Independent People (19 page)

Bailiff Jon was lying on his bed with his hands under his head and his spectacles on the tip of his nose; had just laid aside the latest batch of newspapers. He greeted his visitor with a vague snort, careful not to lose any of the precious tobacco juice that had been accumulating in his mouth for some time now. It was his custom not to spit too quickly, but to derive as much real benefit as possible from the juice he managed to suck from every quid. He was dressed much the same as a beggar, in a shapeless old jacket, patched out of recognition and fastened at the neck with a safety-pin. Besides the various forms of dirt that had stained it for some time past there were some fresh patches of earth and some tufts of wool on it which indicated that he had just come in from the sheep-cotes. His trousers were so worn that the original cloth no longer held the patches and was giving way at the stitches. Turned up over the bottoms was a pair of yellowish socks, undyed, and the down-at-heel horsehide shoes on his feet lent support to the theory that he was newly returned from a thoroughgoing inspection of the stables, stronger testimony being provided by the smell. In clothing and general appearance Bjartur of Summerhouses was far superior to this tramplike Bailiff.

Was there then nothing individual about the man, nothing to distinguish him from the crofter’s half-wrought appearance? There was. In spite of the tramp’s equipment, no one could doubt even at first sight, that this must be a man who ruled over others and held their fate in his hands; his lips wrinkled about the quid of tobacco as an unconscious symbol that he released nothing before he had sucked everything of value out of it. The peculiarly clear eyes, hard and cold grey; the regular features; the breadth of the brow beneath the strong, dark hair, grey as yet only at the temples; the shapely lineament of jaw and chin; the pale complexion that spoke of a sedentary life; and last but not least the small, shapely hands, strangely white and soft in spite of the obvious lack of care—all these were outward manifestations of a definite personality, a nature more forceful and more complex than is usually found among those who have to depend on their own toil to win their meagre living.

Bjartur offered his hand in greeting to his former employer, and the Bailiff gave him as usual his thumb and first finger, carefully reserving the other three clenched in his palm, without saying
a word. During his twenty years’ practice Bjartur had evolved a technique of dealing with the Bailiff that was entirely his own. This technique was based on the defensive attitude of an insignificant youth towards a suspicious despot, an attitude that, as the years go by, develops into the conscientious man’s passionate desire to assert himself against the superior power, then passes finally into persecution, into unremitting tension, always militant, which eyes only its own cause and refuses to meet the stronger personality on impartial ground.

The poetess offered her visitor a seat on the chest under the window with the remark that no one knew the knack of sitting in the armchair but the Bailiff himself.

“Pshaw,” exclaimed Bjartur indignantly, “what good did sitting down ever do anybody? There’s time enough for sitting when senile decay sets in. I was just telling Madam, Jon, that if you happen to run short of hay towards the end of winter through your lads’ housing my sheep for a couple of nights, well, just send along to me for a load in the spring.”

Raising his head slowly and cautiously from the pillow, so that his chew retained a level permitting it to spill neither down his gullet nor over his lower lip, the Bailiff opened his mouth a fraction of an inch and, gazing at him with tolerant contempt, replied:

“Look after your own self, my lad.”

This complacent, commiserating tone, though never definitely insulting, unconditionally relegated other people to the category of pitiable rubbish and always reacted upon Bjartur as if some criminal tendency were imputed. It had fostered the aggressive in his nature all these years, his passion for freedom and independence.

“Look after myself? Yes, you can bet your life on that. I’ll look after myself all right. I’ve never owed you anything so far, my friend—except what was agreed upon.”

The Bailiff’s wife drew the crofter’s attention to the fact that she had understood him to say that he had something to tell the pair of them; would he please be so kind as to tell them immediately, it was getting on.

Bjartur sat down on the chest, as he had been asked to do at first, said: “Hm,” clawed his head a little, and grimaced.

“The idea was this,” he said, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, as was his custom when he had to feel his way. “I was a ewe short, you see.”

A long silence followed, during which she watched him
through her spectacles with severe eyes. When she had given up all hope of his proceeding, she asked: “Well?”

Taking out his horn, he tapped a long train of snuff on to the back of his hand.

“Gullbra she was called,” he said. “She was a year old last spring, poor beast, and a first-rate sheep. She was sired by your Gelli, you know, one of the Reverendgudmundur breed that I’ve always had so much faith in; they’re such grand animals. I left her at home during the first round-up to keep the wife company, and then, how it happened I’m damned if I know, but she must have been missed in the second round-up and the third as well. So I said to myself a few days ago: the best thing you can do, my lad, is to take yourself a walk over the moors and have a look for this Cullbra of yours, for many’s the lamb you’ve sought south on the mountains long after the last of the round-ups, and that for other people, as I think you should both be able to testify, it being no longer ago than last autumn.”

The Bailiff’s wife still stared inquiringly at the crofter, still uncertain as to where all this was leading.

“So I went southward over the moors,” he continued, “I went south to the Blue Montains, and I even popped across Glacier River.”

“Across Glacier River?” asked Madam in surprise.

“Yes,” he said, “and crossing Glacier River would have been nothing if only I’d seen any sign of living creature, but there wasn’t a damned thing to be found except a bird in the warm springs south of the mountains, a hot-spring bird I expect. But as for anything with four feet to it, not a sign, with the exception of one buck reindeer (which I don’t class as an animal), and into this trip of mine went, you may say, five days and four nights. Well, and what sort of welcome home do you think I had tonight?”

The others were either unable to solve this riddle or disinclined to begin cudgelling their brains too much, for the Bailiff’s wife recommended that Bjartur should tell them the answer immediately if he attached any importance
to
their hearing it.

“Well, my dear lady, it’s because you’re so fond of poetry that I thought I’d let you hear this little quatrain, a poor thing that happened to occur to me when I looked round me by the trapdoor at home an hour or two ago.”

Then Bjartur recited this verse:

The Bailiff slowly rolled his head to look at Bjartur and raised his brows as if in question, but he was very careful not to part his lips lest he unwittingly ask anything by word of mouth. It was his wife who was left to make this observation:

“I hope we aren’t being given to understand that something has happened to Rosa.”

“Hm, whether anything’s happened to her is more than I can tell you,” said Bjartur. “It all depends on how you look at it. But she lives no longer on my earth, whatever follows it.”

“Our Rosa?” asked Madam in great agitation. “Are you telling us that Rosa is dead—only a young woman?”

Bjartur inhaled his snuff with great precision, then looked up with staring eyes wet with tobacco tears, answered proudly: “Yes. And she died alone.”

At this news the Bailiff rose up in his bed and, swivelling his feet over and on to the floor, sat on the edge-board, continuing for yet a while to ruminate on his chew, and still considering the moment premature to rid his mouth of the notable juice.

“But that isn’t the worst,” pronounced Bjartur philosophically. “Death, after all, is only the debt we all have to pay, you people out here as well, whether you like it or not. It’s this so-called life that many a man finds more difficult to bring into line with his purse. It’s always springing up, as you know, and actually
it’s
silly to go making a fuss about who the father is, though in certain cases it may be instructive as far as paying for it is concerned. So to tell you the truth, it wasn’t because of the wife that I popped over here tonight, for I don’t suppose there’s much point in trying to quicken the life in her now, the way she is; it was rather about that poor little wretch that was just hanging on to life by a thread, under the dog’s belly there, that I thought I might ask you for a little information, my dear lady.”

“What do you think you’re hinting at, my man?” was Madam’s immediate question; and the cold smile was now one in iciness with the eyes behind the spectacles. The Bailiff bent over the spittoon and discharged all his juice in one stream, then rolling the quid all the way from under his tongue to the back of his
jaws, pushed his glasses on to the bridge of his nose and sharpened his gaze on the visitor.

“May I ask what information you think you’re asking for here?” continued the poetess. “If you are saying that your wife died in childbed and that the child is still alive, then try to say so plainly, without so many circumlocutions. Probably we’ll try to help you as we’ve helped many another before you, with no thought of repayment. But one thing we do demand, and that is that neither you nor anyone else should come here with veiled insinuations about me or my household.”

When the Bailiff saw that his wife had assumed the leadership in this affair, he settled down quietly again and started yawning, a habit of his if, when listening to a conversation, his mouth was not full of tobacco juice; in such circumstances he was always sleepy and let his eyes wander all over the place in obvious boredom. His wife on the other hand was not completely mollified until Bjartur had fully and explicitly removed all suspicion that he had come with the intention of inquiring into the paternity of the child at home in Summerhouses. “My tongue, you see, is more used to talking about lambs than human beings,” he said apologetically, “and the idea was simply to ask you whether you didn’t think it would be worth while pouring a few drops of warm milk down its throat to see if it can’t be kept going till morning. I’ll pay you whatever you ask, of course.”

When all this unfortunate misunderstanding had been cleared away, Madam declared, and meant it, that for her indeed the supreme joy in life was to offer the weak her helping hand even in these difficult times; to sustain the feeble, to foster the awakening life.

Her heart was all his, not only in joy, but also in sorrow.

T
HE BAILIFF’S
wife was as good as her word.

That same evening she sent her housekeeper down to Summerhouses on horseback with some bottles of milk, a portable oil-stove, and various clothing for a new-born babe; Bjartur trod the snow in front of her horse in ballad mood after the adventures of the last few days.

The first thing that this midwife mentioned on entering Summerhouses was the smell; the stalls beneath were offensive with the
damp of earthen walls and fish refuse, while the room upstairs stank of death and a reeking lamp, the wick dry again, the last flame guttering, ready to die. The housekeeper demanded fresh air. She spread a coverlet over the corpse in the empty bedstead, Then she turned her attention to the child. But the dog refused to leave it, nursing it still; a mother, thirsty and famished, and yet no one thinks of rewarding an animal for its virtues. The housekeeper tried to drive her away, but she made as if to snap at her, so Bjartur had to take her by the scruff of the neck and throw her down the ladder. But when the child was now examined, it showed no signs of life whatever. The woman tried turning it upside down and swinging it in various directions, even taking it to the outer door and turning its face into the wind, but all to no purpose; this wrinkled, sorrowful being that so uninvited, so undesired, had been sent into the world appeared to have lost all desire to claim its rights therein.

But this housekeeper, who had been widowed when young, refused to believe that the child could possibly be dead; she herself knew what it meant to be confined when blizzards were raging in the dales. She heated some water on her oil-stove, the second time that preparations were made to bathe this infant, and soon the water was hot, and the woman bathed the child and even let it lie for a good while in water that was much more than hot, with the tip of its nose sticking up. Bjartur inquired whether she intended boiling the thing, but apparently she did not hear what he said, and as the child still showed no signs of life, she took it out and, holding it by one leg, swung it about in the air with its head downward. Bjartur began to feel rather worried; he had followed everything with great interest so far, but this was more than he could stand, and he felt he had better ask mercy for the unfortunate creature. “Are you trying to put the kid’s hips out of joint, damn you?” he inquired.

Whereupon Gudny, as if she had not been aware of his presence before, retorted sharply: “That’s enough. Be off with you and don’t show your face up here again before you’re asked.”

That was the first time that Bjartur was ever driven out of his own house, and had the circumstances been otherwise he would most certainly have had something to say in protest against such an enormity and would have tried to drive into Gunsa’s head the fact that he owed her not a cent; but as it was, nothing seemed more likely than that he had been provided with a tail to trail between his legs as in utter ignominy he took the same path as the
dog and crept down the stairs. But for the life of him he did not know what to turn his hand to down there in the dark; a completely exhausted man who had never felt less independent in his heart than that night; who felt that he was almost superfluous in the world, felt even that the living were in reality superfluous compared with the dead. He pulled out a truss of hay and, spreading it on the floor, lay down like a dog. In spite of everything one had at least got home.