Iceland's Bell (12 page)

At that moment the learned Icelander Grindvicensis reemerged from the house. When he cast his eyes upon the latter visitor seated next to the former, he raised his hands halfway in a gesture of despair, then let them fall powerlessly back down as if he no longer knew what to do.

“Oh, as if I couldn’t have seen it coming,” he said. “Jón Marteinsson, I order you to give me back the
Historia Literaria
* that you stole from me on Sunday. Jón Hreggviðsson, good, you may see my master in his bibliothèque*—but tell me first what sort of tricks this foul knave has been up to.”

“We traded knives,” said Jón Hreggviðsson, showing his knife.

“I should have expected it: the knife my master lost this morning”—and he snatched the knife away from Jón Hreggviðsson.

Jón Marteinsson yawned discourteously, as if this did not concern him. As he entered the house, Jón Hreggviðsson heard him ask the learned Grindvicensis to loan him some money for a tankard of beer.

17

“Greetings, Jón Hreggviðsson, you are welcome here after your long journey,” said Arnas Arnæus, slowly, deeply, and calmly, his voice like that of an omniscient being speaking from somewhere within a black crag on a bright summer day, telling the wanderer the story of his adventures from the beginning. It was not quite clear to the farmer whether ridicule or friendship dwelled in the depths of this voice.

This was a huge chamber, with vaulted ceilings and stone walls set with bookshelves from the floor to the rafters so that one had to climb a ladder to reach the highest shelves, just as one did to get to the highest bales in the hayshed. Set high in the walls were windows with small leaden panes, which did not let in enough light to allow one to work there without the aid of a desk lamp. In one shadowy corner tall armchairs were arrayed around a thick oaken table, upon which stood a pitcher and several stone tankards. A statue of a man or a god stood in another corner and a lit stove in a third.

The master of the house showed his guest to a chair, then he screwed open a small barrel resting upon a trunk in one alcove. He poured foaming Rostocker beer into a tankard and placed it before the farmer:

“Have a drink, Jón Hreggviðsson.”

Jón Hreggviðsson thanked him and drank. He was desperately thirsty. After emptying the tankard he heaved an extremely contented sigh of relief at the taste of the beer in his mouth, and he sucked at his beard. Arnas Arnæus watched him. Finally, after waiting for some time for his guest to begin explaining his business, he asked:

“What do you want from me, Jón Hreggviðsson?”

Jón Hreggviðsson bent forward and started to take off one of his boots.

“Are your feet wet?” asked Arnæus.

“No,” said Jón Hreggviðsson.

As he pulled off the boot he revealed his foot wrapped in rags, and when he finished unwinding the rags it came to light that he had a golden ring on one of his toes. He slipped the ring off, rubbed it on his trouser leg, and gave it to Arnæus.

Arnæus looked coolly at the ring, and when he asked his guest where he had gotten this object his voice knitted to a small extent, as if he were suddenly far removed.

“The fair maiden,” said Jón Hreggviðsson, “the fair maiden asked me to say—”

“That’s enough,” said Arnas Arnæus, and he placed the ring on the table in front of his guest.

“The fair maiden asked me to say—” repeated the guest, but the master of the house interrupted him again:

“No more.”

Jón Hreggviðsson looked at Arnas Arnæus and for perhaps the first time in his life felt a twinge of fear. One thing is certain: although he had finally reached his destination, he didn’t dare to deliver the message that he’d stored in his heart the entire long way, the words that he’d been entrusted to say.

He said nothing.

“I hear that you’ve killed a man, Jón Hreggviðsson,” said Arnas Arnæus. “Is this correct?”

Jón Hreggviðsson raised himself in his seat and answered:

“Have I killed a man or haven’t I killed a man? Who has killed a man and who hasn’t killed a man? When does a man kill a man and when doesn’t a man kill a man? To Hell with it if I killed a man. And yet . . .”

“There now, that was a strange jingle,” said Arnas Arnæus, but he did not smile. Neither did he look at the ring again, but instead continued watching Jón Hreggviðsson.

“Do you think that you’re a killer?” he asked finally.

Jón Hreggviðsson answered: “No—but things go worse for me when I say that, sometimes.”

“I don’t understand,” said Arnas Arnæus. “I read in the documents from Iceland that you were accused of murder and convicted last year at the Öxará Assembly, but that you escaped from your detention by some unknown means. Now I ask you what the truth is in your case—and I’m not trying to trap you.”

Jón Hreggviðsson started telling him the entire story of his dealings with God and the king, beginning with the time that he stole the cord to use as fishing line during the famine three years ago, and how he’d gone to the Þrælakista; then how he had, the year before last, helped to demolish Iceland’s bell for our Most Gracious Majesty; then how his jaws had worked against him in his conversation with the king’s hangman and how he’d reaped a flogging, as his lord already knew, since he’d paid him a visit in his ramshackle cottage at Rein the day after the punishment was carried out; then about the untimely death of Sigurður Snorrason and his, Jón Hreggviðsson’s, waking in the suspicious vicinity of the deceased flesh; next about his life at Bessastaðir in endless deathly darkness, without having seen the light of God except for a peek at Yule and Easter; about his sentencing at Þingvellir by Öxará, the place where poor men in Iceland have had to endure untold amounts of pain and disgrace; and about the night before his beheading when his chains were unlocked and he was given gold and told to go to his lord and beg him to redeem his head; and about his travels, how he’d left Iceland sinking under the swell of the sea and how he’d cursed it, and how finally, after all sorts of adventures out in the wide world, he’d arrived at this chamber, an ignorant, insignificant individual from Skagi, wishing and pleading that he might make peace with His Most Gracious Majesty, just so that he might go on looking after his own little house—

Arnas Arnæus listened to the story. When it was finished he walked down the length of his hall, cleared his throat, and walked back.

“Quite correct,” he began somewhat dreamily, looking past his guest as if he had already started to think about something else. “In the fall I took a look, out of curiosity, at a copy of the court documents in your case that I found lying here in the Chancery. It was difficult for me to see how they could have convicted you according to the testimony that was used as the basis for the verdict. I could see no clear link between the verdict and the investigations that had been made into the matter. It seemed, in other words, to be one of those outstanding verdicts that our wise fathers and pillars of the land there at home feel themselves compelled to hand down for some more valid reason than the satisfaction of the demands of justice.”

Jón Hreggviðsson asked whether the king’s friend and table-companion of counts couldn’t somehow arrange to have his case retried and concluded with a new and better verdict here in Copenhagen.

Arnas Arnæus walked through the hall, just as before.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “you are in the wrong house, Jón Hreggviðsson. I am not the keeper of law and justice in this kingdom, neither by calling nor office. I am a poor bookman.”

He gestured with an open hand at the book-covered walls of his hall and, looking at the farmer with a peculiar gleam in his eyes, added:

“I have bought all of these books.”

Jón Hreggviðsson stared openmouthed at the books.

“When a man has bought so many precious books it shouldn’t be such a great matter for him to speak the words that can buy Jón Hreggviðsson mercy,” he said finally.

“In your case, Jón Hreggviðsson may not matter,” said Arnas Arnæus, and he smiled.

“What?” said Jón Hreggviðsson.

“Your case is not so important as far as you are concerned, Jón Hreggviðsson. It is a much more serious matter. What good will it do anyone even if the head of one beggar is saved? A nation does not survive by mercy.”

“The fire’s hottest for the one who burns himself,” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “I know that it wasn’t considered manly in the old days to beg for mercy, but what power does one desolate beggar have to fight for his life against the entire world?”

Arnas Arnæus took a few moments and carefully considered this man who had been flogged in Kjalardalur, placed in chains at Bessastaðir, sentenced at Öxará, beaten on the highways of Holland, sent to the gallows by the Germans, put in a Spanish Jacket in Glückstadt, and who now sat here as his guest with one of his boots at his side, one of the king’s boots—and who wanted to live.

“If your case has taken a wrong turn,” said Arnas Arnæus, “then it would be easiest if you yourself went to the king and brought to him in your own words your supplication concerning an appeal, a reopening of the case. The king is not opposed to looking into the faces of his servants, and he will solve their problems eagerly and benevolently if he can find good reason to do so. But do not entangle me in this case, because nothing would be saved even if I were to save you. And it would only make matters worse if I were to intercede for you in such a small matter in this place.”

“So that’s it,” said Jón Hreggviðsson, drably. “All of this must have been for something. Otherwise it was only bad luck that sat me down beneath the hanged man. And here’s the token lying in front of me. I hope it’s not too much if I ask you to fill up my tankard.”

Arnas Arnæus filled the man’s tankard and let him drink.

“I mean you no harm, Jón Hreggviðsson,” he said. “I might be better inclined toward your old mother, who preserved six pages from the
Skálda,
but because of that, I’d like you to benefit as well, if only in a small way. The treasure lying there before you once graced the hand of a noblewoman from the south. And I had the good fortune, one summer’s night in Breiðafjörður, to be able to place it upon the hand of another queen. Now she has sent it back to me. I give it to you. This thing, which the queens called their good gold, the dragon that bites its own tail, I give now to you, Jón Hreggviðsson—use it to buy yourself a tankard of beer.”

“What does this soldier want here—or maybe I hadn’t already ordered him away from this house?!”

The hunchbacked witch stood before them, her face outstretched, her hair rising in pillars above it and her long chin like a cliff-ledge hanging downward and outward, set in such a way that her mouth looked like it was in the middle of her belly. Her shrill voice tore through the library’s calm.

“My delight!” said Arnas, and he went over to her and stroked her long cheeks tenderly. “I’m so glad that she has come!”

“Why has the soldier taken off his boot inside my house?” said the woman.

“Perhaps his shoes were chafing him, my darling,” said her husband as he continued to stroke her tenderly. “This is an Icelander who has come to speak with me.”

“It’s obvious that this is an Icelander, because he’s stinking up the whole house!” said the woman. “And naturally he’s begging for alms like all Icelanders do whether they’re at home or abroad, whether they’re wearing sweaters, overcoats, or soldiers’ jackets! Wasn’t it enough, dearest, that you dragged back here that insane Johan Grindevigen and that evil devil Martinsen, who stole two fine hens from me yesterday and who was lurking about here in the garden this very morning?—and you said you wouldn’t be scraping together any more of this disgusting race. This entire half-year since I became your wife I’ve been forced to buy more perfume than I ever had to do in my previous long and blessed marriage!”

“Oh, darling, these are simply my impoverished people,” said the Erudite Archive-Secretary, Assessor Consistorii and Professor Antiquitatum Danicarum, and he continued to fondle his dejected wife.

18

Jón Hreggviðsson strolled down the street without knowing for sure what he ought to do next, though he’d been granted leave for the entire day. He wanted to go to a tavern and cool himself down with a drink, but he had only a few coins. He stood irresolutely on the street corner as others passed by. He became so lost in thought that he didn’t notice it when someone started speaking to him.

“Huh?” said Jón Hreggviðsson.

“I told you it wouldn’t do much good,” said the man cheerlessly.

Jón Hreggviðsson said nothing.

“Ah, I do pity the boy.”

“Who?” said Jón Hreggviðsson.

“Ah, who else but poor Árni,” said the man.

“You stole the woman’s hens,” said Jón Hreggviðsson.

“Who cares? She inherited a large farmstead in Sjaelland from her previous husband,” said Jón Marteinsson. “Besides the gardens, the ships, and the barrels of gold. Listen, pal, what sense is there in standing here? Don’t you think we ought to go to Doctor Kirsten’s and buy ourselves a mug of beer?”

“I was thinking of that,” said Jón Hreggviðsson, “but I don’t know if I have enough to pay for it.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Jón Marteinsson. “At Doctor Kirsten’s beer is always brought to the table, as long as men are wearing decent boots.”

They walked down to Doctor Kirsten’s Tavern and ordered Lübeck beer.

It turned out that the Icelanders in Copenhagen were very familiar with Jón Hreggviðsson’s case and his escape from Þingvellir at Öxará during the past spring. Concerning his fate, on the other hand, they had heard nothing, until he appeared here as a soldier registered in the king’s book, newly transferred to Copenhagen from Glückstadt. Now the adventurer himself got the chance to tell the story of his journeys between toasts. He took care not to reveal how he’d actually gotten out of his fetters so as not to betray anyone, but said only that a woman of distinguished lineage had given him the good gold to bring to the man who was now considered the best of Icelanders, with the request that he be granted reprieve and pardon. Jón Hreggviðsson then told this new friend of his, much too willingly, how his business with this renowned man had ended. He let Jón Marteinsson see the ring and Marteinsson weighed it in his hand.

“Aw, Hell, I’ve known women of distinguished lineage, even bishops’ daughters,” he said. “Every girl’s the same as the next. Now let’s have some brennivín.”

When they finished their brennivín Jón Marteinsson said:

“Now let’s have some cognac and—soup. Iceland is sunk, no matter what.”

They ordered cognac and soup.

“I think it might be sunk many times over because of me,” said Jón Hreggviðsson.

“It’s sunk,” said Jón Marteinsson.

They sang in harmony, “O Jón, O Jón, drunk today, drunk yesterday, drunk the day before that.” Someone in the tavern said that it was easy to hear that the Icelanders had arrived. “And easy to smell,” added another.

“It’d be something to celebrate if it were sunk,” said Jón Hreggviðsson.

“It’s sunk,” said Jón Marteinsson. “I didn’t say it might be sunk.”

They drank more cognac. “O Jón, O Jón, drunk today, drunk yesterday, drunk the day before that—drunk indeed!”

After a short time Jón Hreggviðsson asked Jón Marteinsson to act as his intercessor before the king and the counts.

“Then we have to have some roast venison and French red wine.”

Jón Hreggviðsson ate for a while, then drove his knife into the table and said:

“There, I finally got something good to eat. Now the land is slowly starting to rise again.”

Jón Marteinsson crouched greedily over the food.

“It’s sunk,” he said. “It started sinking when they put the period at the end of
Brennu-Njál’s saga.
Never has any land sunk so deeply. Never can such a land rise again.”

Jón Hreggviðsson said:

“Once a man from Rein was flogged. And Snæfríður Iceland’s sun comes and leans up against the most noble knight in the land, against the one who knows the stories of the ancient kings, but behind him in the shadows stand countless leprous faces and all the faces are mine. Once there was a man condemned to death at Þingvellir by Öxará. In the morning you’ll be beheaded. I open my eyes and she stands over me, white, dressed in gold, not more than a span’s length around her waist, with those blue eyes—and I, all black. She rules over the night and sets you free. She is and will be the true queen of the entire northern world and the fair maiden with the body of an elf even if she is betrayed; and I, black.”

“Aw, is there no end to vanity?” said Jón Marteinsson. “Leave me in peace while I eat this beast and drink this wine.”

They continued eating. When they finished the beast and the wine the old woman brought them punch in mugs and Jón Marteinsson said:

“Now I’ll tell you how to lay a bishop’s daughter.”

He moved right up to Jón Hreggviðsson, hung over him, and openly described all the details of this work to the farmer, then straightened up again in his seat, struck the palms of his hands together, and said:

“That’s the long and short of it.”

Jón Hreggviðsson seemed unimpressed.

“Before, when he gave me back the ring, I said to myself, which one of us is poorer, him, or Jón Hreggviðsson from Rein? I wouldn’t be surprised if a great misfortune has yet to visit such a man.”

Jón Marteinsson sprang up in his seat as if he’d been poked with a needle, then he clenched his thin fists and thrust his head threateningly forward toward Jón Hreggviðsson; suddenly he wasn’t of the same mind.

“What’re you cursing now, you bastard?!” he said. “If you dare to pronounce the name that you have in mind you’ll fall down dead with that name upon your lips.”

Jón Hreggviðsson gaped:

“I seem to remember you yourself calling him a boy and a wretch just a short time ago, and his house a miserable one.”

“Try saying his name!” hissed Jón Marteinsson.

“Get your face away from me so I can spit,” said Jón Hreggviðsson.

But since he said nothing else, Jón Marteinsson leaned away from him again.

“Never pay any attention to a sober Icelander,” he said. “God in his mercy sent the Icelanders only one truth, and its name is brennivín.”

They sang “O Jón, O Jón,” and the other guests stared at them in horror and disgust.

Jón Marteinsson leaned up against Jón Hreggviðsson again and whispered: “I’m going to let you in on a secret.”

“Aw, I’m tired of hearing about this goddamn bishop’s daughter,” said Jón Hreggviðsson.

“No more bishop’s daughter,” said Jón Marteinsson. “Upon my honor.”

He leaned toward Jón Hreggviðsson’s ear and whispered:

“We have only one man.”

“We have a man—who?” said Jón Hreggviðsson.

“This one man. Besides him, no one. Nothing more.”

“I don’t understand you,” said Jón Hreggviðsson.

“He’s gotten them all,” said Jón Marteinsson, “all the ones that matter. The ones that he didn’t get in church lofts and in kitchen-nooks or in moldy bedsteads he bought from great aristocrats and wealthy landowners for farms or chattel until all of his folk ended up penniless—and his family was well-off to start with. And the ones that’d been shipped out of the country he pursued from kingdom to kingdom until he found them, one in Sweden, another in Norway, now in Saxony, then in Bohemia, Holland, England, Scotland, and France, yes, all the way south to Rome. He bought gold off of usurers to pay for them. Bags of gold, casks of gold, and never once did anyone hear him haggle over the price. He bought some from bishops and abbots, others from counts, dukes, princes, and emperors, several from the pope himself—it even looked likely that he’d lose whatever he had left and be thrown into prison. And never throughout eternity will there be any Iceland except for the Iceland that Arnas Arnæus has bought with his life.”

The tears streamed down Jón Marteinsson’s cheeks.

And the day wore on.

“Now I’m going to show you Copenhagen, the city that the Danes got from the Icelanders,” said the farmer’s new guardian and guide late in the evening, after they’d paid their bill with the good gold in Doctor Kirsten’s Tavern—they even had enough left over to visit a whorehouse. “This city was not only built with Icelanders’ money, it’s also lit with Icelandic whale oil.”

Jón Hreggviðsson sang from the
Elder Ballad of Pontus:

“Whenever you’re able to buy a cask
Throw all you’ve got into it,
Stave off sleep till you’ve done your task
Stave off sleep till you’ve done your task—
Till you and the boys drink through it.”

“And there’s the King’s Pleasure-Garden,” said Jón Marteinsson, “where noblemen in sables rendezvous with aristocratic girls wearing low-cut dresses and gold on their shoes while other folk plead tearfully for pig iron and rope.”

“Alright already, don’t you think I know there’s a shortage of hooks and line?” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “Now I want to go to a whorehouse.”

Their path led from the harbor through the center of town. The sky had lightened considerably with the calm frost and the moon added to the glow of Icelandic whale oil illuminating the place. The households of the noblemen towered over each other, each one more splendid than the next, with the cold and unimpressive appearance that is a true witness to the world of wealth. In the doorways of these massive houses were heavy doors made of choice wood, locked tightly. Jón Marteinsson continued to brief the out-of-towner:

“In this house sits my blessed Maria von Hambs, who at this moment owns the single largest financial share in the Iceland trade. A short time ago she donated a large sum of money to be used to buy soup for the poor once a day, so that she wouldn’t go to Hell. So you can see it’s not only the one-third of the townspeople who are worth anything that makes its living off the Iceland trade; now it’s also the earth-lice, the sons of Grímur Kögur,* who get their meals from it— the ones who were previously roaming the streets with empty paunches and rolling those who starved to death into the canals. The Treasurer Hinrik Müller, who controls the harbors in the Eastfjörds, owns that brightly lit house there encircled by fruit trees—do you hear those sounds of music and dancing?—it’s not just you and I who’re feasting tonight, pal. And the house with the angel at the gate is owned by the most handsome cavalier in town, Peder Pedersen, who controls the harbors at Básendar and Keflavík—he supposedly doesn’t have to do anything more than pull out his handkerchief for the king during their next drinking party in order to be made a true nobleman, with his name ending in ‘von’ and some other long German word.”

Finally they came to a great orchard surrounded by high stone walls. They peered in through chinks in the wall. Glazed frost coated the trees and the lawn was covered with rime. Moonlight reflected scatteredly off the glaze and gleamed golden upon the orchard’s quiet ponds. Two shimmering swans glided over the water and stretched their necks majestically in the tranquillity of the night.

A lofty palace dominated the center of the orchard, shining under the shelter of the expansive crowns of oak trees. It was newly raised, with steep roofs and florid gables, oriels of red sandstone, and niches containing statues perched on columns. The palace had four towers with stacks of balconies, each tower topped with a tapering spire; the finishing touches were being put on the final spire. The moon shone on the burnished copper of the roofs and towers.

Jón Marteinsson continued:

“This palace has been built as splendidly as possible in order to overawe foreign ambassadors and dignitaries; they searched for the materials far and wide before it was raised and nothing was spared in its expense. A Dutch master built it; an Italian sculptor did the exterior ornamentation; the chambers within were decorated by French painters and engravers.”

Jón Hreggviðsson felt like he would never be able to tear his eyes away from this vision: the forest of white porcelain, the polished copper roofs of the palace in the moonlight, the lake and the swans that continued to glide over the water and stretch their necks as if in a dream.

“This palace,” rattled off Jón Marteinsson, with a cosmopolitan’s straightforwardness—“this palace is owned by Christian Gyldenløve, the king’s kinsman, Lord of the County Palatine of Samsøe, Baron of the City of Marselisborg, Knight, General-Admiral, Lieutenant-General and Postmaster-General for Norway, Governor and Chief Tax-Collector for Iceland—an exceptionally honest and excellent lord.”*

Jón Hreggviðsson awoke suddenly from his reverie, stopped peering in through the openings in the wall, gripped handfuls of the shaggy hair hanging out below his hat, and scratched himself.

“Huh?” he said distractedly: “Did I kill him? Or didn’t I kill him?”

“You’re drunk,” said Jón Marteinsson.

“By my Creator, I hope I killed him,” said Jón Hreggviðsson.