Heaven and Hell (5 page)

The six men wait in the boat for the fish that have swum the seas for 120 million years. Animal species have come and gone but the cod has swum its own course, humanity is just a short span in its life. The cod swims its whole life with a wide-open mouth, so gluttonous that it’s second to none, except humans of course, eats everything it can catch and never gets enough, the boy once counted 150 full-grown capelin inside a medium-sized cod and was scolded severely for wasting so much time on such a thing. The cod is yellow and enjoys swimming, is always on the lookout for food, very little that is remarkable occurs in its life and a line that sweeps down with bait on a hook is considered great news, it is a huge event. What’s this? the cod ask each other, finally something new, says one, and bites immediately, and then all of the others hurry to bite as well, because none wish to stand apart, it’s excellent to hang around here, says the first out of the side of his mouth, and the others agree. Hours pass, then movement, then everything starts moving, they’re all pulled away, some great power pulls them up, upward and upward in the direction of the sky, which soon breaks and opens onto another world full of peculiar fish.

They have set all the lines and the wait begins.

The long wait for the fish to bite. Two hours of doing nothing. Two hours in an open coffin out on the Polar Sea. In frost, rising wind. Now it’s only Gvendur and Einar who have work to do. They do not let go of the oars, do not get a break from them until they reach land and the freedom of the sea is behind them, unless the wind is favorable for the sail, then they rest while the boat sails, Pétur steers and the sixereen turns into an elegant ship. Oh yes, those are good moments, even beautiful, a coffin becomes a ship that cleaves the waves, the men doze and their minds fill with dreams.

Gvendur and Einar row against the current to hold the boat steady near the buoy. The dark color of night sinks slowly before the daylight, very slowly, it is still half-dark above their heads, a star here and there in breaks in the heavy, low-lying clouds that gradually fill the sky. Pétur stoops for the whey keg, removes the cork, takes a long drink, hands it to Árni, and they all drink in the same way, fill their mouths with whey and are refreshed. The temperature drops. This will be a cold wait but so what? They have waited over lines in colder weather than this, and have waited in more wind, so much so that it took four men to keep the boat in place. They have waited in so much darkness that Pétur needed to hold fast to the rope tied to the buoy so as not to let it slip from the boat and be lost, held fast to the rope but feared to his bones that the Devil was lurking in the night, holding onto the other end. Yet it would never cross his mind to let go, because the worst thing in this world is without doubt letting one’s lines slip away, losing them, having to leave them behind, having to flee to shore in consternation before the fury can seize the boat, before the waves grew larger and broke over it, precisely as heavy as death. But the world is varied, there are storms and there are calms, and it was gloriously calm when they last rowed out, half a month ago. The world slept, the sea was a mirror that rose and fell. They had seen every crack and crevice in the mountains many kilometers from the boat and the sky arched over them like the roof of a church, the roof that protects us. The six men had been silent, humble, and thankful for their existence. But it isn’t natural for a person to feel thankful or humble for long: some had started thinking about tobacco and forgotten eternal life. Bárður and the boy had leaned back a bit and looked at the sparkling sky that makes us humble and powerful at once and seems sometimes to speak to us. What it says carefully cleanses old wounds.

But there are no stars now, not on this voyage. Not any longer. They have all disappeared behind the clouds that thicken overhead, bringing bad weather. Day is approaching, the wind grows stronger and colder, born of ice that fills the world behind the horizon, we shall not row in that direction, Hell is the cold. They throw on their waterproofs, because even though their sweaters are well fulled the arctic wind slips easily through them, and it certainly doesn’t help that they’re drenched in sweat. They all grab their waterproofs, all except for Bárður, he grabs nothing, his hand stiffens in the empty air and he curses loudly. What? asks the boy. Damned waterproof, I forgot it, and Bárður curses more, he curses having focused unnecessarily on memorizing lines from
Paradise Lost
, so focused that he forgot his waterproof. Andrea has surely already discovered this and fears for him shivering there in the cold, defenseless against the arctic wind. This is what poems can do to us. You’re such an idiot, says Einar, and he grins, but Pétur says nothing and even appears to avoid looking at Bárður, who strings together all the curse words life has taught him, and they are many. Curse words are little pieces of coal and can heat things, but words unfortunately do little to keep out the arctic wind, it slips through and into the flesh, a decent windbreaker is many times better and more important than all the poems in the world. The boy and Bárður sit opposite each other astride the thwart, start to slap their palms together, first slowly, then as fast as they can, continuing until a decent heat has been produced in Bárður, while the boy has become sweaty and breathless. The heat, however, quickly leaves Bárður, who tries punching himself to generate heat, now I’ll get sick, he thinks resentfully, will no doubt miss out on the next voyage, miss out on delivering the fish to the shop, miss out on the fish, hell, he curses, it’s bad to miss out on the fish. Fish are not just a group of vertebrates with cold blood, living in water and breathing through gills, fish are much more than that. Most Icelandic settlements were built of cod bones, they are the pillars beneath the arched roof of dreams. Pétur dreams of becoming rich, tearing down the old farm and building a wooden house with windows, that would make Andrea happy and she could certainly use it, in fact it seemed as if something bad had happened between them. Yet Pétur doesn’t know what it could be, he is, to tell the truth, helpless, he hasn’t changed, always works at everything conscientiously, never gives himself a break, but why does he sometimes feel as if he is losing her, is life betraying him? But he can’t put a finger on any particular event, there is nothing that supports this suspicion, except for the feeling that something in the air is working against him and raising a wall between them, creating distance. This suspicion sometimes turns into pure indisposition, depression touches him and takes the power from his arms, makes his head heavier, but rarely here on the sea, here he is happy, here he can overcome everything, and next to him sits Árni, the best deckhand Pétur has ever had. Árni also dreams of wooden houses, dreams of improving his fields, leveling tussocks, buying soft red fabric in Tryggvi’s Shop at the end of the fishing season, along with toys for the children. He who has no dreams is in danger. Gvendur dreams of American boots and often eyes Árni’s. Einar plans to buy a jacket and a checkered cap at the end of the fishing season but the boy dreams of books, of another life, and he sometimes dreams of Guðrún, maybe they could buy a little farm together, no, dammit, he’s no farmer, doesn’t care to be a farmer, not even with her who would possibly make everything good and bright and change everything into a fairy tale, no, he will become an assistant at Leo’s Shop to start with, then he can read in the evenings, then something will happen and his opportunities will increase.

The wind has grown stronger.

Bárður punches himself. He curses out loud and silently. He dreams of being free of his father, dreams of getting away, of living with Sigríður, with her laughter and remarks that often shed new light on the things of this world, dreams of learning more than he knows already, dreams of Copenhagen, where there are towers and innumerable streets to get lost in, he dreams of doing something big because why the hell do we live otherwise? That is a question to wrestle with. But here is another even more pressing one: how can he keep the cold at bay? Pétur gives him tobacco, which Bárður takes even though he’s not used to it, scowls at the bitter taste, the tobacco warms him slightly but not for long, they go back to their pat-a-cake, he and the boy, slap their palms together fast and hard, the wind and the freezing cold increase and the clouds darken. The land has disappeared, the horizon is filling with swirling snow, it will reach them in just over an hour if time does not stop passing, it barely crawls along, so slow that it almost stands still. Árni and Pétur squirm, they are cold even in their waterproofs. Pétur starts humming, low and incoherently, relaxes his vocal cords, and when they are warm and flexible enough he starts reciting and the others perk up their ears. At first it’s verses about horses, verses about fishing voyages, about heroism and derring-do on the sea. But heroism and horses don’t do much against the cold, he changes course, starts reciting ambiguous verses that quickly turn obscene. Pétur knows a great many such verses, they number in the dozens, perhaps the hundreds. He has moved to another thwart and sits foremost in the boat, clad in his waterproof and large, thick woolen mittens, a woolen cap under his sou’wester, his cap reaches down to his eyelids, only his eyes, nose, part of his cheeks, and mouth are visible, his beard hides the rest, it hides his expression and is likely the reason why he appears indomitable as he rocks back and forth and chews his tobacco. The verses gush out of him. As if to exorcise the arctic cold itself. The verses become steadily more raw, more violent, and Pétur is transformed. He is no longer a silent, serious skipper, the workhorse, something ancient and dark awakens in him, this is no longer poetry that wells up from within him, poetry is for laggards and schoolmen, this is a primitive force, a language with deep roots in a dim subconscious, sprung from a harsh life and ever-present death. Pétur grows burning hot and he rocks rhythmically on the thwart, slaps his hands now and then on his thigh when the rhyming words become so heavy that it is difficult for the human body to handle them, because the human body is delicate, it cannot bear the impact of large rocks, cannot bear avalanches, the stinging cold, cannot endure loneliness, cannot endure rhyming words heavy with antiquity, saturated with lust, and this is why Pétur slaps his thigh, to bring the words forth, and the five men start in surprise, everyone bound by this primitive power streaming from their skipper. Einar’s eyes are stretched wide with black happiness, Gvendur breathes through his mouth, Árni does not take his eyes off Pétur, Bárður’s eyes are half closed, he does not listen to the words but rather to their sound, the sound in the voice, and thinks, the Devil himself, where does this old bugger get such power!? The boy swings between rapture and antipathy, he stares at a fifty-year-old man shoveling out obscene verses, what is Pétur but an old man and what are these verses but ribaldry? But in the next breath Pétur changes again, into something ancient, and the sound of the words rips into the boy. He curses himself, curses Pétur, he sits there in the midst of five men in a yawl on the Polar Sea, with frost all around, swinging between rapture and antipathy. Pétur has taken off his sou’wester, he has been sweating, has set aside one of his mittens, his large hand seems to be clenched around some of the words, he stares at nothing, focused, and tries not to think of Andrea, stay longer, she sometimes asks in the salting house, up on the saltfish stack that is getting higher, it will soon be so high that he will no longer be able to stand to do the deed, go slowly, she says, that’s good, and she moves her legs further apart, both to enjoy him, to feel him better, but also so he doesn’t hurt her, but the heat in her words and the legs that spread further apart become too much, everything bursts inside Pétur, he shudders and clenches his teeth but Andrea looks away instinctively, as if to hide the disappointment, even the sadness, that shows on her face, and then there is silence in the salting house and Andrea avoids looking at her husband. At that very moment, in the midst of his pleasure in the power of verses, Pétur looks up. The power, the magic, the lust subside unexpectedly, turn to nothing, are sucked out of him and disappear when the fear of losing her seeks him out and fills every cell. Lose her where, he doesn’t know, has never gone to the heart of that question, but what does he have, and what is life? Yes, it is this boat, the Earth with its houses and creatures, and then Andrea. Thirty years with her. He knows no other life. If she were to disappear, he would lose his balance, he realizes that now, completely unexpectedly this conclusion stands before him, the verse dies on his lips and Pétur seems to collapse.

Einar curses softly. He knows the set of verses that ebbed out and had been waiting eagerly for the last stanzas. The unexpected silence brings the world back to them. Brings the frost, the wind, the rising waves, and the snowflakes, because the swirling snowfall has drawn closer. Bárður rubs his arms furiously, the boy turns so he can rub his friend’s chest and back simultaneously, Einar and Gvendur fight the waves, Árni avoids looking at Pétur, who is so unlike himself, sits there and appears to be waiting for someone to throw him overboard like something useless. The boat rises and falls. The seasickness that has plagued the boy so little on the voyage, he having blessed the Chinese Vital Elixir so often in his mind, now returns, yet is still mild, a qualm he should be able to work off when they start to haul in the lines, that is if they start sometime, if time has not abandoned them, left them behind on the Polar Sea. Pétur shakes himself, he shakes himself like an animal, tears himself away from the numbness, the surrender, the fear, and says: let’s row to the buoy.

Árni, Bárður, and the boy straighten up, but Einar and Gvendur turn the boat around and row hard the short distance to the buoy, because now they shall haul in fish, now they shall haul it up from the depths that keep life in us, improve homes, and amplify dreams. Bárður fastens the spool onto the rowlock, his job is to haul in the line, needed for this work are strength and stamina, of which he has a considerable amount. Pétur leans slightly over the side, looks down into the sea, waits with the gaff in his right hand, they start with his line, the skipper’s line. They quiver with expectation. Bárður pulls, down in the deep the line moves, the cod rise to the surface and receive a rude reception. Pétur gaffs the fish on board, shortly afterward Árni bleeds them with one swift movement and they never swim again through the dark blue depths with wide-open mouths, swallowing everything smaller than themselves, those moments of delight are behind them and death takes over, but we do not know where death takes them, should the eternal sea exist somewhere behind time, full of deceased fish, some long extinct here on Earth? The fish has cold blood and is perhaps not particularly sensitive concerning life and death, thinks the boy, takes the line just as soon as Bárður hauls it in, very heavy with fish, lays it down, carefully, makes sure it does not get tangled, cuts off the bait remaining on the hooks, it’s not always easy and he needs to be quick, sometimes the only way is to use his teeth, pull off the bait and then spit it out ice-cold and extremely salty. There are a lot of fish. Bárður starts to haul in Árni’s line, Pétur aims the gaff, he smiles, this is a beautiful moment. Einar and Gvendur fight the waves, they both smile, Gvendur resembles a huge, gentle dog and morning has arrived. But when Bárður has come a long way in pulling in the fourth line, the boy’s line, it’s as if the sky darkens again, as if night has returned, forgive me, I forgot something. But this is not the night that has returned for its cap, because Pétur looks up and glances around, the world is gone and a dense black cloud where the horizon should be.