Iceland's Bell (18 page)

“I’ll fall off this creature,” said the Dane.

“Maybe you’d rather stay behind, friend, and walk there tomorrow,” said Túre Narvesen.

“It’d be just like you to swindle me, and I was the one who got hold of the brennivín,” said the Dane. “You know I’m weak-footed, and that there’s no way I can walk over Iceland.”

“Dear brother,” said Túre Narvesen, “I didn’t say anything but that if you wanted, I could dawdle there before you and give her your regards until you arrive around noon.”

“How am I supposed to find the way there if you ride off without me?” said Jes Ló. “I’m sure I’ll never make it to Brødretunge. I have absolutely no idea which way I should ride. I’ll probably get lost and plunge off the horse and die, and you’ll be there already, having already gotten the girl and swindled your friend; and I was the one who stole the brennivín.”

“Now, you mustn’t forget, dear brother and friend, that I wrote the contract,” said Túre Narvesen. “Danes are big men in their own country, but here they’ve got no chance, whether or not they can write, walk, or ride. Here in Iceland we don’t wait around for anyone. The one who gets there first gets the girl.”

Jes Ló was by now starting to tilt to the side, so Túre Narvesen shoved him in the chest, and since the Dane’s horse was more inclined toward standing still he felt it best to ride close behind it to spur it on. But as it turned out, the Dane’s mount was a mare and consequently somewhat touchy concerning its virginity, and it started to kick out with its hind legs and squeal at the too-close pursuit. At this kicking the Dane dropped quite beautifully forward off the mare’s neck, and the soles of his feet turned up toward heaven.

“There you go, a Dane in his best light,” said Þórður Narfason, and he dismounted and kicked at the man.

“You bastard, you kick me while I lie here wounded and dazed!” said the Dane.

Þórður Narfason pulled the man up and poked at him and discovered that he was soaked with brennivín, since the flask had been smashed to bits; apart from this he was uninjured.

“Since you’ve pulverized the flask I am no longer duty-bound to you,” said Þórður Narfason. “Our partnership is finished. I proclaim myself divorced from you. Now each of us goes his own way. The one who gets there first gets the girl.”

The swineherd grabbed Túre Narvesen’s legs and said:

“I’m an upright Danish man, in the service of my merchant and my company and my king, and it is I who stole the brennivín and I who own the woman.”

“You Danes really are a sorry lot,” said Þórður Narfason, as he continued kicking his friend, “if you think that the day will dawn when you’ll get hold of Snæfríður, Iceland’s sun.”

Finally the Dane’s patience came to an end and he tried to sweep the feet out from under his friend the murderer, who by now had become his outright competitor for the woman’s hand. With that the battle had begun. It soon became evident that this fat, upright Dane was really quite a strong man and knew a few dirty tricks that took the Icelander completely by surprise. The Icelander wanted to fight standing up and use wrestling throws but the Dane preferred to attack from a prone position and use the strength of his frame. They fought for a very long time and shredded each other’s clothing until they were both nearly naked; they scratched and squeezed each other and blood poured from both of their noses and mouths, but neither had been so provident as to bring weapons along. Finally Þórður Narfason managed to land a decent blow upon his friend and knocked him senseless: the swineherd’s head fell back and to the side, powerless, his tongue stuck out at the bloodied corner of his mouth, and his eyes closed. Þórður Narfason sat down some distance away, exhausted from the battle. The sun was coming up. There was no brennivín. He saw the contract lying in the turf and picked it up. He had twisted his ankle and could hardly walk; the berserk frenzy had run off him somewhat and he started to feel more and more pain in his body. The gulf remained quiet but for the murmur of water; the egg-laying was for the most part finished. He spied his horse a short distance away and dragged himself over to it, mounted, and rode away. The horse was exceptionally lazy and budged along only when its rider drove his legs into it with all the powers of his life and soul. Finally it stopped inching forward and stood completely still. The man dismounted and kicked at the horse, then lay down with his back against a hillock and looked up at the sky. The moon hadn’t vanished yet despite the sunshine. He drew the deed out from under his brazen belt, likewise the letter concerning the woman, read both of them carefully, and found in neither of them any gaping errors.

“Praise God I’m a learned man and a poet,” he said.

One of his eyes started aching a bit as he read, and he found that he was unable to keep it open; it was starting to swell furiously. He tried to stand up but his head spun. He hadn’t accomplished everything even though he’d succeeded in dispensing with the Dane. He still had a long way to go to Bræðratunga and to the lukewarm woman. He wanted brennivín, but lacked the energy to stand.

“It’s likely best to catch some sleep,” he said, and he stretched himself out on the road, contract in hand, and fell asleep.

5

Around nones on the day after these events took place, Snæfríður Björnsdóttir Eydalín and another woman are strolling through the homefield at Bræðratunga. The herbs that they have gathered hang from a string tossed over Snæfríður’s shoulder. She has inherited her foremothers’ skill in identifying medicinal herbs—from some she prepares elixirs, from some dyes, others she picks for their perfumes. She is clothed in an old blue shift, bare-necked and bareheaded in the sun, her hair hanging loosely about her shoulders, sunburnt from her daily excursions in search of herbs. The woman and the homefield share the same golden hue.

Not far from her she spied a fat black horse, tied to a horseblock at the farmhouse, and a short, lean man, darkly clad, walking back and forth along the flagstones, stooping and holding his hands clasped, palms downward. It was the archpriest in Skálholt. When he saw the housewife he removed his high-crowned hat and held it in his hands as he walked out to join her in the homefield.

“An unexpected honor,” she said, and she smiled and curtsied and walked directly up to him, extending her sunburned and slightly dirty hand in greeting; wafting from her was a warm, strong scent of thyme, reed, dirt, and heather. He took care not to look directly at her, but greeted her and praised God for having met her in good health, then put his hat back over his ceremonial peruke and clasped his hands as before. He looked down at the backs of his hands, which were blue and swollen with age.

“The day is so fair that I could not refrain from taking my dear Brúnn out for a ride,” he said, as if in apology for his presence.

“The giant’s ox* always takes to flight during the dog days,” she said. “I always want to run off into the wilderness somewhere at this time of year.”

“In this destitute land where everything dies, such days reflect the very nature of eternal life,” he said. “They are apex perfectionis.”*

“How delightful it is to meet monsieur in heaven—in this homefield,” she said. “You are welcome.”

“Nay, nay,” he said, “it was not my intention to preach delusion, and madame must not think that I have begun to embrace heathendom, praising created things before their Creator. I only meant this, that they are perfect days indeed when one’s prayers transform, as if of themselves, into thanksgiving: a man starts to pray, but before he knows it he finds himself giving thanks.”

“Next time you come to me, my dear Reverend Sigurður, I am certain you will tell me that you have met a lovelier girl, that you have experienced eternal life and summum bonum,”* she said. “And I hear that you have found a grotesque crucifix in some old ruins, and that you invoke it in secret.”

“Credo in unum Deum, madame,” he said.

“You must by no means think that I suspect you of being a heretic—even if you do possess an idol, my dear Reverend Sigurður,” she said.

“What matters are a man’s thoughts concerning idols,” he said, “not the idols themselves. What is most important is to believe in the truth that may be concealed even in an imperfect image, and to live for it.”

“Indeed,” she said. “The other day I had to leave out the right horn on Abraham’s ram, because I needed room for my monogram and the date in that corner of the tapestry. Do you think this will cause someone to believe that the ram broke its horn in the thicket? Of course not; everyone knows that Abraham’s ram was sent from God and had two picture-perfect horns.”

“Since the conversation turns to images,” he said, “I shall explain to you my view. There is only one image of images—our image of life, the one we ourselves make. Other images are beneficial if they show us where we are deficient and how we can improve our way of life. This is why I saved that old effigy of Christ, a relic from the days of the papacy, found in a digging.”

“You are a wise and sensible man, Reverend Sigurður, but I do not know whether I would weave into my tapestry all those useful images you mention.”

“And yet, what we read in the doctores,”* he said, “remains firm: the truth displayed in a good life is the fairest of images.”

“Might I invite the Doctor angelicus* reborn in Flói to enter my poor house and accept a simple, homemade drink?” said the housewife.

“My dearest thanks,” he said. “Blessed is the man who is ridiculed by madame. But just as a giant’s ox creeps along the ground for eleven months, then flies in the sunlight in the twelfth, so it may be that one ex-priest shall also have his day: might I not rather walk side by side with madame out onto the homefield, for just a moment, to discuss with her a certain matter that has preoccupied me?”

They walked out onto the homefield.

He still had not looked up, but walked cautiously and conscientiously, lingering in every step as if to find its correct working both upon the ground and in himself. He was slightly shorter than she.

“Just now we were discussing images,” he continued lecturing, his hands in the same position as before, “true and false images, the images a man makes correctly and those he makes incorrectly though God has provided the raw material for them: I know that you wonder why I have come to you with such idle chatter. But I am, after all, your pastor. I believe it is God’s will that I speak. And I have prayed for Him to enlighten me. I believe it is His will that I speak to you these words: Snæfríður, the Heavenly Father has given you more than you have ever wanted to receive.”

“Is this meant to be an accusation?” she asked.

“I am not the one who accuses you,” he said.

“Then who?” she asked. “Have I done someone wrong?”

“You have done yourself wrong,” he said. “God says it and the whole land knows it, though no one as well as you yourself. The life you have lived all these years does not beseem such a splendid woman.”

Finally he looked at her, though with only a swift glance. His mouth quivered, and his black eyes were repulsed by her golden complexion.

She smiled somewhat absentmindedly and answered nonchalantly, dully, as if he had caused her to notice a slight stain on her sleeve: “Oh, does the bride of Christ now take an interest in such a pitiably innocent glimmer as my life?”

“I did not expect,” he said, “that I would once again have to undergo such a trial as to parley with a noblewoman, especially a woman so bewildered as madame as to have at one time performed a deed which, whether in civilibus or in ecclesiasticis,* would be called a crime, and to have to admonish her concerning her way of life.”

“You frighten me, Reverend Sigurður,” she said. “It sounds as if you were reading over either
Merlin’s Prophecies
or
Tungdal’s Vision
* before you set out today. I would give a great deal to understand exactly what you mean.”

“Blessed would I be if I knew the way to your heart, but it is not in the power of a simple cleric to find his way through such a labyrinth, least of all if you yourself have no desire to comprehend what you are told,” he said. “And though your heart may be a wall in which a poor poet can find no door, I am, all the same, compelled to speak.”

“Speak then, my dear Reverend Sigurður,” she said.

“When it comes to conversing with madame, she should realize that I am not totally ignorant concerning the one with whom I speak: you are as noble a woman as has ever lived in the Nordic lands, wise like the women in Iceland who were once called cultivated, trained in grammatica since your youth and so skilled an artist that your tapestries are celebrated in foreign cathedrals; apart from this, you of all women have been graced physically with such a life-giving fragrance by the mother of the Lord that your sojourn here, besides that of our own tiny blossoms, gives promise of the fact that the protective hand of our Lord Jesus shall always uphold this destitute land despite our Father’s rightful wrath. Those few inhabitants of this land who are still able to maintain some semblance of virility are burdened by grave obligations during these troubled times, and a woman like the one I described just now has no right, before God, to squander her life in company with an individual who is antipathetic to the honor of her fatherland. It may cause you consternation to hear from the mouth of a priest words spoken in opposition to that which the Lord has joined. But I have watched and waited. I have implored the Holy Spirit. And I am certain that your problem will be solved in casu.* I am convinced that even the pope himself, who proclaims matrimony to be an unshakable sacramentum,* would annul your marriage, considering the fact that it is more scandalous than adultery.”

“Oh, I had almost forgotten one thing, Reverend Sigurður: you were once my suitor,” she said. “In your view I should divorce Magnús and wed the archpriest. But listen to me, my dear: were I to do this then you would cease to be my suitor, and suitors are the most blissful of all people—apart from the objects of their affection. And besides, what would your Christus, the one you dug up in a rubbish heap, have to say about it?”

He said: “I have always known that the poet’s tongue that you inherited from your forefathers and foremothers sprang from a heathen root. How can I, a tenderhearted cleric, who is allowed to think so little and say even less, withstand her? One thing I have known only too well for a long time, despite the old joke that is now forgotten, is that the magistrate’s daughter’s heart was not inclined toward me. This was most readily apparent in the choice she made when that great cosmopolitan, her lover, deserted her. And how much less would this pitiable cleric, soon an old man, consider his chances with such a woman, even if she were free, now that the man has returned whom he would never have thought to compete against in his younger years?”

She became just slightly agitated and said: “Oh, stop reproaching me for the bugbears that supposedly confounded an ignorant little girl in her father’s house. Few things inspire one to more heartfelt or innocent laughter than adolescence.”

“Whether in jest or in earnest, madame, your conscience shall decide,” he said. “This I remember clearly—a fully grown woman told me, to my ear, that she would love him awake or asleep, living or dead. And it would not surprise me if by your acquaintance with him the warp-lines that support your life’s web become tangled. I do not suppose it was this great cosmopolitan, half-foreign, who first led your weak feet up the slippery slope to the precipice where you stand now? He was the comrade of princes and counts across the wide sea, wearing English boots and changing his Spanish collar weekly, thoroughly versed in all the apostatical heresy, heathen dialectic, and contemporary French learning that plagues the scoffers of God’s kingdom. The Lord sometimes occupies men with peculiarly reflecting illusions. He has allowed the Tempter to roam the earth clad in the dress of the light. As is always described in the exempla, action perpetrated by blind desire confounded you, and you awoke alongside a monster, as all cosmopolitans appear in the sight of God: of course this one owned no palatinate on the other side of any stretch of water broader than the Tunga River, and he had only one ruff, bent quite out of shape; nonetheless, he was no less versed than the former in the mockery of holy relics, following the prognostications of the spiritus mali,* which in the eyes of God is viewed in the same light as French learning and heathen dialectic, though here it is known as brennivín.”

“At first I thought that you had come here to try to destroy my relationship with Magnús,” she said, “but now I can see that it is actually someone completely different whom you have in mind: the man whom you claimed to be the best my devoted friend could wish for me. If he is the Tempter in the image of a man, as you say, then you wished me no well when you spoke those words.”

“When I was a twenty-year-old roving youth, I stood over the grave of the good and beloved woman who had been my sister, my mother, and my bride all at once, my guiding star and refuge. She was twenty-five years older than I. I stood at a crossroads. An over-arrogant lust for the world overcame me and I, entranced, watched the sparks flying out from under the fine saddle horses of the men who held the mandates; I made so much of the world’s frills that Christ vanished before my sinful Adam. And I was the suitor of the young magistrate’s daughter—she had said that I would be next. The worldly lord had come and gone, the only man I envied, the first man to have gained your affection. I was certain that you would never have him. I was certain that he would never return.”

“And now that you know he has returned to this country, you feel that the time has come to speak your mind concerning him.”

He answered: “You are no longer speaking to an infatuated suitor, madame, but rather to an experienced eremite who has dug his Christ out of a rubbish heap, just as you said—and who no longer pales before the lords of the world. And though I am an aged eremite, you are still a young woman, with a long life ahead of you and duties to your land and to Christendom. And it suits me to attend to the lot of your dear soul—for the glory of God.”

“And what lot has monsieur now chosen for me in God’s glory, if you please?”

“I am certain that your sister, Madam Eydalín, would rejoice if you were to abide with her in Skálholt for a year or so while your divorce from Magnús is being settled, and while you take some time to examine your conscience.”

“And then?”

“As I said, you are a young woman,” he said.

“It’s all clear now,” she said. “Leaving you out, dear Reverend Sigurður, what sort of lout or low-grade priest do you have in mind for me, for the glory of God, after the year is up?”

“You would be able to choose from wealthy landowners and great aristocrats,” said the archpriest.

“I know whom I would take,” she said. “I would take old Vigfús Þórarinsson, if he would condescend to have me. He is not only rich in lands, he also has bags of silver; besides that he is one of the few men in Iceland who know how to speak to ladies.”

“Perhaps another man with even higher authority might find his way to Skálholt this year, madame.”

“Now I really don’t understand,” she said—“hopefully the archpriest doesn’t have in mind for my dear soul the devil himself—for the glory of God?”