World Light (23 page)

Then he bawled out, “Woman, where’s my hat?”

“It’s where you left it,” his wife replied from the kitchen.

“It doesn’t matter what you’re asked, you never know anything!” said the manager.

Nevertheless he found his black bowler hat, and now they were ready to set off to visit Hólmfriður in her loft and hear the poem.

8

Pétur said they would have to look in at the doctor’s on the way, and when he came out again one could make out the shape of a bottle in each pocket beneath his coattails.

“Now we’re ready to meet the poetess,” he said.

It was a long cow shed at the foot of the homefield right down by the sea. Half of the loft was used for human habitation, but the other half of the building from floor to rafters was a hay barn. Access was up some stairs with creaky steps. The door at the top of the stairs had been nailed together from odds and ends of wood; it closed of its own accord, worked by a weight on a string. The woman met them at the door and said that her husband was asleep.

“At the most productive time of the year?” said the manager.

“Is there anything more productive to do in Sviðinsvík than sleep?” said the woman.

She was a big, dark-haired woman with an intelligent, clear-eyed face, her voice oddly high-pitched and metallic, the more susceptible the tauter it was strung, and cracking at a certain pitch.

“I won’t listen to any pessimism today, my dear Fríða,” said the manager. “Today the weather is fine and we are all life’s children. I’ve brought a young poet from the fjord valleys, a nice polite boy, as you can see. Would you let him hear my latest poem, if you’ve finished it?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t had time to compose your new poem, the piebald cow didn’t take with the bull this morning,” said the woman with a tired, almost studied, lack of expression. In the lines around her mouth there lurked a kind of suffering the boy did not understand, something completely different from the common, coarse and stupid pain of poverty that is the easiest of all suffering and the least noteworthy; it was a delicate, rare and hard-earned suffering, a combination of hunger and sickness, and the boy felt he was kin to this woman despite the indifferent glance she gave him.

“Yes, you all pretend to be materialists,” said the manager, “and behave as if the mating of livestock is more important than the soul. But what a surprise they’ll get when they die, poor things, as the poet says! How often have I told you that spiritual matters should come before livestock?”

This started a bit of a wrangle between them: Pétur the manager as the sensitive and emotional upholder of human feelings, the poetess snappish in her replies, brusque and dispassionate. The boy stood halfway up the stairs and listened as hard as he could. Then a torrent of curses and oaths was heard from inside the house; the woman’s husband had woken up. He appeared in the doorway dishevelled, with feathers on his jersey, red-eyed and swollen, unshaven and toothless, jerking his shoulders and spitting. Ólafur Kárason stared in amazement at the man’s wife, this woman with her fair skin and hawk-like eyes, her strong vigorous hair and her red young-looking lips.

“Have you brought a drink, Pétur?” asked the woman’s husband, point-blank.

“I would expect to be invited in at least before I answer questions of conscience like that,” said the manager.

“Come inside!” said the woman’s husband.

They slammed the door on the poetess and the poet, and disappeared inside. The woman gave no reaction when the door was banged, but cleared her throat on a high, thin note, like the G string of a violin being plucked.

“They’ll never quench their thirst,” she said. “It’s their life.”

He did not know what to say.

“Are you in tow with him?” she asked, and took the boy into the kitchen.

“Oh, I don’t know, really,” he said, and added foolishly, “He played a hymn for me.”

He could not stop looking at the woman: this wordless blend of inquisitive, ever-vigilant feminine perception and petrified indignation as if she were indifferent to everything and despite everything, indifferent in some indefinable, inverted way at once fanatical and impersonal, a hundred thousand million times indifferent, her introspective, precise replies as stilted as some kind of poetry—how was it that he felt he knew this soul? Before he was aware of it, he was saying, “I feel I’ve seen you before.”

“Really?” she said. “It must have been in an earlier life. Where do you come from?”

He pondered her question in his mind for a moment, and then replied, “That’s never occurred to me before. Where I come from, it was always said that another life came after this one. But now I see that it could just as well have come before this one.”

“Do you believe everything you’re told?” she said.

“I feel that what you say is true,” he said. “I have known you in an earlier life.”

“Aren’t you hungry; don’t you want to eat?” she asked.

“No,” he said, and blushed because she was turning the conversation so abruptly to mundane and distasteful matters; and to tell the truth he was past hunger now.

“Didn’t you get a hymn for your midday meal?” she asked.

At that he could not help laughing.

“I’ll give you some fish now,” she said, “and perhaps some bread.”

“Well, perhaps just a very little, thanks,” he said.

He thought she would just toss a cod-wing at him without ceremony, but she did not; instead she went to the rack and fetched a rose-patterned plate and a knife and fork and laid a place for him at the kitchen table, as if for an important visitor. He got into a festive mood, and went on studying her carefully while she was serving. Very soon the fish and bread had arrived.

She was a combination of two people, one half of each. Above the middle she was like a big, gangling adolescent, slender down to the waist, with that thin voice and that intelligent countenance; but below the waist she was gross, her legs (not forgetting her heavy, clumsy hips) were clearly those of quite another person; the upper part was like a sensitive flower which had been planted in a coarse vessel; he was convinced that if she were married to a bad man, her soul was not to blame for that. She paused in her work and threw him a glance, and he felt she had sensed what he was thinking, and he was ashamed right down to his toes, and silently prayed God to help him.

“Go on eating,” she said. And when she saw how ashamed he was, she forgave him and said, “Let me hear some of your poetry.”

He let her hear some of his poetry.

“Where did you learn all these kennings?” she asked.

“From an old poet,” he said.

“Why do you write about love, at your age?” she said.

“It’s probably because I’ve been in love,” he said without looking up; then he added, as an excuse, and looked up, “But it didn’t last very long.”

“Love passes,” she said, and it was the first time she smiled with her lips; but he felt that the look in her eyes hardened at the same time.

“It wasn’t a very happy love, either,” he said.

“A happy love is no love at all,” she said.

“I would like to hear how you write about love,” he said.

“I write about death,” she said.

“Death? I don’t understand how that comes into it.”

“Oh, well,” she said.

“Then you must be terribly unhappy—in your love,” he said.

“My husband, he surpassed all others like an ash over thorn-bushes,” she replied. “He had eyes that saw miles out to sea. When I saw him for the first time, I saw a hero. It is life that is disgraceful.”

What was the woman getting at? Why this uncalled-for defense of her husband? Was she excusing herself?

“Unfortunately, he wasn’t wicked enough for this criminal society,” she added. “Unfortunately, he wasn’t a criminal.”

The boy forgot to eat and looked at the woman in surprise, but she did not even look up; she went on with her housework as if she had said something very ordinary.

“Take an oak tree and try to transplant it on to bare rock,” she said.

He did not know what to say. “That’s how I write about love,” she said, and then said no more, and gave him his coffee and sugar in silence. Afterwards, when he had eaten his fill, he sat for a long time at the window and looked out over the bay, while she went about her work indoors and outside quietly and conscientiously, while the men in the next room sang “In Bethlehem a Child Is Born.”

9

When the Bethlehem stage was over, “Oh, Thou Joy of the World” began. Finally came the Sprengisandur stage—“O’er the Icy, Sandy Wastes,” with incredibly long pauses between the lines. That night there was a white mist over land and sea. Ólafur Kárason helped to fetch the Regeneration Company’s cows and tether them, and stood in the barn and looked on while they were being milked. The poetess gave him milk to drink, warm from the cow, as much as he wanted and more. She had the task of separating the milk, churning the butter, preparing the whey, and making cheese for the manager, and the remainder of the milk she distributed at the barn door to the villagers who were on the books of the Regeneration Company. Towards midnight her evening work was done. Afterwards she sat in the kitchen and knitted very rapidly, but said nothing; the cat lay under the range and closed its eyes; the plates were rose-patterned, the curtains blue-checked; he sat at the kitchen window and looked out at the white mist, and the dew settled on the green grass in the summer dusk, and one could just glimpse the white sea like cream on the shingle a few yards away, and there was a shrieking of terns in the mist, and he felt that the night could continue like this forever. He tried time and again to start a conversation, but she would not talk; he wanted so much to hear one of her poems, but could not bring himself to say so.

Eventually no more singing was heard from the next room, just a vague mumbling now and again. The husband’s name was called out a few times, but in vain. Pétur Pálsson came out of the living room, blue-black in the face and unsteady on his feet, minus his pince-nez and teeth, with tobacco stains at the corners of his mouth; he still had his celluloid collar on. He came over to the poetess, seized her hands and pressed them fervently, and spoke in a foreign language. When he had talked for a bit he tried to kiss her, but she wriggled out of his embrace.

“You’d be better to spare a thought for this young man you left hanging about here,” said the woman.

“My name is Peder Pavelsen Three Horses,” he replied. He talked twice as gutturally as usual, and his voice was very thick as well.

“What’s happened to your eyeglasses, Pétur?” asked the woman.

“I’m no Icelander, s’help me,” answered Peder Pavelsen Three Horses in Danish. “My grandmother’s name was Madame Sophie Sørensen.”

“And where’s your hat and your false teeth?” asked the woman.

“Don’t you bother about that,” he said. “I’m going to sleep with you tonight.”

She went in and fetched the manager’s discarded emblems of dignity, wrapped the eyeglasses and false teeth in a newspaper and put them in his pocket, and placed the hat on his head.

“You are the greatest poetess in Iceland,” said Peder Pavelsen, and began another handshake with the woman, and repeated in Danish, “I’m sleeping with you tonight.”

“What for?” said the woman.

“I love you,” said Peder Pavelsen.

“Is that so, poor fellow?” said the woman.

“I’m no Icelander, s’help me,” said Peder Pavelsen in Danish.

“No, thank goodness,” said the woman.

“That’s the sort of thing you can say because you’ve got no soul,” said Peder Pavelsen. “It’s your fault that I’m no better than a corpse in this locality.”

He sank down on a bench and wept.

“Don’t cry, Pétur dear,” said the poetess, and patted him consolingly on the shoulder when he had cried for a while.

“I’m not your Pétur dear,” he said, sobbing. “You’ll be the death of me. And take from me my afterlife.”

The words were practically drowned in sobs, and the inflections of his verbs had gone adrift.

“If you do something for that homeless boy sitting there, you will attain eternal life, Pétur dear,” she said.

At that the manager stopped crying, leapt to his feet, seized Ólafur Kárason’s hand, squeezed it hard, and said in broken Icelandic, “You who are homeless, walk into my heart. If you are hungry, I shall give you a feast. If you have nowhere to live, I shall give you a palace. Love is the only thing that pays. My name is Three Horses.”

He hugged the poet to his bosom and started crying again, overwhelmed by the thought of love in general and his own love in particular. Then he shook his fist angrily in the poetess’s face and threatened in abusive and obscene language to drive her away and never let her compose his poems for him again, since she would not sleep with him. “We’ll leave this jade to her own devices, my boy, she’s never understood the Regeneration of the Nation anyway. But you understand me, and you follow me.”

He lurched down the stairs, and the poet bade the woman good-night and followed him. When they were outside, Three Horses grabbed his arm to steady himself. He discoursed at great length about Love and swayed and hiccuped and spat and wept, but talked for the most part in Danish, so that Ólafur Kárason unfortunately could not understand very much of it. It was past midnight, and the village was abed.

The shore road lay below a gravel-bank, but on the lower stretches between it and the beach were cobbled pitches for drying and stacking fish on both sides of the road, and at the far end of them there stood a large building right on the seashore, on its own, below the village proper. This building was grander than any man-made structure Ólafur Kárason had ever seen; nor had he ever dreamt any dream so far removed from reality that it had given him any suggestion that such a house could exist.

What especially attracted his attention at first were the three towers on the building, for he had never seen a tower before. There was a tower on each gable, shaped rather like a giant turnip and painted red, while the midtower was a four-sided pillar with concave walls and a very small roof. But on closer inspection the whole building was equally notable. The front faced out toward the waves of the sea, but right through the center of the building there was an open passage for the winds of the heavens. On the ground floor there was a large number of windows on the side facing the sea, and each window was designed to hold only one pane of glass, even though it was as large as the wall of an average living room. But unfortunately a pitiless war had raged there with such hatred and stone-throwing that all the panes were smashed or cracked or holed; yet there was still enough broken glass left at the front of the building to mirror the afterglow and give seafarers the idea that on this shore there were castles of gold. In the upper story the windows were elongated to a Gothic point, as in superior churches, and had many small panes, which had tempted the rampant armies all the more since they were higher up and made more demands on accuracy of fire and other advanced military arts, and indeed not a single pane was still intact. It was the same story with the cheerful little panes which had once adorned the midtower. But despite the shattered windows, the poet gazed in admiration at this mighty building, and before he knew it he had begun to count the windows in silent veneration.

“What’s that in front of us?” asked the manager and pointed at the building with a lurch to one side.

“It’s a house,” said Ólafur Kárason.

“What house is it?” asked the manager.

This the young poet could not answer. He could not immediately find words for the strange feelings which gripped him as he faced the building. Even if he had said that this must be the biggest house in Iceland, that was really no reply at all; it was more likely that the house had been built by some higher being for some higher purpose that man’s wisdom was incapable of figuring out, for example as a complement to the ocean, or as an assembly hall for the storms of heaven. And while he was racking his brains for a suitable answer to the manager’s question, an old, mangy rat came crawling out through a crack in the wall, limped painfully over the paved yard, and disappeared among the stones on the beach.

Then the manager said, “That house was built by Tóti
smjör
(butter) from the banqueting halls he bought from the government the year after the king came. That house is built of four royal palaces from the government, and how much do you think it cost?”

The boy thought for a long time, because he did not know whether he ought to say a hundred, thousand or million; but then the manager asked if he were such an idiot that he could not estimate the cost of one house.

“A hundred thousand,” the boy guessed.

“Idiot!” said the manager.

“A million,” the boy guessed.

Peder Pavelsen had never known such an idiot in all his born days. Then the poet gave up guessing.

“No, my boy,” said the manager, “when you do business with the government, you say, ‘Not a brass farthing until I’m made a Privy Councillor.’ And when you’ve become a Privy Councillor, you say to the government in Danish, ‘I’m no Icelander, s’help me.’ ”

The manager bellowed with laughter at this witticism about Tóti
smjör
and the government, still swaying and lurching.

“But,” he continued, “there was one thing that Tóti
smjör
never understood, even though he became a Privy Councillor and was therefore in a position to cheat the government. He never understood the present day. He was a rat. But it’s me, Peder Pavelsen Three Horses, who understands the present day. Education, science, technology, organization, say I; but above all, spiritual maturity, love, light. D’you understand me? Everything for the people, say I. I’m what foreigners call a socialist. I’m in favor of Christian rationalism. D’you know what I’m going to do with this house that old Tóti
smjör
abandoned like a rat? I’m going to convert it into a fish meal factory and an observatory for the people, d’you understand me? And I’m going to convert it into a theater, shops, a net-making workshop and a church, because God is eternal, whatever that fellow from Skjól says. And I’m going to convert it into a bait shed, a restaurant, a hotel, a cold store, a scientific research society, a piggery, and a residence for myself, say I. It’s me who’s going to make this building a bastion of Icelandic culture for the people, a cultural center, if you can understand that. Do you want to be my poet?”

The manager tried to stand as upright as possible in front of the poet and glared at him with one eye at a time.

“If I can,” said the poet.

“I like you,” said the manager, and greeted the poet with one of those long handshakes reminiscent of a marriage ceremony. “You’re a hell of a good fellow. You can undoubtedly make verses about the parish officer and others who want to get rid of me and think I’m some sort of small fry.”

“If I had a roof over my head I would write large books,” said Ólafur Kárason.

“A roof,” said the manager. “It’s a sin and a scandal that a major poet shouldn’t have a roof. Major poets ought to have a roof. It is I, Peder Pavelsen Three Horses, who says so. Where would Fríða in the loft be if she hadn’t been allowed to tend my cows and support the Regeneration movement? And where would her wretch and fool and idiot be, who planned to set up a shop here and compete with me? They wouldn’t have a roof. They’d be rats. If you’ll swear to be my poet, you shall have a roof.”

“I don’t know how to swear,” said the poet.

“Well, in that case you can go to the devil,” said Peder Pavelsen; he let go of the poet’s hand and pushed him away.

The poet’s upper lip began to tremble at once, and he said bitterly, “It’s easy enough to push me away.”

“Yes,” said Peder Pavelsen. “You’re a rat. Anyone who won’t raise three fingers in the air for the Regeneration of the Nation is a rat.”

At that the poet changed his mind and declared that he was ready to raise three fingers for the Regeneration of the Nation.

Then the manager loved the poet again, embraced him, and wept a little.

“Now we’ll both raise three fingers and swear in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,” he said.

They both raised three fingers and swore in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The boy got palpitations, and silently implored God to forgive him if he were swearing a false oath. When they had finished swearing, Peder Pavelsen laughed one of those buoyant toothless laughs, and said, “The Regeneration of the Nation, that’s me, you see, my boy.”

Then he waved his arm in the direction of the palace and said, “There you are! There’s your house.”

“Eh?” said the poet, uncomprehending, his voice squeaky with horror in case he had sworn a false oath after all.

“The house is yours!” said the manager.

“Is it all mine?”

“That’s up to you,” said the manager. “You’ve sworn.”

“Didn’t you have other plans for the house?” asked the poet, his heart still thumping, in the hope of having the oath annulled in exchange for returning the house. “I thought you just said that you yourself were going to use the house for the people.”

“Am I an Icelander?” asked Peder Pavelsen.

The boy could not give this question the answer it deserved; he was tongue-tied and could not put the oath out of his mind; he had sworn a false oath. Now it was his turn to feel giddy and to have to make a supreme effort to keep his balance.

“No, I’m no Icelander, s’help me,” said Peder Pavelsen, and raised his black bowler hat to his poet and marched away with great dignity in an unsteady curve and disappeared round the corner.

The poet was left behind, standing on the pavement in front of his house. My God, he had sworn a false oath after all! He had developed a severe headache, perhaps his health was failing again. As far as he could see, the front door of his house had been nailed shut and barred. He looked for another door and found it, but that, too, was firmly closed. He stood perplexed and irresolute in front of his house in the night mist, and had sworn a false oath. A gray-striped feral cat came creeping through a cellar window and loped round the corner, but not without stopping for a moment to hiss in the poet’s direction.