Heaven and Hell (4 page)

IV

They have been rowing for a long time and the sky is brigh
tening. They have rowed out of the night and into the fragile morning. They have taken off their sou’westers. Little by little they lost sight of the other boats scattered over the wide expanse of the deep, the sea rolling, and they row further than the others and head toward a deep-sea fishing bank that Pétur knows of but has not visited for several years, they trust him, he knows more than all of them combined as far as cod are concerned, he thinks like a cod, Bárður once said, and it was difficult to know whether that was praise or derision, it can be difficult to figure Bárður out, but Pétur decided to take it as praise. They attack the oars and put more distance between themselves and the land. It can hurt to move further away from land, it’s as if one were rowing toward loneliness. The boy watches the mountains diminish, they seem to sink into the sea. The mountains threaten us when we’re on land, gather storms unto themselves, kill people by hurling stones at them, wipe out towns with avalanches and mudslides, but the mountains are also a protecting hand, they foster us and embrace the boats that row into the fjords, but nothing protects the fishermen who row far except their prayers and ingenuity. They’ve started to grow weary although Einar still takes delight in the task, still has a gleam in his eyes. Bárður breathes shallowly at the boy’s side. We two aren’t born for seamanship, he had said yesterday, in the German Bakery, over a cup of coffee and a sweet roll.

The coffee in the bakery is somehow cleaner, free of grounds. Might as well get used to the luxury, the boy had told Bárður, but then the bakers, husband and wife, started to argue in German in the back. Their disagreements were quick to explode, and in a short time they were shouting at each other, but suddenly everything went dead calm and silent in the bakery, then a suppressed giggle could be heard, followed by the smacking sounds of passionate kisses. The two female shop assistants went about their work and pretended not to hear, but Bárður glanced with a smile at the boy and it was incredibly good to be alive. There they sat in the bakery, celebrating the future, Bárður having secured them summer work at the shop run by Leó, his father, a close acquaintance of the Factor, who was called Jón and who has trouble standing still, shuffles his feet as he speaks, shuffles them as he listens, continually licks his lips with the tip of his tongue. Jón would be nothing without his wife, Tove, Bárður had explained, she’s Danish, some call her the Frigate and you would understand the name if you saw her come sailing down the street. The world becomes considerably easier if you have her on your side, she appreciates hard work: you just need to stick to your job and everything will be fine. It’s also a dream job, no hard slogging, you’re not exhausted by the end of the day and there’s not a stain to be seen on your clothing, you don’t even need to wash your hands!

The sea is wide and very deep and the boy has never rowed out so far.

This is actually unnecessarily far.

Just a thin piece of wood between them and drowning, he will never get used to this, and here the wind blows harder. The waves rise higher, the sea becomes heavier. Yet this is no weather to speak of, and they row. They pull hard, their muscles knit, wait for us, cod, we’re coming. He looks at Pétur’s back, there is no resemblance between him and his niece, Guðrún, are you crazy, it’s like comparing a summer’s night and sleet. It’s a shame it’s so difficult to talk to her, it’s nigh impossible because he frequently loses both his tongue and his courage when she looks at him, and in any case Guðmundur would order the men to tear him apart and use him for bait if he tried something other than look at and admire her. The land continued to sink into darkness and sea but soon the light will come from the east. They see a few stars, the clouds are of various types, blue, almost black, light and gray and the sky ever-changing, like the heart. Bárður pants and mumbles something, in snatches because of the strain . . . cowl casts . . . color of dusk. All of their hearts beat fast. The heart is a muscle that pumps blood, the abode of pain, loneliness, joy, the one muscle that can keep us awake at night. The abode of uncertainty: whether we will wake again to life, whether it will rain on the hay, whether the fish will bite, whether she loves me, whether he will come over the heath to speak the words, uncertainty about God, about the purpose of life but no less the purpose of death. They row and their hearts pump blood and uncertainty about fish and life but not about God, no, because then they would scarcely venture out in a little cockleshell, in an open coffin, onto the sea, which is blue on the surface but pitch black beneath. God is all-embracing in their minds. He and Pétur are likely the only ones whom Einar respects in this world, sometimes Jesus, but that respect was not as unconditional, a man who offers his other cheek wouldn’t last long in the mountains here. Árni rows and sometimes becomes one with the exertion, for a long time thinks nothing but then Sesselja comes to mind, and the children, three living children and one dead, Árni rows and thinks about the houses, the livestock, the parish, he plans to become a town council member within three years, a man has to have a goal in life, otherwise you get nowhere and decay. There is power in the twelve practiced arms but the boat seems hardly to have moved at all, the waves toss and turn all around them, there is no violence in them but still they are large and block any sort of view, there is an ocean in these waves and the boat is just a piece of wood, the men sit on the wood and trust in God. Bárður and the boy are, however, not as confident as the rest. They are young and have read unnecessarily much, their hearts pump more uncertainty than the others’, and not just about God, because the boy is also uncertain about life, but particularly about himself in life, about his purpose. He thinks about Guðrún and his uncertainty doesn’t lessen because of it. Guðrún has bright eyes, they are so bright that they vanquish night, he thinks between oar strokes, and is pleased with this sentence, repeats it and memorizes it to tell Bárður later today, when they have firm ground beneath their feet and where it is considerably more distant to the next man than here in the boat. He looks at Pétur’s back, hears Gvendur breathe slowly and gigantically behind him. Eyes so bright that they vanquish night, he repeats to himself, and a line Bárður had read from
Paradise Lost
last evening comes to him there in the boat: nothing is sweet to me, without thee. The boy murmurs these two sentences, eyes so bright that they vanquish night, nothing is sweet to me, without thee—but then starts to think about her breasts. Tries as hard as he can to think instead about the night, about uncertainty, but it’s useless, his head is filled with images and words and he has an erection. In fact it’s good at first, but then it isn’t good anymore and he is deadly ashamed of himself. Now he can no longer look at Guðrún, it’s finished, he has lost her, I should jump overboard like a shot, nothing is sweet to me, without thee, pants Bárður, as if to punish him. Quotes from the book the blind sea captain had loaned him. They had stopped at Geirþrúður’s café on their way out of the Village; now we’ll go visit Geirþrúður, Bárður had said as he finished his cup of coffee at the bakery, the smacking of kisses has fallen silent but the baker has begun to sing in German, an importunate song, in a high, soft voice.

There is considerable traffic on the streets of the Village and some of the houses rise high above them.

The boy felt slightly smaller because of the bustling life, the houses and the name Geirþrúður. They stopped first at Tryggvi’s Shop, and then to see Magnús the shoe-smith, where Bárður had his feet measured and ordered knee-high boots for the spring and summer here in the Village. Don’t be afraid of Geirþrúður, said Bárður afterward as they were approaching the Café, she won’t eat you, or at most just one of your arms. And what Bárður said was absolutely right, she didn’t eat the boy, but perhaps mainly because she wasn’t there, or at least didn’t come into the Café, where they stopped for around half an hour. These were rather long minutes for the boy, feeling insecure about Helga, Geirþrúður’s right hand, about her gray, searching eyes, fearful of the sea captain and his hoarse voice, his cutting words and those dead eyes beneath his high, wrinkled forehead that contains remarkable thoughts, or should have done, must do, because he owns at least four hundred books, Bárður had assured him. Bárður who seemed right at home there, had a laugh, introduced the boy, my friend, too gifted for the fish, and the word
friend
was so warm that the boy felt a little better. The mocking remarks of the three fishermen who sat over bottles of beer didn’t touch him, he understands their language after having rowed through almost three winter fishing seasons. The overland postman, Jens, was also there. Big, drunk, newly arrived from his monthly trip from Reykjavík, a six- to eight-day journey. Bárður and the boy had seen the boxes and bags of post in the Café’s entryway. Of course Jens should have taken the post directly to Dr. Sigurður, where it is sorted and then handed over to the sub-postmen who carry it to the farms and fjords all around, but Jens couldn’t care less about regulations, he also bears half a grudge against Sigurður, and in any case it’s much better to sit in Geirþrúður’s café and drink as much beer as he can and as he can afford, nor is Sigurður too good to come fetch the post himself. Jens had given the boy a quick look but otherwise didn’t pay any attention to him or Bárður, occupied as he was with speaking to Skúli, editor of the
Will of the People
newspaper. The boy had seen Skúli once before, but from a distance, had stared at this tall, well-dressed man. It must be wonderful to work as a writer for a newspaper, a thousand times better than fishing. Skúli had papers in front of him and was writing down something dictated to him by the postman. The next paper will be chock-full of fresh news because Jens has walked and ridden the whole way from Reykjavík, with news from the capital and from abroad, along with all the little bits of news he has collected on his long journey. Jens stops at many farms, there are many mouths that wish to tell something, gossip, ghost stories, speculations on the distance between two stars, between life and death, we are what we say, but also what we do not say. The blind captain, Kolbeinn, is silent about many things and luckily had no interest in the boy, he only spoke to Bárður, take this book about Juel for Andrea, he said, and this one here is for you. Kolbeinn put one hand on the large book before him,
Paradise Lost
, printed in 1828, you see I trust you, he said to Bárður, almost cruelly, was silent for a moment, as if contemplating these words,
you see
, continued to speak about the book, it will change your life, which could certainly use a change.

Nothing is sweet to me, without thee.

Milton was blind like the sea captain, an English poet who lost his sight in old age. Composed his poems in darkness and his daughter wrote them down for him. We thus bless her hands, but hopefully they had a life apart from the poems, hopefully they were able to hold something warmer and softer than a slender dip pen. Some words can conceivably change the world, they can comfort us and dry our tears. Some words are bullets, others are notes of a violin. Some can melt the ice around one’s heart, and it is even possible to send words out like rescue teams when the days are difficult and we are perhaps neither living nor dead. However, words are not enough and we become lost and die out on the heaths of life if we have nothing to hold but a dip pen. Comes evening, and a cowl casts, over all. Lines written in darkness that never left his eyes, written down by a woman’s hand, translated into Icelandic by a priest who had excellent vision but was sometimes so poor that he didn’t have paper to write on and then was forced to use the sky over Hörgárdalur Valley for a page.

Right! Pétur says loudly.

Right!

The first word heard in the boat for nearly four hours.

They stop rowing at once.

They breathe as heavily as the sea beneath them.

Most of the mountains have sunk completely, but the outlines of two peaks appear dimly, and it is by them that Pétur steers, the boat is above the fishing bank, where the depth is not as great and the sea is not as frightfully dark below.

Right! and Árni and Pétur have pulled in the oars.

One word, which is, however, scarcely a word and is in general completely useless, we scarcely say, right! when we dream about purpose, yearn for lips, touch, we scarcely sigh, right! when we reach orgasm, we don’t say, right! when someone abandons us and our hearts harden to stone. But Pétur doesn’t need to say more. The men don’t need words out here on the open sea. The cod have no interest in words, not even adjectives such as
splendid
. The cod have no interest in any words, and yet have swum nearly unchanged through the seas for 120 million years. Does this tell us something about language? We might not need words to survive; on the other hand, we do need words to live.

Pétur says, right!, casts the buoy overboard and starts to set the first line together with Árni.

The other four row the line out. This long stretch of rope with countless hooks onto which they threaded the bait during the evening, six lines, one for each man, Pétur’s line laid first. He and Árni make the sign of the cross over each line before setting it so that nothing evil comes up from the deep, but what could that be? The depths of the sea are innocent of all evil, they are just life and death, while there would certainly be a need to make the sign of the cross over the lines not just once but at least ten thousand times if we were to sink them into the depths of the human soul. The easterly breeze is growing steadily stronger, becoming more northeasterly. The temperature drops. Slowly, however, and they are still quite warm after the rowing, a warmth that doesn’t completely leave the four who row out the line, the other two are cold but don’t show it and in that way prove their strength, which is perhaps no strength at all but simply fear of others’ opinions. People are sometimes ridiculous. The lines sink one after the other down into the cold blue sea, lie there in silence and the darkness of the deep, waiting for fish, preferably cod.