The Blue Fox (6 page)

The priest was not in a good way but this did not bother him as he was dead to the world.

Now it was fortunate for Reverend Baldur that he was well wrapped up.

His mother, Nal Valdimarsdottir, had dressed him for the fox hunt. He wore thick, homespun undergarments, so well fulled that they could stand up on their own; a middle shirt of rabbit skin; two woollen sweaters, one light and the other very thick; Danish trousers; three pairs of knitted stockings; and unshaven sealskin shoes on his feet. Over all he wore leather trousers and a leather coat; double-breasted with whalebone buttons.

But, most important of all, Nal had equipped her son with a scarf of her own knitting. He had wound the scarf around his head to make himself invisible to the vixen and this get-up had prevented the priest from losing anything in the first avalanche but the hat that perched on top, a German piece made of kid, while on the second journey the scarf had held the balaclava in place, although it was now half off his head.

On his chest he had the wretched vixen.

The rock splits open behind the man. In the doorway stands a young woman clad in nothing but blue knitted drawers and a red tasselled cap. She takes the man’s hand and guides him into a low-ceilinged chamber. There is a well in the middle of the floor with lead shot floating on the water, not sinking, so the surface is grey with shot.

She points at it and says:

‘This is the Well of Life.’

The priest stirred.

The glacier admitted a dim blue shadow into the little rock chamber and by that faint light Reverend Baldur could make out his surroundings. He lay at the foot of a wall, which must be the eastern wall. He had scrabbled a little with his left foot in his sleep, but the right leg was still stuck fast, pointing straight up in the air. He couldn’t sit up or twist round or free himself, however furiously he struggled.

He soon grew weary from his exertions, a drowsiness fell on him and he lost consciousness once more.

The man thought he must have nodded off, for when he was startled awake by his right leg falling to the floor with a noisy splash, it seemed to him that the very rainbow itself was shining in through the ice-eye of the cave mouth. He simply couldn’t work out where the colours were coming from, but guessed that it was night outside and the Aurora Borealis sisters had followed him from Asheimar – they were greeting their old friend Baldur Skuggason.

The priest thought this was most obliging of them.

He was feeling rather chilly so he tried to move and that warmed him up again. He drifted off for an hour or so at intervals during the night, shifting position in between times – but not enough to tire himself out. The strap on his haversack grew steadily tighter on his right arm but he couldn’t reach the knife in his belt to cut it.

The man knew that it was possible to survive for a long time in a snowdrift, but expected the glacier to prove a cold bedspread – the advantage was that he would gradually grow wetter from the snow, which was melting around him.

The evening of the second day drew on.

Next morning the heat from Reverend Baldur’s bodily engine had told upon the snow by his left arm and head. He was reasonably compos mentis and able to rise up on his elbow. He noticed that the snow was dark where his head had dented it. And at this sight he became aware of a stinging in his neck. He pulled off his mitten, reached a hand behind him and groped his nape: he seemed to have acquired a new mouth where the flesh bulged between neck-bone and shirt collar.

He fumbled this phenomenon for a good while before drawing back his hand. It was covered in blood, which appeared black in the deceptive light of the fissure. Reverend Baldur licked the gore from his fingers; nothing nutritious must go to waste. Then he placed the mitten on the wound and bound the scarf round his neck, pulling it good and tight.

He fell into a deep sleep.

Twilight fell, not gradually but abruptly, bringing a black murk.

Around midnight, in all likelihood, he sensed a wetness from the snow, and towards morning on the fourth day there had been such a thaw around Reverend Baldur that he was able to remove his belt, get at his knife and cut through the offending strap. Sitting up, he dragged the haversack to him. There he had provisions: a dried cod’s head.

Dried cod’s head is not merely food fit for a gentleman; it is also a diversion. As he flayed the flesh from the head, putting it in his mouth on the point of his knife and chewing as slowly as he could, to make it last, the man amused himself by naming all the bones and parts of the head:

‘Jawbone, that’s the jaw muscle, shoulder bone, that’s the shoulder muscle, pillow bone, that’s the pillow muscle, raven bone, that’s the raven muscle, gum, that’s the gum muscle, cheek, that’s the cheek muscle, nape, that’s the nape muscle, bell, that’s the bell muscle.

‘And that’s all the bones in this old head!’

Reverend Baldur burst out laughing. He pictured that ancient hag, his mother, with the hook bone on her shrivelled lower lip, mumbling:

‘My little bit, my little bit ...’

The priest couldn’t control his mirth. He gripped his belly and laughed. He laughed until he howled with laughter. He howled with laughter until he cried. He cried and his tears were sore.

Yes, he wept sorely for the evil fate that had left him alone, with no one to share the entertainment that is to be had from a dried cod’s head.

On the fifth day the priest under the glacier began to fear for his sanity, so he did what comes most naturally to an Icelander when he is in a fix. That is to recite ballads, verses and rhymes, sing loud and clear to himself and, when all else fails, to recall his hymns. This is a failsafe old trick, if men wish to preserve their wits.

Reverend Baldur embarked conscientiously on his programme. He sang and recited all he knew, even the psalms of David. But he had nothing left but Reverend Jochumsson’s ‘big bang’ and a comic verse by his colleague Thorarensen, which he meant to leave out and instead start all over again, when he discovered to his amazement that everything that had dropped from his lips up to this point had been wiped from his memory. Not a single word, not a single letter remained.

He reacted quickly, testing whether this was really the case; he thundered all the verses of Jochumsson’s ‘Song of Praise’ to himself – and, would you know it?, once he had finished the rendition he couldn’t remember a thing.

Then he came to Reverend Gisli’s verses.

S
HOPPING
L
IST FOR THE
M
ERCHANT
’
S

Paper and ink and pens and wax,
raisins and prunes and hemp and flax,
baccy, pepper and camphor oil,
a hundredweight of coffee, hooks and foil,
anvil, window glass, fencing twine,
ginger and rum and good red wine,
from this my need will be quite plain,
the day I meet old Thorgrimsen.

Now my wife comes after, to wit,
and buys a cask of aquavit,
silk cloth, soap, a whistling kettle,
six plates, a chamber pot of metal,
cards and baubles, a cinnamon roll,
she buys as if for life and soul,
I think that if she had her way,
she’d take the merchant any day.

The poem droned c-c-constantly in the m-man’s h-head like a fly under glass, with-without his being able to resist it. H-he was b-both h-hot and c-cold, ice-hot and boiling-cold at o-once. He t-tried what he c-could to recall oth-other stohories, oth-other p-poems, but it was all-all lost and forgotten, lohost and for-gotten from his deep-frozen memory, he w-was st-stuck with this on h-his b-b-b-boiling b-brain:

Oh, o-o-oh, h-how sham-shaming to d-die with this ab-absurd shopping list, shohopping list, o-on, on m-my li-hip-lihips, thought the pre-pre-hiest.

He p-pursed to-togehether his m-mouhouth to p-prevent, his, his d-dying wohords fr-from behing, for example: ‘a hundredweight of coffee’. Though ih-it w-was truhue that-that he had no-ho witness to his hour of deheath b-but ‘Aitch Tee’ – the H-holy T-trinity – he didn’t ca-hare. And j-just f-for a m-moment, Reverend Baldur f-felt s-s-sorry for h-hims-self, self.

H-he wh-whispered to-the dark-darkness:

‘Thi-his is an ug-ugly h-hole ...’

He felt instantly better.

He closed his eyes.

And awaited his death.

‘Ho! Reverend Baldur! Baldur Skuggason! Ho!’

The calls which carried to the ears of the dying man sounded as if they came from the belly of a whale; the voice was muffled, and distance even made it, if anything, even shriller:

‘Ho, Reverend Baldur, ho!’

The priest was jolted out of his deathly lethargy:

‘Ho! I’m here! Ho!’

He fell instantly silent to listen for a response:

‘Ho! Ho! Ho!’

He tore off his balaclava and turned his right ear to the livid ice wall, but heard nothing – he turned the left ear: not a sound.

‘Down here! Ho! Down here!’

He shouted and yelled, then pricked his ears, moving with great care so the creaking of his leather clothing would not drown out any noises from outside. Yes! There it was; nearer. A reedy voice was calling:

‘Are you there? Ho!’

‘HO! HERE! HO!’ Reverend Baldur howled with all his life and soul.

‘Do you want to deafen me?’

Reverend Baldur’s heart missed a beat. The enquiry did not come from some searcher outside on the snowfield, no, the impertinent enquiry came from someone inside the fissure with him, and not only inside the fissure with him, but right up against him, or to be more precise, from inside his own clothes.

The priest squawked with terror when the vixen stirred at his breast. He writhed on his wet pallet, tearing off his leather coat with such violence that the whalebone buttons popped off and were lost. (Which was a great pity as they were fine articles which Haraldur, Reverend Baldur’s half-brother, had carved with his own hand and given him as a confirmation gift.)

The vixen sprang forth on to the floor of the cave. She spun in a circle, plumped down on her rump – and began to lick herself like a house cat.

Reverend Baldur was quick to recover, a man with a priestly training; the naturalist rose up in him. He watched the beast’s behaviour with scientific detachment.

She was damn sprightly, considering she had been out cold for six days and nights. It was ridiculous how she worked away at herself so frantically. She licked the bloodstains from her pelt and bored her muzzle to the roots of her fur, gnawing at herself as if she were de-lousing for Doomsday.

The nature-observer shut one eye.

‘Look at the creature, faugh!’

He slapped his thigh.

‘Hah, a vampire drinking its own blood!’

At that point the vixen spat out the first piece of shot. It pinged against the priest’s cheek. He moaned aloud and swore. But the vixen ignored him. She continued to preen herself until she had cleaned from her flesh all that the rifle had delivered to her: bloodstained lead ricocheted around the fissure, and great sparks flew from the rock where the shot struck.

The priest was hard-pushed to avoid the hail of lead that whined around him like a swarm of midges.

The vixen now began to pace back and forth, to and fro, here and there. Reverend Baldur sat quietly in his place, with his hands in his lap. He avoided meeting the beast’s eyes; it seemed edgy and incalculable.

Time passed.

At first light next day the vixen stopped and said:

‘Well, Parson, what do we do now?’

‘We could argue,’ he answered.

‘What should we argue about?’ she asked.

‘Electricity,’ said the priest.

The vixen regarded him as if he were a fool:

‘If you think a wild beast like me knows the first thing about electricity, you’re sadly mistaken ...’

But Reverend Baldur was so insistent that he suggested to the vixen that if she could solve a riddle he knew, she would be allowed to decide the topic of argument; if not, they would argue about electricity. The vixen agreed:

‘Out with it, then ...’

‘I’m born with a loud noise, and yet I have no voice.’

The vixen took thought – for far too long, in Reverend Baldur’s opinion, but he said nothing, he didn’t dare alarm her – and in the end she gave in.

‘Do you give in?’

The priest laughed at the beast’s stupidity: ‘It’s a fart!’

And he broke wind in support of his point.