World Light

by Halldor Laxness

  “It’s been proved that his rusty tub of a trawler has been here inside the fishing limits.”

  “Those people who have trusted Júel J. Júel deserve neither better nor worse,” said the poet.

  She asked, “Are you a villain, then?”

  “Quite possibly,” he said. “But I’ve never been a Júelist.”

  “Are the wretched people to be punished for whom they elect?” asked the girl. “They thought the damned scoundrel had money and would give them plenty of alms, and then he goes bankrupt. It’s said that the last rusty tub will be taken from him this summer.”

  “Well, that will be one fewer inside the fishing limits,” said the poet. “And one ship’s crew fewer to feed to the sharks.”

  “The postmaster has been summoned south,” she said.

  “Really?” said the poet, who had no interest in the postmaster’s movements. “You’re a strange girl . . .”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “To be talking about such matters,” he replied.

  “What do you think is worth talking about?” she said.

  “I can’t answer that when I’m asked so brusquely,” he said.

  “You probably don’t think it worth talking about the fact that Júel Júel is known to be spying on the movements of the fishery patrol boats on behalf of foreign trawler-owners, and has operatives near all our best fishing grounds. Pétur ríhross is an agent for these foreigners here on this estate and is in contact by coded telegrams with other spy stations in the vicinity night and day.”

  “I was seventeen years old when I first made the acquaintance of Madame Sophie Sørensen,” said the poet. “That same summer I earned some money for the first time, with Júel J. Júel. Nothing can surprise me now. But we who meet so seldom ought to be able to think of more pleasant things to talk about.”

  “It’s you who are strange,” she said. “Talking to you is like talking to someone who has no shadow.”

  “I know what you’re getting at,” he said. “You mean a ghost.”

  “Can you clench your fist?” she said.

  “Not very much,” he said. “Just a very little. Practically not at all.”

  “Clench it as hard as you can,” she said, and stopped.

  She had a very broad bosom; there was a cleft between her high, curved breasts. Her face was as strong as the bows of a ship—the forehead high and arched, the mouth broad with a full lower lip, the eyes bright and wide under the thick brows. He clenched his fist.

  “Hit me!” she said.

  “You’re a woman,” he said.

  “Hit me wherever you like. I dare you to!”

  “Jórunn,” he said, and put his hand on her shoulder and touched her bare neck. “Are we friends or enemies?”

  She said nothing, but set off walking in silence.

  When they had gone another few steps, she said, “What’s the point of the Dream of Happiness if one can look on calmly while evil people cheat innocent people?”

  When he had pondered this for a long time he asked, “What do you want me to do?”

  She replied, “We have formed a Laborers Union and are demanding the right to negotiate about working conditions, and for members to have preference when jobs are available. We have stipulated our own rates of pay. Why don’t you join this union? Why don’t you make those in your care join it?”

  “At night I stay up and write books,” he said. “Other work means nothing to me. I am a poet.”

  “Ólafur Kárason,” she said. “Will you tell me just one thing. Are you for us or against us?”

  “I don’t want to harm anyone,” he said.

  “Ólafur, say Yes or No.”

  “Yes or No, I am here only as a visitor . . .”

  “Oh, shut up!” she said. “The fish yards have become a battlefield. The battle will be fought tomorrow and you will have to side with one or the other. Either you fight for the Laborers Union or you fight for Pétur ríhross. There is no third choice.”

  “I shall be at home,” he said. “I have a sick child.”

  “In other words, you’re going to send poor Jarþrúður into the battle, while you yourself stay at home.”

  “You must be off your head,” he said. And when they had walked a little farther in silence: “Am I to be torn apart once again?”

  “It’s your move,” she said. “It’s your choice.”

  “Let me say Good-bye to you here,” he said. “I’m a little pressed for time.”

  She gave him her strong hand.

  “Are we friends or enemies?” she said.

  He left the road and jumped over the ditch. “I have something to do up the hill.”

  “Are you angry?” she asked.

  “I’m undoubtedly a fool,” he replied, and climbed over the barbed-wire fence at the roadside. “And probably also what you said earlier—a villain.”

  “Why are you so angry?” she called out to him from the road.

  He walked away quickly across the moor, toward the mountain, without replying.

  7

  Five years ago, when she had come over the mountains with the autumn storms at her heels and sought him out and found him, a failed suicide, it had been her mission to nurse pastor Hallgrímur Pétursson reincarnated and support him. She was not in such straits that it was enough for her to live for herself alone, and therefore she was determined to live for him. She said she had never forgotten his eyes; she was sure the world misunderstood them, she thought he stood above all other men, and said it was of vital importance for him to have a mother.

  He said, “I once had a mother. She sent me away in a sack one winter’s day. I cried so hard in the storm that I haven’t recovered yet, and never will recover.”

  “I shall never forsake you,” she said.

  He looked at her. Youth had faded from her cheeks, and her brownish eyes had the moist sheen of seaweed and reminded him of the sea one cannot drown in.

  “What I long for most of all, since I couldn’t drown, is to be allowed to hear the music of revelation anew,” he said.

  “I shall ask Jesus to whisper in your ear night and day,” she said.

  “Oh, where I was brought up, there was never really any Christmas,” he said, downcast. “My friend was Sigurður Breiðfjörð.”

  It was as if the sun had clouded over a little. Perhaps this was the first time she had suspected that he did not stand above all other men, perhaps she had not understood him completely; it was her first disappointment over Hallgrímur Pétursson reincarated.

  She had a cousin in the parish at the head of the fjord, where there was a vacancy for a very low-paid teacher to instruct children in reading, writing and Christian faith. Jarþrúður Jónsdóttir had come to fetch the poet and move him to this place.

  He had not succeeded in catching pneumonia, certainly, but he had often shuddered at the thought of the murder that had failed, and he had some difficulty in getting used to the idea of being alive. He dreaded to think that a frustrated death should be followed by a frustrated life. The children in the parish looked at him with fear. He said he was in pain and asked if he could go to bed early; Jarþrúður had already taken over the duties of the barn.

  He was shown to a bed in a semi-outhouse near the front door of the farm. Round about lay farm implements, packsaddles and seed potatoes. There was a strong smell of fulmar from the eiderdown, to be sure, but it was warm, and there was a lamp hanging from a post. When he had got under the covers he realized that one’s circumstances are never as bad as one imagines beforehand; he brought out his notebooks and pencils and began to write down what can happen to one individual. Within a short time the chill had gone out of him and poetic inspiration had taken its place; perhaps it was not impossible that he might yet hear the right music once again.

  It was late in the evening and the farm had been quiet for a long time when he heard someone fumbling with the door handle. From old habit he hastily hid what he had been writing under the bedclo
thes. Jarþrúður Jónsdóttir pushed the door open, but only just enough to be able to squeeze herself through. He looked at her in alarm, but she said she just wanted to see to his clothes. Her colorless hair was braided into two plaits. She was pious and burdened with sins, but despite that she had hair, eyes and teeth which suggested an animal. There were holes in his socks and in his shoes, and she sat down on the edge of the bed and began to mend them. Nothing was said for a little while. Then she said, “You don’t say anything.”

  “What am I to say?” he asked.

  “Last spring you said so many things. I’ve thought of it all summer. Talk to me about the Voices of the Light. Talk about Jesus in human life.”

  But he was no longer in the mood to talk about these things. He who had got to know Meya of Fagurbrekka since last spring, that earthly, natural girl who left sea-wet footprints on the floor and sand in the prints—how could he ever set his mind on Jesus in human life again?

  There was silence for a while and he studied her pale cheek. Her neck and chin began to tremble, and then the tears came. Then he suddenly felt he was being cruel, because he had actually once written a hymn to this girl and proposed to her, even though the letter had gone astray. Was it not just as disgraceful to deceive a girl even though she was getting on in years? Or did the poet no longer appreciate this woman for having traveled all the way from another county to make a man of him again after things had gone so badly for him that he could not even have an accident any more—could not even catch pneumonia no matter how long he went around in wet clothes, nor die of starvation when he got nothing to eat, nor fall on the battlefield when he was shot at. Why, even the sea refused to accept him for drowning. Finally he made this confession, in utter despair about his own character:

  “Unfortunately, I’m afraid I’m not Pastor Hallgrímur Pétursson reincarnated, Jarþrúður dear.”

  She started to cry aloud at that, and asked Jesus if He were determined to deprive a sinful woman of her last hope. Ólafur Kárason was more and more moved. Finally he asked if she could not possibly imagine having someone other than Pastor Hallgrímur Pétursson for a son, and at that she looked up with a new gleam of hope in her moist, seaweed eyes and whispered, “Yes.” And since that was the case, he brought out his poetry book from under the eiderdown and said she was more than welcome to hear the poems. She recovered completely at that and stopped crying. But while she listened to his poetry, he was sure she saw something quite different in him from the person he was; perhaps he also saw something quite different in her from the person she was. But when she had listened with staring eyes for a while, she suddenly fell to her knees beside his bed, put her hands on his naked body and said, “Shouldn’t we pray?” This was in the middle of a poem, and he winced a little at the touch of her cold hands, and put down the poetry book in amazement.

  “Eh?” he said.

  “Pray,” she said.

  “You pray, I’ll listen,” he said.

  So she prayed.

  He was now called Ólafur Kárason the schoolteacher, and had attained thereby a certain standing. He was not expected to share the work in the house, and so he often had time on hand to pursue his own studies. Every second day he went to the next farm to give religious instruction, and there was a young girl there who sometimes looked at him. He talked to her for the first time by the farm brook one day at dusk when she was rinsing out some clothes. Later he met her in the doorway of the farm; then he met her in the kitchen where he was getting coffee. She talked easily. The weather was often wet at midwinter and two young, scintillating eyes were just as good as the sun. When he got back home the memory of those eyes inspired him to write a poem about freedom and the blue expanse of spring which beckons us with infinite promise; such eyes were enough to abolish the thought that spring was just a folktale and a pleasant fantasy about a Golden Age which in reality had never existed in Iceland. Then someone called to him as he sat working at his poems and he was told to come quickly: Jarþrúður had had a fit. She was lying in the mud between the barn and the farmhouse, this always fastidious woman who could not bear to see dirt anywhere, and her cousin, the housewife, was standing over her and had thrust a nail between her teeth. The poet got muddied from carrying her into the farmhouse. When he had laid her down, he looked in amazement at how the holy sickness that had struck her down had given her another soul, another body and another face, the face of ecstasy; he would not have recognized the woman had it not been for the claw-like hands which had seized the chance of touching his naked body in the middle of the prayer and laid claim to dominion over a poet. That night he lay awake with the seed potatoes and saw mysterious islands beyond the mouth of the fjord, far out to sea, toward which two young men made their way as the sun ascended the heavens, in order to find freedom; and found nobler people than are to be found in the Sviðinsvík district; and more beauty. Complete happiness reigned there. It was the beginning of the novel The Outer Isles Settlement.

  It was no use denying it, the answers he got from the girl on the next farm had the hot rush of the blood in them. One says Hallo shyly and gets a smile in return, one feels one’s way with an observation about the weather and gets a snatch of verse or a proverb in return, or even a paradox; and the game is on. But did she not forget one again the moment one disappeared round the corner of the house?

  On a moonlit night one evening when he was on his way home he met her behind the farmhouse; she was carrying the usual cinders out, and had spread her sacking apron over the ash trough so as not to get ash in her eyes.

  He said, “You are too lovely to be carrying ashes.”

  “I’m nothing more than dust and ashes,” she said, and laughed.

  “What do you think of the evening?” he said.

  “It’s like porcelain,” she said, for the moon was glittering on the frozen snow.

  “Then it’s the first time that dust and ashes have turned to porcelain,” he said.

  “Tomorrow the porcelain will be broken,” she said.

  “You’re so intelligent I think you ought to come for a walk with a poet, beyond the homefield,” he said.

  She undid her sacking apron and forgot about the ash trough, and made a slide over a frozen puddle with a poet, and laughed. When they were beyond the homefield she said, “Well, now I’m going back before the blessed housewife starts getting any ideas.”

  “Walk over to the boundary brook,” he said. “When I meet someone high-spirited I am reborn.”

  “Why should one worry?” asked the girl. “The world surely isn’t as serious as some people think.”

  “But if it had nevertheless been created in all seriousness in the beginning?” replied the poet.

  “I don’t care,” she said. “Nothing will make me hobnob with any but the cheerful ones.”

  “Even though you’re dust and ashes?” he asked.

  “Precisely because of that,” she answered.

  When one hears pretty girls talking, one cannot help thinking that even their most light-hearted replies contain some deep, deep meaning: yes, even some hidden wisdom, and perhaps they do; perhaps it is only beauty that contains the highest wisdom—that remains to be proved. He felt she was uttering a special wisdom which she was playing against his own wisdom, in the same way, moreover, that she was playing her own life against his life, with a definite purpose.

  “Be careful what you say,” he said. “Who knows, I might also own an island out in the ocean where happiness reigns entire and intact. Perhaps I’ll write to you one day from a famous island.”

  “The woman will be starting to get ideas now if I don’t turn back,” she said.

  She was eighteen years old.

  A little farther on there was a small lake covered with mirror-smooth ice. They could not resist running over to it and having a slide, because they were the same age. They crossed it twice one way and twice the other, and she held on to his arm, but there was nothing in her grip that suggested wantonness, nor wanting
to lean up against him and dally. She was just companionable and straightforward, totally free of that duplicity and dishonesty on which love is built. So they had yet another slide, and five, and ten, and her face was flushed in the moonlight.

  They noticed nothing until someone was standing at the side of the lake and calling angrily to Ólafur Kárason. Jarþrúður Jónsdóttir said that a person in delicate health should be at home in bed rather than indulging in this tomfoolery in the middle of the night with folk he knew nothing about.

  “Folk?” said the girl from the next farm, and laughed. “Am I folk?”

  “What do you want with this boy?” asked Jarþrúður Jónsdóttir. “Have you any right to him?”

  “Have I any right to him?” said the girl. “I thought people had a right to themselves.”

  “Oh, so you’re one of those!” said Jarþrúður Jónsdóttir. “Ólafur, as your mother and sister, I order you to come away from this person.”

  “Mother and sister!” repeated the girl from the next farm, and burst out laughing, but it was not a laugh of derision; it was a laugh of sheer amusement as when one laughs at a joke. And it was precisely this—that she should find it funny—that hurt Ólafur more than malice and derision would have done. He felt he was ridiculous in the eyes of the girl from the next farm suddenly to have such a mother and sister, and he walked away alone without saying Good-bye. Jarþrúður stayed on for a while and heaped abuse on the girl. When she had satisfied herself, she came running after him.

  “So you had to make me suffer this, too, Ólafur,” she said when she caught up on him.

  He did not reply.

  “Aren’t you ashamed of letting me find you in the clutches of that wanton creature?” she asked.

  “I’m not in anyone’s clutches,” he said. “And she’s not a wanton creature.”

  “Yes, go on, take her side against me!” said Jarþrúður, and started crying in the frost. “D’you think I need to do more than look into her eyes to see what she is? The time will come someday when you will reap such punishment from God that you will realize properly what you have done.”