Independent People (31 page)

The Bailiff had no reply for this squall, but his expression remained quite unruffled—he himself was the independent man on a large scale, and in consequence had at bottom probably even less faith in loving-kindness and the Christian disposition than Bjartur had. He put the bundle of notes back in his purse with the same gravity and the same obvious solicitude, intimating, as he did so, that the best thing in that case would be to return this trifle to where it came from, I’m certainly not going to force it on
anybody. And there ended an act of charity that might otherwise have been so beautiful. One would have thought that the country’s aristocrats would now have given up the attempt to work miracles up this independent moor-crofter, but such was not the case. The secretary, passing him his silver snuff-box with its finely ground, aromatic contents, now began to do his share towards helping the nation’s lone worker.

“Well, well, old lad,” he said. “You’ve life in you yet, I see.”

Snuff was then taken. When they had finished, the secretary hinted that Bjartur of Summerhouses might possibly have been expecting him on business of some slight importance.

“Have I forbidden you the road?” inquired Bjartur.

“There was once,” began the secretary, “a certain movement that began among the weavers of cashmir, in England. This movement is of great assistance to impoverished farmers who seek redress against the depredation of the merchants. It won its way into Iceland during the last century, when the poverty-stricken peasants of Thingey, whose sufferings were due to the rapacity of their merchant, formed themselves into an association for the direct purchase of supplies. This buying organization was the origin of the co-operative movement in Iceland, and now consumers’ co-operatives have gradually spread through the length and breadth of the land, to insure for the fanner fair returns for his produce and a reasonable price for the goods he needs. These co-operatives are in a fair way to becoming the most powerful business enterprises in the whole country, and with time they will eradicate the whole of the merchant class. The destitute Thingey crofters who followed the example of the British weavers have become a guiding light for the young Icelandic community.

“Now, the position in this part of the country is that the merchant in Fjord, having only his own interests at heart, gives you smallholders as little as he thinks fit for your produce, then sells you your necessities at an exorbitantly high price that fleeces you annually of huge sums of money; so huge, in fact, that after careful calculation I estimate that the embezzlement thus practised on the impoverished farmers of the district must amount annually to the cost of a well-built concrete house, in some years two, or at least the cost of an expensive plant for the production of electricity in addition to the single dwelling.” (“Oh, I shouldn’t be surprised if most of this electricity you talk about isn’t in your own backside,” interposed Bjartur.) “The firm sticks all this money into its own pocket, though of course the better part of it goes as spending-money
to the manager himself, whose family, though continually tripping off to Denmark for the sake of their health and amusement, still doesn’t manage to squander all the plunder looted by the firm from men destitute and reduced to starvation level.” (“Oh, you’ve been to Denmark, too, Ingi, lad,” said Bjartur.) “As everyone knows, the manager has gone and built himself a magnificent palace down in Fjord, with some sort of a tower on the top, and he’s spent thousands on improving the store’s buildings.” (Bjartur: “Well why shouldn’t the poor old devil have a tower if he wants one?”) “Now then, in addition to all this, and equally a matter of common knowledge, the doctor speaks for the firm in Parliament and has persuaded the Treasury to pour out thousand upon thousand to the firm in subsidies for the building of piers and breakwaters, the reason being that the doctor himself owns a substantial share in the fishing carried on by the firm down in Fjord.

“Though we live in a district that has from time immemorial been renowned for its natural advantages, it cannot be denied that in social matters we have long lagged behind less fortunate districts. But now there has come a time,” said the secretary, “when public-spirited men in the south, aware of the pass to which the farmers in isolated districts have been brought, realize that a serious effort must be made to persuade them to follow the example set by the Thingey crofters. They must be persuaded to take organized action against this gang of conspirators who fleece the individual and the State of every cent they can lay their claws on for the maintenance of their extravagant undertakings. Night and day you poor crofters slave over your little holdings without a decent rag to your backs or food enough to stave off the famine that preys upon you at this time every year. Money you never see for years on end, except for a few random cents that come your way from the hand of uncertainty itself’—(Bjartur: “Plenty of money in Summerhouses”)—“Perhaps a crown or two a year. You know yourself that it’s true, Bjartur, and there’s no point in trying to gild this destitution with glowing colours. Now I ask you as an honourable man: what have you to say of all this highway robbery of a whole community?”

Bjartur: “Well, to be quite candid with you, I’ve never been in the habit of looking on when you so-called gentry start slinging mud at one another; it’s never a very pleasant sight. I don’t interfere with the merchant; whatever his way of life, it’s no business of mine as long as I have no complaints to make against him. All
I know, and care to know, is that my sheep are doing well after the winter and that I owe nothing to God or man either. I have plenty of money and my family are, comparatively speaking, just as healthy as you Utirauthsmyri folk, who I don’t suppose are more than mortal, and apparently much healthier than the merchant’s family, who you say are sent abroad every year to distant continents in search of doctors. We people on the moors here would not care to exchange with anyone.”

“But, my dear Bjartur—”

“I am no dear Bjartur of yours. My name is Gudbjartur Jonsson, farmer of Summerhouses.”

“Very well, then, Gudbjartur Jonsson,” said the secretary with his cold smile and his head cocked in arrogant indifference. “And my name is Ingolfur Arnarson. And as my name implies, I am a colonist.” (Bjartur: “Yes, you’ve tried your hand at most things in your time.”) “I want to colonize this country, and persuade others to colonize it. People have starved themselves and their animals to death in it for a thousand years, but it has still to be colonized. Let me tell you this: there are two parties in the land who from now on will never be at peace, but will fight on till a conclusion is reached. On one side are the conservatives and the reactionaries who do all they can to keep the farmers down, and to this party belong the merchants, the boat-owners, and officials like the doctor. The other party consists of those who want to do everything to help the farmers. We want to give the farmers a fair price for their produce and sell them their necessities without profit by founding co-operative societies; then we want to provide them with cheap labour. That can be done by destroying capitalism in the coastal towns so that the workers are forced to return to the land. Last but not least we must provide the farmers with money, and that we will do by establishing agricultural banks through which the State will lend the farmers working capital at a low rate of interest so that they can extend their buildings, install electric plant, and buy implements suitable for farming on a large scale. Tliat is our program, the program of the new Icelandic colonists. A new age of colonization is beginning in which the Icelandic farmer will be a free man in a free land. We will exalt the Icelandic farmer to a position of honour and repute appropriate to the class that is born to the august destiny of assisting the Creator Himself in His struggle with the powers of darkness.”

“Yes, I think I’ve heard that last bit before somewhere,” said Bjartur, scratching himself.

“But heavens above, man, surely you can understand that we’re showing you a way of making money?”

No, that was just the point that Bjartur of Summerhouses couldn’t understand. However hard he tried, he simply couldn’t get it into his skull that big farmers and the sons of big farmers were wanting to help him make money. They could found as many Women’s Institutes and co-operative societies for themselves as the spirit moved them to, but until I ask the great for charity, the great will have to wait for me to run their errands. “You big people generally make money whether banded together or not, but if you happen to lose, you lose thousands, and you’ll never wheedle me into any society for paying your losses. This is the first year in thirty that I’ve been free of your old man there; who knows but that, given time, I might not build a fine outhouse for the ewes and separate quarters for the lambs? My livestock has increased, not diminished. As far as I am aware, I have seventy well-fleeced ewes in lamb and twenty gimmers, and that I owe to never burdening myself with a cow, though of course there’s no reason why I shouldn’t own as many cows as you people of Rauthsmyri eventually, and even knock up a house for the family, just for the fun of the thing, though there’s no real need, most of the beams here are still pretty sound, though maybe it leaks a bit here and there under the roof-tree. But to go surety for a crowd of big bugs in competition with the merchant, who has always treated me fairly since the day when I first had anything to sell him, more than twenty years ago—”

“Yes, but, man alive, can’t you see you’ll end up on the parish?”

Then Bjartur fired up, raved incoherently, swore he was a freeborn Icelander and and and it’s all the bloody same to me, and and I’d sooner be chopped up alive into little pieces like old Gunnvor at the lich-gate at Myri, and she never gave in but cursed them for all she was worth as she died and it all came true. Women’s Institute or Cooperative Society, I shall never give in—

“For heaven’s sake, Ingi, come away home now. Can’t you see you’re just wasting your breath on the man? I’m setting off by myself if you’re going on with this damned nonsense.”

The Bailiff’s daughter had had her fill of this entertainment. Lacking the mulishness of her father and her brother, she saw no reason why they, these men of position, should go to such lengths to convince one peasant of the moors and save him—as if the man hadn’t full permission to be as mad as he pleased. No one knows how long they might have sat there had she not interrupted.

“This little girl is called Asta Sollilja,” observed the Bailiff to his son, and pointed to the crofter’s daughter, who was standing in the home-field with her rake, gazing at them with wondering eyes as they rode out “She’s thirteen.”

“Why, of course,” said the secretary, reining in his horse to look at her. “I’d quite forgotten. How do you do, Asta Sollilja? You’ve grown quite a big girl, I see.”

“Have you bought that handkerchief yet with the money I gave you in the winter?” asked the Bailiff.

“The money you’re talking about,” shouted Bjartur from the paving, “it happened to drop into a bog in the marshes there. Quite by accident, of course. But we didn’t mind. It was that sort of money.”

“Yes, you always were a pig-headed mule,” replied the Bailiff.

“Oh, do hurry up,” called the Bailiff’s daughter from the road. “Let’s get off home.”

“Well, well, Asta Sollilja,” said the secretary, “you’ve grown into a really fine girl. Good-bye to you. And good-bye to all of you.”

Good-bye.

—all the singers from the south flown home to marsh and heath, the snow-white grass of winter one with the green of the sward, green, all green in the dingles and everywhere along the streams, and yes, so many days of spring gone by that surely it must be time to let out the cow. They talked about it for a few days, but Finna wanted to choose a day that was bright and warm for the ceremony. Soon there came a day that was warm and bright. The cow-shed was opened and the cow unfastened. Unsteady on her legs, hesitant, puffing and snorting through distended nostrils, she stuck her head out of the door with a rumble of anticipation; out of the darkness and stench of winter into the light and fragrance of spring. The change was sudden, she needed time to adjust herself. On the paving she gave a great low at the sun, then, after cautiously picking her way forward for a step or two, she halted
once more to drink in the fragrance of fine weather. She tried to low again, but it seemed as if she could say nothing more for amazement; was she dreaming? There had been so many times when she had dreamed of sunshine and green pasture in the darkness and smell of her shed that she could hardly believe that at last her dream was coming true. She made off down the slope at a sober trot, but after a few moments she could confine her joy no longer, this was really freedom at last. She broke into a gallop, clumsy and stiff after the confinement of winter, and, waving her tail in the air, raced away down into the marshes at full speed. Insensible of all dimensions, she galloped aimlessly in great haphazard curves and circles, lowing and bellowing her song for the spring; and the children ran after her laughing and shrieking till at last she halted in a bog, up to the hocks in mud and panting heavily. Day was far spent before she had calmed down sufficiently to think of grazing.

For the first few days she was graciously allowed to stay in the home-field, though Bjartur grudged her every mouthful that she cropped, for the manured grass, though the total yield would do no more than lace the cow’s fodder, was indispensable to the ewes towards the end of winter. He continued to talk disparagingly of the animal which had broken in upon his household and upset all proportions. And the bitch followed her master’s example. She was an old and conservative bitch now, and in any case had never had the sagacity of her mother, who was wont to take new-born children to foster and give them life. She often lay on the paving, sleepy-eyed and dejected, but always wakeful enough to follow the cow’s every movement with sour eyes. When least expected, she would slink out over the home-field and, stealing up from behind, would watch her chance to sink her teeth in the cow’s shanks. The cow would try to defend herself and would lash out with her hoofs or turn with lowered head and try to chase her off, but she would give up; the bitch was too elusive. Then they would stand facing each other, the bitch with ugly sideward glance and teeth bared in a snarl, yelping now and then, the cow tossing her head and sputtering.