World Light (34 page)

23

A pitch-dark autumn night, without a moon.

He had been allowed to sit in the kitchen and read a book by the woman’s lamp; her husband sat at home with the newspapers, without a drink; nothing was said. Then the evening was over. Ólafur Kárason got to his feet and said Good-night. But no sooner was he outside the door than someone came up to him from the shelter of the house, seized his arm in a fierce grip, and uttered his name in a breathless whisper: an agitated woman; he thought he could sense her heartbeat in the darkness, unnaturally fast, her manner unbalanced and ethereal.

“I have so much to say to you,” she said. “I thought perhaps I wouldn’t find you.”

“What do you want with me so late?” he said.

“Why have you stopped believing in me?” she asked, without any preamble.

“Was that all?” he said.

“That all? Really? Was it so trifling, then, to lead you out into a homefield, fully recovered, this spring? Have you forgotten the night we sat among the sheep and understood one another utterly, even though we had never met before?”

“No,
órunn,” he said. “I’ve told you already that I shall never forget it.”

“Shall I tell you, Ólafur—it was the only time I’ve felt deep down, deep inside myself that Jesus Christ was right. Believe. Believe. Believe. Tell me now, do you think it’s all a lie?”

“I have difficulty in thinking as quickly as you,
órunn,” he said. “You think too quickly. I don’t understand how you think.”

“D’you know that I’m going to England?” she said.

“Really,” he said, and bit his tongue a little afterwards.

“I’ve never known anyone to become so corrupted in one summer!” she said. “You don’t believe anything any more.”

Silence.

“It’s quite possible that my psychic phenomena aren’t all genuine, Ólafur, but what am I to do when there are spirits with horns and cloven feet all around me?”

Silence.

“Why don’t you say something? Am I such a wicked person, then? What a damned fool you are! I can tell you that I have every right to talk to you, because I’m many thousand times older than you are. I could almost be your mother.”

Silence.

“I know perfectly well what you’re thinking even though you don’t know anything about what I’m thinking. But tell me something. How is one to have any respect for a world where nothing else matters except who can lie the most plausibly and steal the most?”

Silence.

“You don’t believe me, but can I ask you something else? Do you perhaps think that Júel J. Júel owns all the fifty-krónur and hundred-krónur notes he carries around in his pockets? No, he has stolen them all. I don’t care what you say. I’m not yielding to anyone. I’m going to England. Am I a pig?”

“
órunn,” he said at last. “You’ve been drinking.”

“Yes,” she said, “I’ve been drinking water. Mad people drink water. Wicked people drink water. Pigs drink water, worse luck.”

“I desire nothing so much as to understand you,
órunn,” he said. “I know that there is something very great in you, and I can well believe that you are destined to become world-famous. But the more famous you become, the harder I find it to understand you.”

“It’s said that people will always hate those who save their lives, and I know perfectly well that you hate me, whatever you say. And yet, yet, I’m standing here in the roadway tonight to save your life for all eternity, all eternity . . .”

“
órunn, I wish I knew what to say to make you stop talking the way you talk. In the first place, I don’t hate any living person; in the second place, I don’t know what hate is; and in the third place . . .”

“Yes, and in the third place you’ve always got something to say for yourself when you want to,” she said. “But if you care for me at all, why wouldn’t you compose a poem? Why did you answer the secretary with mockery?”

“Mockery?” he said. “I may well have answered stupidly. Can I help it if I have no education? But to call it mockery to say that one doesn’t know what the soul is—that’s being more touchy than I can understand.”

“D’you think I don’t know that the two of you are conspiring to work against us and humiliate me, that cow queen and you? You pretend you don’t have souls. You talk about ‘ghosts.’ But have a care, say I. I utter this curse and lay this spell, that one fine day you shall have souls. And that day you will both come crawling on all fours like ghosts to
órunn of Kambar!”

To be sure, he had stopped being afraid of her curses and spells, but nonetheless he felt uncomfortable in her presence and valued neutrality and peace more highly than ever before.

“Let’s meet again tomorrow in broad daylight,
órunn,” he said. “People talk more reasonably in the daytime than at night.”

“No,” she said. “Truth belongs to the night. The day is nothing but excuses. I won’t be wicked any longer. I’ll be good. Let’s be friends. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to write a poem about a ghost, ghost, ghost. It doesn’t matter if we rot like the damned corpses we are when we die, die, die. Come on, let’s run away, away, away.”

She seized his arm and ran off as if she were fleeing. Her frenzied restlessness infected him and he, too, took to his heels; they ran through the pitch-darkness along the wet road, up to their ankles in mud, splashing through puddles, heading up the fjord, away from the village. Then she suddenly stopped.

“What are we running away from?” he said.

“I’m frightened,” she said, panting, and came right up to him and put her arm round him and breathed all over his face.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said bravely.

“Yes,” she said. “Everything one does is a sin. Can’t you see anything?”

“No,” he said.

“Let’s go on,” she said.

They went on.

“Everything one says is a lie,” she said.

Silence.

“Everything one wants is evil.”

“I would give so much to be able to understand you,” he said.

“All your life is a crime and a disgrace, crime and disgrace, if you can’t steal money,” she said. “A lot of money.”

“My life?”

“Everything you say is a lie while you’re not stealing money. Money is truth. Everything you do is evil if you haven’t stolen money. Money is beauty. You are a wicked man if you don’t steal money. Money is love. How I loathe this damned penniless dog’s life that makes a person less valuable than fish offal and whale oil! Can’t you see anything?”

He thought then that he saw a sudden quick glow over the Privy Councillor’s palace, as if someone were walking outside it with a lantern.

“Come on,” she said.

“Where to?” he said.

“I’m going to show you something down by the shore here,” she said. “Something that concerns only you.”

“It’s past midnight,” he said. “Shouldn’t we rather say Good-night and go to bed, in the hope that we shall understand one another better tomorrow morning?”

“No,” she said. “Don’t leave me, I’m alone. The manager’s old woman has forbidden the children to talk to me, and would undoubtedly kill me if she knew how to kill anyone. My mother, who’s an invalid, has been farmed out with some wretches away out on Outer Ness, and Daddy, who’s old and infirm, wandered from place to place all summer looking for work and found nothing anywhere. Yesterday he wrote to me and asked me to recommend him to the high-ups at Sviðinsvík for quarry work. You remember my sisters, how close the three of us were; we were inseparable. They’re now wandering about somewhere in the south, one of them with a two-year-old child. And my friend Friðrik, who made my days at Kambar a festival and a romance, he’s now in a higher sphere and doesn’t come to me any longer. And you, you whom I raised from the dead, you won’t even talk to me, and you say that no one has a soul.”