Independent People (61 page)

T
HIS
so-called World War, perhaps the most bountiful blessing that God has sent our country since the Napoleonic Wars saved the nation from the consequences of the Great Eruption and raised our culture from the ruins with an increased demand for fish and whale-oil, yes, this beautiful war, and may the Almighty grant us another equally beautiful at the earliest possible liioment—this war began with the shooting of a scruffy little foreigner, a chap called Ferdinand or something, and the death of this Ferdinand was taken so much to heart by various ill-disposed citizens that they kept on hacking one another to pieces like suet in a trough, for four consecutive years and more. And in the little loft in Summerhouses, where on the occasion of the Shepherds Meet there had assembled once more all those indomitable warriors who themselves had waged a lifelong unremitting struggle much more serious than any World War, and one that was prosecuted for reasons far weightier than that any Ferdinand should ever have been assassinated, this war was now the theme of debate.

“But don’t you think they ought to have been glad to be rid of the bastard?” asked Bjartur.

“I shouldn’t care to say,” replied Einar of Undirhlith. “They reckon he was the king of some small country or other, whose name I can never remember, but I’m not saying he was any the better man for that. We Icelanders have never had any great respect for kings, except perhaps Fell Kings, for everyone is equal before God; and as long as a farmer can call himself an independent man and no one else’s slave, so long can he call himself his own king. But one thing at least is certain about this Ferdinand
or whatever you call him: he was always a man, poor fellow. And I don’t think it becomes a Christian to use bad language about him. A man is always a man.”

“Well, apart from this one fellow and his name, whatever it may have been,” said Krusi of Gil, “what I could never understand about this business was why the others had to start squabbling simply because this bastard of a Ferdinand was shot.”

“Oh, let them squabble, damn them,” said Bjartur. “I only hope they keep it up as long as they can. They aren’t half so particular about what they eat now that they’re face to face with the realities of life. They’ll eat anything now. They’ll buy anything from you. Prices are soaring everywhere. Soon they’ll be buying the muck from your middens. I only hope they go on blasting one another’s brains out as long as other folk can get some good out of it. There ought to be plenty of people abroad. And no one misses them.”

“Oh, there are ideals in war too, though they may not be particularly noticeable,” said Einar apologetically, for to him Bjartur invariably seemed a thought too forceful in expression, whether in prose or verse. “Bjartur,” he added, “you who are an old ballad enthusiast ought to know that there is always an ideal lying behind every war, though that ideal may not loom very large in the eyes of men who have more serious things to think about.”

“Ideal?” asked Bjartur, and did not understand the word.

“Well, significance, then,” said Einar in explanation.

“Huh, you’re the first I’ve ever heard say that there was any significance behind these wars of theirs nowadays. They’re just madmen, pure and simple. It was another matter altogether in the olden days, when your heroes sailed off perhaps to distant quarters of the globe to fight for a peerless woman, or anything else that they considered some sort of flower in their lives. But such is not the case nowadays. Nowadays they fight just from sheer stupidity and obstinacy. But, as I’ve said before, stupidity is all right as long as other people can turn it to account.”

“There may be a good deal in what you say, Bjartur,” said the Fell King then, “but I think it behoves us also to examine this war from rather a different point of view. What we have to realize is that such a World War is accompanied not only by great blessings, such as the extra money we farmers now make on all our produce, but also by extensive damage and all sorts of hardship in the countries in which it is being waged, as for instance
the other day there when they destroyed that cathedral in France, a magnificent edifice that had stood there for upwards of a hundred years.”

“What the hell does it matter to me if they destroy the cathedral in France?” cried Bjartur, spitting contemptuously. “They’re more than welcome for me. They could shell Rauthsmyri Church itself and I still wouldn’t give a damn.”

“Unfortunately it isn’t the cathedral alone,” said the Fell King. “They say they don’t even think twice about blowing whole cities to pieces. Just think, for instance, of the amount of gold and jewels alone that must be destroyed if a large city, London or Paris for instance, is razed to the ground. Think of all those marvellous palaces of theirs. And all the libraries.”

“Well, they don’t destroy the gold and the jewels for me. And they don’t blow up the palaces for me. And as for the libraries, they tell me that both mice and worms have been busy eating up the parish library here for the past ten years. It didn’t require a war.”

“Then what about all the valuable statues that must be destroyed when a city is shelled?”

“Statues, what the hell are statues? When the devil did you ever see a statue?”

The Fell King was slow to answer, for the truth was that he had never actually seen a real statue; none of them knew precisely what a statue was, save that Madam of Myri had once been heard talking about a statue and Thorir of Gilteig’s eldest daughter had bought a little china dog many years before. “Yes, that reminds me, china—”

“Oh, it’s all to the good if they start smashing rubbish like china, which is nothing but a rotten fraud and a swindle,” said Bjartur, who no longer regretted anything. “I don’t see why I should worry if a gang of foreigners have to start drinking out of ordinary bowls or enamelled mugs. I’ve done it all my life and thrived well on it.”

“Now, if I were to give you my opinion,” said Thorir of Gilteig, “I should say that this war was being waged principally to give a dissolute rabble the chance to invade other people’s countries and rape all the foreign women. I heard from a man who was abroad for some time that these swine of soldiers and generals are the most lecherous beasts that ever crawled on the face of the earth. And some of the stories I have heard about these military whoremongers are such that it would be pointless to repeat them;
no one in Iceland here would believe them. I have three daughters myself, I’m saying no more about it, it isn’t my fault the way that things have gone, but I’ve often thanked my lucky stars lately that at least no Franco-German generals have ever forced their way into the country to practise their abominable manoeuvres on our innocent daughters.”

“Oh, they can always get into plenty of trouble without generals,” retorted Bjartur. “I should say from my experience of womenfolk that most of them want to be raped, more or less. Maybe they don’t like to hear the truth, but I think I’m pretty near the mark, worse luck.”

Thorir of Gilteig, however, felt that this was a little too hard on the poor girls, and thought, not without emotion, of the fate of his own three daughters. “If only they could withstand guile as well as they can force,” he argued, “many a girl would be in better case.”

“Personally I see very little difference between guile and force as long as the object is the same,” said Bjartur.

Einar made no contribution to this part of the conversation. His wife and his only daughter were both dead of consumption, so that there had never been any question of guile or force in his household. “But,” said he, taking up his own thread again, “I agree with our worthy Fell King in this, that if you look at the war with one eye upon the ideals that lie behind it, and the other on all those thousands of men and women whom it robs of life and limb, then you can’t help wondering whether it wouldn’t be better to lay more store upon preserving people’s lives than upon fulfilling a set of ideals. For if ideals aim not at improving the lot of mankind on earth, but at slaughtering men by the million, one may well ask whether it wouldn’t be more praiseworthy to be wholly devoid of ideals, though such a life would naturally be a very empty one. For if ideals are not life, and life is not ideals, what are ideals? And what is life?”

“Well, if they simply must have it that way,” said Bjartur, “they’ve only themselves to blame. Surely anyone who wants war must also be willing to have himself killed. Why can’t they have leave to be as idiotic as they please? And since the swine can be bothered to go to the trouble of butchering one another—from imbecility or ideals, it’s all the same to me—well, I'll be the last man on earth to grieve for them. To hell with the lot of them. All I say is this: let them continue till doomsday, as long as the meat and the wool keep on rising in price.”

“But what happens if there’s no one left in the end?” asked Krusi of Gil.

“Why, in that case we simply fit out a boat together, lads, then sail off south to the Continent and see how they are off for pasture-land in those parts; yes, it would be a first-rate chance of discovering whether there are any prospects of good farming down there. It wouldn’t half be a joke if Thorir of Gilteig’s grandchildren should end up by making dandelion chains on the ruins of London city, after all their damned china rubbish has been smashed to fragments; yes and their statues. And I might even set to and dig myself a vegetable garden on the plain where Paris had been razed to the ground hahaha.”

The Fell King: “You may be right in maintaining that the war arose from nothing but sheer stupidity, Bjartur, but personally I’m inclined to agree with Einar when he says that such a statement is an exaggeration of the truth. At least I doubt whether we, both you and I, who enjoy all the blessings of an increasing prosperity because of the war, have the right to call it by such indiscreet names. But, on the other hand, I am convinced that Einar likewise overshoots the mark when he says that the war sprang from some definite ideal. I should like to point out that I am not speaking as a parish councillor in this matter, for the war does not concern the parish council as such. But if I were to give you my own personal private opinion of this war, which in my eyes is only a sort of disagreement, I should say that this disagreement was, like most other disagreements, begotten first and foremost of a misunderstanding. This war, so far as I have been able to discover, is being waged principally between two countries, France and Germany as they are called, though naturally England also plays an important part, especially at sea, where she has a whole host of elegant warships that would be a credit to any country even if they were put to some useful purpose. Now, one day in the summertime, shortly after war broke out, it so happened that I had occasion to visit the District Medical Officer on some small business connected with the animals’ physic, and while we were sitting over a cup of coffee he brought out a most interesting foreign book and showed me some pictures of these two countries, France and Germany. I should like to make it clear that I examined the pictures as closely as circumstances allowed. And I came to the conclusion, after minute scrutiny and conscientious comparison of the pictures, that there is no fundamental difference between France and Germany at all, and that they are actually both.
The same country, with not even a strait between them, much less a fjord. Both countries have woods, both countries have mountains, both countries have cornfields, and both countries have cities. It is at least impossible to see any difference in the landscapes. And as for the inhabitants of these two countries, I am not afraid to declare that they are neither more stupid nor more vicious in appearance than any other folk, and certainly no more stupid-looking in the one country than in the other. To judge from the pictures, they would appear to be quite ordinary people, except that whereas the Germans are said to keep their hair close-cropped, many of the French are supposed to stick to the old custom of growing beards, much the same as in our own parish for instance, where some people keep their hair short while others prefer to grow a beard. The truth, I imagine, is that both the French and the Germans are just ordinary sort of folk, fellows of a decent, harmless sort of nature such as we find so many of around here, for instance. That is why I have arrived privately at the conviction, and I am fully prepared to maintain it in public if need be, that the aforesaid disagreement between these men sprang from a misunderstanding. And that the cause of it is that each thinks he is better than the other, when as a matter of fact there is no real difference between them except perhaps some trifling variation in the manner of wearing the hair. Each maintains that his country is in some way more holy than the other’s, though in strict reality France and Germany are exactly the same country, and no one in full possession of his faculties can possibly see any difference between them. But in spite of that, it is always a serious business to side with one when two are fighting, and the most sensible course, obviously, is to stay on good terms with both parties and speak ill of neither. I say for my part that I shall wait patiently until one or the other wins, and it’s no matter to me which it is, as long as somebody wins, for then there will be a greater likelihood of the two countries being combined and made into one country, so that there need rise no future misunderstanding about their being two different countries.”

Olafur of Yztadale had never been fond of discussing matters with the superficial wisdom that merely scratches at the crust and leaves the kernel undisturbed, for his was the type of mind that prefers to inquire into a thing’s deeper causes, and loves especially to probe into the utterly incomprehensible and inexplicable aspects of any question. He had been waiting impatiently for an opening, and when at last the Fell King was silent, he
lifted up his piping voice and crammed on full speed in order to make best use of that short space of time that he knew from past experience was his grudging dole in every conversation.

“When ten million men murder one another in bad will,” he said, “I for one don’t give a damn whether it’s from no reason at all or because of a dirty little cock-sparrow like this chap Ferdinand. It’s just as Bjartur says: Why can’t they have leave to be as idiotic as they please? Now, one idiot is a curiosity, as everyone knows who has seen an idiot; their jowls stick out beyond then-shoulders and they slaver at the mouth. But what is one to say of ten million idiots? Let us imagine that these ten million idiots murder one another, possibly because of a dirty little cock-sparrow, possibly for no reason at all, it’s no matter to me. Let us take it mathematically and say that five million of each are killed, for twice five are ten, as everybody knows. Suppose now that all these idiots go to heaven, for even if I believed in hell I would never wish anyone so ill as to send him there. Suppose further that they meet each other in heaven on the same day as they murdered each other on earth—it’s no matter to me whether it was out of imbecility, it doesn’t affect the question at issue, as I said before, because murder is murder as Einar of Undirhlith says. Now then, here are three questions which I ponder over night and day and which, since this seems a favourable opportunity, I intend to put to you also. In the first place, do they forgive one another in heaven for having murdered one another? it’s no matter to me whether it was out of stupidity. In the second place, do they perhaps thank one another in heaven for having murdered one another and thus helped one another on the way to heaven? Or, in the third place, do they go on fighting with undiminished imbecility in heaven, and if so for how long? And if they murder one another afresh, where do they land then? Will there eventually arrive a time when the whole universe will be too small to accommodate people who want to murder one another in stupidity, for no reason and to no purpose to the end of all eternity? I expect I'll be pretty grey at the temples before I get an answer to that, as to so much else.”