World Light

by Halldor Laxness

  Ólafur Kárason was disappointed and replied, “I’m a stranger here in the capital, and don’t know any people here apart from the one house I’m to go to, and I haven’t got much money. I’d prefer to be allowed to start serving my sentence as soon as possible.”

  They said there were several difficulties about admitting him immediately to this highly desirable residence which they managed; of that house it could truly be said that many were called but few were chosen, all the documents had to be in perfect order. Did he not have any friends in town?

  Ólafur Kárason blushed. One man in this capital city, certainly, was his friend from the old days, but he did not even know himself any more, let alone old friends. He wanted to delay meeting this man until he had served his sentence and was a free man again. But all things considered, there seemed to be nowhere else to turn for the time being, and a policeman was sent with the poet to look for his old acquaintance.

  They walked for a long time until they came to the house where the poet’s friend lived; the policeman went to the back door and said Good-day, and a middle-aged woman came to the door, a little scared because she thought someone was going to be arrested, but it turned out to be only a stranger asking for Sveinn of Bervík. She said that her stepson was out at work and would not be back until six o’clock. The woman asked who the visitor was, but when she learned that it was the children’s schoolteacher from Bervík her face filled with sheer anguish. The policeman said that the man was a stranger in town, and asked the woman to afford him shelter until his friend came home. With that the policeman disappeared, and the woman stood in the doorway and looked in dread at this terrible man, Ólafur Kárason. She called out to three adolescent girls and told them to leave the house at once. Then she took Ólafur Kárason through the kitchen into the living room. He asked if she could please sell him some food. She said this was not an eating house, but perhaps she could give him some food. He was grateful for being allowed to sit in her living room for the day, because as a stranger, an idiot and a criminal he did not have the courage to wander about in this town, even though it contained the grave of Sigurður Breiðfjörð.

  That day while he was waiting for his friend was extraordinarily long. The woman brought him food with fear in her eyes, and if he tried to start a conversation with her, she became even more scared. Everything he said seemed to have the same effect on her as delirious ravings; there was no doubt that in her eyes he was not merely a hardened criminal but a lunatic to boot. He looked out the window at lightly clad children playing in the street, and in his thoughts he had already become a prisoner, an outcast of mankind, and despised by society. Again and again he was on the point of sneaking away before his friend returned.

  Around six o’clock he heard a young man’s cheery greetings outside; it was the boy coming home from his work with no thought of anything untoward. But his voice was quickly hushed and whispering began, and after that it was whisperings and suppressed emotions that reigned in this house. Blushes of shame came and went in the poet’s cheeks.

  After a long time his friend Sveinn of Bervík came into the room. He was a tall, fine-looking young man in a blue suit and brightly colored shirt, extremely well-washed, smelling of hair-oil, with his hair carefully brushed, his hands scrubbed to remove all traces of the day’s work as thoroughly as possible, his shoes polished. He offered his hand to the visitor with grave courtesy, and when the visitor had examined him more closely, he was grateful that he had not tried to pretend a friendly smile. In a flash the visitor saw that all his secret plans to try to make his life comprehensible to this young favorite of fortune were ridiculous. To try to excuse himself to this young man was merely to accuse himself. He understood now as never before that a man must conquer or fail in his own eyes alone.

  “Sveinn, I–I know no one; you don’t need to know me if you don’t want to,” he stammered, and felt, as he always did in the hour of trial, that he was a foster child at Fótur-undir-Fótarfæti and was in the wrong, alone against the world. Once upon a time these two men had been in the same situation; now the difference between them was like the difference between a wish and its fulfillment. The one was what the other had dreamed of, and therefore they did not know one another any more. He who has wishes, yearns for a friend; but when the wishes have been fulfilled, the friends are the first thing we forget.

  “You are a man of learning now,” said Ólafur Kárason, and could not hide the admiration in his eyes as he contemplated this young, handsome, intelligent and well-dressed man whom he in his insignificance had discovered in the darkest cranny of the country and had helped to push towards maturity.

  “I’m an undergraduate,” said Sveinn of Bervík, with a slightly selfsatisfied expression round his mouth.

  “And you’re no doubt a great poet now,” said Ólafur Kárason of Ljósavík.

  Perhaps the unreserved devotion in the visitor’s eyes struck this young man as being merely dog-like, because a shadow of distaste passed over his face at these words, and he looked at Ólafur Kárason’s Sunday-best suit not without disgust.

  “I’ve decided to become a theologian,” said the undergraduate.

  “A theologian!” repeated Ólafur Kárason. “That’s wonderful! Oh, how that pleases me. I always knew you would become something; something special; something out of the ordinary.”

  He smiled his gentle, fervent smile at his friend, but to no avail.

  “Did you have a good trip?” asked the undergraduate.

  “Yes, thank you,” said Ólafur Kárason. “But I was a little seasick the first night. And my neckwear was ruined, unfortunately, so now I haven’t got any neckwear.”

  “What do you think of our capital?” asked the undergraduate.

  “Thank you, I like it,” replied the poet. “I haven’t actually had a chance of looking around very much, but that doesn’t matter. But there’s one thing I would like to see here in the capital, and that is Sigurður Breiðfjörð’s grave. Would you like to show me where it is?”

  “I know where the cemetery is, of course,” said the undergraduate. “But I’ve never looked for any particular grave there. I wouldn’t be any quicker at finding this tombstone than you yourself. If you want to find the cemetery, you walk west, then turn south. By the way, where are you staying the night?”

  “I’m ashamed to say I really haven’t thought so far ahead yet,” said the poet. “I–I know no one . . .”

  No one knows another man more than once, any more than a woman. The friend you took leave of yesterday is a different man today, you do not know him any more, the world changes overnight, not even loyalty can conquer time. Whatever a man possesses, he possesses only for a fleeting moment—a friend, a sweetheart, his own life—just for a moment, the moment that is passing; the next moment it does not exist any more. And Ólafur Kárason’s Sunday-best clothes were ridiculous rags in comparison with this man’s everyday clothes.

  “Is there any news from Bervík?” asked the undergraduate.

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Reasonable weather?”

  To think that he should know how to ask such ordinary questions, the poet thought to himself, and reported to the best of his ability that the grass-growth had been well above average and the hay crop was doing reasonably well so far this summer. “But there isn’t much fishing with us, of course; it’s the old story, as you know. On the other hand, there have been good catches at Kaldsvík.”

  Then there was silence. The undergraduate was becoming rather impatient; he drummed his fingertips on the table or put his finger into his mouth and bit at a nail or suddenly noticed a speck of dust on his shoes that had to be brushed away. Of course he had never intended to listen to the poet’s report about the weather conditions in Bervík. Between these two men lay a gulf that could not be bridged. Neither of them knew what to say. Ólafur Kárason looked at his friend with pleading eyes and the sweat streamed from his forehead; it was like a dream about a ledge on a preci
pice, about drifting helplessly in a boat without oars.

  Finally the undergraduate said, “I’m afraid I’ve got a rather special engagement tonight. I didn’t know you were coming, you see . . .”

  “Yes, I’ll go now,” said the poet, and stood up and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket. “But I couldn’t help it,” he added, “I wanted so much to see you.” And he smiled once more at his friend that gentle, remote smile, and his throat was dry.

  14

  At their parting, his friend gave him the address of a hotel which bore the proud name of “The Mountain Queen,” and said that some woman from Sviðinsvík was running it. Ólafur Kárason wandered around the town that evening and asked his way to the hotel. Well-dressed young gentlemen stood at the street corners in groups and criticized the passers-by. When Ólafur Kárason came along in his forty-year-old jacket and National and Cultural Drawers from Pétur Pálsson the manager, this attire aroused only scant admiration and earned all the more severe criticism. The poet felt as if he were coming to Sviðinsvík for the first time and did not know how to put one foot in front of the other.

  Over the door of the hotel there was a large signboard with a painting of Mount Hekla on it, and on top of the volcano there sat a beautiful woman in national costume looking out over the whole world. Underneath was printed “Mountain Queen Café.” The poet drew from this the conclusion that the mountain queen was called Safé, which must be a modern version of the name Sophia. He felt so much respect for this house that he scarcely dared enter it. From the elegant vestibule, however, he eventually edged his way into an elegant lobby where he met an elegant girl. He took off his cap and said Good-day. The girl looked at his forty-year-old jacket and cultural drawers and did not return the greeting, but softened when she looked into his eyes; so he plucked up courage to ask if it would be possible to talk to the woman.

  “What woman?” said the girl.

  “I–Isn’t there a woman from Sviðinsvík here?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what woman you’re talking about,” said the girl. “I don’t suppose you’re talking about Madame Félgor?”

  Gradually the visitor and the inmate succeeded in understanding one another, and the girl set off to look for the woman.

  While he waited, the poet had a chance of getting to know the atmosphere that reigned in this house.

  In the dining room sat some extremely noisy men of foreign and native extraction, busily courting some almost unnaturally beautiful women with lavishly curled hair and crimsoned cheeks that put all shame to shame; and from another room came a clamor of unidentifiable musical instruments not unlike a rattle, a banger, and three tin buckets rolling down a staircase. Happy couples danced past the doorway.

  Then a door in the lobby suddenly opened and a woman came walking towards Ólafur Kárason, and face to face with this sight the poet suddenly knew where he was. He perceived the house in its natural setting; this house was just a continuation of a fairy tale from the past. Once upon a time there was a man, or rather, once upon a time there was not a man but a living corpse who came riding across the moors on a stretcher; and there were fairy maidens; and he was woken up from the dead.

  órunn of Kambar came sweeping toward him, an energetic woman with black wavy hair, darkened eyebrows, rouged cheeks, and false teeth, and thick spectacles to shield these mysterious, semi-albino eyes which no colorist has ever managed to capture, wearing a rustling silk dress, rather plump with two or three bracelets and several rings set with precious stones, a half-smoked cigarette between nicotine-stained fingers. But it soon became obvious that the hostess’s ornaments were not just vanity—they were the outward symbols of her inner virtues, for she was the only person in this capital city who did not seem ashamed of greeting a humble guest who had neither hit upon the right fashion in jacket and trousers nor acquired the art of mixing with distinguished people.

  “Ólafur Kárason of Ljósavík, you are welcome here!”

  She still spoke in that well-remembered ambiguous voice which fitted both night and day, but the twilight best of all.

  “I don’t suppose you’d be so kind as to let me stay the night here?” said Ólafur Kárason.

  “Of course!” she said. “How delighted I am to see you! You’re almost exactly the same as you were. Let’s get out of this din at once and go to my own room.”

  She still had not lost her tendency to lay hands on people; she laid her hands on Ólafur Kárason instinctively as she made him sit down beside her on a dark-red plush sofa. She wanted him to smoke a cigarette and drink a glass of wine, but he said he was too old now to learn that sort of thing. In her room everything was of plush and more plush, cushion upon cushion, tablecloth upon tablecloth, picture upon picture, mirrors mirroring themselves in one another.

  “Do you remember when I raised you from the dead?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he replied, “and I thank you for it with all my heart. Unfortunately I was never in a position to repay you. But when I look around me in your house, I can see that it’s been proved once again that God pays for the poor. I myself haven’t acquired much more than I had when I came to you dead that time, and learned very little more than I knew.”

  “On the other hand you haven’t lost anything since then,” she said. “You have the same eyes, and the golden sheen in your hair and these long, delicate hands.”

  She took his hands in hers, as she had done so long ago, and studied them. Then she said, “There’s a barber in the house on the other side of the street; go and have a shave and a haircut, and when you come back I’ll give you a new suit I’ve been keeping since the spring. I took it in lieu of rent from a very nice man. Dinner will be served soon.”

  A little later be was shaved, trimmed, and bathed and wearing new clothes from top to toe. She herself tied his tie under his shirt collar. She looked at him and started humming a tune which was coming from the room below, and he stared at himself in the mirror.

  “There,” she said at last. “Stop looking at yourself in the mirror. Come and talk to me. Tell me why you could never fall in love with me.”

  “What a thing to say, órunn! I was always so terribly attracted to you,” he said. “On the other hand I didn’t always understand you. You knew more worlds than I did. You even made me a little afraid of you sometimes. But you always had a very overpowering personality. I was only seventeen.”

  “And it was another girl who came to you through a window. All you wanted to give me was some damned old book.”

  “What was I to do?” he said.

  “If you had fallen in love with me, nothing would ever have happened to me,” she said. “Nor to you, either.”

  “You have everything at your feet, órunn,” he said. “Even this world is your world, too.”

  “If you mean that I’m wicked enough even for this world, too, it isn’t true,” she said. “One can never be wicked enough for this world. No one is wicked enough for this world.”

  Then the look in her eyes was drowned in the refraction of the glasses, and she started to hum to herself, absentmindedly, and the smoke from her cigarette curled upwards.

  This girl had at one time gone to England to become world-famous for spiritualism, but her inexperience of miracles was too great for them to be able to use her. Pétur ríhross and Júel, whom she called unprintable names, forgot to send her any money, a stray Icelandic country girl alone in a world city. “You said just now that I was intelligent enough to live in this world, yet I wasn’t even intelligent enough to be a successful woman of the streets in a large city, and that sort of failure is the crowning misfortune that can befall a woman.”

  She had started singing again. No one knew what she was looking at. The poet paced the floor deep in thought: “You have always been a little cynical in the way you talk, both about yourself and the world,” he said. “Will you promise not to be offended if I ask you in all sincerity: did Friðrik never exist?”

 
She often did not hear what was said to her, and she went on singing; the cast of her features had been of a particular kind originally, and could only accommodate a particular kind of experience, but now the experience had long ago settled in these features and marked them in harmony with their nature and origin. But while he was still puzzling over her, she had long since made up her mind about him.

  “When the devil has taken care of old Félgor, I’m going to marry a man with your face,” she said, “your brow, your golden hair, your eyes, your hands.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “But who was the other man you mentioned?”

  “It’s my husband, whom I had just finished undressing and laying to rest when you arrived. He died at seven o’clock tonight. He’s lying there in the next room.”

  “Good God!” said Ólafur Kárason. “Is your husband dead?”

  “Yes, he died today,” said Madame Félgor. “But don’t grieve over it. He also died yesterday. And he died the day before yesterday. He dies every day. Shall I show you?”

  She led the poet against his will into the next room; he did not dare do other than tiptoe out of respect for this great and constantly repeated death. In the marital bed there lay an obese corpse, bald, blue in the face, with its mouth open and its teeth on the bedside table; the flabby shoulders protruded from under the bedclothes, and one arm hung limply over the edge of the bed; it was absolutely true, this man was dead to an unnatural degree, and yet there was in him some ghost which made a curious whistling noise in his nostrils.