“I shall help you pack your things, Jarþrúður,” he said. “Where do you want to go?”
She let herself sink down on a chair and started to cry into her blue, gnarled hands which for all these years had laid claim to dominion over a poet, had worked for him, touched his nakedness, nursed his children in happiness and sorrow and closed their eyes for the last time. But this time she wept without violence, a quiet weeping, just with deep, wordless grief.
19
A few days later, Ólafur Kárason removed his former intended, Jarþrúður Jónsdóttir, from his house. It had been decided that she should go back over the moor to the farm at Gil where she had been staying before she came to live with the poet. They crossed the fjord on the ferry, and on the other side there was a horse waiting for her which had been sent across the moor. The poet had decided to escort his former intended to the county boundary, and be back home in Sviðinsvík himself by nightfall. The route was the same as when he had been taken on a stretcher by the poet Reimar long ago.
The journey was rather a silent one. He walked ahead, threading the winding bridle paths up the mountain, sweating, bent, with his hair in his eyes. He was in no state to look back and see how the vista widened behind him the higher up they went, nor to breathe in the fragrance from the green dells of the mountain; he plodded onwards like a soulless old jade and never lifted his eyes from the path. She sat astride her belongings, wrapped in black shawls and wide skirts in the June sunshine, and the tears fell in brief showers with clear periods in between, and dried of their own accord before the next shower. Finally they reached the brow of the mountain and were met by the fresh, cool breeze off the highlands.
Halfway across the moor, at the boundary line—a little brook reddened by bog ore—the poet stopped and said: “This is where I turn back, Jarþrúður. I want to be home by tonight.”
“Home?” she repeated tonelessly, and could no longer weep; defeat was frozen into her face.
“I’ve no doubt you can find your way from here,” he said. “You traveled this route by yourself when you came.”
No reply.
“I’m sorry I’m not in a position to give you a present now that we’re saying good-bye. But so as not to part from you like a dog, I want you to accept my watch.”
He had got this old timepiece in payment for a poem the previous year, and although he had never discovered how to make it work for any length of time, and seldom accurately, it was still the only thing this poet possessed which could be valued in money.
“Keep your watch yourself, Ólafur,” she whispered.
“No,” he said. “I want you to have it.”
He thrust the watch into her skirt pocket, whether she liked it or not.
Then she said: “Ólafur, aren’t you even going to pray to Jesus for me?”
“I know there’s no need,” he said. “Your invisible friend will be with you whatever he’s called, perhaps Jesus, perhaps Hallgrímur Péttursson. Whoever you believe in will be with you. And now I ask you to take this parting sensibly. Remember that all people have to part sometime, however much they have loved one another, yes, however much they still love one another. It’s better to part before anything happens which could leave a stain on one or both of them. It is beautiful to have been together, Jarþrúður, but it is also beautiful to part. It is right to have been together, but it is also right to part. And now, good-bye, Jarþrúður. And thank you for everything.”
He gave her his hand and made haste to take it back again. He was even so hard-hearted as to give her horse a little smack as she started crossing the brook. Then she was over the brook and in another county.
He hurried away in the opposite direction. His steps were as light as a criminal’s leaving the scene of the crime, or a man walking over burning coals; and yet he avoided running, so as not to hurt her if she happened to look back, but he quickened his stride as the distance between them grew, feeling anything but secure while she was still within hailing distance. At last when there was a hillock between them he took to his heels. He was ready to run to the ends of the earth. He ran as hard as he could, he ran with seven-league strides, he vaulted over everything that stood in his way, he flew. He had never run like that before, nor had anyone else. Yet there was no effort to this running, quite the contrary; it was supernatural running, it was redemption, it was freedom itself. The land beneath his feet was small and distant as in a bird’s-eye view. He sang, he yelled, he shouted the names of trolls, gods and elves he had never believed in before; in a dell he started to turn somersaults and walk on his hands or else lift them to heaven thanking the Almighty with tears—“God, God, God.”
Finally he lay flat among the grass willow and dwarf azaleas of the highlands, a free man under the blue sky, and listened to the beating of his heart. There is nothing so glorious on earth as to have been in a dungeon and to be freed. This was the most wonderful moment he had ever experienced, or anyone had ever experienced. He felt as if his childhood would now return to him anew with all its mystical music.
20
On a bright night he stepped ashore at Sviðinsvík a free man. After six years in a dungeon he saw this village in the light of a new promise. He was not quite twenty-five years old.
The village was asleep; there was a soft night-murmuring of birds gliding softly over the creamy-calm sea. It had been arranged between them that the girl would be waiting for him when he returned from this journey. His expectation, the knowledge that he would be meeting her as a free man and staying with her without interference from God or man made him feel dizzy, made his blood seethe with joy, brought a hot flush to his cheeks, animated his body with a feverish lightness as if he had taken a drink.
When he walked up to her house he saw a glimpse of her behind the curtains of her room. He closed the garden gate as quietly as he could. As he walked up the steps the door opened as if of its own accord. She was standing inside; she gave him her hand and pulled him quickly across the passage and into her room, and locked the door carefully behind them. Then she came to him. Nothing was said, they embraced one another blindly, drowned their shyness in each other’s kisses.
And the night went on passing. All life’s threads were entwined into one cord, all its laws reduced to their fundamentals, love reigned alone. The first rays of the morning sun found a man and woman, naked, smiling mankind’s eternal smile at one another, and the murmur of the birds had grown louder and the sea was ruffled by the morning breeze, and they had started whispering to one another and telling one another the story of their love.
“What on earth kept you her prisoner for all these years?” asked the girl.
“I wasn’t her prisoner,” he replied. “I was the prisoner of those in distress. But when you looked at me at the fish yards one day and said ‘Do you let yourself be turned back?’ I felt then that something had happened in my life, which would never let me be the same person again.”
“Here,” she said. “Here in this room is your home—if you like. Nothing shall happen to you ever again which isn’t worthy of a poet. You shall never go without again. We here in Veghús have green fingers—everything we touch comes to life.”
In the glow of dawn he looked around this room which surpassed all other human abodes, profoundly moved, grateful and speechless like a sinner who awakes in paradise after death. Was it true that in this lovely house he was yet to compose the immortal poems of his adult years and write thick books about mighty heroes, who were not perhaps entirely real but were at least more real than living people, and who made the world new or at least made beauty more alluring than ever before? Was it true that he was yet to stand pensively at this curtained window on many a tranquil summer’s day and look at the sky mirrored in the deep? Was it true that on countless winter nights when the roar of the sea and the storm could be heard outside, he was yet to sit here safely by the fireside and lamp, wrapped in her love that was the symbol of all that was noblest in earthly life? Was it true?
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“I’m going off now to burn my shack with all the loathsome lumber it contains,” he said.
“What will the owner of the estate say to that?” she asked.
“No one can say anything if a man burns his own house when he’s tired of it,” he said. “Don’t you think it’s a wonderful feeling to see the past ascending to heaven in flames and to rise from the ashes oneself, a new man?”
She asked him to leave before her stepmother came downstairs; it would take time to prepare her for the news of this betrothal, but she was nevertheless going to tell her about it at once, that very day. She embraced him again and again and said, “Kiss me, Ljósvíkingur, hold me tight, let me feel you, no one has ever loved so passionately as this.”
The parting kiss at the door was never going to end, and it was touch and go that everything would not start up all over again.
He roamed for a long time alone, out in the cool of the morning while the sun rose higher and higher; he was tired from lack of sleep and lethargic after a night of burning love, and longed to slip into a deep slumber.
He stopped on the hillside at The Heights and contemplated his shack, which was still a little lopsided after the war damage of the spring, and looked forward to setting fire to it. No one had ever hated any house so much as the poet had hated this house. No one could ever have suffered more in any house, and yet escaped with his life. In this house he had never passed a happy hour. In this house he had never been himself, never spoken a true word, always kept silence about his real inner self like a crime. Every single time he had stepped across this threshold in all these years it had meant a victory over himself, a victory which often demanded all his strength. This house was not only the one place where every life-process had been an agony for him, but also the only place where he had been as wicked as deep down in his consciousness as everyday conduct reached, deeply and inevitably wicked. He had wasted the six best years of his life in Hell—and it was this house. What a joy to be able at last to see this Hell going up in flames!
He opened the door, and the smell of the house assailed him after being away for twenty-four hours—putrid fish, rancid old puffin feathers, the ever-present stench of smoke, mildew. But as he stood in the doorway, wrinkling his nose at this familiar stink, he caught sight of a heap on the floor, wrapped in black clothes covered with mud and dust and horsehair. It was a human being.
At first he had some difficulty in believing his own eyes—had he gone mad? He went inside with hesitating steps in the hope this vision would dissolve before he made himself ridiculous by trying to touch it with his hands. But the vision did not dissolve. And he touched the heap on the floor. He took it in his arms and raised it to its feet. And it turned out to be alive.
She opened her terrified, tearful, beseeching eyes.
“Jarþrúður!” he said. “I don’t understand. Why have you come back?”
She sank down at his feet, embraced his knees, and begged: “In God’s name, kill me!”
“Stop it,” he said, and pulled her up again. “Tell me what you want.”
She fell against his shoulder, weeping, with her arms round his neck.
“Dearest Ólafur, dearest darling Ólafur, my own one, if you will let me die here with you, I shall belong to you in death just as I have borne your children and buried them. But if you let me live, I shall endure any suffering you want to cause me. If you think me wicked you can beat me, if you think me ugly you can go with other women, anything, anything except casting me from your sight into the outermost darkness!”
At that he stroked her awkwardly on the cheek, his eyes a little troubled, and said: “Poor little Jarþrúður, how could I ever imagine that I, the poet, could forsake those in distress? Stop crying, my dear, and I shall try to be good to you.”
He felt her lips burning on his skin, and her salt tears, and into her weeping there came an exalted, convulsive jubilation as if she were about to fall down again.
“Are you then going to go by the will of merciful God, Ólafur?” she asked through her tears.
“God and his mercy have nothing to do with me,” replied Ólafur Kárason. “On the other hand, I’m going to go by the will of man. Soon we shall publish the banns. But at this moment I only ask you to come away from here with me.”
“Yes, I shall come,” she said humbly. “Where are we going?”
“Away,” he said. “Away—to the west, over the mountains, to far-off places, perhaps up into the remote valleys, perhaps to another corner of the country, just so long as we come away at once, before the sun is high.”
“And leave everything behind?” she said.
“Leave everything behind!” he said. Everything. All his dreams. All his poetry. All his hopes. All his life. Everything.
He sat down at the table by the window and looked out dully over the roofs of the village. She wanted to make coffee before they left. She lit the stove and it smoked; she opened the cupboard and out gushed a smell of stale bread. He leaned forward on his elbows, put his palms against his temples, and went on staring out of the window. Like a man in a stupor he perceived without seeing or hearing, he knew without reasoning or thinking; cowardice or compassion, whatever it was called—he did not go back on his pledges to life at the hour of decision; or rather—he did go back on them. He was a real man. With his hair over his forehead he continued to stare at the first light of day for a while with the glazed eyes of a condemned man. Gradually his eyelids grew heavy. He sank down onto the table, stretched out his arms, buried his face and slept.
BOOK FOUR
THE BEAUTY OF THE HEAVENS
1
Where the glacier meets the sky, the land ceases to be earthly, and the earth becomes one with the heavens; no sorrows live there any more, and therefore joy is not necessary; beauty alone reigns there, beyond all demands.
While people in the remote bay were toiling to lay in their winter supplies, and the wife, Jarþúður Jónsdóttir, was working at the haymaking for the bailiff in Greater Bervík, the husband was lying on the grassy slope in front of Little Bervík, a landless, deserted hut, contemplating this remarkable meeting of land and sky where heaven and earth at last understood one another to the full.
“It’s fine weather today,” said the wife when the sun shone from a clear sky at breakfast time. “You should go and rake hay with the Bervík folk to make yourself useful.”
“Please leave me alone,” he said imploringly.
He drank the milk she had brought him the night before and gave her back the empty bottle, went out into the aroma of summer, and lay down on the grass. A bluebottle was already up and buzzing at the wall of the house, there was still an echo of nesting time in the chirping of the birds, the dandelion was not yet in bloom.
It was best to forget one’s own world, both the world one had to endure and the world one longed for, the world one had lost and the world one might perhaps achieve, forget one’s own life in the face of the beauty where mortality ends and eternity takes over: perfection, beauty as the supreme arbiter. No day which gave a clear view of the glacier could ever become commonplace; as long as the paths of heaven were open, each day was a festival, peaceful and yet without any connection with death, beyond poetry and painting. Other people’s animals came and grazed on the slope around the poet.
Some other day he got to his feet and wandered off like a sleep-walker. The river was called Berá, or Bergá; it was clear spring water with no trace of clay although its source was at the roots of the glacier. In the upper reaches it ran through ravines, but lower down it flowed over sandbanks. The poet walked upstream toward the mountain, the valley narrowed, the ravines deepened, the current grew stronger, a waterfall. He sat down on the brink of the ravine and listened to the purl of the water in the narrows blended with the shrill, echoing cries of a pair of merlins which flew in circles over the ravine, where they had their nest. There were copses in the hollows, small bushes growing on the ledges in the ravine, rosewort and fer
ns in the cracks. From here one could see out over Bervík parish, this small, remote community with its infertile lowlands, its sandy harborless bay sheltered on two sides by almost-barren mountains; their nearest trading post lay in another district, on the other side of a mountain pass.
The poet made his way farther up alongside the gorge, towards the glacier. And suddenly there was a little valley with yellow-green mossy bogs along the banks of the river and small, marshy patches below wooded hillsides, and here at the foot of the forest slope he suddenly came upon a tiny farm in a homefield facing the sun. There was an age-old man scything the homefield and a girl, with a head-scarf pulled down to her nose, was raking behind him. On the mown grass lay the pet lamb and the farm dog. When the poet approached, the dog began to bark, but the lamb stood up and stretched itself and tossed its head and wagged its tail. On the doorstep sat a little boy, who started to cry and called out to his mother.
“Who is the man?” asked the farmer, and began to whet his scythe.
“My name is Ólafur Kárason of Ljósavík.”
“And where would he be going?” said the old man.
“I don’t know,” said the poet. “I didn’t know there was a farm here.”
“Oh, it’s a farm only in name,” said the old man. “You might be a stranger in these parts?”
“I’m the funny man who got married the other day and moved into the house at Little Bervík,” said the poet. “Most people think I’m crazy. There’s been some talk of letting me give the children religious instruction this winter. You must have heard of me.”
World Light Page 52