Independent People (58 page)

Now, it was something rare and almost unique for Bjartur of Summerhouses to receive a letter, with the exception of tax-bills, for independent men do not receive letters; such things are for those who rely on others rather than on themselves. He read the address twice aloud, turned the letter in various directions, studied it back and front. Both the boys stole nearer to their father as he opened it. He held it a short distance away from him, slightly to one side, knitted his brows, tilted his head back. It was impossible to read in his face what the contents might be. Then he read it again. He scratched his head carefully and it grew even more difficut to guess what the letter was about. Finally he read it a third time, stuck it in his pocket, went his way. No one knew what news it might contain.

A bright evening with feathery clouds over the green marshes; and the song-birds of life so happy that there was no lull in their song after sunset; yes, how spring was welling up in everything and flooding farther and farther afield with every day, every evening! And once again Bjartur was going down the valley, to look for a sheep that was due today, and though it was bedtime he called to his youngest son.

Gvendur: “I’ll come with you, Father, so that little Nonni can go to bed.”

The father: “I said that little Jon was to come with me. You go to bed. I shall remember to wake you so much the sooner in the morning.”

The father set off over the marshes with long strides, the boy
skipping along behind him, jumping from tussock to tussock. They went down to the flats along by the river; the slender mouse-vetch had grown to a good length, the butterwort had pushed its way up with its blue bells, and there were water-avens as well. The ducks resting peacefully on the river’s grey, unruffled pools had finished building their nests. The garrulous redshank followed the crofter, cheerfully prattling his long and marvellous story; though when one listens to it one feels sometimes that there is too little matter in a story so long, only hee, hee, hee, for a thousand years. But one fine day, perhaps in a far-off continent, this story returns to one’s mind and one discovers that it was more beautiful and more charming than most other stories, and possibly the most interesting story in the world; and one hopes that one may be allowed to hear it after one’s death also, that one may wander about the marshes of a night, the night before Ascension Day after one’s death, and listen to this incredible story; yes, this story and no other. They found the sheep on the flats and she had lambed. Splendid. Bjartur caught the lamb and marked it. The ewe came nearer and he took hold of her and felt at her udders to see if she was giving milk, and she was giving milk. Yes, tomorrow is Ascension Day and little Sola is going over to the homesteads to attend at the minister’s for a week; she is to be confirmed on Whit Sunday. “Probably there will be a shower about sunrise, do the grass a lot of good.” Seating himself on a clump of heather near the river, he gazed at the smoothness of its flow as it ran past him; at two ducks under the opposite bank; at two phalaropes swimming to and fro, bobbing curtsies. The boy too sat down and gazed at them; everything was so mild, so unassuming; it was as if the marshes wanted to make amends for everything. This moorland valley could change its face and show itself in any mood. Thus did the moors take leave of their darling, who was greater than all other Icelanders; they were taking leave of him for the last time.

“Well, Jon,” said the father. He had suddenly started calling him Jon. He did not look at him, rather at the river flowing past. “I believe there was something I was wanting to say to you before we went back home.”

Silence.

There’s a woman down in Fjord,” he continued. “I don’t know her at all, but now that I come to think of it I’ve heard her mentioned once or twice. They say she’s some relation of
the Sheriffs, but that’s no concern of mine. Anyway, she doesn’t live here, she lives in the Western World, which some people call America; it’s another continent.”

“I know that,” said the boy.

“Oh, you know that, do you?” said the father.

“I’ve learned about it,” replied the boy.

“Yes, of course,” said the father. “But don’t for heaven’s sake get it into your head that you should believe all you learn. It may be true, as most people say, that there are better pastures there than in this country, but when they come along and tell you that the sheep there can be left out to graze all through the winter, then you know of course that it’s nothing but a lie, like, for instance, so much they tell you about the feeding of cattle in America. But there’s supposed to be a lot of trades carried on there, and some of them seem very suitable for youngsters who would like to be independent people.”

“Yes,” said the boy. “And there’s a river there.”

“A river? Yes, there are rivers in lots of places.”

“And cities.”

“Pshaw! These cities; you mustn’t believe all that they tell you about cities. However, this woman has been asked to take you with her to America. I understand that your uncle’s sent the money and that he wants you to stay with him so that you can learn some suitable trade. She sails on Saturday morning. Your mother had always thought of making something of you, so maybe you had better go.”

The boy said nothing.

“I’ll take you down to Fjord tomorrow evening, then,” went on his father, “though only if you yourself want to go.”

Silence.

“Do you want to go?”

“Yes,” said the boy, and burst into tears.

“Right,” said his father, preparing to rise. “It’s all settled, then. I asked you simply because I consider that a man should make up his mind himself and follow none but his own behests.”

Then he stood up, adding as he did so:

“It’s a useful habit never to believe more than half of what people tell you, and not to concern yourself with the rest. Rather keep your mind free and your path your own.”

When father and son came home, everyone was in bed and asleep. Little Nonni undressed in silence and lay down beside his grandmother. In the air there still floated the sound of birds
singing down in the marshes. Or was it perhaps the echo of the marsh’s bird-song lingering in his soul and unwilling to be silent for the brief space of this tranquil spring night? It was a sound that was never afterwards to forsake his soul, however far he travelled and however resplendent the halls in which he was later received—the marsh with its Icelandic birds, one short spring night.

Yes, thus gently, thus demurely, did spring dawn over its moors after their winter. And before him there lay new lands which rise from the ocean like young maidens and bathe their precious shells and thousand-coloured corals in the summer’s first light; or old lands with fragrant forests, sun-white cities that open their arms on green waveless oceans; the rustling groves of California, the sun-gilded palm-avenues of the Mediterranean; the Mississippi and its banks where the hart and the panther lay hid in the shelter of the woods. And he himself, he was to sing for the whole world.

Then surely he was happy, surely he was filled with great bliss as he lay under the tiny window at the foot of his grandmother’s bed, with all the boundless expanse of the world open before him?—The boundless expanse to which he had been born. No, there was calm in his soul, the calm of the spring night and its tranquillity. Except that he could not sleep. He felt that never more would he wish to sleep, felt as if the whole of life would henceforth be one lingering spring night—after all the incredible storms that, young as he was, lay behind him. Gone were the days when he had been told that there were no countries behind the mountain, gone the nights when pots and pans had made speeches on the shelves and in the cupboards in order to banish the boredom of life and the horror of emptiness; and the snores, those alien journeys over tilted planes, immeasurable time—what journeys? It was he, he himself who was about to make a journey.

No, he could not bear the thought of closing his eyes, rather lay staring up at the roof, at the knot in the wood which he had once dubbed a man, even though he had only one eye. He had gone further and made this knot into his kinsman, and now this kinsman of his had sent him some money—in such a fashion did everything come true. Everything that one has ever created achieves reality. And soon the day dawns when one finds oneself at the mercy of the reality that one has created; and mourns the days when one’s life was almost void of reality, almost a nullity; idle, inoffensive fancies spun round a knot in a roof. His eye had
already, this first night, become a mourning eye. Mother, he thought, and recalled her who was nobler than the world; recalled the sighs that had planted sorrow in his breast, that sorrow which henceforth was to follow him all his life, colouring his every song. No, though in the woods of better lands, the hour would never come when he would forget her, or those days when the heath and the heavens were one. And it never did come. He felt he was looking back over an incredible life, back over oceans and countries, over years and seasons, and seeing once more before him this little room where he had listened to her groans in the darkness of the night and had asked: Is she asleep or awake? In the woods of better lands it would be this little room—

“Well, child,” said his grandmother the following day as she sat with idle hands, a rare thing for her, and gazed at him with eyes almost closed, her head half-turned away from him, and a finger between her gums, “it’s marvellous the things one lives to see.”

The afternoon sun shone in through the window and the ray fell vibrant with motes on the floor. Asta Sollilja was sitting by the window mending Nonni’s clothes before she left for Rauthsmyri; he had no Sunday clothes. But he had a new pair of stockings and a new pair of gloves that his grandmother had knitted, and Sola had made him some new sheepskin shoes to go to America with. Then suddenly he remembered that he had once intended, as a pastime, to count the wrinkles in his grandmother’s face. But now he found that he no longer desired to count them. He was going away without having counted them; but they remained in close keeping somewhere in his soul, all of them, each and every one. He stood by her bed for the last time, gazing mutely round him. He looked at the clinker-roof that had sagged between the rafters and was growing rotten at the joints; at the two knives wrapped in linen; the beds with their torn blankets of natural colour, their woodwork that glistened with fifteen years’ human friction; at the floor, indifferently clean, that gave under the weight of one’s foot; the front window with one pane broken and the other whole; the straws on the ledge outside unnaturally long, a corner of the marsh, a glittering loop of the river; at the family’s little range, where during all these years the fire of home had burned, and standing on it an ill-washed pan containing the cold remains of some porridge—the pan that he knew so well.—And Asta Sollilja. He had talked with her up in a grassy hollow, but he dared not talk with her again. Poor big
sister, she had made the acquaintance of love and therefore she longed to die. Yes, love; love was dreadful, and he shuddered at the thought of leaving her solitary, solitary in love, but there was nothing he could do to help her. He had had a letter as to his destiny, but there had been no letter for her. Her mother had died before she could give her a wish, the only cradle-gifts she had ever received were the wishes of one wormy bitch; and during the winter, at wishing-time, she had asked for love, which was surely the most dreadful of all things in existence; Asta Sollilja, I must go, in love no one can help anyone else; no one but oneself alone; now you are going to Rauthsmyri to attend at the minister’s and be confirmed, but I have been sent a letter.

Then the old woman dug her hand under her pillow and withdrew a little bundle. It was made up of useless old rags, both woven and knitted, which were wrapped tightly one round another. Numb-fingered and with trembling hands she proceeded to unwind them.

“Are you there still, urchin?” she asked finally when she had reached the heart of this mystery.

“Yes, Grandmother,” said the boy.

And what should it turn out to be but those two treasures of hers, the only things of value that she possessed: the kerchief and the ear-pick. She was going to give him these treasures at parting, he who had slept in the corner there beside her ever since he was in diapers. She could do no more.

“Oh, it’s not much of a gift to offer anybody,” she said. “But you could wrap this cloth round your neck on festival days when the weather’s good. And this ear-pick, they say it’s been in the family a long time.”

She did not recite any hymns, did not mention Jesus or Kuria, did not warn him against sin. Neither did she ask to be remembered to her sons in America—she had never been able to sense ties of kinship that stretched farther than Methalland in the south. Nor did she ever on any occasion ask about little Nonni when he had gone.

“There are two things I want to ask you to remember when you’ve gone,” she said, the wrinkled old face trembling much more than usual. “I want to ask you never to be insolent to those who hold a lowly position in the world. And never to ill-treat any animal.”

“Say thank-you to your grandmother, Nonni,” said Asta Sollilja. “She’s given you the only thing she has.”

And he put his hand in hers and thanked her in silence, for he knew no words that could express his gratitude for such a gift; she was giving him the nation’s poorest Christmas to cheer him on his way when he went out into the world, and he knew that henceforth she would no longer celebrate Christmas.

O
N
the Saturday before Whitsun Asta Sollilja returned from Rauthsmyri; let us hope she had learned her Christianity, for she was to be confirmed on the morrow. But why had she come home today? Had not Bjartur arranged for a woman up-country to make her a dress and had he not paid for it in advance? Surely it had been decided that the girl was to return only when the confirmation ceremony was over, on Whit Sunday evening? What of it: she came home on the Saturday before Whitsun, late in the afternoon. It happened in this way: