The Great Weaver From Kashmir (23 page)

“What reason should I have to be angry with you? Nonsense, Diljá!”

“Sit down,” she said calmly. And when he had sat back down: “I'm sorry I lied, Örnólfur. But we did book seats; that's absolutely true. But it was so icy and windy.”

She went into her bedroom, put her coat in the closet, took off her hat, fixed her hair, powdered her face, and then came back into the sitting room. She pushed over the silver box of cigarettes that stood on the little table next to him, sat down opposite him, and continued to run her fingers through her hair.

After a little silence he said:

“I've been very distracted since last Sunday evening, Diljá. It's no exaggeration to say that I haven't had any sleep or anything to eat for the last twenty-four hours. The time has come; in fact it came a long time ago – I haven't kept my mouth shut for any other reason than cowardice. There's nothing that I fear as much as my own feelings. I've been gnawing the backs of my hands because I lacked the words
for it when we spoke together last time, or, to put it better, lacked the courage to tell you what's been in my heart, what's been in my heart for many years–”

She was at that stage of understanding instinctively the female art of changing oneself into all different forms of living creatures, and now she put on the best face she could manage of a complete moron who couldn't discern one thing from another:

“I beg you, Örnólfur,” she said, “it's hopefully nothing terrible!”

“I haven't been able to forget what you told me on Sunday, that you want to go away.”

“No, Örnólfur,” she interrupted, “I don't want much of anything. I just want a little – sometimes.”

Now there was a short silence, punctuated by a feeling of dread that ran through the girl when she beheld his face so heavy with passion: she'd never seen him like this before; his voice, his glance, the lines in his face, his entire being had transformed. But no matter how much he had pressing on his mind, he did not break out of the basic mode of the businessman at this moment any more than usual, and he told her, straight out, the entire story of his heart in this simple declaration:

“Diljá, I have loved you for many years.”

“Örnólfur!” she said reproachfully, as if he'd been swearing. “I think that you're not quite in your right mind! What dreadful foolishness has gotten into you, man?” – at the same moment she grabbed the powder box from the table and started to powder herself from old habit, but he placed a finger on her wrist so that she would stop this foolishness.

“Diljá! Listen to me!” he said, and his eyes were burning. “Listen,
when I finally open my heart! I've been sitting here waiting for you because I can't put off telling you my deepest secret; I know precisely what I want to say. Listen!

“I've been sitting here waiting for you to tell you that I love you, Diljá, I love you and have always loved you. In fact I've never loved anything but you. My life is founded upon nothing but love for you. I've loved you from the time that you were a little child. It might be ugly and sinful for an adolescent to love a little girl, but I didn't care about that. The truth is that I've loved you since you sat on my knee when you were a six-year-old girl. Deep inside your child's eyes I saw the woman dozing.

“I lived abroad for many long years,” he continued, fixing every word precisely, with soporific calmness, although his eyes were moist. “I won't bore you by describing the nature of the training that I undertook. You would never understand it, and I would never require you to understand it. But I have lived many sad, empty days and racked my brain between dawn and dusk over problems that are thoroughly counter to personal life. I lived like an ascetic, and this has certainly made me strong; I struggled mercilessly against everything human in my nature, and that struggle has given me the strength to raise myself over the populace. What do you suppose has been my only pleasure all these years? It was to think about a little fair-haired girl who had sat on my knee when I was a youth far in the north of the world. There was only one picture for my guests to look at in my apartment; it stood on my desk: a photograph of a seven-year-old child, a smiling girl with two golden braids, in a white dress and white shoes. At night I dreamt childish dreams: I dreamt that we walked side by side, hand in hand in the sunshine through
green valleys, that we picked flowers on the banks of streams and listened to the songs of the birds.”

After a short silence he continued:

“I have never before spoken of my feelings, Diljá, and I know that I have difficulties expressing myself clearly. I don't know how to speak, but I know how to feel. I trust that you will not only listen to my words, but also to their spirit. You understand things that are not possible to say with words. I would have felt that I was committing blasphemy if I had ever dared to speak about the things that I kept hidden inside, so sensitive were my feelings to me.

“All of my life I have despised those peddlers, those naked whores who shout about human feelings out in the streets. This repulsion gripped me first one summertime here at home when I heard Steinn Elliði read one of his poems, when he was fourteen years old.

“Diljá! I have been disgusted by Steinn Elliði since the time when he wasn't such a bigwig that I couldn't spank him with one hand. From his earliest days his entire personality has been tinged with treachery, every one of his movements, every look of his eyes, every word of his fit for the mouth of a sorcerer. His mother is a harlot, and it's from her that he inherits this poetic caprice; in our family we've never been given to any sort of libertinism. Steinn Elliði is a degenerate and malefactor who has no ability to live for anything other than his own hallucinations.

“When I saw the gleam of sympathy in your eyes it became clear to me that in my nephew dwelled the archenemy of my life. I knew that he had all the requirements to be your beloved; he was almost the same age as you, he was your companion, and last but not least – a poet! A woman is a more innocent, more simple being than a man,
always ready to let herself be deceived by the illusions of a clown. One quick flash of an illusion enchants her more than the mighty lifelong work of an honorable man.

“Diljá, I would have looked upon it with equanimity if you had fallen in love with a wholesome and true man, a man who desired only to be able to be everything for you. I would have wished you congratulations for having such a man and kept silent until my dying day about my own feelings toward you. But it was clear to me from the beginning that Steinn was a man who would do nothing other than ruin your life, unless you were to part ways. Love is only of any worth to poets when they can sing about it on the streets and corners, like the Salvation Army about God. A woman is only of any worth to them if they can deceive her. Lost souls and shamed women are to these members of the Salvation Army of love their most beloved topics for song. The poet is a talking mannequin, a conscienceless imp; his soul is nothing but a perfidious monster. Because men only become poets if they are prepared to defend lies: everywhere, in everything and always. I hate Steinn Elliði.

“And I told myself: ‘Be quiet and strong. Don't speak with words, but with deeds. Prove to Diljá that greatness is not found in high-flown gurgling and marvelous babbling, but rather beyond anything else in the productive might of the iron will of a quiet man, who surpasses thousands and hundreds of thousands of others. Perhaps someday she will understand that no matter how glorious she thought the gab, the clownish antics, and the castles in the clouds, it on the other hand takes manliness to dare to place unwieldy reality beneath one's chisel, to choose a working-place in the center of the battlefield of life and there raise a monument around which
the children will play, securely and fearlessly, long after the chatterboxes with their castles in the clouds have fallen silent and been forgotten.'”

She sat there hunched and motionless, reluctant to look at his face so as not to distract him; her ears were thirsty. But here he fell silent, and she felt that he was waiting for her to say something.

“I've always known that you are a great man, Örnólfur,” she said, and looked calmly into his eyes, because she had somehow managed to steady herself, “a much greater man than all the others. And I have, what's more, often thought, especially the last two years, that Steinn Elliði cannot compare to you in any way.”

Then she looked down at her lap and continued: “I've sometimes feared that you were too selfish to be able to let yourself admire anyone in any noticeable way. Actually you are merciless, Örnólfur; you can't deny it. It's almost as if there are spells on you, as perhaps there are on all great men, to wish to put everything under you and to stop at nothing to do so. Have you at any time considered whether your desire for dominance is actually not the strongest of all your feelings? Domineering men frighten me.”

“My dear Diljá!” he answered with a pained smile. “I see that you haven't understood me, that you haven't realized the main point, the thing that I named the foundation of my life. If I didn't love you, Diljá, it never would have crossed my mind to reach down to pick up the glove lying on the stage before the jaws of the lion. I would have ended up out in colorless banality somewhere, among other mediocre men, without having spent any time on great works, set course into the storm, or played a risky game. A man's love is a man's omnipotence. It was to be elevated in the eyes of the woman I loved
that I made a vow to become the most powerful man in the country or else be destroyed. It was for her that I longed to be able to dive into the deepest depths and fight against all the monsters of the deep, like the man who sought the cup, because I thought myself unsuited to stand in her presence until the tribulations had consecrated my might. Because of her I reared my work with affectionate care, as if it were my foster child, working days and nights. Because of her my work became not only my art and my science, but also my world.

“It's true, Diljá, my work was never contained in whatever it is that's called doing good; it is, in general, impossible to express earnest work with a vain phrase. And it is also true that my love for mankind, of which these so-called men of the soul boast, is greatly lacking. But neither do I hate mankind: I am artless enough to admit that people are all the same to me. I discovered early on that all goals outside of my work were pointless and nonsensical. A serious man sets no goals for himself beyond his work. It is only through the perfection of his work that a man becomes powerful; to make one's work one's whole life is to realize this. A lawyer does not defend a case because he desires to advocate the cause of a client who claims to have suffered injustice, but rather because he loves the art of advocacy. A doctor does not heal because he loves the patient; he is quite indifferent to the patient. He heals because he loves his art, his science. I have nothing against the fact that you call whatever it is I have that surpasses other men selfishness, mercilessness, and a desire to dominate. If someone proves to be stronger than others in his lifelong battles, then he ordinarily possesses such qualities. Christian virtue always upholds and praises the weak; but we will
not speak about that. I just wanted to remind you that if I had not been selfish, merciless, and domineering, Ylfingur would never have become anything other than an ordinary small retail company; wealth would not have been exploited; the lives of a thousand people would have been much sadder than they are now; their children would still be crying from hunger at the close of winter; a whole nation would have been timid, helpless, less educated, less independent. Because of the fact that my selfishness and my domineering nature have cost me many sleepless nights full of worries and headaches, yet another risky chess move played after the one before it was thwarted, I have still managed in the end to give my business enterprises a solid foundation. And although I am not the man to write a psychological essay about my feelings or to consider in any philosophically long-winded way how this so-called domineering desire of mine relates to my other feelings in certain situations, I would dare well stand in comparison with those in this country who have shouted most beautifully about brotherhood and the universe, the solar system and the cell, for in my hands I have felt the wealth well up from the wastes of the sea, seen children satiated and gladdened, the backbones of the cotters straightened, the condition of the entire nation blossom, its honor increase, its culture become fragrant with newfangledness. I am not seeking praise, either from you or from others; those who compose the poems have earned the right to be carried on golden chairs – they belong there. But face-to-face with the woman I love I find myself no less worthy than any other suitor, no matter how glorious his name might be.”

The home that Steinn had lived in as a youth had neither center nor periphery. It was scattered here and there throughout the world. Reykjavík and Bilbao, Genoa and Baden-Baden, Brighton and Paris – newly refurbished mansions where the furniture smelled of polish – hotels, trains, and ocean liners – these had been his youthful homes. Each of his parents had had a different fatherland.