The Great Weaver From Kashmir (34 page)

With each day that passed, his mind became more balanced; few things are better suited to soothing a troubled disposition than Benedictine gentility. He slept undisturbed at night; his groundless
fears disappeared; his thoughts became ever more calm, stronger, more firmly coherent. He recalled that long season devoid of joy, full of stress and insomnia, when he had stayed at the Villa Warren Hastings in Hounslow near London; it made him shudder like someone who has experienced being buried alive. He recalled the rooms where everything had been in chaos, as in the graveyard at Doomsday, books and papers all over the floor or up on the furniture, and in among all that mess floated innumerable notebooks containing English lessons marked over in red by Mr. Carrington, as well as endless drafts of poems that their author had deemed dead and banal after having struggled so much to try to knead them together; where everything had been covered in dust and filth, because it had been strictly forbidden to tidy up; where every single thing had been thoroughly soured by tobacco smoke. His room in the abbey was a dwelling place of another sort, clean and simple, only a few books on the shelf over the desk, everything in order, no decorations, nothing for comfort, and Steinn adapted himself to the monks' habit of having nothing at hand that was unnecessary. Two large windows looked out at the abbey garden and remained open most of the time, allowing fresh air to stream in, blended with the smell of decaying vegetation and rainy soil. At the start of winter the leaves dropped from the trees, and the bare branches appeared against the evening sky like an image of man's brain drawn on a gray tablet, while the moon sat at the edge of the forest like a bronze kettle on a shelf.

But in the same way that his condition had become more natural, the life of his soul more healthy, the stronger became the voices of his needs, which
la fureur intellectuelle
had fettered during the last few years. Who knew but that the storms of the intellectual life had
only been an outflow of the unquenched demands of sex? If a man did not suffer like a beast, he suffered like God. He was reluctant to disturb his new condition by probing into his former life, tearing open old wounds. But the days of temptation were facts that he had to look in the eye. On days when such images crept into his consciousness he worked at overcoming them by dipping his fingers into the bowl of holy water at his door, making the sign of the cross over his breast, or reciting a short prayer to Mary. But on Sundays when a crowd gathered for High Mass, feverish fires flamed around him if he heard the sigh of a young woman break through the silence of the Offertorium. He could smell the odor of women throughout the whole church. His sensitivity for even the weakest of waves in the streaming current of the female body became for him an intolerable plague. But he fought valiantly and faithfully. While Mass was being sung he never yielded to his longing to glance behind him at the women seated at the front of the church, so that he would not turn into a pillar of salt, and when he walked along the highway for exercise and met a girl by chance, he was careful not to look in her direction. He used the same approach if he was passing through the village, and the women stared giddily at him from their doors or windows, but it cost him incredible effort to conquer himself in this way. In one house by the road sat a beautiful girl at her window, sewing. Every time she spied him from a distance on the road she stopped sewing and did all she could to get his attention; he felt the lust from her eyes burning like fire around him, but he never once looked into her eyes. Yet he dreamt of her at night.

Unclean dreams became one of his most serious afflictions. Naked lustful women encircled him. He would start up in the same
way that he had previously started up in the middle of the night with thoughts of death. He got out of bed, turned on a light, knelt on his prie-dieu and prayed for a long time beneath the cross.

He trusted his Father Confessor with all of this and learned that what plagued him was nothing unique. The saints had all found themselves in the same battle,
propter regnum coelorum
.
¹⁰⁴
Saint Benedict's temptations cannot soon be forgotten; the same went for the temptations of Saint Francis. And how had the saints triumphed? All in the same way: humility, dear sir; solitude, prayer, ceaseless prayer, endless prayer all their lives. God has sent his heaviest temptations to his most holy; Christ himself was tempted with every conceivable trick, even after a fast of forty days. He was led up onto a high mountain and given a choice. Let your vigor never be broken, friend, least of all when you find that you are capable of nothing. “Strength is perfected in infirmity,” says the apostle. Never trust ourselves, but trust God always and in everything. He defeats our weaknesses; he is in charge of our lot. Let him be everything! We must let our prayers ascend to him, and he will let his grace descend to us.

Steinn Elliði had now decided what to do. After thinking the matter through the entire winter he had become convinced that his monastic ideal was not a simple dream: everything but the ascetic life was vanity, was chasing after the wind. All the same his Father
Confessor advised him to consider his decision carefully, and not to give an answer until he thought it sure that it was the voice of God calling him.

Otherwise they discussed his plan as if it were already decided, and talked about the most opportune way for Steinn to seek admission to the monastic life. Steinn desired most of all to begin his training under the guidance of Father Alban, but the father particularly recommended Solesmes and said that it was uncertain whether he would continue on in his work as Novice Master. When spring came, however, Steinn began to think of Iceland. He thought of the blue bays of Reykjavík, and the mountains that watch over the bays. He saw these things in his mind's eye in the same glory as they had appeared to him in his youth, and he dreamt of the wilderness like a young man who dreams of the bosom of his lover; he could not sleep for their songs. He thought of the peaks, the tranquility of the peaks, the glaciers, the light of the glaciers, because he loved the godlike purity of the natural wilderness at home, the depth and expansiveness of the sky vaulting over that royal world. God in Heaven is somehow completely different there than here – the God of our land.

The enchantments of the land of memory are powerful. He longed to feel once more beneath his feet the earth from which he had grown, the country that had nourished his family for a thousand years. In July the nights begin again to grow dim; the songs of the swans resound from moorland lakes, and from the hot springs ascend bright, sluggish clouds. And he felt as if he were in a swoon in the melodious calm of midsummer nights, and the Mother of God stood in the grove.

He became sad with homesickness, like an ancient Icelander. And even if he had been a saint, he could not have avoided recalling the young girl to whom he had bid farewell near a mountain almost five years ago. She must be happy now, even if she'd complained about it then. No, he would not even touch her hand; he would only look at her from a distance. I'll ask God to protect you, he thought, and then I'll leave and never return. He begged God to forgive him if all of this was sinful.

“Father Alban,” he said. “Is it wrong of me to wish to see my country once more for the last time? If it is your opinion that this is harmful egoism, I will not go. But you would not believe how passionately I desire to spend this last summer of mine at home. I have never prayed to God at home in Iceland.”

Father Alban was far from thinking this wrong.

“There is, might I say, nothing more likely than that your journey to Iceland will turn out to be exactly like a pilgrimage to the Holy Land,” he said, and he immediately began to give Steinn various healthy pieces of advice for his journey, counseling him to guard his faith and remain attentive to his prayers, and warning him against three things: “Never attack the faith of another man, never engage in disputation over your own faith, and never discuss your plans with anyone.”

Several days before his departure Steinn participated in a minor
ceremony of investiture and became a Benedictine
oblatus secularis
.
¹⁰⁷
Father Alban presided over the investiture, which took place at the altar of Benedict in one of the side chapels. Only three monks served at the ceremony. Steinn was neither required to swear oaths to the rules of the order nor to make any other promises relevant to the monastic life, but he did accept the obligation to live according to the spirit of the Catholic faith. At the conclusion of the ceremony Father Alban slipped a tiny scapular over his head; this he was to wear beneath his clothing night and day. When this was finished Steinn knelt before the altar and prayed. The monks did the same, and now all was silent for a long time. Steinn covered his face with his hands and repeated over and over: “God, I offer you my body and my soul; God, I offer you my body and my soul!”

To Steinn this minor investiture meant that he was now connected to the supernatural with unbreakable bonds: he felt that he was married to the foundational ideals of the Church. And if he placed anything before this it would mean a breaking of a vow, harlotry.
Credo in unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam
.
¹⁰⁸
He called on all of the saints to intercede for him.

When he finally looked up Father Alban was still kneeling next to him, but the other monks had gone.

The ocean liner glides into Faxaflói on a bright night during the dog days and is opposite Grótta by midmorning. Few passengers are up and about to greet the glory of the summer morning, even though the ship will dock within half an hour. Last night a great drinking party had been held, and folk went to sleep drunk around the time that the sun of the Northern Hemisphere began to redden the mountains around the bay. Now they enjoy their dreams most deeply and sweetly, until the stewards are ordered to wake the assembly with the news that the ship has reached harbor. Then folk are startled awake and start the day by trying to comprehend exactly where in the world they are now. Compare:

A foreign couple, dressed sportishly, lean up against the ship's rail on the lee side and look out spellbound at Kjalarnes. It may be that they have dreamt of making this trip for years, to the arctic island where the ancient saga has its holy sanctuary and the language of the gods was written in books. They hold hands, rapt and pious like oriental pilgrims who have espied the towers of Benares from afar.

Before a gable in the smoking parlor sit two businessmen on a bench, smoking their morning pipes and enjoying the bliss that is granted two elderly bourgeois who pretend to take an interest in each other's family affairs. One is from Copenhagen, the other from Oslo. One speaks deeply, the other feebly. Neither of them took part in the drinking the night before. The bourgeois virtue of frugality, which no unspoiled Icelander has understood to this day, was the fundamental ideal of both. Neither was touched by the beauty of the land, because they had sped a hundred times over the Atlantic Ocean on company business, and Sagaöen
¹¹⁰
was in their eyes nothing other than a run-of-the-mill herring-salting station.

But at that moment another early-rising traveler joined the crowd: a big, strapping young man, confident in his step. He walks leisurely along the rail, with his hands in his coat pockets, gazing shoreward, finally leans up against the gunwale on the starboard side, looks first over Reykjavík, which resembles a poorly made Cubist painting, then lets his eyes wander over the mountains from peak to peak. Wind gusts against him, cold and fresh, the mountains open their valley laps, green and blue. The beauty of the summer morning rests upon the land, from the town to the countryside, where the heart of the nation has beaten for a thousand years, where the noble mountains keep watch over the straits, the same mountains that kept
watch here of old; they bid the Icelander welcome after long periods away from home, now as in ages past. And he greets the land that preserves the footsteps of his childhood, silent and emotional, like the heathen Viking who brought his ship into Leiruvogur a thousand years ago, after many a dangerous journey to foreign harbors, pirate raids in far-off lands. Many times he had suffered shipwreck; he had fought against the overwhelming force of armies, been thrown into dungeons, delivered poems to kings to ransom his head. Now he is carried once again to the shores of the land of his childhood.