The Great Weaver From Kashmir (40 page)

“I always get up late,” she said, without looking up.

“That's unhealthy,” he said, and kept chewing.

“I usually don't sleep until around dawn.”

“Why is that?”

She shrugged her shoulders and made no reply. Twice he had seen her appear in the hallway in the last few days, but both times she had disappeared through the nearest doorway and acted as if she hadn't noticed him. Yesterday she'd been walking with one of her girlfriends along a path from the east; he had come from the west. But the two women quickened their pace so that they could turn up the road to Hotel Valhöll before they met him, and they disappeared into the hotel.

He acted as if he had no idea that she was afraid of him, ate easily, and kept on talking.

“Who knows, maybe I can give you some advice about insomnia, my
good lady,” he said. “I've spent time studying homeopathic remedies and was for a time a specialist in painful mental conditions.”

She leaned her elbow on the edge of the table and ate half a biscuit out of a sense of duty to breakfast.

“You should determine never to sleep until you have reviewed all of the happy moments in your life. I guarantee you that you won't have finished reviewing the sixth before you relive the seventh in your dreams.”

“I've never lived any happy moments” – her answer came like an echo out of a frigid vacuum.

“Except for your honeymoon,” said the doctor, and he gulped down an egg in one bite.

“No.”

“What the hell?” said he. “That's a sad story indeed. Have you ever tried taking the multiplication table to bed with you? Or read
Manhood
by C. Wagner? That's such a hateful book that it could put a five-year-old bull to sleep.”

“Oh, Steinn, stop it!”

But he was not about to stop; he was eager to give his wholesome advice, like an elderly bourgeois.

“The best way to deal with a disturbed mental condition at night is to accustom oneself to going to bed in alignment with the compass. All the perturbed movements of a person's heart are caused by its not being aligned properly with the magnetic axis. As soon as one lines oneself up with the magnetic axis, the heart is calmed and the thoughts become as fair as lilies of the valley. If I were a Protestant, I would invent a religion that would aim at aligning the heart of man with this particular axis.”

“Steinn, you are mocking me! Why can't you speak seriously anymore?”

He looked at her with wide eyes as if he were completely surprised, but there was some devil in his heart that giggled unrestrainedly. How was it possible to imagine that he could speak a word in earnest in this pestilent atmosphere?

“Am I so despicable in your eyes, Steinn?”

Finally he stopped eating and looked straight at her:

“But you certainly couldn't think that I look upon human feelings as sacred?” he asked. “Such ludicrous vanity!”

“Then are people even more ridiculous in your eyes the worse they feel?”

“Yes,” he replied unequivocally. “I am grateful to you for wording this question so well. People are even more ridiculous in my eyes the worse they feel.”

“Is that Catholic?” she asked.

“No, it's Buddhist.”

“Steinn, I feel that I still haven't begun to speak to you, to your essential self. Why aren't we allowed to see you as you are?”

He couldn't hold back his laughter.

“I have lived my life among giants and ogres,” he said.

“Do you know what I really long for, Steinn?”

No, he had no idea.

“I really wish that we could be friends, Steinn, all three of us.”

“Three?”

“True friends, Steinn; like brothers and sisters. Örnólfur, you, and I.”

“I'll remember you in my prayers after I've gone.”

“Why do you have to go? Your friends are here.”

“Friends!” he said contemptuously.

“Imagine what a great man you could be here at home!”

“Stop this shameful nonsense!” he said, and stood up.

“Steinn, you're hiding something!” she said hotly, and her eyes started to glisten. He looked at her dumbfoundedly, unable to make heads or tails of her vehemence.

“Yes, I'm hiding something,” he said, and he left.

Skjaldbreiður is enwrapped in coarse clouds. It has started to rain; Almannagjá is like a dark, dirty streak traversing all existence, from the mountain above down to the lake, broken in only one place by a waterfall. Otherwise the mountains are not nearly as holy as Steinn had fancied in Belgium. Of what worth are mountains? He roams to and fro along the paths through the lava, and the raindrops fall from the sky. The drops come from Heaven and land in different types of soil, like good tidings. He shuddered most to think of how he enjoyed being a wicked man, entirely contrary to his conscience. He could care less about being better. He loved the Devil by leaps and bounds more than God. He started thinking about a certain medieval prioress who had made a contract with the Devil in her cell. It was a lengthy, detailed contract. She gave herself head and foot to the Devil. To him she dedicated her body and soul, her deeds
and all of her thoughts. Because it is so delightful to give oneself to the Devil – it requires neither contemplation nor concern; nothing is easier. The contract is written on calfskin. It is stored in a certain archive, and is signed by both parties.

He thought to himself: is a man the same today as yesterday? If this is so, then there exists no more merciless truth, and the hopes of the Kingdom of Heaven dwindle. “The bird flew featherless and alighted on the wall boneless. Then came a man handless and shot the bird bowless.” Meaningless.

Now for the first time in a long while he recalled Hounslow, the suburb of London where he had studied Strindberg, and said: “I'm no better off here than there!” There he had suffered from angina; there he was stuck on a spit and roasted over a slow fire like Savonarola. One night he had bitten his own tongue, causing blood to flow from the corners of his mouth. All night he had cried out for the comfort of the downtrodden, for the God whom he neither believed in nor trusted. On one side death screamed: on the other insanity howled. He prayed the Lord's Prayer nonstop, over and over again, incessantly, without rest, like a sailor who curses when his life is in extreme danger. He prayed for twelve hours at a time, from dusk until dawn, without believing in God.

On the days when he tried to read, the letters started dancing around and turned red; they were playing; the pages burned with corposant. And dismay lurked behind the entire dance. The little that he understood were hints and insinuations predicting his damnation. Finally he had ordered James to hide every last book that he found in the house. Where? Down in the basement. The shelves were emptied, the table and the floor cleared; the furniture was
poked under to see if any volumes might have crept into hiding, until finally the rooms were emptied, but for a few bugs in the corners. When it was least expected, however, a very thick old book fell down from one of the shelves that had recently been emptied. It was a train timetable; an omen, he thought; some left at 10:15 and others at 12:45. He did not doubt that the book had come like a
sending
,
¹²¹
in a fiendish way, and terror welled up in his heart the more he thought about its contents: a conspectus of trains that transported lost souls to Yorkshire and Devonshire, Budapest and Prague. He threw it out the window.

And as Steinn drank his afternoon coffee at Hotel Valhöll, he pulled
The Imitation of Christ
from his pocket to see whether the saint might not have something up his sleeve. Wherein could he find lasting peace of the heart and true advancement?

“If you have finally become so sturdy and perseverant in hope,” says the master, “that you are able to submit your heart to even more hardships when it feels as if all of your inner comfort has been taken from you – when you no longer try to make excuses as if you felt you were too guiltless to suffer hardship, but rather admit Christ to be righteous in all of his dispositions and worship him as holy, then you will find yourself on the true path of peace.” One cup of coffee with cakes, two krónur fifty. He killed two flies with one swat of the book and stood up.

When he came home late that afternoon he wondered why the door to his room was ajar. He hung up his wet coat and went in. The Director's wife was standing near the table in his room, arranging flowers in a vase. He saw her profile. There were violets from the slopes, forget-me-nots from the priest's yard, and various other
flowers, all Icelandic, beautiful, and small. They grew at the heart of the country.

“Good day.”

Unsteady fingers upset the bunch the moment he walked in; her pupils were dark, but she did not blush. She looked at him and started to rearrange the flowers.

“I'd planned to have been gone,” she said.

“Are these flowers?” he asked.

“I don't know,” she said.

“What are flowers for?” he asked.

“Flowers? I don't know,” she said, and continued to arrange them. She tried to keep the violets on the outside, the forget-me-nots on the inside, because they were the smallest. “We always have flowers here in this room. I picked them for fun, because they grow–”

It was almost bizarre how her hands had gotten smaller since she was a girl; at that time they had appeared large; now small; then, her arms had been slender; now, her wrists were cylindrical, her skin more delicate, softer, whiter. She had had braids before; now her hair was bobbed. Her neck was strong, yet had soft lines, her femininity woven with a distinctive velvet blueness, her calves stout, adamantine, and beautifully shaped. And there she stood, arranging flowers.

Finally she walked over to him and said:

“Tell me, Steinn, what we can do for you. Now you've been outside the whole day. We've been worried about how lonely you must be.”

“I'm thinking of taking up smoking again,” he said. “Do you think you might have any decent cigarettes at hand?”

“Yes, there's plenty to smoke here,” she said. “Listen, do you want some wine?”

“Wine? Have you lost your mind?”

“No, Steinn,” she said in a pleading voice, and touched his arm. “Can we drink a bottle of wine together? Yes, let's do that, alright? Please don't be angry that I've come with these flowers; they're just ordinary flowers; I found them, forgive me for that, alright?”

“It's criminal,” he said, pointing at the flowers.

She closed her eyes quickly and sighed; grimaced as if she were going to start crying, and turned away. Finally she looked again toward him and asked with wide eyes:

“Am I really so corrupt?”

He took her in his arms. He was very strong. She gave herself completely to his embrace. But this only lasted a moment; then he shoved her away, turned, went to the table and started looking at the flowers. Finally he asked impetuously, looking sharply toward her at the same time:

“What am I supposed to do with these damned flowers? Get these damned flowers out of here!”

He grabbed the vase and threw it full force at the wall, causing shards to fly throughout the room and water to stream to the floor. But he was not satisfied with just breaking the vase; he also trampled the flowers under his heel, yelling, “Down with flowers!”

But she had never been more calm nor determined than at that moment; this meant she was a woman; she looked at him without moving an inch and said coldly:

“How you hate me!”

He continued to trample, she to strengthen her resolve:

“You make a game of trampling me to pieces!”

He went straight over to her and struck her on the cheek with the palm of his hand, causing her to sink at the knees.

“I love you!” he said.

But she did not start crying, and instead sat calmly down, felt her cheek, and said:

“I know that you're hiding something. And I know what it is you're hiding. I might as well say it. You're married.”

“I am a man of God,” he said.

“A man of God!” she repeated, and she laughed contemptuously.

“I'm going away to become a monk.”

“But you're not married otherwise?”

“I'm going to become a monk.”

“Where?”

“In France.”

“Where in France?”

“Solesmes.”

“Can I come visit you after you've become a monk?”

He walked quickly westward along the road, as if he had pressing business. But when he reached Þingvellir he realized that he had no business there after all. Some Germans rescued him: several scientists with close-cut hair, newly arrived, thirsty for knowledge,
asked him,
“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”
Steinn was delighted to meet educated men, and was eager to guide them and explain things to them. They went first to the Byrgisbúð, then west along the riverbank and examined the outlines of the booths, finally sat down on the eastern rim of the ravine and talked about the place. Twilight fell over the mountains and the valley; the rain abated; the winds died down along the paths; the lake was placid and white; loons cried out. Next they went to Valhöll, ordered drinks, and discussed European cultural affairs and British and Russian politics in Asia; Steinn sounded like a telegram from Agence Havas. He came home half an hour before midnight.

The Ylfingabúð did not have electric lights, because it was not used during the darker part of the year. He lit a candle and looked about; both the shards and the flowers were gone. She had gathered them herself, cleaned the floor with her prim wife's hands without anyone else knowing. He sits down and reflects in the quiet of the night on how wonderful it would be to break more. But after sitting like this for some time he catches sight of something new upon his table: a bottle of champagne and two glasses. A bottle of champagne and two glasses, he thinks, and his heart stands still for a long time. Sticking out from beneath the bottle is a folded piece of paper, upon which are several typed lines and an address: a telegram. He picks up the note. It has already been opened; the address is Madam Diljá Þorsteinsdóttir,
pro tempore
Þingvellir, and its contents as follows: “London this morning, 9 a.m. On my way home to you. Örnólfur.”