Iceland's Bell (24 page)

11

A poor man, chafed blue in the face and soaking wet from the rain, stands before the bishop’s doors one day in the autumn and demands to speak with someone, but he is ignored. His clothing is tattered and shabby, though it was originally tailored for a man of higher standing. His boots are scuffed and coming apart at the seams, about as ragged as one could expect in the land where everyone shared a single common distinctive feature: wretched shoes. He is apparently sober. His face does not resemble a caricature but rather the relics of a man, displaying occasional traces of his youthful, manly mien. It is clear from the man’s vigorous carriage that he has seen better days. He refuses to mingle with the common folk gathered here; his business, he says, is with the higher-ups.

The first time he knocked upon the bishop’s door his only request was that he be allowed to see his wife. The door was slammed shut in his face. He stood at the door for some time, and when it was finally opened for other visitors, he was ordered to stay outside. He remained standing there and poked at the door now and then, but those within knew who it was and left it shut. He walked around behind the house and tried to get to the bishop’s office through the main bedroom, and even made it as far as the hallway when he ran into angry housemaids who told him that he had to go around to the other side if he wanted to see the bishop. After numerous other attempts he was finally allowed to speak to one of the bishop’s wife’s maidservants, who informed him that the madam’s sister was in poor health, and that the madam herself was preoccupied. He asked to be allowed to speak to the bishop, but was told that the bishop was at a meeting with his priests.

The visitor returns the next day and the events of the previous day are replayed, only now in a southwesterly gale and fierce hailstorms. In between the gusts of hail that tear into the visitor’s clothing one can see that his legs are starting to quiver and his knees to bend, but his boots are still more dismally dry than wet. He wears no gloves and wipes his nose with his bare fingers, sneezing and snuffling. The third time he visits the place he knocks on the front door and hands over a letter addressed to the bishop, then dawdles and loiters until early evening, when someone comes and informs him that he is to appear before the bishop in the Grand Salon. The bishop addressed him, “Dear Magnús,” then took hold of his cold hands, smiling and respectful and dignified; he was not at all angry, but rather patronizing, saying that he thought Magnús had come from more clever stock than this, to imperil himself in such a hazardous course by attempting to initiate legal proceedings touching upon his marital estate, as outlined in his letter. As far as the husband’s wish to discuss the matter with his wife was concerned, the bishop’s only answer was that it was entirely her decision to meet with him or not. And as for the letter’s demand that the bishop impose his clerical power and authority and order the woman back home to her husband, he replied along these lines, that his sister-in-law was welcome to stay at the see whenever she chose. Magnús from Bræðratunga proclaimed that he loved his wife with all his heart and beyond measure, and that to drag her away from him was a tremendously evil deed. The bishop said that he was not a party to their affairs and asked his brother-in-law not to be offended though he could not offer any more advice on matters of the heart, especially since nothing had happened yet between husband and wife that might demand his special and immediate attention.

The husband continued nonetheless to hang about the place, day and night. He came up with various excuses to speak with the steward and persons in other low-level positions when the higher-ups refused to see him. He even took it upon himself to repair the riding gear of gentlemen who had business at the see and did odd jobs in the smithy for the steward. He stayed completely sober, even when surrounded by drunks, and when the louts on the premises invited him to join in their public drinking party after a supply trip to Eyrarbakki he staunchly refused to join in the fun and walked away.

One Sunday morning he planned to waylay his wife as she went to mass. He waited for a very long time but she never appeared, and finally when he went into the church he saw her sitting with her sister and other prominent women in the farthest corner of the women’s pews. She was wearing a faldur.* She stared straight ahead, unmoving, paying close attention to Reverend Sigurður’s sermon on people afflicted with palsy. He had lingered too long outside and when he went to take a seat in the choir he found them all occupied, as was every other seat in the side-nook—Arnas Arnæus was sitting there with his entourage and a number of aristocrats from other districts. The squire slunk back to the nave and sat down. After the priest intoned the collect he saw Snæfríður and the bishop’s wife, along with the housekeeper and a maidservant, stand up and make ready to leave; but instead of walking out through the church after exiting the choir, they turned the other direction, following the par-close around the altar to the sacristy. From there an underground passageway used mainly during winter storms led to the bishop’s residence. She would surely have to take off her faldur before venturing into that dirty hole.

One day not too long after this unlucky churchgoing the husband decides to speak to Arnæus, and is shown to the room where he and two of his secretaries sit working before a fire blazing in the fireplace. The abandoned husband placed his cold-benumbed hand in the warm and blessed hand of the royal envoy. Arnæus welcomed his visitor cheerfully and bade him sit. The husband sat down, glanced about quixotically, and scowled. Opposite the true gentleman with the fire burning behind him, the huge books and the carved chairs, the visitor looked more like a lanky, awkward youth who doesn’t know for certain whether he’s a man though he tries hard to act like one.

“Is there something I can do for you?” asked Arnas Arnæus.

“I wanted to say a few words to you—Your Lordship,” he said.

“Privatim?” asked the assessor.

The visitor looked up with a smirk, baring his gaping teeth and gums. “Yes, just so,” he said. “I haven’t used Latin for a long time: privatim.”*

Arnæus asked his secretaries to leave the two of them alone to talk.

The man’s smirk remained both shy and forward at once, its sting directed both inward and out. He said:

“I was thinking of offering you a couple of old, worn-out books, if they haven’t yet gone rotten out in my storehouse loft; they’re from my blessed father’s farm.”

Arnæus said that he was always curious to hear about opera antiquaria* and asked him what books these were, but the squire wasn’t quite sure, since he hadn’t been much in the habit of digging around in the old fables about Gunnar of Hlíðarendi and Grettir Ásmundarson* and other highwaymen who lived in this country in the old days; he said he’d even give his Lordship the old rubbish if he wanted it.

Arnæus bowed in his seat and thanked the squire for his gift. The conversation halted for a moment. The husband’s eyes had stopped wandering for the most part, but he sat downcast in wordless obstinacy. Arnas Arnæus looked silently at his broad, flat forehead, which resembled the crown of a bull’s head. Finally, when the silence grew unnaturally long, he asked:

“Was there anything else?”

The visitor seemed to awaken suddenly, and he said: “I’ve been wanting to ask the assessor if he would lend me his support in a certain small matter.”

“It is my duty, as far as I am able, to lend every man my support for righteous causes,” said Arnas Arnæus.

The visitor paused for a moment, then began to explain. He was married to an outstanding woman whom he loved very much—she was an extraordinarily sensible woman. He said that he’d always treated this woman like an unhatched egg, watching over her night and day, treating her like a princess in her tower with her gold and silver jewelry and her beautiful embroidery, putting panes of glass in her windows, providing her with delicacies to eat and a stove, while he himself slept in a faraway wing of the house whenever it pleased her. He’d never considered anything too good for this woman, because she was from a noble family, besides the fact that many people considered her to be the most beautiful woman in Iceland. But such is the female race: suddenly she wants nothing more to do with her husband and runs away from him.

Arnæus carefully considered the man before him as he was speaking. It wasn’t clear whether Magnús was telling this story out of naiveté, under the presumption that this dignitary from afar was unfamiliar with the particulars of such a private matter, or whether this was in fact sarcastic dissimulation, whereby a crafty cuckold was playing the fool for his old competitor in some sort of test of wits. Although there could still be seen in the eyes of the visitor distilled traces of the attributes that confirmed that he had once been a cavalier and a charmer, their luster revealed the astonishing torpidity of the man’s mind, like that of a prisoner or a beast—it was highly doubtful whether a man was hidden behind them.

“Who is the defendant in this case, the woman herself or someone else?” asked Arnas Arnæus.

“The bishop,” said the husband.

This required some explanation, which ran as follows: the bishop, the visitor’s brother-in-law, and that entire side of the family had long been contriving to belie him to his wife. Now they’d finally achieved their goal—they’d cunningly lured his wife away from him and turned her into a kind of prisoner here at the bishopric, holding her against her will and standing guard over her day and night so that her rightful husband by the laws of God and man would never get the chance to meet with her. The husband said that he’d gone to the bishop to discuss the matter, but had gotten nothing back from him but excuses and hearsay. Now the husband hoped and prayed that the royal envoy would grant him his support in bringing a lawsuit against the bishop, in order to assert his rights and legally reclaim his wife.

Arnæus smiled affably, but said that he would prefer to be excused from bringing legal action against his host and friend the bishop, especially on account of another man’s wife, unless of course a huge breach of justice was at issue in the case; as far as the husband’s old books were concerned, however, he said that if the opportunity arose he would be delighted to have a look at them and assess their value. Then he stood up, took a pinch of snuff and offered some to the husband, then showed him to the door.

Snow is drifting outside. A chill wind presses in upon a wayward man standing in the dooryard of the bishop’s residence one evening. He turns his back to the wind like a horse left outside, one blue hand at his neckline, holding together the collar of his coat since he’s too aristocratic to wear a scarf, and stares up at the little windows just above the Grand Salon, but the curtains have been let down and it is dark inside; she is taking her twilight nap. He stands there shivering for a while before a man with a few dogs steps out from the passageway between the buildings and shouts at him through the snow-storm, saying that that damned villain Magnús from Bræðratunga was to vacate the premises of Skálholt immediately or he would sic the dogs on him; and if he tried to go on behaving in the same way, skulking around here day and night, he would be tied to a post and flogged the very next time he showed his face. It looked as if the steward, who up until now had acted benignly toward the husband and had frequently assigned him various jobs to do around the see, had recently received orders outlining the novel attitude toward this pilgrim that was to be adopted by the see’s inhabitants.

The husband said nothing. He was too great a squire to bandy words with nobodies, especially when sober, and amongst other things he was hungry. He walked straight into the winds coursing between the estate’s buildings and the gusts tore through his clothing; his legs had never felt more weak or his knees more bowed than now. Once upon a time he had ridden his horse over these lordly flagstones on late spring nights as fair as any described in the lais; horses were not allowed in the yard during the day. Unfortunately he no longer owned a single shoed horse. On the other hand, coming toward him now is a man riding a black horse with calked shoes; he has been out on the Hundapollur, giving his black minion a twilight run. The squire pretended not to notice the rider and continued on against the wind, but the latter stopped a short distance behind him and reined in his wild mount, which champed its bit, dripping foam. The rider turned in the saddle and called out to the walker:

“Are you drunk?”

“No,” said the squire.

“Do you by chance have business with me?”

“No.”

“Then with whom?”

“My wife.”

“So she is still here in Skálholt,” said the priest. “I hope that her visit has done my dearly beloved friend well.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it if you already knew best yourself how things are going for folk here in Skálholt,” said the walker. He could be pert with the rider because they’d been schoolmates here a long time ago. “You’ve all done a good job of duping my wife into leaving me. And you certainly can’t be said to have neglected your own interests.”

“I always assumed that it was beyond my ability, dear Magnús, to lure a woman away from someone as charming as you,” said the priest.

“I have it on good authority that you had a long conversation with her out in my homefield last summer.”

“Oh, I never heard it was a crime, dear Magnús, for rectors to hold open conversations with their beloved parishioners out in a homefield in the light of day. If I were you I would probably consider more noteworthy those conversations that might be taking place elsewhere than out in the open in a homefield in the light of day.”

“I’m cold, I’m hungry, I’m sick, and I have no desire to stand here out in the open in frost and storm and listen to your prattle. Farewell, I’m gone,” said the husband.

“Otherwise I make no secret of the business that I had with your wife last summer, dear Magnús,” said Reverend Sigurður. “If it is important for you to hear it I will be glad to tell it to you right away.”

“Is that so?” said the husband.