Heaven and Hell (14 page)

XIII

His first job here in the Village, apart from going as a beast
of burden down to the shop with Helga, was to open beer bottles for Brynjólfur and see to it that Kolbeinn had enough coffee in the large coffee pot Geirþrúður bought for him when she went to London two years ago. The pot cost a pretty penny since it had supposedly belonged to a famous poet, William Wordsworth, who composed many poems for the world, some of which still shine over tormented and arrogant humankind.

We mention this about the pot and its former owner because there are two things that matter to Captain Kolbeinn: poetry and the sea. Poetry is like the sea and the sea is dark and deep, but also blue and wondrously beautiful, there swim many fish and there live many kinds of creatures, not all good. We all understand Kolbeinn’s interest in the sea very well, but some to be sure have difficulties understanding his interest in poetry. Naturally we read the Icelandic sagas, they have something to do with the nation and are sometimes exciting, quite boisterous, and have heroes to whom you might possibly compare yourself, also natural to read a few folktales, tales of everyday life, and deeds of derring-do, a poem here and a poem there, preferably by poets who write about their nation and know much about haymaking and the tending of livestock, but for a sea captain to value poetry as highly as fish, well, what kind of captain is that, in fact? And sure enough, Kolbeinn never found a wife and then he lost his sight. The light of day left him and the darkness settled over him. A vigorous seaman, nothing lacking there, tough as stone and could haul in the fish, certainly not much given to company and slightly sarcastic when speaking, but definitely not ugly and quite a promising catch, but never married and lived with his parents, then they with him when the years made them reliant on others. The dear couple. They were good people with scarcely a stain upon them. His father died first, at the time when Kolbeinn’s fanatical interest in words and poetry had only just awakened, because of this the old man never got the chance to become irritated about the fact that his only child, his flesh and blood, wasted precious money on books. But his mother was smitten by this same interest and died underneath a German novel in Danish translation, lay reading in bed when death beset her, quickly but softly, and the book settled open upon her face. Kolbeinn thought she was just resting, this was at midday, she was old and rest is good for old bones, he kept as quiet as possible and didn’t nudge her until two or three hours later, but there’s little use in nudging the dead.

When Kolbeinn lost his sight he owned just under four hundred books. Some were large and expensive and came on ships from Copenhagen, like the book that killed Bárður. Naturally, a considerable amount of money went into his purchases, and the women who had dreamt of a life with this energetic but grumpy and sometimes peculiar sea captain thanked God it hadn’t worked out, and thanked him even more when Kolbeinn lost his sight and thereby became a helpless wretch. We don’t know when his vision began to fail, he hid it extraordinarily well, adjusted himself to the dwindling light, simplified his work habits, the crew naturally noticed the changes in his behavior but blamed the man’s waxing eccentricity and bookishness; as long as he continued to fish, it was his business. And that is what he did. Yet he had ceased long ago to discern his position against the mountains, it was simply as if he could smell the fish down in the sea. And then his sight extinguished completely. He went to bed and could still read by bringing his face almost completely up to the pages of the book, he could see his hands fairly well, saw the outlines of houses, but the stars in the sky were long since gone from him, and then he wakes in utter darkness.

First he lay extremely calmly and waited for his sight, or what was left of it, to return. He lay there as long as he could. Then started to move his head. Looked quickly from side to side, opened his eyes wide, rubbed them, but nothing changed, they were dead and the darkness pressed so tightly against him that he had trouble breathing. He sat up quickly to catch his breath, punched himself in the head, softly at first, then hard, hit it against the wall repeatedly and ever harder, perhaps in the hope that whatever had sprung apart would fall back into place, but the darkness stood firm, did not leave him. It had seized him and would never release its grip. Then he tottered out and made it safe and sound to his reading chair beneath the window, sat there upright, his face bloody, waited for his helmsman to arrive and thought a little about the knife that can easily cut an artery in two. But first he had to speak to his helmsman and then try to scratch something down on paper, however he could accomplish it. He owned more than a half share in the ship, all those books, and the house, and it wouldn’t do to die and leave it all without having settled it somewhere before that, otherwise rascals and sharks like Friðrik and Lárus would gather it all up and throw out whatever they didn’t care about. Finally the helmsman came to check on Kolbeinn, who was always first to show up at the ship, but now the entire crew waited there scratching their heads, maybe you’re sick, asked the helmsman hesitantly and felt a kind of coldness sift into himself, cold and fear, when he looked at Kolbeinn’s face and saw the dried blood and the eyes horrifically empty. Kolbeinn turned his terrifying face in the direction of the voice and said calmly, decisively, you pilot the ship today, I am blind. Go. I’ll speak to you later. And the helmsman drew back, scared of the blind eye, scared, as always, of that damned man, drew back and down to the ship, said little and revealed nothing until they were well out to sea, with five days of fishing ahead of them. Kolbeinn groped his way through the house in search of a pen and paper, fell twice over the furniture, in the second instance ran into the bookshelf, sat there a long time, and ran his fingers along the spines of the books, maybe Hell is a library and you’re blind, he muttered, tried to grin but it served little purpose and four or five tears ran from his eyes, hopefully not more, he thought, shattered over not being able to endure this shock without tears, those transparent fish escaping from him.

So that’s all a man amounts to, when it really comes down to it you break like a pitiful piece of rotten wood, he said to Geirþrúður, who had found him on the floor in front of the bookshelf. Are you blind, Kolbeinn? she asked, not in a concerned or a merciful way, but rather as if she were asking whether his fingers hurt. What does it look like to you? he retorted bitterly, then asked her to find him a pen and paper, which she did, without a word, and put it in his lap. He poked around for the pen and took a book from the shelf to use as a writing desk, then sat and did nothing. Time passed and Geirþrúður, who had stopped by to return a book and borrow another, just sat and waited until he said, I can’t write.

What do you want to write?

It’s none of your business.

That’s certainly true, but I can still write for you.

Then take the bloody rubbish, he said, and threw the pen and paper out into the darkness whence her voice came.

What should I write?

I own more than half the ship, these books, and this house, and I don’t want some bastards appropriating these things for themselves.

Should I write that?

Of course not, don’t be so bloody stupid.

Why do you think they’ll appropriate what you own?

Because I’m a wretch and will soon be dead.

As far as I can . . . she stopped, continued, you appear to be living and breathing now. When he didn’t answer she added, or so it looks to me.

Kolbeinn gave a little start but otherwise acted as if nothing was wrong and said, but you don’t expect me to keep living like this, a blind wretch, useless to everyone, completely helpless and dependent?

Are you going to kill yourself, then?

What else should I do, dance perhaps?

You can live with me and Helga, we need company sometimes.

Are you calling me company?!

You’ll get an excellent room that can hold all your books; you sell your house and I’ll take over your share in the ship and we’ll call it even.

When there is a choice between life and death, most choose life.

Geirþrúður took Kolbeinn with her through the Village and up to the house, like an old, wretched dog it would have been an act of charity to shoot. This was four years ago. Since then Kolbeinn hasn’t gone any further than out to the garden gate, sits in the garden when the weather is mild and the sun heats the air, but otherwise feels best in the Café, gulping coffee, listening to the guests if any are present. Helga and Geirþrúður take turns reading to him, mostly in the afternoon or in the evenings when the darkness has softened the world and gone out into space after the stars, then they sit together in the parlor, this peculiar, profane trinity. We have never understood why she took the old seawolf under her wing, so temperamental and unsociable. They had known little of each other before, she had borrowed books from him on occasion, but perhaps they go excellently together; both of them blind, he physically, she morally.

But now the trinity is no longer a trinity because the boy has joined the group. He pours coffee into the mug that once belonged to an English poet, says, there you are every time, but Kolbeinn acts as if he’s not there, as if he doesn’t see me, mutters the boy to himself, getting a bit of a chuckle out of this.

He had told the trinity the story of how life changed to death.

Helga had returned and brought Kolbeinn with her and the boy told them about the sea voyage.

How Bárður had forgotten his waterproof, how they had rowed an unusually long way out. He told of how the weather had worsened, then turned cold, how a gale blew up, then how the waves started to dash over the boat. Bárður immediately became soaked and cold, so wet and so cold that it would have changed nothing even if someone had loaned him his waterproof and thereby possibly sacrificed his own life, perhaps the lives of all of them. He who is soaked so far out on the open sea, in storm winds and frost, is doomed to die. The boy hadn’t perhaps fully realized it then, or hadn’t wanted to, and it’s likely only now, for the first time, that it comes to him that the only hope was to get Bárður quickly enough to shore, to punch the ice and frost off the sail, off the boat itself, so it could attain a good speed. Yet that was still no hope, but instead more of a mirage. An illusion.

Then the boy told of how he went through the valley and the dark night with the book that killed his friend, nothing is sweet to me, without thee.

Geirþrúður listened with her eyes half shut, the white eyelids sunk over the night of the eyes; Helga looked at the red cover because eyes must be somewhere, they aren’t like hands that can just sleep, feet that no one notices for a long time, eyes are completely different, they only rest behind the eyelids, the curtain of dreams. Eyes must be treated with care. We must think about where we point them and when. Our whole life streams out of our eyes, and thus they can be cannons, music, birdsong, war cries. They can reveal us, they can save you, destroy you. I saw your eyes and my life changed. Her eyes frighten me. His eyes hypnotize me. Just look at me, then all will be good and perhaps I can sleep. Old stories, possibly as old as humanity, tell us that no living being can stand to look into the eyes of God because they contain the fountain of life and the abyss of death.

The boy described Bárður’s eyes. Had to describe them, revive them, let them shine one more time. The brown eyes an obscure and foreign fisherman left behind on shore a very long time ago. Geirþrúður and Helga rarely looked at the boy as he told his story, Geirþrúður perhaps once, the other slightly more often, but the captain’s blind eyes rested on him the entire time and didn’t waver, cold, lifeless, darkened windows, nothing can come out, nothing can get in. The story went on longer than he had expected it to. He forgot himself. Lost himself. Left existence and vanished into the story, touched his dead friend there and revived him. Perhaps the purpose of the story was to resurrect Bárður, break into the kingdom of death armed with words. Words can have the might of giants and they can kill a god, they can save lives and destroy them.

Words are arrows, bullets, mythological birds that chase down gods, words are fish many thousands of years old that discover something horrible in the deep, they are nets vast enough to trap the world and the sky as well, but sometimes words are nothing, torn garments that the frost penetrates, a run-down battlement that death and misfortune step lightly over.

Yet words are the one thing this boy has. Apart from the letters from his mother, his coarse woolen pants, woolen clothing, three thin books or pamphlets he brought with him from the hut, sea-boots, and ragged shoes. Words are his most trusted companions and confidants but are still quite useless when put to the test—he is unable to revive Bárður and Bárður knew that the entire time. This is why he stood in the doorway before and said, and there I was, thinking you were going to come to me, but left unsaid what the boy worked out for himself: because I cannot come to you.

There was silence after he finished his story, silence he himself broke by muttering, as if distracted, I need to write to Andrea and tell her I’m alive.

Silence after a long narrative indicates whether it has mattered or was told for nothing, indicates whether the narrative had entered and touched something or just shortened the hours and nothing more.

None of them moved until heavy blows unchained them. Someone was pounding on the house outside. Helga stood up, stood up slowly, then she came with a paper and pen that she handed to the boy and said, we should care for those who matter to us and who have goodness in them, and preferably never put it off, life is too short for that and sometimes ends suddenly, as you have come to know unnecessarily well. Then she went out to see what fist was responsible for the blows.

We should care for those who matter to us and who have goodness in them.

This must be one of the laws of life, and the Devil kicks the asses of those who don’t heed it.