From the Mouth of the Whale (9 page)

‘It seems to me that the best way to go about it would be by the sort of exorcism that good priests used to perform in papist times, that is, to tell the ghoul the history of the world, of spirits and men, both evil and benevolent. In that way it will eventually see where it fits into God’s great mechanism and realise that it is in quite the wrong place. For how is a dead man to tell the difference between himself and the living if he is still able to walk around, participate in fights and run errands? For that matter, how is he to know that he is not one of the elves? Both live outside human society. How is he to know that he is not a piece of driftwood? The flesh of both is equally rotten and stinking. Or a stray dog? Both are shooed away. Or merely a rock that rolls down the mountainside, causing men to dodge?’ I said, and persisted doggedly:

‘No, we must find this walking corpse a suitable resting place, we must find it the right shelf in the world’s museum of curiosities, we must place it beside its peers, so that both it and any passer-by may see what kind it is, and thus both we and the ghost will be free of all fear and suffering. For when a thing has been classified correctly, it is tamed.’

Yes, Láfi and I would impress upon the corpse of the parson’s son the workings of the world and its own place within it, after which it would hopefully find its way to the right door, in this case the coffin lid. But for this to work, I would have to browbeat it. Láfi glanced out of the corner of his eye and nodded, signalling that the ghost was sneaking up behind me. I spun round. Yes, there it stood, mouldering and hideous. I began the browbeating:

Christ’s death upon the holy cross
has brought mankind salvation.
Twixt thee and me this fact I toss,
thou creature of damnation …

And still I intoned:

All day we’ve knocked this fiend about
and harried him with our verse;
may it strike his jaw like a bloody great clout
and put an end to this curse.

At this, the apparition’s lower jaw snapped against the upper with such force that its front teeth cracked to the root. Not that it could have answered me anyway as its tongue was too rotten to do more than growl and spit. And now it could not even do that, though its throat still rattled and the groans found their way out through its nose as it flinched under the verses, which became ever harder for it to bear the more skilfully and aptly they were composed. While I chanted, Láfi made sure that the ghost remained within earshot, for of course it fled from the message like a dog from curses, and was uncomfortably quick on its feet due to the length of its stride, as mentioned before. The corpse fled, not pausing in its flight except to stoop for stones or dirt or sheep droppings still warm from the rectum, which it flung at my head as I tore in pursuit, chanting as loudly as my lack of breath would allow, while Láfi ran alongside, trying to head it off or guide it towards rough terrain that would slow it down. Eventually, we managed to drive it into a marsh, where it sank up to its navel in a bog. I was now able to summon up before its mouldering eyes a picture of the horde of demons that fell to Earth when Lucifer was cast down from Heaven. Their multitude is like glowing motes in a sunbeam (they are swarming evil in search of something to stick to) or as many as the raindrops that fall in a downpour that lasts for nine days without stopping. Then I consoled it by explaining that it did not belong to that group. I described for it how the heavens rise and fall in relation to the moon, three in a row above and three in a row below. In these heavens dwell the ethereal spirits, endowed with various natures, some fine, some foul, though it is always perilous for people to swallow them and therefore not to be attempted except by well-equipped experts like Láfi and me. Under this onslaught the animate corpse struggled like a wolf in a trap, scrabbling in the spongy moss and trying in vain to heave itself out of the bog. I continued, turning now to its own case, telling it that revenants were the bodies of the dead who in life had been guilty of swearing at others; that on the corpses of such cursing wretches the doors stood wide open for the Devil himself to crawl inside. Which he did willingly, appointing himself the driver of the body and riding the deceased like a cruel jockey driving on his horse, except that in this case the vengeful heart formed the saddle in which the accursed rider sat as he drove his spurs into the rotten lungs. Once I had exposed the Prince of Darkness who was abusing the corpse of the parson’s son, it was as if all the wind left its sails. Its body slumped, its arms fell to its sides and it hung forwards, trapped by the bog, like a drunken rider fallen asleep in the saddle, its matted hair swinging in the evening breeze. In this position it began to stiffen up, like the corpse it should by rights have been. A deathly silence fell on the countryside, the breeze caressed my cheek and I believed the Devil’s corpse-ride was at an end. And so it was for a long moment. Then the corpse’s mouth fell open and from where I was standing I noticed that a small butterwort growing on a nearby tussock imitated its movement; its flower-head opened with a quiet pop, releasing a midge that it had snapped up the instant the world fell silent. The fly had not been lying in the plant’s digestive juices too long to prevent it from launching into flight, and with an ugly thunderous drone it flew straight into the dead man’s mouth. Instantly all rigidity left the corpse as the Devil re-entered it in the form of this midge. The corpse tore itself out of the bog with a terrible howl and took flight, heading for the mountain with us close on its heels. But its strength was so depleted by its enforced sojourn under my fiend-scaring verses that Láfi caught up with it before it could squeeze all the way into a fissure in the rocks. Clutching its shanks, Láfi hauled with all his might against the ghost which was halfway down the cleft, hanging on grimly to a root or whatever it could grab. The wretched fiend was evidently trying to reach the place where it was happiest; in other words, Hell. At this I began my hectoring anew, commanding it to release the soul of the parson’s son for judgement by God in Heaven, for only then would it be free to travel down the fifteen levels that separate the world of men from the inferno of Hell. At that it ceased all its struggling and our work was done. We dragged the corpse out of the hole and wiped the filth from its face, for although it was all battered and maggoty as described before, it now had the peaceful air of one who is well and truly dead. We carried the boy between us home to the parsonage, where the parson and his wife thanked us with kisses and cries of gratitude for laying the fiend that had forcibly taken up its abode in their son’s body. Láfi and I received our appointed wages, which were not much to speak of once we had divided them up between us but more than enough when one considers the fame we acquired by this deed. We did not dine at the farm, having had our fill of the stinking corpse, but took the food we were given and hurried up the mountain with our tent. It was the longest day of the year, my last night with Láfi, and the prospects were good for poetry. The following day I would head south to Sigga and Pálmi Gudmundur, our firstborn. I was full of grand plans, mindful of the fame that the destruction of a malevolent ghost was bound to bring me, the anticipated renown that would elevate me to the giddy heights of esteem, from which vantage point I would be able to survey the world as my playground. Just as I was thinking this thought, I was startled by a gruff voice saying:

‘Make the most of your fame!’

It is my poor old lady, Sigrídur. Instead of answering, I merely pat the tussock at my side and so the two of us sit, watching the sun complete its circuit of the Earth. It climbs aslant up the cloud-foamy sea of sky, sailing in a fine arc to the horizon where it perches for an instant like a dandelion seed which just touches a wet stone before the wind lifts it away.

Dazzling light: when the day is such a brilliant blue-white that the firmament is no longer a frame for the burning sun, rather the sun has become the kindling for a brilliant silver curtain that rises at the horizon and is drawn across the entire visible world, while the mountain ranges to the north, west and south shimmer as if in a mirage, sometimes in shadow, sometimes in sunlight, but never still; and the sea is a sheet of billowing velvet, stretching from the shores of the island to the hem of the sky, while the island itself, glittering in its midst, is a yellow-gold button on a downy cushion, waiting to be dented by the head of the heavenly child; and the whole vision is run through with tinkling bright silk thread, nimbly tacked between earth and sea and sky and fiery sun with the great needle that can pierce every element. But tracing the blazing needlework means little to the human eye, for although one line springs from another, like vein branching from vein on a birch leaf or the back of one’s hand or a precious stone, this magnificent play of light is so small when set against eternity that to perceive the whole picture the spectator would have to step back into the next world, to stand beside the throne of the One who in the beginning opened His mouth and uttered the words: ‘Let there be light!’

And there was dazzling light.

Jónas the Learned sits on a rock by the shore, gazing at this world which has silently merged into a single point of light. He has not taken his eyes off it since he sat down and the vision first began to take form, and now his pupils are like grains of sand, the protective film of tears has dried up; he urgently needs to blink but cannot lest the vision disappear before he can fix its details in his memory, which is essential if he is to interpret it. But in the end there is no avoiding it, either he must draw down the lids over his eyes or else he will go blind. He blinks. But instead of dissolving, the vision gains an addition: far to the north-west, in the angle of a cove where land meets sea in a glimmering mirage, a tiny black spot appears and begins slowly to move out into the bay. Careful not to lose sight of the sailing dot, Jónas shifts on his hard stone seat and takes a deep breath: this could be a long wait. He opens his eyes wide and keeps them like that until an infernal cramp seizes every muscle in his head, from the corners of his mouth to his crown, and his face is distorted into a ludicrous mask of suffering, but by then the dot has grown to the size of the smallest fingernail on an infant’s hand and the spectator dares to close his lids again for an instant. Next time Jónas looks at the dot it has changed shape and is no longer a dot but a diamond, a black diamond sliding over the silky smooth sea: it is the prow of a boat and that boat is making for the island.

There is a man standing in the bow – the watcher on shore squints in the hope of recognising him (could they be bringing him supplies?), but the light falls on the man’s back – as yet he is only the silhouette of a man – and he raises his right hand in a grand gesture, as if waving to Jónas Pálmason the Learned. Jónas is about to wave back but lets his hand fall in his lap when he sees that the greeting was assuredly not intended for him. For as soon as the man’s arm comes to a stop above his head there is such a whooshing of feathers that the wind blows from all directions at once as every last bird in the north obeys the man’s command, swiftly swooping in from land and sea. Whether they have been endowed with large wings or small, speckled coats or black stockings, whether they are short of beak or long of shank, with heather in their crop or sand eels in their gullet, the birds answer the summons and circle like a whirlwind over the man, calling, squawking, chirping, until each finds its place in the sky above his head. When the down finally ceases to snow from their wings, Jónas sees that the flock has formed a living fan over the boat, in which a pair of each species (cock and hen, drake and duck, gander and goose) has lined up according to size, from the wren, fluttering at shoulder height around the man in the bow, to the puffin which flaps frantically somewhat higher, to the piping whimbrel hovering above the mallard but below the cruel eagle, right up to the swans, cob and pen, beating wings so white that they rival the silvery firmament.

After studying this vision for a while, Jónas blinked, at which the man lowered his arm and pointed to the surface of the sea. In an instant the sea became as clear as a cool autumn evening and the boat appeared to be hanging in thin air rather than floating on water, for the ocean had grown so translucent that its bed could be seen far and wide, even to the horizon. Jónas saw now that the island was like a tapering peak; he sat not on a rock on the beach but on the edge of a precipice. Then the glassy sea began to boil, the deeps churned and now the fish came swimming with rapid flaps of their tails, from south and east, from the shallows by the shore and the trenches beyond. There were redfish and whiting, shark and plaice, sea scorpion and halibut, thorny skate and cod, herring and seal, and all the other fish Jónas the Learned knew and others he did not. Observing the same rule as the birds in the sky, they arranged themselves according to size, from the keel of the boat to the bottom of the sea, sticklebacks at the top, sperm whales at the bottom, and so many species in between that when each pair was in place the shoal spread out in the clear brine like a scallop shell, a glittering reflection of the flying fan above. There was no respite for Jónas’s eyes as he cast his gaze hither and thither between sky and sea, memorising the appearance of the birds and fishes, their similarities in colour and shape, redwing and redfish …

All the while this spectacle lasted, the boat slid ever closer to the island – moving of its own accord though there was no wind in that still, cloudless, dazzling world – and had Jónas paid any attention to the figure standing in the bow he would have seen that he was a man in his forties, clad in a coat of grey-brown or grey-speckled homespun, with a homespun hat of the same colour on his head, while under the brim could be glimpsed eyes that seemed to glow like glass orbs. The man swung his arm again, drawing the naturalist’s attention from the creatures of the heights and depths: this time he pointed to land. Then it appeared to Jónas as if in a revelation that from the shores of the sea to the peaks of the glacier a specimen of every kind of plant nourished by Icelandic soil tore itself willingly from mould and gravel – everything from the forget-me-not to the rowan tree – and the flowers of earth rose into the sky, light as mist from a mountain tarn. High in the sky, the grasses and herbs classed themselves according to their growth, twining together to form a vast garland that danced over the barren wastes, giving off a perfume so sweet that Jónas nearly swooned. But he had to stay awake for the spectacle was not over: now the land animals entered the stage on a mossy stone, the fox and the field mouse; the little mice perching serenely between the foxes’ ears.