World Light (28 page)

Silence.

“She has fallen into the trance,” said Pétur. “Now we must sing and sing, and remember to call for light and strength from above the moment contact is made.”

A few more hymns were sung, and the Lord’s Prayer was recited a bit more. All of a sudden an unfamiliar man’s voice, but not particularly deep, was heard through the prayer: “Good evening, hallo.”

“God be with you,” said Pétur Pálsson the manager.

“I am Friðrik the elf doctor in the next world,” said the voice. “Some say I am one of the Hidden People, but that’s due to a misunderstanding at the beginning. I am a spirit. I am the son of love and the friend of the light. Hallo and welcome my dear sheriff, and may the light be always with you. Welcome, welcome, Pétur Pálsson, my dear manager. The light is always trying to shine more and more upon you. And all hail and good wishes to you, dear Pastor Brandur Jónsson, minister and rural dean of the deanery of Sviðinsvík . . .”

Friðrik continued to address all those present in this way, in theological vocabulary and prodigiously Christian speech; but he got a little mixed up over the widows and mothers. Finally it was the poet’s turn, and this was the only greeting which was not couched in flowery theological language: “It is you whom I greet with sorrow,” said the elf doctor.

“Oh, why is that?” said the manager, who took it upon himself to reply on behalf of the poet.

“He is without gratitude in his heart,” said Friðrik.

“It’s strange to have no gratitude in his heart for being allowed to live,” said the manager.

“I want him to speak for himself,” said the elf doctor. “I don’t want others to speak for him. Speak, Ólafur Kárason, say where you are.”

“I’m here behind the door,” said the poet in a small voice.

“We must have gratitude in our hearts,” said the elf doctor. “And spiritual maturity. And lift our minds from base things, lift them to higher spheres, search for the right current. Not to think of ourselves but to raise ourselves to the light and love one another like invisible beings in space. If we do that we shall achieve gratitude in our hearts. And spiritual maturity. And shall get the right current like the invisible beings in space. That’s why we ought to go to visit those who have contact with higher spheres, and show them gratitude. One mustn’t talk much to the girl standing in a doorway, because she has a bad influence on spiritual maturity. She has a base current which ruins the right heart-current. She robs the wealth of the heart. She kills the light of the heart.”

“What a hell of a lot the spirit’s got to say to this boy,” said the sheriff, rather displeased.

“Friðrik dear,” said the manager, interrupting. “Can’t you produce some proof for the authorities as quickly as possible, my dear friend?”

“There’s a tall, dark-haired woman standing behind the sheriff,” said Friðrik. “Now she’s laying her hand on his shoulder and leaning down over him, I almost think she’s going to kiss him. Does the sheriff recognize her at all?”

“She shouldn’t be very tall if it’s her,” said the sheriff.

“Did I say tall? I thought I said small, at least I meant that she was small,” said Friðrik. “That’s to say, a little under average height.”

“Can you give me proofs about yourself, my dear?” said the sheriff gently.

“Why did you have the sofa in the drawing-room moved over to the other wall, dear?” came a weak whisper.

At that the sheriff recognized at once that this must be his first wife, and started to explain why the sofa had been moved, and apologize for it. “But how are you feeling, anyway, dear?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m feeling so wonderfully well,” said the sheriff’s first wife.

“Can you let me touch you?” said the sheriff.

“No,” said the sheriff’s first wife. “I have long since lost my wretched, neurasthenic earthly body. And besides I haven’t time, there are so many others here waiting to make contact tonight. But perhaps I’ll be able to borrow a strong, good body somewhere, some time, and then I shall let you touch me as much as you like, but you mustn’t tell Jóhanna your second wife about it, because then she’ll send me a bad current. We must have spiritual maturity. Good-bye.”

“Isn’t that a wonderful proof?” said the manager.

“Yes,” said the sheriff. “Particularly the bit about the sofa.”

Soon came the husbands of the widows; they kissed them in the dark and tried to comfort them with assurances of how good a life they were leading in the Summerland. One had nothing to do but wander up and down through orchards and pick flowers and fruit the size of lumpfish, instead of carrying rocks on the beach at Sviðinsvík; and those who wanted to could build themselves palaces from different light rays when they had nothing better to do.

The women wept, each one harder than the next, and one of them in particular was inconsolable and kept on crying, “Grímur, Grímur, the cow died this winter, I wish I could come to you with the children, we don’t have any potatoes left!” Another said, “You must remember our
Númi
here; it was on her that you broke your back just before you died. Now she’s sunk. She sank last night.”

The manager interrupted and called upon the women not to besmirch this sacred moment by harping on insignificant sorrows of the belly; truly no one needed to complain now about not living grandly enough, eternity itself was standing open before them. But when least expected, the widows’ husbands disappeared and the weak crying of a child began, like an infant’s crying, and Friðrik informed one of the mothers that her son was calling.

“My darling boy, my boy!” said the woman, and started crying herself.

“Mama, Mama,” said the child.

“Oh my darling little boy, I’ve cried so much, but now I know you’re alive.”

“The grave and death don’t exist, Mama,” prattled the boy, and had suddenly got the voice of a two-year-old.

“How very small you’ve become again, my little darling, you were fifteen when I lost you,” said the woman.

“A good boy becomes a little angel,” said the voice.

“I wish you could come on my knee as you did when you were small,” said the woman.

“Fly in the light; look after flowers,” said the little angel.

“Yes, I might have known that you wouldn’t want to come to me any more since you’ve become an angel and are looking after flowers, ” said the woman, a little disappointed. “How much I’ve wept, and weep still when I go to bed at night and start thinking that if only I could have got him that jersey he needed, he wouldn’t have caught a chill at the quarry and got pleurisy.”

“Tcha, tcha!” interrupted the manager, “don’t start bringing that up again; he’s forgotten all about that long ago. What do angels know about jerseys? Angels don’t even know what jerseys are. It’s you who are foolish and he who is happy, Katrín dear.”

Then came the little girl, Örn Úlfar’s sister, whom the couple from Skjól had lost early that spring.

“Oh, it’s so good to be dead!” said the little girl.

“Yes, I’ve always known that it’s better than being alive, Anna dear,” said the woman. “And how are my two boys and your eldest sister? Are they pleased to be dead, too?”

“They’re always playing at flying about on their wings.”

“The darlings,” said the woman. “God bless them. It’s probably wicked of me, then, to be hoping and praying the whole time what I have been hoping and praying.”

“What is that?” asked little Anna.

“It’s perhaps not right of me to say it,” said the mother. “But God knows what it is if he has heard me.”

“I see God every day,” said little Anna, inquisitive. “If you think He hasn’t heard you I’ll pass it on, so you can be sure that it reaches Him.”

“I wanted to ask if my little
órarinn, who is the only one I’ve got left, will also get consumption and be taken from me? But perhaps it’s wicked to ask about that. And perhaps it’s a sin to wish that I may keep him.”

“God doesn’t want any questions of that sort,” said little Anna.

“Yes, I always thought so, too,” said the mother, and wept into her apron with deep, pain-racked sobs. “But tell God that if he wants me to bear that burden, too, then I shall bear it like the rest.”

“You must get more spiritual maturity, Mummy, and get into the habit of seeing the light,” said little Anna. “Your mind is all on base things. To die, that’s just fun and games for those who have spiritual maturity. It’s like taking off your wet things.”

“This is heavenly!” cried the manager. “More dead children! More dead children!”

More dead children came and had contact with their mothers, and this went on for a long time with tears and rejoicing in turn. At last the manager began to tire of listening to other people’s proofs and getting none himself. He put a stop to these long-winded exchanges and called Friðrik by name and said, “Listen, why is it that no one wants to talk to me, my dear fellow? Tell them that we’ve had enough of minor proofs. Now it’s Pétur Pálsson the manager who wants proofs, and nothing less than major proofs will do for him.”

“There’s an old woman standing beside the manager,” said Friðrik the elf doctor. “She is beginning to lose her teeth.”

“It can’t be my mother,” replied the manager, “because to my certain knowledge she hadn’t lost a single tooth by the time she died, least of all her front teeth.”

“Nevertheless, this woman is very keen to talk to you, Pétur, but she says she doesn’t understand Icelandic,” said Friðrik.

“Goo’morning,” said the toothless woman, speaking Danish in a hard, broken, old-woman’s voice.

“No, God be with you, it isn’t old Madame Sophie Sørensen, my grandmother?” said Pétur Pálsson, and practically glowed in the darkness at this proof, and started at once to interrogate his grandmother about her health.

“Yesyesyesyes,” said the late Sophie Sørensen. “Goo’morning.”

“Are you not extremely elevated now, grandmother dear?” the manager asked unctuously.

“I no Icelander,” said the manager’s grandmother.

“Have you no news to tell me, dearest grandmother?” he asked.

“S’help me, s’help me,” said the grandmother in Danish.

“I see,” said Pétur. “And what else can you tell me?”

“Goo’morning,” said the grandmother.

The conversation continued like that for a long time with few variations, the manager went on asking for news from eternity with religious unctiousness and invocations to Jesus, and the late Sophie Sørensen went on replying Yes and Goo’morning and S’help me. Finally the guide, Friðrik the elf doctor, became bored with this conversation and interrupted, saying, “Madame Sophie is gone, but another woman has arrived, much older, she’s so old that she can’t stand upright. She says she’s your great-grandmother and comes from France, and that she understands nothing but French. Do you want to speak to her?”

“Tell her that I’m a bit weak in French, but that I pray Jesus to give her strength, on the other hand I can manage a little English,” said the manager.

“Bisk-vee,” said Pétur
ríhross’s French great-grandmother.

“Yes,” said Pétur
ríhross in English.

“Sakaria malistua,” said the great-grandmother.

“Christ,” said Pétur
ríhross in English.