World Light

by Halldor Laxness

  That evening the ship was again in harbor. It was raining. The poet stood on deck and looked at the rain coming down. There was a streetlamp; it glinted on the fish offal on the quay in the summer twilight. Cheerful passengers in raincoats were waiting for the ship to tie up; they were going ashore.

  “We’re going to a café,” said Bera. “Are you coming, too?” She put her hand on the poet’s arm momentarily.

  “No thanks,” he said. “I don’t know how to go to cafés. I’m going to stay here and look at the rain.”

  “He’s a poet,” said the student. “Some call him Ljósvíkingur, others call him Bervíkingur. Poet, which are you?”

  “Do come,” she said.

  “Where have you been all day?” asked Bera’s girl friend.

  “With myself,” he said.

  “He’s been with himself!” said the student. “He’s a poet. Heeheehee!”

  One girl came over and said, “Isn’t it fun being a poet?”

  Another said, “Will you write a poem about me?”

  “Come on,” said Bera. “We’re going to a café.”

  “The ragamuffin gave a hop,” said the student. “Humpty-dumpty saw him bop. Can you finish that one?”

  A chorus of laughter; and the whole crowd went ashore. He stood at the rail and looked at the lights in the village. It went on raining into the mud. She was in a new, off-white raincoat, with a black pillbox hat on her head; how slender she was; and she tripped slightly as she walked. In the light of the streetlamp at the top of the pier she looked back; the light gleamed on the rain behind her as if she were standing in the middle of a harp with silver strings—what was she looking for? For a moment he thought she might call out, but she did not. Could it be that she had been looking back for him? No, it could not be. She went on with the crowd.

  But when she had gone ashore, he was seized with impatience and he wandered off the ship by himself. He walked first up the main street, and then along smaller streets. If he saw a nice house, well-lit, he thought it was the café, for he associated such establishments with bright lights and luxury. He peered through windows, tiptoed up doorsteps, listened but could not hear her voice anywhere; he became more and more agitated, he started running, landed in puddles, muddied himself; it rained and rained. A man came out of a garden and stepped into his path and said harshly, “What’s all this?”

  The poet came to a dead stop in the street, as if he had been shot, and stood in front of the man, panting and guilty-looking like a criminal with blood on his hands.

  “Why are you running like that, boy?” said the man.

  “I’m searching,” said the poet.

  “For what?” said the man.

  “For someone,” said the poet.

  “For whom?” said the man.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve seen a crowd of people going into a café, a young, fat man and a fair-haired girl with a pillbox hat on her head?”

  “Pillbox hat?” said the man. “No. And the café went bust a long time ago. It doesn’t pay to have a café. These are critical times for the nation. On the other hand I can sell you some excellent dried halibut, as white as a newly fallen angel, twice as cheap as in the south. It’s a giveaway bargain, man. And if you want some coffee, I’ll wake up my old woman free of charge. And I can also show you the most delectable spring haddock, man, red through and through like an untouched maiden, the best fish God ever created.”

  The poet needed all his diplomacy to escape without any stockfish from this simile-rich man. When he at last got away, he decided to walk very slowly so as not to frighten himself or others. A river flowed through the village. The crowd was standing on the bridge, talking loudly above the babbling of the water.

  “Ljósvíkingur!” said Bera, and took his arm while her girlfriend took the other. “Why didn’t you come with us?”

  “The ragamuffin gave a hop, Humpty-dumpty saw him bop,” said the student. “How does it finish, poet?”

  The crowd moved on, except for the two girls and the poet; they hung back and were left behind on the bridge; he never knew who decided that, but there they stood, leaning over the railing, with him between the two of them, and looked at the river flowing in the midnight dusk and the rain falling. He wished that this moment would never end. An unknown bird flew past them. Did she lean up against him? If she did, then nothing seemed more natural nor more straightforward. He was the proudest poet in the world.

  A moment later they heard a shout, the crowd was waiting for them, did they want to be left behind, the ship would be leaving soon.

  “Excuse me, but how old are you girls?” asked the student. “Have you forgotten what I told you? Little girls should beware of Bervík poets.”

  Ólafur Kárason gave a start as if he felt a knife against his bare skin: what had this man told them? Now for the first time he realized that obviously all his fellow passengers must know what had happened to him. It was a small nation; everyone knew everything about everyone else, he alone had forgotten that. He let go the arms of both girls.

  “You go on ahead,” he said. “I’m staying here.”

  “You’ll miss the ship,” said Bera.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

  She took his arm and said, “Come on.”

  Then he whispered, “Bera, let me talk to you privately afterwards.”

  There was no opportunity to exchange any more words. No sooner had the crowd gone aboard than she disappeared below decks; and soon the ship had put to sea.

  He was uneasy in his mind. It was long past midnight, the passengers had all turned in, he went on pacing the deck in the night-gloaming, the rain had stopped, a single star peeped out.

  He had really no right to think that he was expecting anyone, he had not arranged any meeting, he did not even know if she had heard what he was asking of her, or had paid any attention to it. But he was too agitated to go below and rest. He tried to calm his mind with this one star that shone on the wake of the ship; but not even a star could bring him peace.

  Was she asleep?

  If the student had told her, what was she thinking now? Why had she allowed a criminal to squeeze her arm on the bridge; why had she even leaned up against him? If she was sleeping, what had she been thinking about when she had fallen asleep? Why had the god laid this upon him on top of all else, to show him this image precisely now, in this trough of life?

  There was a whiff of the new morning in the chilly breeze; he was cold. But just as he was about to go below, he suddenly became aware of her standing beside him. She had thrown her raincoat over her shoulders, the breeze ruffled her long locks, her face was paler than usual, from her eyes there shone a strange mystery in the gloaming just before dawn, a night-woman, and behind her the land of sleeplessness. Perhaps she had been standing there for a long time and staring out over the sea before he had noticed her.

  She did not look at him until he had whispered her name a second time.

  “Is it you?” he said. “Or am I seeing things?”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said slowly.

  “How can you stand beside me, Bera, after what you’ve heard?”

  “What have I heard?” she said.

  “Don’t you despise me?” he asked.

  “What kind of a person do you think I am?” she replied.

  “What did the student say about me?” he asked.

  “I didn’t listen,” she said.

  She looked at him with her deep, steady eyes for a long time. If he had previously thought it essential to explain his position to her, he now felt, at this look, how trivial all accusations and excuses were. With one glance the eyes of beauty, wiser than all books, could wipe away all the anxiety, guilt and remorse of a whole lifetime. She had come to see him in the secrecy of this night to rehabilitate him, to give him the right to live a new life where beauty would reign alone. He put his arm around her slender waist and kissed her warm lips in the cool night breeze. Afterwards he looked ar
ound in alarm; she was not alarmed and did not look around. But in the same instant she had gone.

  Only the solitary star was left behind, pale in the light of the early morning—and the memory of the time he had found her, three mornings ago, radiant in the glow of a new light.

  We met like passing ships upon the ocean,

  While meadows basked in autumn’s russet gladness.

  Our destinies were strung ’tween time and motion

  Like all who meet in joy and part in sadness.

  We stand in silence, you and I. The trailing

  Mists of morning melt from heaven’s spaces

  And clear the path for the one who home is sailing,

  And for the one who sails to unknown places.

  Oh, wonder of mine eyes, I welcome thee!

  Or is this greeting only the good-bye

  Of one condemned to separate from thee?

  Am I the one who goes—or do I stay?

  I only know your beauty now will guide me

  In every step along life’s endless way.

  22

  The loveliest flower lives in hiding; very few people ever manage to see it, many overlook it, some do not understand its value, while those who discover it will never see another flower again. All day one thinks about it. When one sleeps, one dreams of it. One dies with its name on one’s lips.

  The jovial student had found her, and never left her side all day. He was endowed with all the accomplishments the Ljósvíkingur lacked. His cheerfulness seemed as if it could be measured only in horsepower, his energy bordered on frenzy, he was always ready with a quip, he could talk to many people at once, his speech was sleek and polished by nature, with no inner effort, whereas a poet has to buy his simplest expressions with protracted suffering and his poems, even the bad ones, with almost unbearable sorrow, with unquenchable grief. In the presence of this man the poet suffered physical torments, like a child visiting a sawmill for the first time. He fled if they approached; but he could not stop watching them.

  Who could understand the heart? Last night she had deliberately lingered on the bridge when the student’s crowd had moved on—yet this morning she was bestowing on him her guileless glances, each of them a treasure in itself. She smiled at him with all the candor of daytime, she flaunted the golden-smooth color of her cheek and the ethereal wave of her hair before his lovelorn eyes; only the discretion of daylight seemed to prevent her from offering him her lips. Does infidelity no less than cruelty have to be the inseparable companion of beauty, then? Is fidelity just the excuse of the ugly? Or was it just the poet’s imagination that she had come up on deck to see him in the secrecy of the night?

  That evening the ship sailed up a long fjord and tied up at a quay in a large town; a crowd of people disembarked here, and the last of Ólafur Kárason’s cabin companions got ready to leave. It turned out that here, in these green and red houses with their beautiful gardens, was where the student charmer lived. Ólafur Kárason heard him inviting the girls to a party at his home. His mother, a formidable woman, had come on board to meet her son; these were distinguished people. In his mind’s eye, the poet saw Bera being received like a queen with unrestrained delight by wealthy people in a great mansion; in his imagination he confused the student’s invitation with the caliph’s feasts in the Thousand and One Nights—and he himself was one of the beggars outside. The evening sun turned the windows of the town to gleaming bronze, and the lavish embellishment of the sunset played its part in justifying the poet’s ideas about the oriental splendor of the town; there was also a new moon. But at the head of the fjord there was a wide valley with broad, green grasslands, and the river flowed silver-clear through the valley into the evening sun, the green of the slopes and the yellow, newly mown meadows turned red in the euphoria of the evening.

  “I’ll come for you all at ten o’clock,” said the student charmer, and raised his hat and bowed, and Bera took leave of him with her calm smile in which every thought of deceit seemed an impossibility, and every promise a certainty.

  Like a light eiderdown the dusk of this mild summer night settled on the warm mountains and the still sea; the moon and the stars took charge of heaven and earth. He was wondering whether to stroll ashore by himself and have a look at the town, but to tell the truth he was not in the mood for anything; seldom had his own wretchedness been weighed down by such a vast burden of other people’s happiness. And then he saw the girl standing not far off, bareheaded, in her light coat. At first there was nothing to suggest that she had noticed him. She leaned against the rail and looked ashore; it was nearly ten o’clock. The student charmer was bound to be coming soon to fetch his guests to the party. Ólafur Kárason had not the courage to let on that he had seen her, let alone speak to her. But then it was she who did not think it beneath her to notice him. And since he did not come to her, she came to him.

  “Ljósvíkingur,” she said, and her smile and her voice, that ethereal hair and the pallor of her cheek along with the dusk of the midsummer night and the young half-light of the new moon—everything was one.

  He did not say anything.

  “Why haven’t you spoken a word to me all day?” she said.

  She had her own melody, a rather eager tone of voice in keeping with her tripping, slightly stubborn gait, but simple and free of affectation; her pronunciation revealed a certain aristocracy of the common people, with a strong flavor of the country in it.

  “You have found someone better than me,” he said heavily.

  “Ach, why are you being like this?” she asked reproachfully, but without any resentment.

  “He is intelligent, well educated, congenial, well dressed, and undoubtedly rich,” replied the poet.

  “Whom are you talking about?” she said.

  “The student,” said the poet.

  “Yes,” she said. “He’s all right, I suppose.”

  “And he’s giving a party for you,” he said.

  “What’s the time?” she asked.

  The poet: “He’s bound to be here any minute.”

  “I don’t want to go,” she said. “And anyway, the party isn’t specially for me.”

  “You accepted with thanks,” he said.

  “I didn’t promise anything,” she said. “It was the other girls who promised to go.”

  Then he asked eagerly, “Are you not going to his party, then?”

  She looked the poet in the face with her deep, deeply perfect eyes and said, “No.” Just that one word.

  “Aren’t you going ashore, then?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Are you?”

  “Will you come ashore with me?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  But after they had gone ashore he was tongue-tied. He was too agitated, and besides, he did not know her language; she did not even seem to listen when he talked, although she was talkative and quick to laugh when she was with others; it was as if her reactions ceased in his presence. When they had walked in silence for a while he started again: “I thought you found this student attractive?”

  She, curt and toneless: “Why did you think that?”

  “You’ve been talking to him all day.”

  “He wouldn’t leave me alone.”

  “What effect does he have on you, then?”

  “Oh, none at all, really.”

  “Then at least he doesn’t have a bad effect on you?”

  “Oh, no, not particularly.”

  “Well then, since he doesn’t make a bad impression on you, you could just as well fall in love with him.”

  “Why are you behaving like this?” she said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “If you insist on knowing,” she said, “he bores me stiff. He behaves as if he owns me, and that I cannot stand. And now let’s not talk about it any more. Say something nice.”

  She had never said so many words to him at once, and he was astonished to hear her say all this.

  “Bera,” he s
aid, “when I walk beside you, and particularly when I look at you, I feel that everything I’m going to say is going to be banal and empty. And yet I now understand for the first time why we have a sun.”

  “Why do we have a sun?” she asked.

  “For your sake,” he said.

  She did not answer for a long time, but her portrait said more than speech; her changes of expression were more eloquent than words. Once again there came over her this anxious questioning, this other face, this foreboding of lasting sorrow. And she said, finally, “That’s not the way to talk to any human being.”

  “I ask your forgiveness once again,” he said. “Perhaps it is I who am not a human being.”

  “Yes,” she said, “it’s you who are different from everyone else. And I, on the other hand, am just an ordinary girl, except that I’m nowhere near being pretty—can’t you see how ugly I am when I close my mouth? Everyone says that I’m too flat, and I’m too long in the waist, with thick legs and not at all nice hands.”

  “Really?” he said. “Perhaps you’re one-eyed, with a wart on your nose and hag’s claws? Then it’s just my bad eyesight which has endowed you with beauty; my ignorance which says that the sun was created for beauty’s sake; my madness which says that beauty belongs to that sphere where the concept of death is incomprehensible. But if that is so, let me never be cured.”

  “Don’t say madness,” she said. “It’s wicked.”

  “It is my love that cannot acquiesce in believing in anything less than immortality,” he said.

  “Don’t speak,” she said, and laid her hand in his for a moment. “Some people think it’s necessary to talk, but it isn’t necessary to talk.”