The Great Weaver From Kashmir (41 page)

He pretended to have no idea as to how these things had mistakenly found their way into his room, did not even suppose there might be someone insane in the house, thought to himself, “There
was a man named Joseph,” understood nothing. Steinn Elliði was determined to admit the righteousness of Christ in all of his dispositions and worship his holiness. In the tranquility of midnight, when the world sleeps, the Lord is near to everyone who calls upon him. The Lord is awake all nights.
Sicut tenebrae ejus sicut et lumen ejus
.
¹²²
As his light, so also is his darkness. Lord, teach me to love you as your saints do, in such a way that nothing will be of any worth to me within the boundaries of existence except for you alone, the ultimate reality! Teach me to submit my heart to even more trials, even if all spiritual comfort might be taken from me! Make me a pilgrim in this world, which gives only stones for bread and worms for fish, and let me find no refuge until this sorrowful existence is at an end and my bones find their rest in you. He reached into his pocket for his rosary and started to contemplate the five sufferings of Jesus, who died for the sins of men: he sweat blood in Gethsemane, was scourged, was crowned with thorns, bore a heavy cross, was crucified. Amen.

His fingers feel their way from bead to bead, and at every tenth bead he makes a large sign of the cross, brings the Rosary's crucifix to his lips and recites the Lord's Prayer, then begins the next set of ten.

But even the smallest movement outside disturbs him; the night is so quiet, so still; somewhere in the house a door is opened carefully, and then quiet footsteps can be heard. His concentration is broken for several moments, a short time passes, and all is as quiet as before; his fingers feel their way along another five beads.

Then a rustling noise is heard again, and no longer in a distant wing of the house – instead he hears the unmistakable sound of someone walking outside his door: movements, footsteps, a brushing
against the wall. He sticks the rosary quickly into his pocket and blows out the candle. For a moment he hears nothing but his own heartbeat, heavy like the boom of a cannon, but then the door handle is turned from the outside, thrust downward until the latch is free of the jamb. There is a slight hesitation again, until the door is opened very slowly, and in through the thumb-sized crack between the jamb and the door falls a stripe of dim light.

The door is opened halfway. It is Diljá who stands there in a wide-sleeved pink negligé, with naked feet in high-heeled silk slippers; in her hand she carries a little red night-light. The gleam from this faint red light falls on the lines in her pale face, rigid as a wax mask, and her wide-open eyes, pupils dilated, stare into the room. She stops in the doorway, her hand still on the handle, and continues to stare; it is almost as if she has lost the ability to move her eyes; she stares and stares. The fetters of reason are broken, blind natural power appears in these nocturnal eyes, liberated on the ruins of God and man, gleaming red. Her personality has disappeared into the void, where all form vanishes; she appears here as the embodiment of nameless powers, the image of the first and last living being, blind, devoid of thought, and gruesome.

After staring at him for a time she sighs quickly, and convulsive shivers of either bliss or woe run through her body. She steps over the threshold and closes the door behind her. He walked over to her with almost perverse calmness, took the lamp from her hand and put it on the table, took her by the arm and led her to a seat in a deep chair. But when he was going to release her arm she took him by the hands, held them tightly, stared agonizingly into his face, and sighed:

“Oh-h-h, wine!”

He sat down opposite her and said:

“God has blessed both of our lives. We may not reject his mercy, because our health in the next world is far better than our sin now. Love Örnólfur, Diljá; he is worthy of your love; he is your husband. God desires that you live a stainless life as a faithful wife, not for your sake or his, but rather for the sake of the children that God gives you. For before the judgment seat of eternal life it will not be asked how passionate your loves have been, but whether you taught your children to love God. And I have been called to die to myself for the name of Jesus Christ.”

“Take off your mask, Steinn,” she pleaded.

“You are not free tonight, Diljá.”

“You said you love me.”

“Forgive me for what I have said. I am not in control of myself. Everything that I say is a lie. I am nothing but an illusion. This is why I have turned my back on myself. God alone is real.”

Then she squeezed his hands, tilted her head back, and closed her eyes. Her voice welled with passion as she started to speak:

“All of my most sublime feelings would enclose this little holy innocent. How blissfully I would have thanked God when I held him to my breast to feed him. For his sake I would without a grumble take every single burden of fate upon my shoulders. Steinn, I am prepared to sacrifice everything, everything! That cannot be a sin!”

“What are you talking about, woman?”

“The memory of you, Steinn, the incarnate memory of the god in you, the truth in you, your clear blue eyes, your bright curls, your mouth, Steinn, your mouth; the memory that you are going to give
me, that I want to bear in my womb. I can no longer evade you, Steinn; it would be ridiculous if I tried to hide myself.”

“This is sinful, Diljá.”

“If I have sinned, then God sinned before me when he created the world.”

“Diljá! Beware, child! God is holy!”

“He is heathen,” said the woman, “and neither Catholic nor Lutheran; heathen! I hate all of this disgusting religious prattle!”

She sat up in her chair and looked him straight in the face, her eyes wild. He feared that the savage beast would burst out uncontrollably if he did not try to calm her down, so he stroked the back of her hand with his palm and said:

“Calm down, Diljá dear. We shall be friends as you suggested yesterday morning, pure and simple friends, like sister and brother.”

“Fie,” she said. “I never said that, never wanted that! Sister and brother! It's disgusting! Oh, Steinn, Steinn!”

He tried again to calm her mood and continued to speak in a friendly, relaxed tone of voice:

“Diljá. I will never forget you. You will continue to be my most cherished memory from youth. I shall pray for you every day, every night pray to God to let his angels watch over you. But God has called me; he demands me; all of me. I have made an unbreakable vow to worship God, entirely. I begged him to preserve my chastity long before I humbled my arrogance before his omnipotence. And he desired that I live chastely long before it pleased him to let me hear his voice. If I were to sin tonight, I would stain my baptismal vow. I cannot bear to think of taking a willing step contrary to the will of God.”

“Fool!” she shouted, shaking her fist in his face, her face disfigured from the anger of humiliation. “You disgrace me! This is what it means to disgrace a woman! Get out of here! You do not belong in this house! I own this house! Away!”

Then he acted humble and wretched, cast himself on his knees before her, begged for forgiveness and kissed her hands, but she grabbed handfuls of his hair; they remained in this posture for a short time. Then he stood up. She turned away, went to his bed, threw herself onto it in a heap, and started to weep. She lay there for a long time and wept, in painful, heavy sobs. He waited. Then he showed her to the door.

Peace between a man and a woman is the worst, except that one thing might be even worse: their friendship. On the next day they sat together for three hours and spoke harmoniously. He told her everything that had happened from the time that he abandoned his mother in Naples in the fall of 1921 until he set foot in Iceland again six weeks ago. He described to her Hounslow near London, the abominable city; told of his pilgrimage to Sicily, where his mother's gravestone, inscribed in Danish, stands in the heathens' graveyard, and where green lizards run around and squint in two directions at once in the midday heat. Then he told her about his stay in the abbey in the Ardennes mountains, where he was converted to the true faith. He spoke about his growth in the faith, using exemplary tales like a public
school teacher. He explained to her that God himself established the Catholic Church, and that the other churches were heretical. He proclaimed to her that the soul of man is predestined for eternal life. The way to freedom requires the sacrifice of one's own will. Afterward he was annoyed with himself for all of his prattle. He felt as if he'd been making excuses.

She listened, but he couldn't tell whether she was distracted or attentive. Perhaps she was thinking of only one thing the entire time. Of course women never think about anything else. Women don't understand spoken words. One can only speak to them as to children and dogs. Where can one find enduring peace of the heart and true advancement? What woman understands this question? If she had had a lucky night, she would spend the entire next day thinking about it. If something had disappointed her in the night, she would start contemplating her revenge.

Then they went out for a ride.

The evening was cloudy, but the clouds and the peaks were tinged with sunshine and the air was calm. They had gotten a late start, because the boy had taken a long time rounding up the horses. By the time they came down from Meyjarsæti after sunset and rode back toward home, rain clouds covered the sky and showers fell in the mountains. Soon the first drops fell on them, and in just a short time it was pouring. They would rather have let the horses run the rest of the way home, since they weren't dressed for the rain, but as it turned out, one of the horse's hind hooves was shoeless and it limped, forcing them to walk. The light grew dim.

When they had crossed the lava halfway they stopped for a rest in
a hollow. They sought shelter from the rain and found an overhang, but the space beneath was so narrow that they had to sit squeezed closely together. He took their gloves and wrung them out. They cursed the stable boy for not having inspected the horses better before they set out, said that sloth was to blame for his tardiness in rounding them up. They agreed that he should be fired. Finally she said:

“I hope I don't have a cold tomorrow, because I'm going to Reykjavík early in the morning.”

“To Reykjavík?”

“Yes. The
Bothnia
arrives tomorrow evening. I'm going to meet Örnólfur.”

He said nothing. It rained on the lava and the birch; the twilight deepened. She was sitting nearly in his lap. All he needed to do was lean a little to the left and she could have rested her head against his chest. But neither of them moved. They even took care not to let each other hear their breathing. Both of them seemed to have forgotten that they were wet and needed to get home quickly so that Grandmother would not be alarmed.

Finally it was she who flared up, as if she were startled; she turned her face quickly toward him and whispered:

“Steinn, what must you be thinking of me?! You must think the very worst of me! Oh my God, if you should have misunderstood me; if you should think that I am loose!”

And now she tugged at his shirt and whispered imploringly into his face:

“Promise me that you will never think that I came to you out of
wantonness. I could never bear that. God Almighty knows that I hate wantonness, Steinn, I hate it!” – and at this point the sobs once again broke through her sighs, and at the same moment she wrapped her arms around his neck, cuddled up to him, trembled and wept:

“Steinn, you cannot imagine how I hate wantonness!” she professed. “I could die!”

He walked out of the lava hollow and looked for the horses, but they were gone. “Wait!” he called, and then ascended the nearest hill, but the rain and darkness clouded his sight so much that he caught no glimpse of anything resembling their horses. He crept about in the hollows around him, climbed from hill to hill; she waited for him. She had no inclination to crawl into a shelter again, but stood there where she had emerged, staring trancelike into the night and allowing the rain to trickle down into her bosom as it did into the earth. Finally it crossed her mind that Steinn Elliði might be in mortal danger due to the deep clefts in the lava, and she started to yell: “Steinn, Steinn!”

He answered from a distance.

“Come here,” she yelled. “Come here!”

She waited again for a little while. Finally she heard his spurs clinking on the lava rocks, and the drenched birch brushing against his clothing.

“The nags have bolted,” he said. “I can't see anything in this darkness. We'll have to walk home.”

The path was not easily trodden, and was worst where it lay across bare lava; it was very difficult to make out the road, but where it crossed soft ground pools of water gleamed in old hoofprints.

“You must be soaked to the skin,” he said. They walked for a whole hour without saying anything, splashing, slipping. She lost her whip, he one of his gloves; the mud piled up on the outsides of their boots; she fell behind. Finally he recalled that she was a woman and offered to take her arm.

“We must be almost there,” she said.

He answered, annoyed: “I don't understand this at all.”

This night walk continued for quite some time without them finding themselves anywhere near the Ylfingabúð, until dogs started barking loudly a short distance away – and now three or four dogs came at them, making an angry racket and a fuss. And when these unpleasant night watchmen were assured that these were not ghosts, their vehemence subsided, until they lost all interest and slunk away.

“We've come to a farm,” said Steinn. “This is clearly a fence, and it looks to me like the outline of a farmhouse, just over there.”

They felt their way along the fenced path to the farmhouse and after a few moments arrived at the paving stones before its door.