Independent People (39 page)

“Don’t you know any games?” he inquired without looking up.

“No,” they answered.

“No?” he said. “Why not?”

“We have to keep on doing something.” said little Nonni, without explaining the process of his thought.

“What for?” asked the man.

They didn’t know.

“It’s great fun playing games,” he said, but they didn’t know whom he was referring to—whether he referred to them, to himself, or to the people of the district The young girl’s cheeks were burning for fear he should look at her or address any remark to her in particular.

“Why don’t you shoot some of the birds?” he asked.

“Father doesn’t want to,” said the boy, without remembering that his father had published his considered opinion on the subject.

“What did you do with the geese I gave you the other day?”

“We boiled them.”

“Boiled them? You ought to have fried them in butter.”

“We haven’t any butter.”

“Why not?”

“Father doesn’t want to buy a churn.”

“Does your father want anything?” inquired the man.

“Sheep,” replied the boy.

Then at last the visitor looked at the children, and it was as if he realized for the first time that this was a conversation, and that there was, moreover, some real substance in this conversation. He was rather surprised. “So he wants sheep,” he said, with a heavy stress on the “sheep,” as if unable to understand the word in this context. Presently he turned the birds over, and then it came to light that the side that had been below had turned brown; the butter spat and crackled as he turned them, and a dense smoke filled the tent. “So he wants sheep,” said the man to himself. He shook his head, still to himself, and though they did not really fathom his disapproval, they felt nevertheless that there must be something not quite right in wanting to have sheep. Nonni decided to tell his brother Helgi that it was questionable whether this great man was in complete agreement with all their father’s opinions.

She looked at him all, and at his belt, and at his toes, and his shirt was made of brown cloth, open at the neck, and she had never known the like of him; he could no doubt do anything he wanted. His house—in her mind’s eye she saw the house, lovely as a dream, on her mother’s cake-dish; but that was impossible. And why was it impossible? Because there was a girl standing in front of it. This man’s house stood by itself in a wood, like the house on the lovely calendar that the sheep had trodden into the muck when it fell downstairs two years ago—by itself in a wood. He lived there alone. In his house the rooms were more numerous and more beautiful even than those in the mansion of Rauthsmyri; he had a sofa that was more beautiful even than the Rauthsmyri sofa; this was he of whom it is written in
Snow White.

“What do they call you?” he asked, and her heart stood still.

“Asta Sollilja,” she blurted out in an anguish-stricken voice.

“Asta what?” he asked, but she didn’t dare own up to it again.

“Sollilja,” said little Nonni.

“Amazing,” said he, gazing at her as if to make sure whether it could be true, while she thought how dreadful it was to be saddled with such an absurdity. But he smiled at her and forgave her and comforted her and there was something so good and so good in his eyes; so mild; it is in this that the soul longs to rest; from eternity to eternity. And she saw it for the first time in his
eyes,
and perhaps never afterwards, and faced it and understood. And that was that
“Now I know why the valley is so lovely,” said the visitor.

She hadn’t the faintest idea what to say—the valley lovely? For weeks afterwards she racked her brains. What had he meant? She had often heard people talk about lovely wool and lovely yarn and, most of all, lovely sheep—but the valley? Why, the valley was nothing but a marsh, a sodden marsh where one stood over the ankles in puddles between the hummocks and deeper still in the bogs, a stagnant lake where some people said that a kelpie lived, a little croft on a low hillock, a mountain with belts of crags above, very seldom sunshine. She looked about her in the valley, looked at the marsh, the evil marsh where all summer long she had lifted the sodden hay, soaking and unhappy; the days seemed to have had no mornings, no evenings to look forward to—and now the valley was lovely. Now I know why the valley is so lovely. Why, then? No, it wasn’t because she was called Asta Sollilja. If it was lovely it was because a wonderful man had come into the valley.

The ducks went on sizzling.

“Let’s go outside,” he suggested. They sat down on the bank by the lake. It was nearly three o’clock, a summer breeze in the valley, warm. He lay flat in the grass looking up at the sky, and they gazed at him, and at his toes.

“Do you know anything?” he asked up at the sky.

“No,” was their reply.

“Have you ever seen a ghost?”

“No.”

“Is there anything you can do?” asked the man.

At this point the children felt that perhaps it was scarcely polite to answer all his questions in the negative, so they did not absolutely deny that they could do something. What could Asta Sollilja do? She racked her brains for a few moments, but found when it came to the point that she had forgotten everything she could do.

“Nonni here can sing,” she said.

“Let’s hear you sing, then,” said the man.

But apparently the boy had suddenly forgotten how to set about singing.

“How many toes have I?” asked the man.

“Ten,” answered little Nonni at once, and immediately regretted his hasty answer, for he had not troubled to count them, and who dare guarantee that such a great man did not have eleven? Asta Sollilja turned her head aside; she had never in all her life heard anyone ask such a funny question, and however hard she
tried she simply couldn’t keep back her smile. And when she looked around again, the man was giving her such a funny look that she laughed out loud. She was very much ashamed of herself. But she couldn’t help it.

“I knew it,” said the man triumphantly, rising from the grass to watch her laughing. She came all to life with the laughter, roguery in her eyes; she gave up, and it was a girl’s face.

Then he had to see to the ducks again. The odour of frying spread out all around the tent, and the children’s mouths watered as they thought with delight of eating food with such a lovely smell. The man brought some tins full of sweet fruit and turned them out into a basin and was so occupied with his fragrant delicacies that he had little time for the children, and Asta Sollilja was suddenly angry with her little brother Nonni for being so stupid and so tiresome. “Why couldn’t you have sung for the man, you fool, when I let you come with me?” she said. But that evening when she was sitting outside on the paving alone, she reproached herself bitterly for not having shown what she herself could do—why, for instance, hadn’t she told him the story of Snow White, which she knew practically off by heart? Once upon a time in a great snowstorm—she had been on the very point of beginning. But the truth was that she had felt that he might possibly misunderstand such a story. Yet, whatever the result might have been, she could not help thinking of what she had left undone and regretting the story that had gone untold. She did not tell anyone, only sat gazing towards the tent gleaming in the dusk on the bank of the lake. And then she saw what, to the best of her vision, was a man walking away westwards over the marshes, as if he were making for Rauthsmyri. It was he.

When bedtime is near in Summerhouses he walks away westward over the ridge. Where could he be going so late at night? She had never noticed it before, but perhaps he went there every night without her knowing. But hadn’t he said that the valley was lovely? What had he meant? Nothing? Had he said it just for fun, and she so sure that he meant it? For, if the valley was lovely, why did he go away over the ridge—and night fallen. It had grown cold.

They did not see him for two days, but she heard him shooting. Then he came. It was at nightfall again, and they were getting ready for bed. Fortunately she had not taken her slip off yet. There was a light in his pipe as he stuck his head up through the hatchway in the dark and said good-evening. From his pocket he took
a box that gave out a light and the women were standing in their under-petticoats. He was puffing vigorously at his pipe; the clouds of fragrant smoke filled the room immediately.

“I’m leaving,” he said.

“What’s all your hurry?” asked Bjartur. “I always thought a week or two extra made no difference to you southerners. And the marsh is as good a place as any for you, mate.”

“Yes, quite so.”

“You were giving the youngsters some duck to eat the other day,” said Bjartur.

“Oh, it was nothing,” said the guest.

“Quite right,” agreed Bjartur. “It’s famine food, no pith in it; the stuff they ate after the Eruption. I suppose you’ve been half-starved in the marshes there, poor chap, as was only to be expected?”

“No, I’ve put on weight.”

“Well, we prefer our food with a bit of strength in it,” said Bjartur, “we like it sour and salt. By the way, you know all about building, I expect. I was thinking of starting to build myself a house, you see.”

Here old Fritha could restrain herself no longer. “You building?” she interjected. “Huh, it’s about time you were thinking of building some sense into your thick skull. And painting it as well. Both inside and out.”

Yes, he had decided to build, but it would perhaps be wiser not to say too much in case these half-wits heard, spiteful old paupers, parasites battening on the community, but whatever happens, you’re welcome here on my property at any time, be it night or day.

The visitor thanked Bjartur for his royal hospitality and said that he would most certainly return to such a pretty valley. And Bjartur answered, as in their first conversation, that pretty, well, it all depends on the hay.

Then the visitor began to shake hands in farewell.

The old woman seemed to have some difficulty in withdrawing her feeble hand from his farewell grip. She who so rarely needed to say anything to anyone seemed, strangely enough, to be trying to produce something from a recess in her mind; there was a little question she had been wanting to ask him. What was it?

“Did I hear aright the other day, does the gentleman hail from the south?”

“Yes,” answered Bjartur loudly, relieving his guest of the inconvenience. “Of course the man’s from the south. We’ve all heard it a hundred times.”

But the old woman said that she had thought she might have misheard, she was such an old wreck these days.

“Yes,” agreed Bjartur, “you’re getting the worse for wear. The fellow can see that.”

“I was wanting to ask the gentleman before he went away, seeing that I was brought up in the south, whether you might happen to know anything of my sister or perhaps have seen anything of her down there lately.”

“No, no,” cried Bjartur, “don’t be so silly, he’s never seen her.”

“How the devil do you know?’ asked old Fritha.

But the visitor wanted to make further inquiries into the matter, and said that there was always a chance that he might have seen this old woman’s sister, what’s her name?

He shone his pocket lamp on her and she tried to look at him with her dull, blinking eyes. Her sister’s name was Oddrun.

“Oddrun? Is her home in Reykjavik?”

No, her home wasn’t in Reykjavik. She hadn’t a home anywhere, had never had a home. “She was a housemaid in Methal-land for a long time—that’s where we come from.”

“Tcha,” interrupted Bjartur. “How do you expect him to know folk like that, common folk?”

“The last I heard of her, she was in service with some people near Vik in Myrdal and was in bed with a broken hip. She asked someone to write me a letter. I got it from the postman. More than thirty years have passed since then. We were two sisters.”

“Tcha, she must be dead long ago,” cried Bjartur.

“For shame!” bawled old Fritha, taking up the cudgels. “You don’t rule over God and men, thank goodness.”

The visitor excused his ignorance of Oddrun by informing them that he had never been in Methalland.

“Oh, she left Methalland years ago,” said the old woman. “But she’s in the south all the same.”

‘Well, well,” said the visitor. “Just so.”

“News takes a long time to travel so far,” remarked the old woman.

“Yes,” agreed the visitor.

“So I was wanting to ask you to give her my greetings if you should ever run across her, and please tell her that I am well, praise the Lord, but failing fast and not much good in soul or body,
as you can see. And tell her that I lost Ragnar thirteen years ago; and that the boys have all been in America for years now. I am living here with my daughter now. She is married.”

“He knows that,” cried Bjartur.

The visitor shook the old woman’s hand once more in farewell and promised to convey these tidings to Oddrun in the south. He then said good-bye to the others. And he said good-bye to Asta Sollilja.

“Asta Sollija,” he said. And passed his hand over her cheek as if she were a little child. “Lovely name in a lovely valley. I’m sure I shall never forget it.”

She lay awake praying to God without knowing God, endlessly revolving his promise in her mind, never forget it. Never. She looked forward to next summer, when he would come back again. Then came the doubt. If he were never going to forget it, why had he gone off across the ridge the night before last?

When they rose next morning he had packed up his tent and was gone from the valley. The rain was raw, summer far-waned, and in the rain there was the dreary beat that reminds one of everlasting waterfalls between the planets; it brooded oppressively over tibe whole countryside, smooth, smooth, over the whole shire, without rhythm or crescendo, overwhelming in its scope, terrifying. But the fragrance of his tobacco remained for a while in the house, she smelled it when she came home to do the cooking. But with the passing of time it faded. And finally there was no fragrance left.

T
HIS
Bailiff Jon of Utirauthsmyri was a person who had long been renowned for his ability to sell sheep wherever he pleased and at whatever price suited him best, while lesser farmers had to content themselves with revolving on Bruni’s tether of debt. He was the one man in the district who could afford to hate Tulinius Jensen in public. He bought people’s sheep and drove them north over the high heath and sold them for huge sums of money in Vik, because he had a share in the business there. But as time went on this co-operative society epidemic began spreading farther and farther afield till eventually a society was established in Vik, and this society grew so rapidly that the Vik business died of a wasting disease, and that in spite of the Bailiff’s support, which goes to show
how dangerous societies can be for the individual in these hard times, however strong that individual may happen to be. One would naturally have imagined that Jon of Myri would now turn tooth and nail upon such unions of the crofters as the one that had just destroyed his business in Vik. But what happened? He sent away to the south country for his son, the secretary. He started a society in Fjord along with Ingolfur Arnarson Jonsson. And into this society he not only raked all the solvent farmers from the surrounding districts, including everyone down to the most abject peasant, but started lending people money on whatever terms they liked so that they could throw off Bruni’s yoke and join his cooperative society. ‘We must stand together, we farmers,” he said. He who so far had always stood alone was now of a sudden standing together. Such people know the tricks of flattering and fawning all right. “If the Icelandic farming community
is
ever to become anything but the miserable doormat of merchant power, we must take concerted action and rally round the standard of our own financial interests. The co-operative societies give full value for the farmers’ produce and sell them their necessities at practically cost-price; they are actually not business enterprises, but charitable institutions owned and used by the farmers themselves for their own benefit. A man who sells us thirty lambs receives something like sixty crowns in dividend if world markets are favourable. A man paying in three to four hundred lambs would receive a dividend of say a thousand crowns. Anyone can see how essential these societies are to rich and poor alike. No one steals from anyone.”