From the Mouth of the Whale (5 page)

SHELL-HEAD
,
or
HUMPBACK WHALE:
has shells and barnacles covering most of its head. Wherever the water is deep enough it rubs itself against barnacle-encrusted rocks. Of all the inedible whales, this is the greatest scourge of ships and men, for it will charge at boats and smash them in two with its fins, flippers or tail. At times it will block men’s course, so they have no alternative but to collide with it. Upon which it will cast the ship high in the air if it can, and pick off everyone on board, unless men succeed in dodging so that it misjudges and charges past. However, the sound of an iron file is insupportable to it, causing it to go mad or kill itself. On hearing the sound of a thin piece of iron, about the size of a saw, being rasped against the gunwale using a large file, the humpback will be repulsed and flee or, if shallows are to be found nearby, take its own life by running aground. It contains a good deal of blubber and its short baleen makes fine runners for sledges. The humpback can grow to some sixty ells long.

Yes, strutting sandpiper, your footprints in the sandy beach are your handwriting; thus you write your ephemeral tales and reports of what you have seen on your short-winged travels … I learnt to form letters and illuminate capitals in the scriptorium in my grandfather’s house, where I was entrusted with the copying and compilation of books … These were minor works at first, timeless neither in content nor in execution … A ballad or two and verses to entertain the traveller; handy little books containing instructions on how to cook tasty dishes; prayer books, and workbooks in which to preserve illustrations found in borrowed tomes but left out of the copies due to lack of space or else because they were out of fashion or contravened the new Church law … I also copied the diagrams of anatomy in books of healing which showed mankind as we are: our form, the places where the flesh hugs the bone or swells out, all according to how the Creator’s hand moulded our substance like clay … Since the old women in country kitchens would no longer allow me to fumble their bodies, I collected in one volume everything I could find about healing the principal maladies afflicting the female anatomy … There in alphabetical order you could find every kind of blockage, disorder of the blood, fever and chill, or swelling of their vitals or upper body … Between these I copied out old prayers to the Virgin Mary and appeals to those saints who had proved most efficacious in curing the Icelandic belly, together with exorcisms and similar invocations of white magic to aid in the battle against the wiles of demons and other horrid sprites … The bulk of this material was copied from the leechbook of the good Bishop Jón Halldórsson, and patients regarded it as an honour to hear that reverend man’s wise counsel vying with the boiling of the kettle, the sucking of the chimney, the crackling of the lamps and the crunching of the gravel floor. They used to exclaim that it was as if the Lord Bishop himself had descended to the sooty kitchen to heal them … In other words, I held to my course when it came to the healing of female disorders and the collection of ravens’ heads … But the leechbook would later land me in such desperate straits that I will never again be able to return to society but am fated instead to sit here talking nonsense to birds … Having burnt one man, they were eager to burn more … ‘Schoolmaster of Necromancy’ they called me when I helped some lads copy the leechbook and pronounce the names of the holy women who are addressed in the invocations … Those hypocritical jackals would have burnt me too if the ladies I cured with the help of the late bishop had opened their mouths … But no, they kept mum out of gratitude for my care … Yet although my body hair was not singed on their bonfire, I felt the heat of the animosity they bear towards me, the vindictive nature that drives a man to destroy his neighbour in a fire as if he were a banned book … For what is the difference? Every book is imbued with the human spirit … They knew that, the sooty guardians of the kitchen hearths, when they claimed to hear the bishop’s voice in the descriptions of their maladies and fell on their knees, only to jump up with reproaches when they heard that I had compiled the text myself … It was all in fun … And yet … I would not dream of comparing myself to Bishop Jón, any more than it would cross your mind, sandpiper, to liken the puff of air from your short wings to the whoosh from an eagle’s flight … To watch a book burn … My eyes are smarting … In the conflagration I hear the breath of the man who composed the text, and the breath of the man who formed the words, one after the other, and the breath of the man who reads it … I hear this trinity breathing as one and the same being, steadily in and out, until the fire consumes the breath from their lungs, disbanding the fellowship of those whom the book nurtured, like the soil that brings forth different plants … And many were the intertwined souls that burnt at Helgafell when the old monastery library was cast on the bonfire, along with the few holy relics and statues that had not already been destroyed … Alas, I was there! … What could my puny strength achieve when set against the giant pyre that raged like three volcanic craters, so great was the heat from that diabolical act? … And who should have been the Royal Incendiary of the first pyre, the Master Incendiary of the second pyre, the Grim Incendiary of the third? He whose duty it was to take the lead in the spiritual education of the flock in that parish, Reverend Sigurdur Pétursson, a young man who had recently taken up the living there … A sunny countenance, spare of flesh, nimble in his movements and loving to his wife and the child she bore under her belt … They had occupied the living for only four months when he lost his mind … which was seventeen days before he ordered the burning … That day Reverend Sigurdur awoke before anyone else, already raving … He ran in his nightshirt to the library, locked himself in and began hurling the books higgledy-piggledy on the floor … The servants watched aghast through the windows as he tore off his shift, flung himself on his back and rolled around on the books like a flea-bitten stray in the farmyard … Howling, he seized the writings at random, laid them on his naked flesh and rubbed them against himself, up and down, up and down, in a sinful fashion … But when he started ripping pages from the books and shoving them into his bodily orifices, the servants, afraid that he would choke himself, broke down the door … They overpowered the minister and tied him to his bed … The source of his madness was traced to a thumb-sized statue carved of whale ivory, supposedly representing Saint Barbara with her tower, which the minister’s young wife had found among the old clutter belonging to the monks and intended to use as a bogeyman for the unborn child … She had been toying with this object, which had probably been carved by some newly baptised Greenlander, while sitting on the bed in the couple’s room and had inadvertently pushed it under her husband’s pillow … So Reverend Sigurdur had been sleeping on it the night he went mad … When he was released from his bed-prison seventeen days later, however, the parson’s mind was sharper and more lucid than ever before … He ordered his sexton to clear out the library, pile the heretical collection in a heap in the field and build three bonfires with the books, which he then set alight himself … Providence guided me to Helgafell that day … I was meant to witness the tragedy … I was on my way to Stadarstadur to paint an altarpiece that I had carved earlier that winter … Seeing a pall of smoke over Helgafell as if the very hill were on fire, I gave in to curiosity and headed for the parsonage … Had I been able to fly like a bird, I might have made do with lifting myself over the hill to see what was causing the smoke … But no, I covered the whole distance on foot, arriving to find the fire at its height and, falling on my knees before it, I wept … That day Jónas ‘the Learned’ sank to new depths of ignominy in the eyes of his fellow men … But they did not see what I saw … Or if they did see, they did not understand what was happening before their eyes … When the bonfire in the middle, the largest, breathed its last, admitting a rush of air to the embers like a thousand devils all racing in single file down the same pipe, there was a great crack of thunder from the pyre … Everyone jumped – there was not supposed to be any gunpowder in the fire … While they were exchanging astonished glances, I kept my gaze fixed on the flames … I saw an open book rise from the pyre and float over the blazing pile … It appeared to be quite intact, the spine facing down, the pages spreading like wings … In an instant it glowed a dazzling white … And the parson’s youngest daughter cried out in a high voice:

‘Baba, see de birdy!’

Next moment the book exploded in a shower of sparks … And the heat blew them to heaven … A year later Reverend Sigurdur rowed out in a boat to collect down and eggs from a small island in Lake Helgafell with two of his siblings to help … By then he had become so arrogant in spiritual matters that he did not give a fig for the enchantment under which the island was said to lie … But on that trip his boat was holed in the middle and all three of them drowned … O little bird, do not let Man’s innumerable acts of wickedness weary you into fluttering too close to their bonfires, lest your flight feathers be singed … Indeed, we must look to our wits, brother Jeremiah …

BLUEBOTTLE:
lays oblong eggs from which maggots hatch; if they are kept in a bull’s horn, come the spring they will turn into flies which the trout enjoys. The bluebottle is fat and as thick as a man’s thumb.

Last winter I was as solitary as Adam in his first year in Paradise, though the island in winter is nothing like that delightful place. It is cold and bleak and one does not venture out of doors except to empty one’s chamber pot, and not properly even then; one merely opens the door a crack, just wide enough for the pot. I was more like a wretched mouse in its hole than a man created in God’s image. As little and hunched as the rat’s cousin, not ramrod straight, proudly surveying my domain like Adam. Ah, yes, Adam was tall and held his head high. That way he could see over the whole world, for he was bigger and heavier than his living descendants, just under thirty yards in height, and with such a head of hair that his locks cascaded like a waterfall over his loins. He was the largest living creature that God had created from earthly clay. And all through that year as he walked the earth alone, his massive body was being fired and glazed by the sun like clay in an oven. All growth was new: the trees put down roots, sprouted, then dropped their leaves and stood naked for the first time. The swans rose honking from the moorland tarns and heard their own voices for the first time. The lily opened her flowers and her perfume filled the air for the first time. The bee alighted on the dwarf fireweed and quenched her thirst with fresh honey before buzzing in flight to the next flower cup. It had never happened before. Everything was new to the eyes of the man and he was entirely new to himself. Moulded by the Master from the four elements, as they combine in the earth, he was closer to his origins now than he ever would be again. His blood was still diluted with seawater, there was gravel in his flesh, roots crept along his sinews and muscles, the seed that quickened to life in his testicles was thick as spider silk and foamy as sea spume. Thus he strode across the world and wherever he looked he saw to the ends of the Earth. At night the starry sky turned over his head, an ever-moving, twinkling, living picture show, and his childish eyes began at once to draw lines between the points of light as he sought there for parallels to the things that he perceived on his journeys by day: a swan, a ram, a snake. By day the blazing orb of the sun floated over his head and its heat drew the sweat from his skin. On the longest day of the world’s first year Adam grew so hot that the sweat broke out all over him and ran in torrents down his colossal trunk. Most of the liquid was absorbed by the golden mane that cloaked his body, and to wring the wetness from his hair Adam shook himself as he had seen the dog do – alone of all beasts this creature had taken to following him wherever he went – but in spite of such tricks the sweat continued to spring from its human source. Adam bent his head and cupped his hands to catch the liquid that poured down his forehead and fell like rain from his brow. He watched the bowl fill and the level of the salty water rising fast, before long reaching his thumb and forefinger, but for a moment before it flowed over the sides, its surface grew still and Adam saw a wondrous sight in the mirror of his hands: he saw himself. Thirst had not yet driven him to the waters, he did not yet know hunger, for a year was no more than an hour to the immortal man. And so he did not know himself in the eyes that gazed at him from the pool of sweat, did not recognise the smooth, glowing face that framed them, nor the nose that separated them. Shrieking with fright, Adam threw up his hands. When he dared to look back at where the face had appeared there were no more eyes to be seen, the mirror had shattered into countless drops, and although he collected more sweat in his palms the surface was never again smooth enough to show a whole picture, for agitation made his hands tremble too much. After a while he gave up and stood without moving, staring blankly into space, his arms hanging idly at his sides. The sun descended in the sky and he felt her heat moving from his neck to his shoulders, from where she began her journey down his long spine. And then yet another wonder occurred, a phenomenon which he would hardly have noticed had the novel sight earlier that day not opened his eyes to the possibility that the visible world had more to it than that which is solidly present; why, from his feet grew a creature which seemed to originate in himself. At first it was nothing but a faint pool, though not shaped at all like a pool, and for a while he thought that this too was liquid pouring from his body, but by the time the patch of sunshine on his spine had settled lukewarm in the small of his back, the phenomenon had acquired a familiar form: a flat head, broad shoulders and a thick trunk with long arms and short legs. Adam started back: it resembled nothing so much as the apes that lived in the southern part of the garden. In contrast to the dogs, these creatures treated him with contempt, scowling and grimacing whenever he came near. He did not know then that these grotesque half-men were put on Earth by the Creator so that he would recognise himself in them when he fell into sin. Ah, but there was still a long time to pass before the day when in their distorted faces he would see his own visage in pride, envy, rage, idleness, lechery, covetousness or gluttony. Free from sin as he was, Adam did not understand the taunt, seeing them only as mischievous, hairy creatures, and often wondered why they were allowed to exist. But as the first man started back, so the dark creature moved backwards with him, following close, pursuing him as if sewn to his feet, and when he finally straightened his back after trying to shake it off, trying in vain to tear its feet from his own, it had grown so long that it was almost as tall as himself. He had often lain on his back, feeling his own limbs, stroking from his upper arm down to his hand and along each finger to the tip, and in the same way his hands travelled down his thighs and calves to his toes – and beyond. Thus Adam was aware of the general form of his body, and in the dark patch that lay at his feet he saw for the first time a creature that resembled himself. At that moment his solitude was revealed to him, loneliness pierced his childish soul: all around him he saw pairs standing in the meadow: the lions and the sheep, the lizards and the tortoises, and in the waters the walruses and the whales, the flounders and the salmon, while above flew two swans and two eagles, and in the birch scrub a pair of snow buntings puffed out their breasts and sang of the joys of coupledom. Adam gazed out over the wide world; could it be that he had overlooked his other half? No, on his journeys around the Earth he had peered under every stone, groped inside every crevice, turned over every clump of seaweed; there was nothing to be found that resembled him. Just as disappointment threatened to flare up inside him, bringing with it a sinful sense of ingratitude towards the Creator, his eyes happened to fall on the image on the ground and a still stronger sensation seized hold of his mind, yes, and body too. Now it so happened that when this being found its way out of Adam’s soles he was standing on the margin between land and sea, on sandy ground full of dips and hollows, dimpled and gently rounded. The image on the ground was thus much softer than him in form, the dips and swellings adding curves to its hips and breast. Yes, the feeling that gripped his mind also gripped his body. The limb between his legs swelled, reared up and jutted forwards, like the strong arm of an army commander ordering his troops into battle: ‘Onwards to victory!’ And without further ado Adam obeyed the command of his powerfully raised limb. He cast himself over the creature, thrusting his limb between its legs, deep into the sandy soil, pumping on top of it until a great, thick stream of sperm spurted from his body with the force of a tidal wave crashing against a cliff forty fathoms high. The climax shattered the rainbow on the inside of his eyelids, each colour shooting out into the void like a meteor, sometimes violet, sometimes blue as water, sometimes yellow as the sun, and the seed flowed into every cleft in the Earth’s crust, every crack in the rocks, every groove and fissure in the crystals, every hole in the soil. Thus Adam fertilised the underworld by lying with his own shadow. From this act sprang the race that dwells in the dark worlds underground. Was it thrice three hundred thousand that quickened to life on that single occasion? Is that the reason why wherever mankind settles, he is preceded by a vast horde of invisible beings in mounds and hillocks, crags and mountains? But the Creator saw that this would not do: what an abhorrent thought that man should be filled with lust for his own shadow, let alone that from him should spring such a legion of offspring every time he lay with the earth. Before long, there would be no room for the mass of earth-dwellers in the darkness and they would burst forth with the same force as the sperm from their father’s loins. So the first thing the Maker of Man did was to deprive Adam of his shadow until he had found a solution to the problem. And while Adam rushed around the realm of the Earth, seeking an object for his lechery – bellowing with lust, leading a chorus of howling dogs that followed his every step – the Maker of the World invented woman, taking care to form her belly in such a way that it could hold no more than three human embryos at a time. Yes, and their species would shrink by an inch with every generation until man was not much taller than the ignorant son of Adam who sits here on the shore with his misshapen shadow, putting down these thoughts in words.