Independent People (72 page)

Now, Bjartur had been so certain of moving into the house that autumn that he had done nothing during the summer to patch up the old croft, and when, towards the end of October, the frosts suddenly gave way to thawing winds and heavy rain, it was soon made uncomfortably obvious that the roof was in a state of acute disrepair. Bjartur stood the leaks as long as he could, then moved downstairs, but the grandmother, being a conservative old creature, refused to move and, having had a sack spread over her, lay in bed there till it faired. Well, one evening Bjartur was sitting downstairs waiting for the housekeeper to bring him his porridge, and presently she set it down in front of him and he began eating. She stood for a while watching him out of the corner of her eye,
as, busy with his spoon, he sat eating from the bowl on his knees, and when he was almost done she opened her mouth and addressed him. She had a habit of turning her back on him when speaking to him, and now it was almost as if she was grumbling away at the wall.

“I must say I can’t see the point of building a fine big house if you intend sticking on in this leaky old hole the same afterwards as before. Folk would have had a lot to say about bad management if it had been I that was responsible for it.”

“Oh, I don’t think well take much harm though we have to put up with a few leaks here and there for one winter more. Leaks are healthy enough if they come from the skies. And anyway it wasn’t my fault that the doors weren’t ready.”

“I would have been quite prepared to pay for a door for my room if I had been asked in time.”

“Yes, but it happens that I intend having the doors in my own house hung at my own expense,” retorted Bjartur. “And anyway, there were other things besides doors needed, and I wasn’t prepared to go and buy all the furniture necessary for such a big house when winter was already upon us.”

“You seem to have managed quite well without furniture so far,” said the housekeeper, “but if it was really necessary I could always have bought two chairs with my own money. And I could always have lent you my bed, or at least shared it with others, if it had been possible to come to any sort of agreement with a living soul in this place.”

“Huh,” said Bjartur, and looked her over as she stood in front of him. No one could deny that she was a fine figure of a woman. And she was certainly good at her work, and intelligent; and free from any kind of vanity or extravagance. Possibly his best course would be to marry the bitch, so that he could have full leave
to
tell her to shut up; or at the least go to bed with her, as she herself was suggesting in her own starchy fashion. He felt that he could not be angry with this colossus, whom the years could not bend, or answer her roughly or haughtily, as she so rightly deserved, and he had to confess that it was both uneconomical and eccentric of him to be always paying her a wage instead of simply getting in beside her in that marvellous bed of hers, one of the best beds in the whole parish, one such as he himself had never before had the opportunity of sleeping in. And besides, didn’t she have money in the savings bank?

“Oh, it wasn’t because I was short of money that I didn’t move
into the house this autumn, Brynja lass,” he continued. “I could have bought plenty of doors, plenty of beds, plenty of chairs if I had wanted to. And perhaps a picture of God, and one of the Czar too, if I’d felt like it.”

“I don’t have to ask why it was,” she replied, still grumbling away at the wall. “Poetry is being written about those who have neither the nature nor the sense to understand it, but other folk never hear a friendly word spoken to them. All that other folk get are the leaks.”

“The leak that comes from outside harms no one,” he stated once more. “It is the leak that one finds indoors that is worst.”

When one is unmarried, one must tell people to shut up in roundabout fashion.

W
AS
it surprising if most people considered that Bjartur of Summerhouses would have been much better off without the house he had built? Then what about the Fell King and his house? Did he fare any better, may I ask? No; the truth was that Bjartur’s house, though innocent of furniture and so far uninhabitable, was a veritable fount of happiness compared with the house that the Fell King had built and fitted out at such expense. For whereas Bjartur’s house continued to stand there by virtue of the loan he had raised in the savings bank, and his sheep to pay off the interest stipulated, the supports that sustained the Fell King’s house collapsed completely, engulfing the owner in sudden ruin. It was a fine house, this of the Fell King’s, so fine, in fact, and so well furnished that it might be designated, along with the mansion at Rauthsmyri itself, as a dwelling such as civilized human beings need not be ashamed of living in; but the lamentable outcome was that no sooner had the Fell King brought it to such a desirable pitch than he was thrown out neck and crop and forced to flee. People simply can’t afford to live like civilized human beings, as has been so often demonstrated before and will be again; even middle-class farmers can’t afford it, and in a boom year at that. The only sensible course for ordinary folk, the only one that pays, is to live in a little hut on the same cultural level as the Negroes of central Africa and to let the merchant keep a flicker of life going in them, as the Icelandic nation has been doing for a thousand years now. People take more upon themselves than they can
manage if they aim higher. True, it had been quite usual in the old days for people to owe the merchant money and to be refused credit when the debt had grown too big. It had likewise been nothing uncommon for people thus denied sustenance to die of starvation, but such a fate, surely, was infinitely preferable to being ensnared by the banks, as people are nowadays, for at least they had lived like independent men, at least they had died of hunger like free people. The mistake lies in assuming that the helping hand proffered by the banks is as reliable as it is seductive, when in actual fact the banks may be relied upon only by those few exceptionally great men who can afford to owe anything from one to five millions. So about the same time as Bjartur sold his better cow to raise money for wages and paid a thousand crowns off the loan and
six
hundred as interest by making inroads on his stock of sheep, the Fell King sold his farm to a speculator for the amount of the mortgages with which it was encumbered and fled to live in a hovel in the town, yes, and thought himself lucky to escape. The National Bank had passed into Ingolfur Arnarson’s control and had become a State bank on the basis of a huge government loan from England; remissions of and concessions on loans were out of the question now, unless it was a matter of millions, and the farmers’ produce had fallen disastrously in price.

Yes, the bottom fell out of everything, the autumn that Bjartur’s house was one year old. The war’s blessings were no longer operative as far as trade and prices were concerned, for the foreigners had begun rearing sheep of their own again instead of killing men, worse luck. Icelandic mutton was once more one of the world’s superfluous commodities. No one was asking for wool these days, the foreigners’ sheep had started growing wool of their own again. Bjartur had to stand by and watch a hundred of these unwelcome Icelandic sheep melt away simply to pay the interest and the part payment of his loan. But this loss he took with the same unflinching fortitude as he had previously shown in the face of famine, spectres, and merchants, complaining to no one. The walls of his prison of debt were no doubt growing the thicker the lower his produce sank in price, but he was determined to keep on running his head against those walls as long as there was a drop of blood or a particle of brain left in it. This was a new phase in the crofter’s eternal struggle for independence, this fight against the normal economic conditions that must of necessity return when the abnormal prosperity of war has passed away; when the unnatural optimism that has betrayed the hut-dwelling peasant into an act
of folly so imbecile as to propose living in a house has evaporated and left not a trace behind. He returned to his senses, now that the boom years were over, to find himself stuck in the bog that, with infinite labour, he had managed to avoid in the hard years; the free man of the famine years had become the interest-slave of the boom years. It seemed after all that in their freedom from debt, their dead children, their dirt, their hunger, the lean years had been more dependable than the boom years with all their coquettish lending establishments, their house.

It was about the same time as Ingolf ur Arnarson was appointed Governor, and the National Bank resuscitated by means of several millions in share capital from the Icelandic State,—that is to say, from a certain bank in London,—that there came a new manager to the co-operative society in Fjord. ‘Things have got into a hell of a mess here,” growled the new manager angrily, and the deeper he probed into the books, the angrier he became; people’s debts had been allowed to run far too high, things were in an awful state, precautionary measures of a most drastic nature would have to be taken immediately. Those people who owed more than they could ever pay were straightway declared bankrupt, and might thank their lucky stars for being let off so lightly, but all those who had anything in them at all were allowed to hang on in their halter of debt, with their toes barely touching the ground, in the hope that they might be able to scrape at least the interest together with their broken and bleeding nails—a misfortune even greater, perhaps, than that of being bankrupted and kicked out empty-handed. The big men arranged that the public should be put on rations in the co-operative society, so that they might go on keeping body and soul together—for the sake of the interest, People’s most essential requirements were then doled out to them, in quantities varying with their means and circumstances so that they could go on slaving for the interest they had to pay. Many folk could only get essential provisions if a more prosperous person went security for them. Coffee and sugar were out of the question except for landed farmers; the wheat ration could be measured most conveniently with a thimble, though some unfortunates got none at all; small wares were cut down severely, and clothes were strictly forbidden, especially to those people who were really in need of them. On the other hand, the Government had made tremendous progress as regards tobacco, laws having recently been passed whereby a free grant of tobacco from public funds was to be made to every member of the farming community
to aid him in defending his sheep against scab and lung-worm; this luxury might be administered either internally, as a medicine, or externally, as a dip. This tobacco was given a very warm welcome; it was christened Exchequer or Wormy and even the Bailiff chewed Wormy in the interests of economy in these difficult times.

“It’s hard lines, surely,” said Bjartur, on being informed of the rations allotted him for his subsistence in the second year of the new house, “if I’m no longer to be allowed to decide my purchases for myself, like a free man. And if I don’t get what I want here, I’ll take my custom elsewhere.”

“Please yourself,” was the reply. “But in that case we simply distrain on your property.”

“What the hell am I supposed to be, a slave and a half-wit, or what?”

“I don’t know,” was the rejoinder, “we’re only going according to the books.”

He was allowed only half a sack of rye meal and the same of oats, but was given plenty of salt refuse fish, which the co-op seemed to have in cartloads, likewise lots of Wormy. It was the first time in all his life as a farmer that he was refused a handful or so of wheat flour with which to make pancakes should a visitor ride into the enclosure, and coffee and sugar were out of the question for such people as he, unless they paid in cash. Time was when he had not scrupled to say what he thought of those who held the peasants’ lives in their grasp, but whom was he to rail at here? A few books?

However, they did not succeed in preventing his making the house habitable that autumn. There were still a good many things lacking, of course, but at least they had got the biggest room on the middle floor into some sort of order, and the kitchen had also been brought into use, and the house fitted with three doors, one outer and two inner, all hung with proper hinges, and complete with suitable knobs at that. He bought a second-hand bedstead for himself and Gvendur down in Fjord, and though no one had hitherto considered him much of a handy man, he hammered a few planks together to fashion a bed for the old woman, likewise a rough-and-ready sort of table and a little bench to sit on. The family then moved into the house, all into the one room. But no sooner had they got settled than they discovered that there was something wrong with the range; the smoke blew down incessantly whenever a fire was made, and the whole house filled with an incredible reek. Various people were called in, and many were
the meetings held to discuss the matter, many the noteworthy theories propounded and conclusively demonstrated. Some held that the chimneypot wasn’t high enough, others that the chimneypot was too high. Some people thought that the flue was too wide, while others considered that it must be too narrow, or even imperforate. Reference was made, moreover, to a scientific theory that had been published in a newspaper, to the effect that chimneys built during spring tides always gave a lot of trouble. Judging by this, Bjartur’s chimney must have been built during spring tides. One thing was certain: the chimney went on smoking in spite of all their theorizing. Obviously, expensive repairs would be necessary to put the thing in order, and it was extremely doubtful whether it would pay to have them done, for the range was a glutton for firewood and other fuel with its three big grates. Finally an oil-stove was bought for cooking on, and the range allowed to stand untouched in the kitchen, as if for ornament.

N
OW
it was housekeeper Brynja’s custom, once every autumn, to saddle her mare and take a trip to town on a shopping expedition. On these occasions she would be away for a week at a time, for this trip of hers was in the nature also of a holiday tour; probably she had friends the same as anyone else. She was wont to return ruddy of complexion and with a certain air of importance about her as she ambled along on her roan, with a large assortment of packages tied to the saddle, small wares, cotton remnants, sewing-thread, hard biscuits to gnaw at on festive occasions and to offer folk if they were of a reasonable way of thinking, a grain or so of coffee, a lump or two of sugar. This time, however, things were rather different, for she returned, not on horseback, but on foot, leading the roan behind her with saddle-packs filled to capacity. She was warm and cheerful in her mood as she asked the crofter if he would help her unhitch the packs and carry them in.