Independent People (46 page)

The evening was calm, so he was in no hurry to bring the sheep in. Absentmindedly he wandered away from the croft, talking to himself, bandying vituperation with higher powers, and perhaps not noticing where his feet were leading him. Then suddenly the going began to stiffen. He had come much farther than he realized and was now ascending the ridge; perhaps he had been going to see Einar and the others. A golden new moon mirrored itself ostentatiously in the hard-frozen snow, the dusk was taking on a deeper and a deeper shade of blue; many people say the nicest time of day is when dusk begins to fall. And there in the calm winter landscape, at the highest point of the ridge, near the brink of the ravine, stood the spectre’s stony burial mound with one side in shadow and the other in the pale light of the moon between day and evening, in an innocence almost charming, a serenity almost dignified. But Bjartur was feeling far from charmed as, increasing his speed, he rushed up the slope like a mad bull charging some unfortunate whom it has decided to gore to death. Yet he did not attack the cairn immediately; rather loosened a stone from the gravel and stood for a while holding it behind his back. “So there you lie, the pair of you,” he said, glaring with frozen hatred at the place of their burial. He stamped his foot in their faces. But they made no reply.

Nevertheless he addressed them for some considerable time. He said he was no longer under any delusion about their intentions. In unequivocal terms he accused them of having murdered wives and children for him, and now, apparently, it had come to the sheep. “Go on,” he said, “just go on if you dare. But I allow no one to act the tyrant over me. Tumble the mountain over the croft, if you dare, but here I shall stand while I have breath to draw. No one, you least of all, will ever subdue me.”

No answer, except that the small stars of heaven smiled with their strange golden eyes upon this mortal man and his enemies.

Then he said: “Here I have a stone” and under their noses he waved the little stone he had loosened from the gravel—“Here I have a stone. You think I’m going to give you this stone. You say, he must be afraid now that he’s standing there with a stone. You say, he has brought us a stone at last because he’s afraid of losing his Asta Sollilja the same as he lost both his wives. But I say, here stand I, Bjartur of Summerhouses, a free man in the land, an independent Icelander from the day of the colonization till this hour and moment. You may throw the mountain on top of me. But I shall never give you a stone.”

As proof of this lack of respect he threw the stone into the ravine, and the stone could be heard raising the echoes as it fell on the pinnacles at the bottom, and from below there rose the sound of old apprehensive voices, as if the troll and his family had waked from the sleep of centuries in sudden and startled inquiry. Never had Bjartur been further from seeking anyone’s assistance than at this moment when he had rendered his account. Never had he been more determined to stand alone and unsupported against the monsters of the country and, single-handed, continue the struggle to the bitter end.

Turning on his heel he strode off, homeward to his valley.

B
UT
country people on their way home from town had called at Summerhouses and learned the news from the children. They bore the tidings up-country to the homesteads, where the story of the ghost was not long in taking legs to itself. By young and old alike it was welcomed warmly in the lack of emotional titillation that is so far-famed a characteristic of mid-winter’s short days; and everyone was the more willing to be convinced of the prowling of ghosts the more sceptically they had queried the scampering of rats, for the soul of man has a liking for the incredible, but doubts the credible.

Before long the number of visitors had begun to increase. Strange though it may
seem,
people rarely show such enthusiasm as when they are seeking the proof of a ghost story—the soul gathers all this sort of thing to its hungry bosom. Bjartur, of course, declared that it was just like the dalesmen to froth at the mouth
with excitement, then rush scampering after a ghost, but that they had full leave to wear out their shoe leather in whatever way pleased them best. He personally hadn’t the time to answer any of their rubbish about ghosts, but one thing he could tell them was that that blasted tom-cat of his had gone and frightened the sheep through the night so that they had gone mad with terror and, running into the walls and the mangers, had either broken their necks or impaled themselves on rusty nails.

The children, on the other hand, were eager to entertain the visitors and stood outside against the wall blethering incessantly about ghosts. For the first time in their lives they were persons of importance with a willing audience; Madam of Myri even sent Asta Sollilja some coffee and sugar behind Bjartur’s back, likewise a book called
The Simple Life
by a famous foreigner of talent and literary genius. It transpired moreover that the boys had actually seen the ghost and talked to him. The eldest and the youngest, particularly, needed only to pop out into the ewe-house and shut the door behind them and the ghost would appear. They could see his eyes shining in the dark, but they could never rightly understand what he said, because he talked with an awful lisp and snuffled a good deal. This much he had nevertheless managed to convey: having long since grown tired of silence and neglect, he was determined to make his presence felt again and wouldn’t behave unless he was treated with proper respect, preferably with songs and sermons, likewise prayers, preferably burial prayers. Several of the visitors went out to the ewe-house to hum a line or two of a hymn or mumble a bit of the Lord’s Prayer. Asta Sollilja had her hands more than full pouring coffee. More visitors, said the ghost, send more visitors tomorrow. He was obviously no false god, but a real god who prayed to men and said: Give us this day our daily prayer. Then he felt much better for it.

The parish was seething with the most outrageous rumours of this fiend who rode the roofs in the moorland valley and could be seen scurrying up to the top of the thatch and down again in broad daylight, what time he uttered the direst threats of what would befall if he didn’t get his prayer. The little croft that no one had taken any notice of until today had suddenly become the sole topic of conversation in a whole district, even other districts. Men and dogs that had never been heard of before drifted along to the paving and even invaded the living-room. The stories of this ghost, the heated discussions, the various points of view, the theological and the philosophical explanations—it would have been no joke
for anyone to have had to write them all up; the result would have been almost as long as the Bible.

In this, as in other religions, there were various sects. Some folk were convinced that it was a manifestation; others asked: what is a manifestation? A third group maintained, in face of all the facts, that the sheep must have killed themselves. Some people said that the ghost was the size of a troll, some that he was only of average size, while others contended that he was little and thickset. There were various people who advanced historical evidence that he was masculine, others who had equally valid proof that she was feminine, and lastly there were those who had evolved an instructive and highly noteworthy theory that it was neuter.

Finally someone who was friendly towards the Summerhouses folk went to see the minister about it, for there was a rumour afoot that the ghost intended to destroy the croft at Christmas, someone had had it from the boys, who were in constant communication with the ghost—would the minister be so kind as to visit Summerhouses and hold some sort of small ceremony to see whether this fiend would not yield to the bidding of the Lord? It cheered the minister greatly that there should at last have arisen a situation that reminded his lukewarm flock of the existence of the Lord, for he himself had not dared mention His name out of the pulpit or of his own free will since he accepted the living, as anything spiritual either annoyed them or simply made them laugh.

Thus it was that one evening the croft was so crowded that anyone would have thought a feast was to be held in the home-field. The weather was peaceful and the stars bright, the moon near the full, frost. A great crowd of young people had arrived and were standing like dolts on the snowdrift, savouring the tense horror that the night brooded over with its stiff blue light Entertainment was being provided by a jaunty young man from Fjord who worked as a winter help on one of the farms up-country. He knew all these new-fangled tunes that people dance to nowadays in Fjord, and the others tried to join in with him to drive away their apprehension. But there were others besides mere thrill-seekers in the company; there were men of maturity and experience, trusty old acquaintances, among whom was our Fell King, who had secured election to the local board two years ago and was therefore often heavy with the responsibility that burdens the parochial administration in these hard times. And the minister, that baldheaded young man with eczema on his hands, had been
persuaded to turn up, and was now observing that the time had come to hold ram-shows in the district and to procure an expert from the south to supervise the arrangements. He quoted the latest words of wisdom on this subject from the
Agricultural Journal.
Several people drew the boys aside to ask them about the ghost, his appearance and speech, but Bjartur was in a surly mood and scarcely acknowledged his visitors’ greetings. He asked no one up, but stood muttering snatches from the Rhymes into his beard.

For a while the visitors lounged about from one group to another in idleness, out on the drift or in the doorway, in company with the shadow of the night, many of them with the knowledge that they were only more or less welcome, till finally old Hrollaugur of Keldur, an open, industrious fellow who could never stand the sight of anyone dawdling, called out: “Well, lads, isn’t it about time we were thinking of walking?”

So it was to be one of those so-called prayer walks round the farm buildings which had now with the passage of time evolved into a definite ritual and had given the language the term “to walk.” Yes, the others agreed solemnly, it must be about time to walk. The boys were sent for and the young people called back, for some of them had begun to walk in their own way along by the mountain, as the night with its floating blue shadows was very alluring, not only for a ghost, but also for love. The boys arrived with eyes dilated, and the minister, who had been trying to forget occult powers in feverish discussion of the
Agricultural Journals
theories, gasped for breath and answered Hrollaugur’s summons with “Yes, in God’s name.” The Fell King, Einar of Undirhlith, and Olafur of Yztadale came in single file with their hands behind their backs, each with his own peculiar expression, each with hay in his beard, dogs before and behind, excitedly and importantly conscious of the solemnity of the occasion. Various people offered the girls their support, and the girls were red in the face with ghosts, though Bjartur considered that it was something else they were nosing after, see.

“Now, then, you kids, just pop into the huts and ask which way we have to walk,” repeated Hrollaugur of Keldur—It was safer to make inquiries first, as sometimes the ghost made them go sunwise round the huts, sometimes contrariwise. Helgi took his brother’s hand and they tiptoed up to the door; no one had permission to interview the ghost but them. After sliding the bar along, they peeped in cautiously. “Shh,” whispered the elder boy,
waving the more inquisitive visitors away, “not too near!” The sheep rushed to the far end of the half-empty stalls in unnatural fright. The boys disappeared inside and shut the door after them. A middle-aged woman from the homesteads began singing “Praise the Lord.” Many of the others joined in. But Hrollaugur of Keldur said it would be time enough to sing when they had begun to walk—he managed this affair as he would have managed any other sensible job of work that demanded its own set routine. Suddenly all of them jumped, for the boys shot backward out of the hut and rolled head over heels on the ice as if they had been slung. “The hymn books, the hymn books,” they yelled, still rolling. The ghost required that they should walk nine times round the hut and sing nine stanzas.

“I suppose he means verses,” said Einar of Undirhlith stiffly.

Whatever his meaning may have been, the procession now began. The older people hummed the hymn to the best of their ability, the dogs howled too, but the young people did not know the hymn and were thinking of other hymns, and there were small surreptitious squeezes while the moon’s blue shadows floated one into another. Bjartur stood on one side, calling to his dog in case it landed in a fight.

After a while, however, it became evident that the younger people could not be bothered to do all those circles; a little group detached itself and wandered off along the foot of the mountain to hear once more from the mouth of the singer the newest dance tune from Fjord: “Supple in reels, supple in reels, supple in lancers and reels.” Two brave men popped into the ewe-house without permission, to see the ghost. But they did not stay long there. Hardly had they crossed the threshold before they saw two evil flaming eyes glaring at them from the nook by the hay-barn door, at the far end of the manger. It was as horrible a sight as the dead thrall’s eyes in Grettis Saga; when these men have grown old they will tell a new generation of that night long ago when as young men they looked into the eyes of Icelandic legend. Nor was it a silent regard, for a hellish noise accompanied it, more frightful than the voice of any Icelandic creature and reminiscent of nothing so much as the insane screech of a devilish old door. According to the minister, who himself took a lightning peep into the stalls, it was the voice of a being condemned to eternal despair outside the gates of Heaven, and the greeny-yellow glare was the glare of eyes that had never seen the light of heaven and never would; so he seized the opportunity to offer up a prayer that to us might be
opened heaven’s gate, that we might see the light thereof. And at that moment the moon floated angrily behind a bank of clouds, and the pallid blue snow-world passed simultaneously into an obscurity more ghostly even than before. The features of the countryside dissolved; even the people themselves seemed unreal one in the other’s eyes as they stood in the shadows of this unusual night-watch that passed the bounds of all reason. They groped involuntarily for one another’s hand, fearful that they might be alone; what more was it really possible to do? Thus they stood, holding hands and shivering as the moon disappeared into a deeper and deeper gloom; they were wanting coffee, they were cold.