He said the ice was bearing.
“Then we’ll walk over to Syðrivík,” she said. “We’ll take the little baby with us. It could be that even if they don’t want to have mercy on us, they’ll have mercy on the child.”
Hope springs eternal in the human breast. All of a sudden, God’s Word had been stanched in her, she even stopped abusing Jasína Gottfreðlína; he listened in amazement to her saying “we” and “our” about his case. Perhaps today for the first time he was really seeing the person who had been his companion for ten years.
After that the couple gave themselves and Jón Ólafsson a thorough wash, put on their Sunday-best clothes, and dressed Jón Ólafsson in his best frock. It was a calm day with a slight frost, frozen snow, solid ice on the river. They walked down to the river without a word, Sunday-suited and grave, the husband carrying his son wrapped in a blanket.
The Syðrivík widow greeted the couple from little Bervík reasonably well, but her cheerful cordiality of the previous morning had cooled somewhat; there was another atmosphere about the house, the sea was dead. The widow told them not to stand outside in the cold with the child, and invited them inside.
“Thank you, there’s really no need,” said the poet’s wife. “We only wanted to have a word with little Jasína Gottfreðlína, your niece, who is staying with you.”
They went inside. The two girls were finishing their Christmas cleaning, there was only a small corner of the living room left to scrub. The schoolgirl, Jasína Gottfreðlína, did not take off her sacking apron when she was summoned to meet the poet’s wife. She had just finished drinking some coffee, and she wiped her mouth on both forearms, one after the other. The housewife ordered the younger children outside, and called her daughter over to the other end of the living room.
“Little Jasína,” said the poet’s wife, and lifted the baby to her breast and hugged it as if to protect it. “We want to ask you something which is perhaps unimportant, but which could affect all of us, not just this innocent little baby and Ólafur, but also you and me. Do you think, if you had to swear to it before God on the Day of Judgment, that Ólafur has done you any harm that you have to make a complaint about?”
The girl answered at once, in a loud voice, “Make a complaint? Me? I haven’t made any complaints. I just told what happened. And it wasn’t anything.”
“All right, Jasína dear,” said the wife. “Since it wasn’t anything, as I’m sure it wasn’t, then it doesn’t matter either if you tell me exactly what did happen.”
“You should ask him,” said the schoolgirl, and pointed to Ólafur. “I can’t be bothered going over something again and again that wasn’t anything. It wasn’t really anything much, and it’s all the same to me if it’s all the same to you, and I’m not angry at all if you’re not angry.”
“Are you then ready, Jasína dear, to declare anywhere and in front of anyone at all, both God and the authorities, that it wasn’t anything?”
“I’m never going to mention it again, least of all before God and the authorities,” said the schoolgirl. “And I would never have mentioned it to anyone if it had been something. I only mentioned it in fun because it wasn’t anything.”
Then Ólafur Kárason said, “To whom did you mention it?”
The schoolgirl: “I only mentioned it to my cousin, Dóra.”
The poet: “Why?”
“Just for a laugh,” said the girl. “Dóra and I are always thinking up things to laugh at. How on earth was I to know that Dóra was going to start blabbing about it? The first thing I knew this morning was that Daddy, who stayed the night here, said I deserved to be flogged in public. And so I naturally told him just to try to flog me if he dared.”
Then the widow came forward and spoke: “I know that you’re not such a simpleton, Ólafur Kárason, as to imagine that individuals can settle this sort of thing according to their own wish and by agreement; you must realize that it’s the law that settles this sort of case. But it wasn’t because I wanted to get anyone into trouble that I told my brother about this, but because I think it’s a hazard to have someone so misguided in charge of the instruction of the young.”
The poet asked if it had been decided to report him to the authorities and have him arrested.
“I’m not reporting you to any authorities,” said the woman. “But God knows that I would rather have lost one of my own children than to have this happen under my own roof. I asked myself, What is the point of fine poems if poets are wicked people? And not least was I distressed when I thought of your Jarþrúður; and your child. But I would have considered myself an accessory to this . . . misfortune that has happened under my roof if I hadn’t told the girl’s father the truth about what took place.”
Then Jarþrúður said, “It doesn’t matter at all about me, a wretch in body and soul, as everyone knows, and corrupted by sin from childhood; but if they’re going to make Ólafur Kárason out to be a criminal and wreck his home and cast an indelible shadow over his little child, then there is no justice on earth any more, and not in Heaven either, may God forgive me. Because if ever an innocent and pure-hearted person has been born on this earth, a person who couldn’t hurt any living creature and has never thought ill of any living person, but has tried to embrace everyone with affection and gentleness, it is he.”
For the second time that day, Ólafur Kárason looked as in a dream at this unknown woman who shielded his child in her arms as if to protect it against axe-blows and spear-thrusts. In her moist seaweed eyes there was a new radiance; her defense was governed by an unshakable natural certainty and instinctive reaction, utterly free from any weeping or whining; this was completely new to her husband. The schoolgirl Jasína had until now been standing facing her rival with her head held high, her legs apart and her stomach forward, with obstinacy in her eyes and electricity in her hair, not fully understanding the deeper significance of this encounter. But now, when she realized that she had a share in wrecking her teacher’s home and casting an indelible shadow over the little child, her bearing suddenly sagged, and she bent her head, lifted her sacking apron to her eyes, and burst into tears.
“If I had known that Ólafur Kárason would be made to suffer for it, I would never have told anyone about it,” she said through her tears. “Ólafur Kárason can always, always do to me everything, everything he wants to, and it will never, never have been anything!”
Further discussion was unnecessary for the time being; the solution of the affair was in the hands of the fates, or rather of those powers which see to it that everything comes to an end in one way or another. The teacher and his wife waited while the widow made coffee, and Jón Ólafsson was given a stick of brown candy to play with. The schoolgirl Jasína and her cousin Dóra made haste to scrub the last corner of the living room, because it was almost the holy hour of Christmas Eve. They did not say anything, did not even look at one another, but sniffed in turn. Nothing much was said after this; everyone was deeply troubled about the future despite the approaching Christmas festival of the Savior. When the visitors had drunk the coffee and eaten their bread in silence, they stood up and took their leave, and people wished each other a merry Christmas and a good and happy New Year.
7
Between Christmas and New Year, Ólafur Kárason was summoned to Kaldsvík to appear in court. He set off early in the morning with a scarf round his neck and a few slices of bread in his pocket. His wife wanted to accompany him with Jón Ólafsson, because she had the peculiar belief that the court would be moved at seeing a baby; but the poet flatly refused to accept this escort. He reached the trading station shortly after noon, and went to the courthouse where he was to present himself; it was just like any other courthouse—rusting corrugated iron, creaking walls, broken steps, faulty door-handles and sagging hinges. Inside, a small group of people sat waiting on benches made of unplaned wooden boards; their breaths made a freezing mist in the air; the windowpanes were thick with hoarfrost. Ólafur Kárason raised his
cap and said Good-day, and got only a reluctant response. He could just make out the bailiff’s face through the mist, as well as the schoolgirl Jasína Gottfreðlína, the lighthouse keeper, and the mother and daughter from Syðrivík. Everyone was freezing.
“Is the sheriff not here yet?” said Ólafur Kárason when he had been sitting for a while and was getting cold.
The bailiff explained that the sheriff had come specially for this court-sitting from Aðalfjörður that morning—“And when have scoundrels and suspicious characters refrained from inconveniencing the authorities and other honest men in the middle of winter in a hard frost, yes, and even in the middle of the Christmas festival?” The widow from Syðrivík said that at the moment the sheriff was at table in the home of Kristinsen the merchant. The lighthouse keeper said he did not understand how the people who lived in Iceland at present could be descended from the men of old. Ólafur Kárason said nothing. People went on waiting and freezing, and the young girls blew into their hands. Eventually the bailiff started pacing the floor and cursing, and said that the sheriff had been eating for three hours. The lighthouse keeper said that the Danes had corrupted the Icelandic nation; he said that Danish merchants had always cowed the common people and led the officials astray. The widow from Syðrivík tried to smooth things over, and said that the merchant Kristinsen was only Danish by descent, and only on one side at that.
“Then why don’t we get roast meat?” asked her brother, the lighthouse keeper, angrily.
“Did we come here to eat roast meat, then?” replied the woman.
“I don’t care what you say,” said the lighthouse keeper. “In my eyes, all merchants are Danish.”
Finally the bailiff said that as bailiff he could not justify keeping the witnesses waiting any longer in this damned cold; he appointed the lighthouse keeper to deputize for him, and set off in search of the sheriff. And they went on waiting.
At last, heavy footsteps and loud voices were heard in the vestibule, and the door was thrown open. The sheriff appeared in the doorway—a mountainous man with the outsize face of a red sea perch, wearing several overcoats, a fur hat, and high boots. In his wake came a number of lesser officials, including the sheriff’s clerk with the court record books under his arm, and the county doctor. The sheriff sat down at a table, took off his fur hat and clapped a little skullcap over his bald pate, ordered the record books to be opened, and gave instructions for the witnesses to be kept in the vestibule and brought before him one at a time.
First he made the widow from Syðrivík give evidence of identification of the schoolgirl, Jasína Gottfreðlína Jasonardóttir, and then about the arrival of the primary schoolteacher, Ólafur Kárason, at Syðrivík two nights before Christmas. What was the visitor’s condition that evening, what were the circumstances in the house next morning, what had the girl said about what happened while the others were out? About the latter, the widow testified that her daughter Dóra had taken her aside when Ólafur Kárason had gone, and said, “ ‘Mummy, Jasína says the teacher got into bed with her this morning.’ ‘Into bed with her, what nonsense is this?’ I said. Then my daughter said, ‘There’s blood in the bed.’ ‘What nonsense you talk,’ I said. But when I took a look for myself, it was true. And when I asked the girl herself, she said that all of a sudden he had got into bed with her and taken her catechism away and put out the light. ‘Did you let him harm you? ‘I asked, and she replied, ‘I hardly felt a thing, and he was away in no time.’ ”
The cousin, Dóra, was called next, and was asked how the schoolgirl Jasína had described what had taken place between her and the teacher that morning. The girl was more dead than alive from cold and anguish, and her teeth chattered in her mouth. The sheriff’s questions soon became too coarse for this sensitive body, and when she did nothing but tremble in front of the sheriff, delicate and anemic, there was nothing for it but to remove her and put her into someone else’s hands.
The schoolgirl, Jasína Gottfreðlína Jasonardóttir, only just fourteen years old, said she had been reading the Children’s Christian Primer that morning after the housewife and the older children had gone out to see to the sheep and the cows. When she had been reading for a while, the visitor, her schoolteacher, woke up and said Good-morning. She said she had not made any reply. He had spoken a few more words to her, she could not remember what about, except that he had offered to explain the catechism to her. Then what? Then nothing. Did he not get into bed with her? Not really to speak of, he was feeling a little cold, he had scarcely touched her, then he went back to his own bed at once and she went on reading her catechism. What had she told Dóra? A lot of nonsense! They were always making up things to laugh at. Then the sheriff became very friendly and asked how Jasína Gottfreðlína liked Ólafur Kárason as a teacher and a person. Jasína Gottfreðlína said that Ólafur Kárason was a very nice person. The Sheriff asked with an oily fish-smile if she did not think Ólafur Kárason handsome.
She replied, “I’m not telling anyone that.”
At that the smile vanished abruptly from the sheriff’s face, along with all the more agreeable characteristics of the sea perch, and in its place came the expression of a sea scorpion. He glared at her with cold, empty, slimy eyes and started asking her the sort of questions that at their mildest were at least on a par with ordinary rape, while some of them would undoubtedly have made even the most hardened prostitute blanch. At first the young girl did not know what he was driving at, and was tongue-tied; but when she began to feel outraged, she replied bluntly, “I’d never even dream of answering such drivel!”
At that the sheriff asserted himself more forcefully and asked if the witness were aware that she was standing before the authorities?
The schoolgirl replied, “There are no authorities over me.”
The schoolteacher, Ólafur Kárason, described how he had come to Syðrivík, cold and exhausted in darkness and foul weather, and asked for shelter for the night. The widow made him go to bed at once and gave him some brennivín. He said he was quite unaccustomed to brennivín and the effect had been that first he had fallen fast asleep in the middle of a conversation with the widow, and later had woken up extremely early with a strange feeling in his nerves as if he were hanging by a thread, and cold shivers. He said he was anxious to avoid saying anything which might be construed as ingratitude for the hospitality he had received, but undeniably the eiderdown had been on the short side and the bed cold. He also explained that there had been a strange soughing sound of surf in the house. To get rid of the cold shivers, he said he had crept into bed beside his pupil but had gone away again quickly when it occurred to him that this move might be misinterpreted. He firmly denied that he had done the girl any harm. The sheriff now started questioning him insistently, but Ólafur Kárason was a past master at evading awkward questions; finally, however, he said that he did not dare to deny on oath that he had had an ejaculation in the warmth under the schoolgirl’s eiderdown, but on the other hand he steadfastly denied that he had had criminal intercourse with her. Then the sheriff instructed the clerk to read out the certificate that the doctor had signed after examining the schoolgirl the day before; this examination had revealed injuries for which there was no natural explanation for a girl of her age. The torn pieces of a pair of drawers, and bedclothes with blood-stains on them, were produced as evidence against the teacher.
Then the witnesses were brought in again and again and interrogated until weakness had overcome them and every trace of modesty had been expunged from them as thoroughly as from the authorities themselves. The girl had started to give answers to various questions about her earlier relations with the teacher which did not concern this case at all: she told the story of his light cuffs and their scuffle one evening, of how she had flown at him in a temper as she often did with her father, and how he had tripped her and thrown her to the floor. The sheriff asked if he had not lifted her skirt, but at that she hastily said No; the sheriff asked if he had not unfastened any of he
r buttons, but she said that was a lie. But when this point had been reached, her evasions were nearing their end. When her modesty had been sufficiently dulled, and cold and hunger had allied themselves with the sheriff against her strength, she suddenly blurted it all out before she knew what she was doing: yes, he had done this on the morning before Christmas Eve; and he had also done the other; yes, first this, then the other. And then she came to her senses again and realized she had said too much, and hastened to add that she had not really felt a thing, it did not matter at all, it was not really anything, it was not even worth mentioning.
On the other hand, Ólafur Kárason stuck firmly to his earlier testimony despite hunger, cold, and weariness; no, he had not done this and he had not done the other either. The girl must be imagining things. The sheriff was sustained by the merchant’s roast beef and was livelier than ever, and the questions went on raining down. It was late in the evening. Finally Ólafur Kárason stopped answering, let his head droop down on to his chest, and closed his eyes. At that the sheriff ordered him to be arrested, and adjourned the court.
8
The sheriff decided to ride home to Aðalfjörður through Gamlafellsdalur that evening, and asked for men and horses to transport the prisoner, whom he was going to take with him. As soon as the hearing was over, he himself went to the merchant’s for supper with his retinue. He deputized Jason, farmer and lighthouse keeper, to guard the prisoner while he was having his meal.
The mountain from which the village took its name was called Kaldur. It was freezing hard, and the snow was drifting a little; a half-moon glistened on the sea and on the rime-covered cliffs where the surf growled menacingly in the night breeze.
The prisoner and his guard stood in the open yard in front of the merchant’s house down by the sea, with orders not to move from there before the sheriff was finished. The news of who was in the yard soon spread, and a few young girls went out of their way to have a look at the criminal. It was difficult to say offhand which of them was the criminal, but the majority of the girls inclined to the view that Jason the lighthouse keeper would be the one. A few young men from the village also arrived. One of them thought he knew who they were, and said that Jason the lighthouse keeper was not the criminal; it was the lanky one. At that the boys and girls raised their voices and jeered at the poet with tolerably witty jibes, from ordinary obscenities to the foulest language imaginable. But when it came to the bit, Jason the lighthouse keeper could not avoid feeling that he was, despite everything, related to this poet now, and realized that blood was thicker than water; besides which, the crown authorities had placed this man in his custody; so he thought he was within his rights to speak to this mob as roughly as he pleased, and told them all to go to Hell.
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