Independent People (64 page)

When he returned to the valley, back to Summerhouses, and Heaven above knew that the croft had begun to lean across the landscape at rather a ridiculous angle these days, it was to inform his father that he proposed going to America—two notes, tons
of money, the war over, he could be what he liked, a cattle-farmer on a big scale, maybe a joiner like his uncle.

The father stood on the paving, gazing deep in thought over the valley where we will suppose that in spring dreams of the future he had seen his family line grow and flourish. True, he may never have seen any such vision, and may never have had any articulate ideals about his toil or endowed it with any poetical significance, any more than the French and the Germans, who slew a million men for no reason at all or, as some people believe, just for the fun of the thing; but that did not alter this salient fact; which remained certain, and fixed and immutable: one fine day would see him dead and gone to the devil, and who would take over the sheep then? Were two counterfeit pieces of blue paper all that was needed to uproot a healthy young country lad who had a past of a thousand years in the country, and who was, as an individual, in perfect harmony with the land and the people? Did it need nothing more to persuade him, in the few minutes’ walk from ridge to croft, to betray the land, the people, and himself in the past, the present, and the future? Yet all he said was this:

“Never trust letters from America, they’re always full of swank. And what they say about the feeding of cattle is mostly lies.”

“Yes, but I could always be a joiner,” said the boy.

The father spat and replied: “I have known many joiners, my lad, but I have yet to meet one who ever got on at all. They go rushing around the countryside from parish to parish, nailing nails for other people. A rolling stone gathers no moss.”

The lad maintained a stubborn silence, so after a while his father went on: “I have lost the most of my children now, each in his own way, and never uttered a word. What is gone is gone. But you who knew how to handle sheep—I would have taken a stick to your back had you been a year younger.”

“When a fellow has been given as much money as I have,” said the lad, “why shouldn’t he use it to take a look round in a bigger country?”

“A bigger country? Don’t talk such damned nonsense. Summerhouses is as big a country as any, and he who cannot get on in Summerhouses will never get on elsewhere. You will never make good anywhere else. It was another matter altogether with your brother Jon; he was born with the love of travel in his blood, and his heart was set upon other things than sheep. But you, you know sheep as only a few know them, and I will never let you go. It was
to you that I had intended leaving the croft. You have always been the most loyal of my children, and though you are only a youngster still, the day may dawn when you will make a good marriage and be able to count yourself among the landed farmers.”

The boy answered, word by word, deliberately: “I am seventeen years old. And I am allowed to manage my own affairs. And though I have always been fond of sheep, you know nothing of what I may sometimes have thought to myself, though I may never have thought aloud. I have often thought that if any opportunity ever offered itself, I would seize it, and such, I am sure, is the case with everybody, whether of my age or older. A fellow dare not think anything or hope for anything aloud, so he simply keeps on doing something, and some people just keep on doing something until they are dead. I could hardly believe my eyes when I opened the letter on the ridge, for I have never dared to think anything or hope for anything aloud, though I may perhaps have thought and hoped unconsciously. This may be the only opportunity that will ever come my way in the whole of my life. I am not a fool, but I would be a fool indeed if I did not take this one opportunity of going out into the world and of being something in the world, just the same as those who dared to think aloud.”

“Don’t talk such utter twaddle,” said the father. “What the devil do you think you know about any damned world? What is a world? This is the world, the world is here, Summerhouses, my land, my farm is the world. And though you propose to swallow the sun in a fit of momentary madness because you’ve seen a couple of blue banknotes from America, which are obviously false the same as any other large sum of money that falls into the hands of the individual unless he has worked for it himself, sooner or later you will find out that Summerhouses is the world and then you will have cause to remember what I have said.”

It was with feeling of little warmth that they broke off their conversation.

H
E
made no further attempt to talk his son over; it is a mark of weakness to try to talk anyone over. An independent man thinks only of himself and lets others do as they please. He himself had never allowed anyone to talk him over. But from that day forward his son was gone as far as he was concerned. He no longer spoke
to him, not even to give him his orders for the day, but setting to work with the labourer on a deep trench he intended digging in the marshes, he worked like a madman from dawn till dusk. The boy said nothing either, but the impending parting weighed on his mind with a sorrow mingled with apprehension, for the soil ran in his blood, without words, without ideas; and now he felt as if he were about to quit the soil and set off out into the atmosphere, out into the blue. But he could not help it No one can help it. One is a realist. One has put up with it all ever since childhood; one has had the courage to look it full in the eye, possibly courage enough to look it in the eye all one’s life long. Then one day the distances beckon with their floating possibilities, and in one’s hands are the admission tickets, two slips of blue paper. One is a realist no longer. One has finished putting up with it all, one no longer has the courage to look it in the eye, one is in the power of beckoning hospitable distances, floating possibilities, perhaps for ever afterwards. Perhaps one’s life is over.

I’m off tomorrow,” he said.

No answer.

“Would you like to buy my ewes from me?”

“No, but I'll drown them in a bog for you.”

“Very well, in that case I’ll make Asta Sollilja a present of them as I pass through Fjord.”

“Huh,” said the father. “You must have gone mad. You’ll be killed.”

“There’s no war on now, the war’s over.”

And there the conversation ended.

“Grandma,” said the lad, “I’m going tomorrow.”

“Oh, not very far, surely,” she said.

“I’m going to America.”

She laid her needles in her lap and looked at him askant for a little while; then sticking one of her needles under her hood, she scratched herself with the point for a moment or two. “Well, that’s shaken all the lice out of my head,” she said, then resumed her knitting.

Next morning he rose with all his faculties dull and sluggish, as if he were about to set out into the atmosphere. He took leave of his grandmother with a farewell that had no elements of poetry in it; she did not ask to be remembered to her relations in America. As his father had not offered him a horse, he set off on foot in his blue Sunday suit, with his watch and chain, and his patent-leather shoes wrapped in a handkerchief under his arm, for his luggage
had gone on ahead of him. He turned his socks up over his trousers to protect the bottoms. The birds were singing. There were white belts of mist lying here and there on the mountains. Dew in the home-field, the marshes yellowy-brown, green in the drier patches. His father was already at work in the trench and he walked over to say farewell; Bjartur did not go to the trouble of even scrambling out, but said good-bye from the mud down below.

“Father,” said the boy shyly as he stood on the bank, “you mustn’t think ill of me.”

“I’m afraid they’ll mishandle you, sonny,” he replied. “They kill everyone who has any decency in him. But had you stayed here, you could have been an independent man like me. You are forsaking your own kingdom to be the servant of other men. But it’s no use grumbling. I’ll just stand here alone, that’s all. And I’ll stand as long as I stand You can tell little Nonni that, too. And good luck to you.”

Thus did he lose his last child as he stood deep in a ditch at that stage in his career when prosperity and full sovereignty were in sight, after the long struggle for independence that had cost him all his other children. Let those go who wish to go, probably it’s all for the best. The strongest man is he who stands alone. A man is born alone. A man dies alone. Then why shouldn’t he live alone? Is not the ability to stand alone the perfection of life, the goal? He had taken to his digging again. Then all at once some new thought struck him; throwing down his spade, he swung himself on to the bank; the boy had got a short distance away over the marshes.

“Hey,” cried the father, and hurried after him until he caught up with him. “Didn’t you say something about Asta Sollilja last night?”

“I was talking about giving her my sheep if you didn’t want to buy them.”

“Oh, I see, said his father, as if he had not remembered the connection. “Oh well, good-bye then. But remember this: though the war may be over it doesn’t alter the fact that they are capable of murdering you out of sheer imbecility. Do you think that men who are mad enough to wage a war for four years will suddenly become models of virtue and intelligence just because they have signed a peace? No, they’re madmen all.”

His son could think of nothing appropriate with which to answer reasoning so profound.

“By the way,” said the father then, still hanging about him,
“if you should chance to see Asta Sollilja, you might tell her that I took a trip over the mountains in the south one day early in the spring, and that when I was standing looking at a certain rock, two verses occurred to me. They go like this:

“Do you think you can remember them?”

“I can remember anything I understand,” replied the bey. “But what does it all mean? That line about Norns, of instance?”

That’s no concern of yours; they’re only a couple of verses about a rock. I don’t believe in any Norns and never have. And as proof of that you can say that I’ve had a headstone erected for old Gunnvor in my name. But that, of course, doesn’t prevent me from saying whatever suits me best in poetry.”

The boy committed the verses to memory and asked no further questions.

“For the rest,” said Bjartur finally, “you can tell her that everything is much the same with me here, except that the loft canted forward a bit a year or two ago, in that winter of hard frost that we had. But that when I build my house, it will be built in such a fashion that it will not cant. And that I shall build it sooner rather than later. But you don’t tell her that from me.”

And with these words he returned to his work.

I
N
these times it was no longer considered an act of ignominy and shame, comparable to seeking parish relief or being sent to jail and fit only for the scum of society, to go to America; nowadays it bore almost the same dignity as going on a pleasure cruise. Emigrants were no longer referred to as tramps and chronic loafers, or as bad goods gladly exported by the parish councils; no, they were men with money in their pockets and they were
going overseas to see their relations and friends, who were high-minded people. Icelanders in America had all at once become high-minded people, as it had been reliably reported that they had lots of money; and it was considered rather praiseworthy to set out in search of these magnanimous plutocrats. Gvendur of Summerhouses, a youth who had never created any stir in Fjord on his previous visits, Gvendur of Summerhouses was in town with money in his pocket, a hundred crowns, a thousand, maybe more, and about to take ship across the Atlantic to see his relations, prosperous gentlefolk. He became immediately a highly respected figure in Fjord, while he waited for the coastal steamer, and the Sheriff gave him coffee when he called about his passport, and even the Sheriff’s wife came to take a look at him because he was going to America. A person of great intelligence whom he had never set eyes on before hailed him on the street, invited him in, supplied him with more coffee, and taught him to say yess-monnee-ollright so that he could make a success of life in America. At the offices of the shipping company he was given an hour’s lecture on how to comport himself in Reykjavik, whom to meet and what to say and where to pay his passage money, and somebody gave him a cigar to smoke and he was sick down on the beach. Lots of people stopped him on the street and asked him if he was the man. Yes, he was the man. Women appeared at the windows, lifted the curtains, and measured him from top to toe with romantic curiosity because they knew it was he. Children stood behind house corners and yelled after him: “America, America hey!” In this atmosphere of fame two days passed. He bought himself a knife and some cord to take with him to America, for nothing is so essential on a long journey. The ship was due early the following morning, and when he had finished all his preparations he still had the afternoon and evening before him. “I’d better go and see Asta Sollilja now,” he thought. He found her at last in service with a boat-owner and his wife; with her was her child of five winters and a summer less, a little girl.

“I christened her Bjort,” said Asta Sollilja. “I was so much of a child myself when I had her, it was all I could think of, it wasn’t meant to please anybody in particular. She’s big for her age and has plenty to eat now, poor kid, and she’s cross-eyed like her mammy.” She kissed her. She was a tall young woman, long in the leg. She was broad, possibly too broad, over the hips, with shoulders that were slight in comparison, a back that was too round, and a bosom not so high as in the year when she was
fifteen. Her eyes were silver-grey under their dark lashes, her complexion pale, and in her mouth the former lines of grace had given way to hardness. One of her front teeth was black with decay, her squint was more pronounced than before, possibly from fatigue, her hands long and heavy-boned, but pleasing in shape, her arms too thin, her neck still white and young, her voice cold and harsh, not bright. She had had her hair cut short and the fringe hung down into her eyes. There was something about her looks and her manner that was at once both strong and weak, attractive and repellent. One could not help taking notice of her; there was not a single feature that was dull in her face, not a moment of muteness in the glance of her eyes, not a movement of her limbs without vital personal expression, and the expression all in contrary sharps and flats, a debasement and a rehabilitation at one and the same time. Her life was one unremitting impassioned torment, so that one could not help wanting to be good to her; and then to push her away; and then to return to her again because one had not understood her—or oneself either, perhaps. Gvendur realized immediately that she was of superior stock, even though she stood there bowed in apprehension over the wet washing, clad in rags, clad perhaps in the shame of a whole nation, of a nation innocent for a thousand years, with a decayed tooth and an illegitimate child,—and marvelled at her in the same way as he and his brothers had always marvelled at her in the old days, when she had been their big sister at home. No, they were not related.