World Light (63 page)

13

By the end of the journey the traveler’s collar was much the worse for wear. The starch had gone out of it long ago; it was no longer a stiff collar. The tie had fallen off during the seasickness and had been trampled underfoot in the dirt on the floor of the hold. The dummy shirt-front turned out to be cardboard, and it sagged into his trousers when the buttonhole got torn; the poet had thrown it away long ago. He threw away the collar also. But the suit was fine, except that the forty-year-old jacket gathered a lot of fluff, and the National and Cultural trousers from Pétur Pálsson the manager were all too prone to wrinkle. Word came that the ship was entering harbor. It was early in the morning. The steerage passengers got themselves on deck, some of them rather fragile from seasickness or hangovers, others, including Ólafur Kárason of Ljósavík, looking solemn and full of expectation for the unknown whose doors were being opened. A little later he stepped ashore.

This was the capital of the country. At long last this poet had left the valleys and outer nesses of the farthest coasts and had been lucky enough to see the place which contained the grave of Sigurður Breiðfjörð.

“Country bumpkin, country bumpkin!” shouted a few children, and pointed at him as he stood there at a street corner with his sack.

But hardly had he realized that he was this country bumpkin before the children had disappeared. Here there was no time to think about the same thing for long. He remained at the street corner for a long time, deep in thought. Then two gentlemen came walking across the street in a slow slalom, stopped at the corner beside the poet, greeted him effusively, and called him their friend. They were a little puffy in the face and red-eyed, and had not shaved for the last few days or had their shoes polished. The First Gentleman squinted with one eye at a time at the people in the street and asked in amazement: “Young man, can you tell me why these people don’t go to bed?”

“I’m afraid I can’t say with any certainty,” said the poet. “On the other hand, I presume that they’ve just got up.”

“Yes, what terrible morals we have in this town nowadays,” said the First Gentleman. “This rabble sleeps all day and then goes whoring all night, even five-year-old children. Listen, friend, what’s the sun doing over Mosfell District at this time of day?”

“It’s shining,” said the poet.

“It can’t be a real sun,” said the First Gentleman. “It’s an artificial sun. I want these children sent home to bed. Will you be honest with me and tell me the plain, unvarnished truth: Are there any morals here in this town? Can the birds be right at this time of day? And what sort of a sun is that? Is it I who have lost my bearings or you, who comes from the country?”

“It is I who have come from the country,” said the poet.

“Friend,” said the Second Gentleman, and embraced the poet. “The Bank’s been closed. The English have closed the Bank.”

“Just so,” said the poet.

“And why have the English closed the Bank?” asked the Second Gentleman. “It’s because there’s no money left in the Bank any more. Júel has cleaned out the Bank. Júel has squandered all the money the English lent this ill-starred nation out of the goodness of their hearts. Júel has sunk all the English money in the depths of the ocean. That’s why the Bank’s been closed.”

“Really?” said the poet.

“D’you say ‘Really’?” said the Gentleman. “How dare you say ‘Really’ here in the south?”

“He needs to go to bed; he’s sleepy,” said the First Gentleman.

“He’d better be careful about saying Really,” said the Second Gentleman. “D’you know who I am? I’m a political editor. I’m a leader. I can prove that you’re a traitor to your country and an anti-patriot. I have the proofs to hand. Whoever says Really is against our kinsmen, the Finns, I can prove that. Listen, have you got a króna?”

The poet found a króna piece in his pocket and gave it to the men. Then they asked if he had two krónur. He dug into his pocket and found two krónur and handed them over, and thus bravely bore the banner of the lending activities which the English had stopped by closing the Bank.

“Now we’ll take him out on the tiles,” said the Second Gentleman.

But the poet thought that The Tiles was the name of some very high mountain, and said that unfortunately he did not have time to climb The Tiles.

“What d’you drink, then?” asked the Second Gentleman.

“Milk,” said the poet.

“Milk!” repeated the Second Gentleman. “God help me, I blush for shame! So you drink milk? In other words, there’s no limit to how far people will go in shamelessness nowadays. May I ask: Are you making fun of people here? Or have you really got V.D.?”

Then the First Gentleman said: “You, as a political editor and town councillor, don’t understand countrymen, whereas I, as a lawyer and a sheriff and spiritual aristocrat, understand countrymen—let me speak. Friend! Milk isn’t just the most boorish and unpoetical drink ever known, but also the most vulgar drink which has ever been invented on earth. No one with an uncorrupted aesthetic sense can announce that he drinks milk, at least not in public and without prior notice. Milk is taboo, my dear friend; milk is an obscenity; d’you understand me? On the other hand it’s a matter for negotiation, and I’m quite prepared to consider the matter at a suitable opportunity, how one should classify cattle. As a spiritual aristocrat I incline in the main to the doctrine that cattle are cattle, as far as that goes. And I willingly admit that when I see a cow chewing the cud, I wouldn’t dream of denying that in these disgusting creatures there may reside a certain philosophical, I’m tempted to say metaphysical, power which . . .”

“That’s a repulsive point of view,” said the Second Gentleman. And mercifully for the poet’s purse they forgot all about him and staggered away, bickering.

He shouldered his sack and set off into the town. There was some sand blowing about, as on Sprengisandur, and everyone was thinking about himself. He was still feeling a little peculiar after the voyage, and knew of no way of finding something to eat in a capital city. He went up to various people and asked where the sheriff was, but people only asked in return if he were an idiot. Finally he met a policeman, which was lucky for him; for this gigantic, uniformed man neither made fun of him nor took money off him nor was suspicious of him on sight, but went out of his way like the good Samaritan to help a stranger, in the spirit of the Gospels.

A midsummer stillness reigned in the police station; no one was in any hurry to take the trouble of coming to the counter to ask this lanky countryman what he wanted. The visitor was allowed to kick his heels for a long time by the door. But when there was no longer any hope that he would go away without bothering people, an elderly gentleman got up from his chair in this mighty sheriff-house, walked with measured stride to the counter, stopped there, and tapped the lid of his snuffbox.

“Good-day,” said Ólafur Kárason.

“Good-day,” said the man.

Ólafur Kárason offered him his hand. “Are you the sheriff?” he asked.

“There’s no sheriff here,” said the gentleman, taking the visitor’s hand rather reluctantly. “This is the police. What do you want?”

“I’m the man from Bervík,” said Ólafur Kárason.

“Bervík,” said the gentleman. “So there’s a Bervík, is there?”

“Haven’t you heard of me?” said Ólafur Kárason. “I’m the one who committed the crime.”

“Really?” said the man, a little absentmindedly. “You committed a crime, did you? What crime was that?”

Ólafur Kárason took from his wallet a copy of the judgment and a document from the sheriff to prove his story, and gave them to the officer.

The man spelled his way through the document and called some of his colleagues over, and they all spelled their way through the document; some of them were wearing ordinary gentlemen’s clothes, others had gilt buttons. They nodded amiably towards Ólafur Kárason when they saw what was up; some of them asked the news from his district about the weather conditions, the grass-growth, and the fishing. The poet said that the grass-growth was well above average in Bervík, and the hay crop was doing well so far this summer; on the other hand there was not much fishing at our place. One man offered him some snuff. These were splendid people. They asked if he could not come back tomorrow.

Ólafur Kárason was disappointed and replied, “I’m a stranger here in the capital, and don’t know any people here apart from the one house I’m to go to, and I haven’t got much money. I’d prefer to be allowed to start serving my sentence as soon as possible.”

They said there were several difficulties about admitting him immediately to this highly desirable residence which they managed; of that house it could truly be said that many were called but few were chosen, all the documents had to be in perfect order. Did he not have any friends in town?

Ólafur Kárason blushed. One man in this capital city, certainly, was his friend from the old days, but he did not even know himself any more, let alone old friends. He wanted to delay meeting this man until he had served his sentence and was a free man again. But all things considered, there seemed to be nowhere else to turn for the time being, and a policeman was sent with the poet to look for his old acquaintance.

They walked for a long time until they came to the house where the poet’s friend lived; the policeman went to the back door and said Good-day, and a middle-aged woman came to the door, a little scared because she thought someone was going to be arrested, but it turned out to be only a stranger asking for Sveinn of Bervík. She said that her stepson was out at work and would not be back until six o’clock. The woman asked who the visitor was, but when she learned that it was the children’s schoolteacher from Bervík her face filled with sheer anguish. The policeman said that the man was a stranger in town, and asked the woman to afford him shelter until his friend came home. With that the policeman disappeared, and the woman stood in the doorway and looked in dread at this terrible man, Ólafur Kárason. She called out to three adolescent girls and told them to leave the house at once. Then she took Ólafur Kárason through the kitchen into the living room. He asked if she could please sell him some food. She said this was not an eating house, but perhaps she could give him some food. He was grateful for being allowed to sit in her living room for the day, because as a stranger, an idiot and a criminal he did not have the courage to wander about in this town, even though it contained the grave of Sigurður Breiðfjörð.

That day while he was waiting for his friend was extraordinarily long. The woman brought him food with fear in her eyes, and if he tried to start a conversation with her, she became even more scared. Everything he said seemed to have the same effect on her as delirious ravings; there was no doubt that in her eyes he was not merely a hardened criminal but a lunatic to boot. He looked out the window at lightly clad children playing in the street, and in his thoughts he had already become a prisoner, an outcast of mankind, and despised by society. Again and again he was on the point of sneaking away before his friend returned.

Around six o’clock he heard a young man’s cheery greetings outside; it was the boy coming home from his work with no thought of anything untoward. But his voice was quickly hushed and whispering began, and after that it was whisperings and suppressed emotions that reigned in this house. Blushes of shame came and went in the poet’s cheeks.

After a long time his friend Sveinn of Bervík came into the room. He was a tall, fine-looking young man in a blue suit and brightly colored shirt, extremely well-washed, smelling of hair-oil, with his hair carefully brushed, his hands scrubbed to remove all traces of the day’s work as thoroughly as possible, his shoes polished. He offered his hand to the visitor with grave courtesy, and when the visitor had examined him more closely, he was grateful that he had not tried to pretend a friendly smile. In a flash the visitor saw that all his secret plans to try to make his life comprehensible to this young favorite of fortune were ridiculous. To try to excuse himself to this young man was merely to accuse himself. He understood now as never before that a man must conquer or fail in his own eyes alone.

“Sveinn, I–I know no one; you don’t need to know me if you don’t want to,” he stammered, and felt, as he always did in the hour of trial, that he was a foster child at Fótur-undir-Fótarfæti and was in the wrong, alone against the world. Once upon a time these two men had been in the same situation; now the difference between them was like the difference between a wish and its fulfillment. The one was what the other had dreamed of, and therefore they did not know one another any more. He who has wishes, yearns for a friend; but when the wishes have been fulfilled, the friends are the first thing we forget.

“You are a man of learning now,” said Ólafur Kárason, and could not hide the admiration in his eyes as he contemplated this young, handsome, intelligent and well-dressed man whom he in his insignificance had discovered in the darkest cranny of the country and had helped to push towards maturity.

“I’m an undergraduate,” said Sveinn of Bervík, with a slightly selfsatisfied expression round his mouth.

“And you’re no doubt a great poet now,” said Ólafur Kárason of Ljósavík.

Perhaps the unreserved devotion in the visitor’s eyes struck this young man as being merely dog-like, because a shadow of distaste passed over his face at these words, and he looked at Ólafur Kárason’s Sunday-best suit not without disgust.

“I’ve decided to become a theologian,” said the undergraduate.

“A theologian!” repeated Ólafur Kárason. “That’s wonderful! Oh, how that pleases me. I always knew you would become something; something special; something out of the ordinary.”

He smiled his gentle, fervent smile at his friend, but to no avail.

“Did you have a good trip?” asked the undergraduate.

“Yes, thank you,” said Ólafur Kárason. “But I was a little seasick the first night. And my neckwear was ruined, unfortunately, so now I haven’t got any neckwear.”

“What do you think of our capital?” asked the undergraduate.