur Pálsson’s hat was an extremely ordinary one. Júel J. Júel’s hat was broad-brimmed, but Pétur Pálsson’s hat was narrow-brimmed; Júel J. Júel’s hat had a narrow band, but Pétur Pálsson’s hat had a broad band. Júel J. Júel’s hat had a low crown, but Pétur Pálsson’s hat had a high crown. And so on. So why was it that people should think that these hats were identical? Was it because Pétur Pálsson had no dent in the crown of his hat, but let it stand straight up, like Júel J. Júel’s? Or was it because people had heard over the wires the previous day that Pétur Pálsson had bought the Sviðinsvík estate from the bank, and assumed that Júel J. Júel had helped him to do it?

  But of all the gratifying and notable things that Pétur Pálsson brought home with him on this occasion, the most gratifying and most notable was the coffin. Such a coffin had never been seen in Sviðinsvík within living memory; yet it would be a shame to say that the people of Sviðinsvík were especially unaccustomed to burying folk. Here in the village, when one’s nearest and dearest were being buried, the most important consideration had always been to ensure that the bottom did not fall out of the coffin at a critical moment and, secondly, that it should at least be as pitch-black on the outside as the life which its occupant had just departed, the darkness
which had engulfed him, and the grief his death was supposed to cause. But now Pétur Pálsson the manager stepped ashore on this memorable autumn morning with a lovely, white infant’s coffin in his luggage, as if the child he loved most dearly had passed away into eternal light. This beautiful coffin was made from special wood, its boards carpentered together with matchless skill and precision. Under the coffin were some peculiar runners or feet which made it higher and more stately than was customary in this part of the country.

  The lid alone was a superb work of art. Near the head end there was a cross emblazoned in gold, and below it two sorrowing golden hands which took their last farewell and forgave everything. The lid was screwed down with many gilded angel-heads with wings in place of ears. This was not only the most beautiful coffin that people had ever seen, but also without any doubt the most magnificent piece of furniture to come to the estate since the days of the Privy Councillor, and it was downright tragic to have to watch such a work of art disappear into the black soil.

  As can be imagined, it was no small ordeal for the manager to come home to his newly acquired estate in its present condition. It was no more than three days since he had increased the insurance on the estate’s major building by a hundred thousand krónur, with a view to converting the building into a cultural center for the people. But when he got home, the prospective cultural center was nothing but an insignificant heap of ashes. He stopped at the scene of the blaze with his hand under his chin, his elbow on his knee, and one foot up on a rock, and remained in that posture for a long time, deep in thought, and let the pastor and the secretary watch him.

  In the midst of all this desolation and ruin there was one thing that the elements in all their fury had not managed to destroy. That was the estate’s huge safe. Inside the palace it had been a sort of kingdom within a kingdom, made of fireproof steel; now it towered over the ruins, alone and invincible. This enormously strong and mighty safe stood on specially cemented foundations which were sunk deep in the ground. No force known to man could shake this edifice. In this repository had been stored all the Regeneration Company’s books and accounts, documents and papers. But unfortunately someone had forgotten to close the safe the last time it had been opened— perhaps the lock had been out of order. The flames had made a clean sweep of its contents, every single scrap of paper, so that not a fragment was left unburnt that could give any idea of the financial affairs of the late Regeneration Company.