World Light (13 page)

19

Guðrún of Grænhóll had moved with her parents out of the parish to another and much better district, and he knew he would never see her again. Magnína, who had given him buttered flatbread and read to him from
The Felsenburg Stories
for a time, had long since stopped reading to him; he was never allowed to know the ending of these exciting tales from that distant island—and, believe it or not, he never again wanted to find out. On the contrary, every time the thought of that book came into his mind he was seized with fear and guilt. And young Kristjána, who had come to him one night to thank him for the poem and had invited him to stay with her when she was married, and had promised to do everything for him, even lay down her life for him—when she had left the farm as a married woman she had even forgotten to say good-bye to him. It looked as if his life would never brighten again. The days passed with incessant sufferings of soul and body, unendurable headaches caused by old blows from beasts and men, terrible pains in his chest and endless indigestion; in addition there were the sleepless nights of despair with their remorseless balance sheets of his wretched life, and the one question repeated like a constant refrain, “Where will it all end for me?”

Often he felt he could scarcely survive many more days now, and then he would turn in the midst of his pain to his book of poems, to add just one little poem yet before he died; for what caused him most sorrow was how few poems he would leave behind him to gladden other people after his death. Often he felt in the middle of the poem that he had not the strength to finish it, that he would die before he could finish it, and he besought the Lord with all his heart to eke out his life just to the end of this one brief poem; and he promised the Lord that when it was finished he would die content and never ask Him again. Often he was amazed that he had not died long ago, considering all his troubles, and he asked aloud, “Is there no limit, then, to human suffering?”

There were now new people he did not know on the farm; no one paid any attention to him, they were all busy with their own tasks, and strangers’ hands dished out his gruel to him at mealtimes. If he tried to crawl out of bed to the window to look at the green homefield and the blue sea, he fainted. It was safest to lie still. He gazed up at the sloping ceiling and thought of the time when he was little and God had been revealed to him in a glory of harmony; but the faculties of childhood, too, were now gone.

Had everyone, then, turned his back on this destitute human being under the sloping ceiling? Had everyone forgotten this living corpse? Was there no heart anywhere that could bestow on him the one grace of heaven and earth—one word of love? Yes, that heart did exist.

One day he received a parcel from the district on the other side of the mountains. It was a small, rectangular package, and it was addressed to: Ólafur Kárason of Ljósavík, Esq., Poet, at Fótur-undir-Fótarfæti.

No one on the farm recognized this Poet of Ljósavík, for he had confided the secret of his name to no one else. But someone recollected dimly that a wretch of a poet was lying on a pallet up in the corner of the loft, and the parcel was eventually delivered. It contained the tattered remains of a psalmbook. It was the sort of psalmbook that an uncommonly sinful person had used every day of her life for consolation and had torn asunder with her eyes in the hope that something even more wonderful might lie hidden behind the lines—but probably without ever finding the Lord. Unfortunately there was no accompanying letter, because she herself could not write—some kind person had addressed the parcel for her; but it was the best she could do, she had sent him the only security in the world a sinful person possessed, and it is not everyone who gives such a gift.

Was it not strange that he should so nearly have forgotten her, this one soul who had understood him completely? How could he have been on the point of despair when he had a friend like that? He was ashamed of his ingratitude to the Creator, to have thought himself to be alone when there was a living heart on the other side of the mountains who loved him and had given him its all. He was convinced that her love would never fail, because she was in poor health and on the parish like himself; she was known as Jarþrúður the Epileptic.

He wrote her a letter on all the paper he had left. He said that her pure friendship, as revealed in the gift of the psalmbook, was what would give him the strength to bear life’s burdens and afflictions in the future. He said that seldom had he been so engulfed in ultimate darkness as in these past weeks since the wedding took place. Summer was beginning for other people, he alone was forbidden to enjoy it; but now it no longer mattered to him whether he missed this summer and all future summers on earth; her gift was like a gently healing hand, and he was now ready to bear mankind’s cross patiently to the end of the road. He asked whether he could from now on look upon her as his sweetheart? Certainly, he said, he could not offer her anything in return except his love, but he was sure that if he knew he was allowed to love her, and that she would give him her heart in return, the time would come when they would both be fully recovered in health, because God is love, and love heals everything and conquers everything, and in time, perhaps, they could set up a little home together in a comfortable croft not far from a market town.

In reality, he said, he looked upon them as being already married in a mystical and supernatural way, that God himself had married them in spirit and in truth the other day; their whole acquaintanceship was bound up with one particular wedding; and in affirmation of this he was sending her the following poem, to the same psalm tune as the wedding hymn that had brought their hearts together:

How cold and wretched and sad it is
In ultimate darkness, with yearning laden;
For none here knows what spirit is,
And none understands you, Christian maiden.
My lady crowned,
Closed is the Sound;
Wanting I’m found,
And lie here bound
In death’s deep grave,
In death’s deep grave.

Oh, Iceland’s Concordia, pure and clear,
Divine star of the spirit’s morrow—
My soul is with you, far or near,
From heights of joy to depths of sorrow;
Your soul takes flight,
A lamp to light
The dark of night;
Your life shines bright
In heaven’s halls,
In heaven’s halls.

He addressed the letter and sealed it and asked for it to be entrusted to anyone who was going across the mountains, and his soul rejoiced after having written the letter; it is the best medicine of all to know oneself in contact with a loving heart. That night he had pleasant dreams and thought of his sweetheart when he lay awake between slumbers; and when he woke up in the morning she was the first thought that came to his mind.

Now, whatever the reason for it, this young man had got the idea that letters were inviolate, whoever might have written them and whatever their destination. But in this, as in so many other things, he was grievously mistaken. The following day the foster mother, Kamarilla, came up to the loft with his letter in her hand, and he could see that it had been torn open.

“Writing letters, I see!” she said.

“Just the one,” he said.

“And you a parish pauper!”

“But I thought I had a soul even though I’m on the parish,” he said, and gasped.

“I’ve no wish to have souls of that kind here in my house,” said Kamarilla. “And this will be the last letter you ever write here in my house. Since you mean to start proposing marriage to women who lie on the ground foaming at the mouth, and since on top of that you have behaved indecently towards my own daughter on Easter Sunday itself when everyone else had gone to church, and since you won’t stop composing disgraceful and obscene verses full of insults against us who run this household, then I’m going to tell you once and for all that we here in this house have no wish to nurture such a snake at our breast any longer. Besides, I’m sick and tired of punishing you with starvation for all your libels, obscenities and blasphemies—it’s been shown over and over again that it doesn’t have the slightest effect anyway. But since you’re planning to introduce open debauchery into my house, not to mention comparing me and my house to the ultimate darkness, and were going to send this letter to another district, then I’m calling a halt here and now: I refuse to take any further responsibility for you, either on behalf of the church authorities or the parish of Sviðinsvík!”

And with these words she tore his letter into little pieces before his eyes and threw the scraps down the stair-hatch. A moment later she was gone.

He was alone. Never had he been cut so deeply or so mercilessly to the very quick of his consciousness. His most intimate, most sacred manifestations of life had been denounced as crimes; the most vulnerable flowers of his heart had been torn up by the roots and held up to view as poisonous, loathsome weeds. It took him a long time to realize that so much injustice actually could exist in the world, to convince himself how totally defenseless he was, how infinitely far from possessing anything with even the remotest resemblance to any form of protection or shield. But when it eventually became clear to him, he began to cry.

He had not cried since he was a little boy, and now he no longer recognized the sound of his own weeping. It had become deep and hoarse, something alien had got into it, so that he became afraid of his own weeping as if it were some unknown strange monster. He was also amazed at how much it hurt his throat when he wept. He did not remember feeling sore in the throat when he had wept in his childhood. Little by little he stopped crying.

He lay silent for a long time, motionless, exhausted, bereft of his last hope. Once again the immortality of the soul loomed over his mind’s eye in all its appalling cruelty, and the hope of absolute death became once again the only imaginable consolation for his soul. Finally the headaches came to his rescue and made him forget.

And so the afternoon passed, and then it was evening. He opened his eyes and woke from his sleep. He was lucky to have been able to sleep. What a wonderful mediator this brother of death was! The boy who had gone to sleep in pain now woke up in gratitude. There was no longer darkness in his soul. The evening sunbeam lay across his bed, and the moment he opened his eyes he felt he was no longer alone. This was not just a vague notion; it was an unshakable conviction. This sunbeam had dimension and shape, he could handle it like any other object; yes, it was that golden carriage of old, it had come back. Deep in the ultimate darkness of despair, when all avenues are closed, when you are bereft of final hope, separated from the only heart that ever loved you—then the carriage comes. And from it steps the invisible friend, the friend whom no power in the universe can separate from us as long as we have the ability to bear the sufferings of human life and meet the injustice of the world; because it is he, this invisible friend, who helps one to bear the sufferings of human life, to meet the injustice of the world. Once it had been the sonic revelation of the deity, later it had been Sigurður Breiðfjörð; now he no longer asked its name or nature. It was enough to feel his presence, to know that it was he, the invisible friend.

The boy felt now that no injustice could ever be victorious in his life in the future. He would never forget this presence, and even though he might never live to see another happy day, he was now more than ever determined to make his life an unbroken echo of what he had perceived when he was young, and to teach other men in poetry what he had learned in sorrow.

It was certainly true—this boy had perhaps become a little disappointed in people, he had instinctively believed that people were more perfect than they actually are; in childhood one cannot help believing this. Certainly his fellow men had turned their backs on him and deserted him, and one could also say with some truth that they had been the cause of his ill health in body and spirit, indeed of all his misfortunes in general. But he was not angry with them for that, he did not hate them, he did not find their inclinations base nor their desires disgusting, far from it. He felt no rancor towards anyone. He respected everyone, without reason, and wanted instinctively to please everyone; moreover, he was grateful to God for all the wonderful people he had got to know in his lifetime, right from the time when memory began until this day. And if the same people who had turned their backs on him and despised him yesterday had come to him again today, he would have had just as much faith in them as before. He would have felt they understood him and understood the spirit even though they did no more than sit down for a moment on the edge of his bed. Whosoever has met the invisible friend can never again see any evil in people, and even though they took everything from him, every smallest pleasure, every faintest hope, it would make no difference—he would nonetheless do everything he could to enrich them, to increase their happiness, to strengthen their hopes, to beautify their lives. They could call his words smut and blasphemy, they could call the things closest to his heart crimes and debauchery, they could starve him, they could drive him from this house, ill and helpless—he would nonetheless continue ceaselessly to dedicate to these people everything most precious in himself. Yes, it is a painful lot to be a poet and to love both God and man by the farthest northern seas! He who has chosen that lot for himself will never achieve any success, any reward now or later, any fulfillment in life, any happy days, any moments of consolation or rest. On the other hand, the invisible friend will help him to bear the sufferings of mankind and protect him from ever being overcome by injustice.

20

A June morning—seldom had the blessed summer sun shone with more brilliance on that bleak northern coast. He had known for a long time that one spring morning he would wake up early, and yet no day took him so much by surprise as this one.

He had had an inkling the previous evening that an overnight visitor had arrived; he had heard his cheerful laughter from down below, and even heard the joyless people of that household joining in. But it was not until dawn the next morning that Kamarilla told Ólafur Kárason why the visitor had come; he had been sent by the parish council at Sviðinsvík to fetch him. “And let me now put some clothes on you, you poor scamp.”

He did not say anything and could not even think, either. All he could feel was his foster mother trying to put some socks on him. But when people tried to help him to his feet and make him stand upright, he fainted. When he came round again his escort, Reimar, was standing over him; Reimar greeted him with a kiss and a handshake, and examined him with that critical, appraising look with which experienced carriers examine fragile goods that have to be handled with care, and laughed.

“It’ll be no trouble at all to shift him!” said Reimar, in order to create a mood of optimism and confidence about the undertaking.

He was a genial, ruddy-complexioned man, with watery eyes and an easy manner. He had two horses with him, and the younger brother, Júst, helped him to lash together a stretcher. The route lay over high moorland. The sun shone sweetly on the blue bay and the fresh green homefield and the buttercups on the grassy slope in front of the farmhouse; swarms of birds eddied over the skerries and the isthmus.

When the boy had been dressed in a weird assortment of clothes which had been collected here and there, he was carried outside and tied to the stretcher on a bed of strips of dried turf, with a bag of hay as a pillow and a coarse blanket on top of him. He was quite sure he would be dead within the hour; he was incapable of appreciating as he should the eternal blue heaven above him, and was only grieved that he had not had time to say good-bye to the old knots in his sloping ceiling.

“We’re off to see the world lo then!” said Reimar, when the boy had been firmly lashed to the stretcher, and laughed.

The whole family was out in the farmyard to say good-bye to the parish pauper. The foster mother, Kamarilla, handed him a piece of sugar candy—the first and last time she ever gave him anything in the way of sweets; then she lifted her apron to her eye and wiped away a genuine tear. Finally she reached up to him on the stretcher and kissed him, and at the same time asked God and the Holy Ghost to bless forever this crossbearer of the Lord; he felt her tears sliding down his cheek, and they tickled.

“Good-bye,” said Magnína, and gave him a fat, limp handshake, sniffed, and turned away. Then she turned to him again and wished him a good journey. She was holding something peculiar under her apron.

“Well, my dear chap,” said brother Júst, who now not only owned many sheep and a part-share in a fishing boat but had also become a farmer in his own right with undisputed control over everything that concerned this household on land and sea. “If you ever get better you will always be cordially welcome back here again, for instance at the haymaking or as a winter hand, because now there’s no one here to order you to stay down in the meadow when you should be going up the hill! And you know from experience, my friend, that our treatment of people here at Fotúr has never been thought worse than elsewhere.”

Reimar kissed all the people good-bye and led the horses along the path towards the road. The stretcher started creaking and groaning at once. Then Magnína called out and asked Reimar to wait for a moment, she wanted to adjust the boy’s blanket; she came and adjusted it, and at the same time she brought out from under her apron a book wrapped in a kerchief, and slipped it under his blanket.

“It’s only
The Felsenburg Stories
,” she said. “I don’t enjoy them any more. You can have them. You enjoy stories so much.”

“Thank you, Magnína dear,” he said.

“It’s nothing,” she said.

She walked a few steps beside the stretcher when Reimar led the horses off again. She looked down at the path and said, “I thought I deserved a letter from you just as much as some people did. And a poem at the end.”

She could not keep up with the horses any longer because she was so heavy. She was left standing in the middle of the path, holding a corner of her apron in her hands and gazing after their parish pauper.