The Great Weaver From Kashmir (42 page)

“Where in the hell did this farm come from?” she said. “There's no such farm near Þingvellir.”

But his only reply was a curse, and he pounded the door with the
toe of his boot, causing the farmhouse to creak and groan and the dogs to bark and howl once more.

“Dogs and devils!” he muttered angrily, as he continued to pound on the door. “Damn it all, I'm sure we've gone in the opposite direction–” and he continued his hammering.

In a few moments a rustling was heard at the door, and a human nose stuck out through the gap. A sleepy voice, which it was impossible to guess came from the throat of a man or a woman, but which was obviously surprised by the noise of the dogs, asked who was outside.

“Folk from Reykjavík,” answered Steinn. “We've lost our horses and our way. Could you possibly put us up for what's left of the night and give us something to drink?”

“Well, damn, I really don't know what you'd settle for; there's nothing you could call high-class housing here, as you can see, but naturally you can try to fit yourselves into what we have resembling a guest room, instead of hanging around out there in the squall.”

It was an old woman. She invited them to follow her down a pitch-black hallway that smelled of rotten turf and other earthly materials, cautioned them not to break their necks on the stairs, and then led them into a little room with a four-paned window.

“I don't dare to wake anyone else, because everyone's exhausted; it wasn't even possible to gather what we'd spread out to dry yesterday morning before the rain started; and I'd only just gone to sleep when the whelp started barking; and there's still nothing to feed the lamps here on the farm; still there ought to be a bed made up there if you'd care to go to sleep, and somewhere there ought to be a chest if you want to have a seat while I try to get something for you to drink. Are there more than two of you?”

Steinn Elliði said no.

After several moments the woman returned with a large pitcher full of fresh milk and two large cups. She placed these on the table beneath the window and invited the guests to help themselves.

“You don't have to worry about the bed at all,” she said, “because we've often housed people from Reykjavík here in the past, and we're clean folk here.”

“When does it get light?” asked Steinn.

“Oh, it'll start glimmering pretty soon, considering it's already three,” answered the old woman, “but don't you worry about that, because when I get up I'll tell the housemother that there are guests here, so she'll wake you up with a cup of coffee.”

The old maid seemed satisfied that everything was in order, because she bade good night without any further ado and left the guests and their muses alone in the darkness.

The milk proved to be a most outstanding thirst-quencher, and they gulped it down as the rain hammered on the corrugated roof of the house.

“What do you think Grandmother will say when we don't come home?” he asked.

“She'll think we're dead,” said the daughter-in-law remorselessly. “She'll think we've fallen into a ravine and broken our necks. It won't do her any harm to be upset for one night.”

The Director's wife took off her hat and fixed her hair in the darkness, just as if she were absolutely delighted with this change of plans.

“You must be soaked to the skin,” he said.

“That doesn't matter. I'm not wetter than you.”

“When it gets light I'm going to look for the horses.”

“And I'd already told our boy at home to have the car ready by nine tomorrow morning. I've got to be in Reykjavík in ten hours. At this particular moment I feel like I'm somewhere in Alaska. Steinn, imagine! We're in Alaska! Alaska!”

“You've hopefully noticed that there's only one bed for the both of us in this damned den,” he said.

“What does that matter? I'm used to sitting up all night when I can't sleep. Take it easy and go to bed; I'll sit here on the chest.”

“Are you crazy? You're wet and tired and a woman besides, and you could catch a cold! You go to bed; let me sit on the chest. I'm going anyway to search for the horses as soon as it starts to brighten up.”

“I'm going too when it's light enough to find my way,” she said. “You mustn't imagine that I would let anyone find me sleeping here tomorrow.”

“No, let me sit on the chest.”

“No, I'm not moving an inch off this chest.”

“Yes, but you can see, woman, that there's no sense in letting the bed remain empty.”

“Then lie down!”

“Are you nuts, woman? It's only fair if I stay awake for a while.”

“I'm not going to sleep before you.”

“Before me? I'm not going to sleep at all.”

“Well, fine then. But you can be absolutely certain that I won't go to sleep.”

“Diljá dear, what is this waywardness supposed to mean?”

“The bed will remain empty as far as I'm concerned; I'm telling you that once and for all.”

They sat there for a while, stubborn and silent, and listened to the rain. He drank a cup of milk. Then he stood up, stricken by a fit of shivering from the cold.

“I don't understand this idiocy at all! Will you use the bed or not?” he asked.

“Haven't I said that this blessed bed can stand empty until Doomsday as far as I'm concerned?”

But it was a long time to wait until Doomsday, and still several hours until dawn. He walked around in the darkness for a few moments, stopped at the window, reached out and found her. He took hold of one of her arms and whispered:

“I'm going to bed.”

She said nothing.

He started taking off his clothes and threw them carelessly onto the floor, slipped himself finally beneath the soft bedcovers and pulled them up to his chin. She didn't stir for a long time. Rock-a-bye baby, he thought, and tried to make it sound as if he were sleeping. A long time passed, and the rain continued to patter on the roof. He perceived no movements in the room until he felt someone standing at his bedside and the top blanket being touched. In the next instant the blanket was quickly lifted, and in a split-second she had climbed into the bed and slipped beneath the covers by his side. His searching hand brushed her naked breast and bare hips, and soft arms slipped beneath his head and entwined about his neck.

“You won't throw me out of bed naked?” was whispered in his ear.

“No. I thank you, my love, for how you have allowed me to torment you. Lovers torment; and are tormented.”

“The time has come,” she sighed. “Then you can kill me.”

“No, my love, I won't kill you; I'll torment you, torment you, torment you. I left Iceland last time with the intention of tormenting you; and when I leave again I leave in order to torment you. Because you are all that I love. The love between a man and a woman is the only truth in life. Everything in my life is a lie, Diljá: God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell, everything a lie but you.”

When he woke it was late in the morning; the sun shone ceremoniously through the room's single four-paned window, gilding the destitution within: under the window stood a table of unpolished wood and upon this a pitcher and two cups. Of his female companion there was nothing to be seen. He got out of bed, drank what was left of the milk in the pitcher, and lay back down. His clothes lay scattered about the floor, in the places where he had cast them in the night.

He pounded on the wainscoting several times and called out: “Hello!” Finally a young woman, the housekeeper, came in, bade good day in a friendly way and displayed obvious surprise at seeing only one guest, because she'd been told that two had come there during the night.

“My companion left early this morning to search for the horses,”
he said. “We were a bit tipsy yesterday and the horses escaped us when we stopped for a rest. Might I ask you to dry my socks?”

The woman was most hospitable, collected his clothes and left with them, but returned in a short time with steaming coffee, hot pancakes, and waffles. Around noon Steinn sauntered away in his dry clothes, feeling very contented. The air was clean and clear after the rain, the view of the mountains was bewitching, the scent of the copse intoxicating; all around him the birds of the heath tuned their voices; the butterflies slipped through his fingers before he was able to catch them. He walked leisurely westward through the lava and recited a stanza from the
Völuspá:
¹²³

He was far from feeling anything akin to remorse; on the contrary, he was elated, full of the confidence of a healthy man, masculine pride. He had learned to perceive the guiles of the Devil in a woman and to value love of chastity as the most precious of all the passions of mortal man. Today he adored man for having been granted the ability to take part in the glory of creation of the living universe. Two human beings encounter the immortality of their own deathliness
in the ultimate offering of their bodies and souls – could a more beautiful gospel exist? That night he had had the courage to forsake himself and speak the most truthful lie of human imperfection.

And he allowed his ideals to evaporate like a web of dew in a brake beneath the rising sun. His monastic ideals? Vain threads, the woof in the warp of a sick soul, the same kind of fanaticism as composing fifty poems about God in English. God cannot be served any better with monasticism than with poetry. Man does not triumph over his imperfection any better with monasticism than with poetry. To live in affluence in a stately monastery all of one's life, to go to bed at nine o'clock and get up at four to sing some sort of rigmarole from the Old Testament, to sing masses in multicolored silk chasubles and to ring bells was not a bit more Christlike than to live in Hounslow in London, to go to bed at one and get up at eight to quarrel with Mr. Carrington over oatmeal about the value of ancient writers. He was determined now to start reading Freud as thoroughly as possible. Self-denial! People would be better off following the example of Lao-tzu and trying to overcome sanctity! The greater part of mankind lives under more stringent forms of self-denial than the most austere monks. In Great Britain there are five hundred thousand people unemployed at this moment; and they don't even have the means to buy the milk for their porridge, let alone to own a one-shilling edition of the works of Bernard Shaw! In the evenings they get drunk and steal. The life of the fifth estate, the unemployed, drunkards, prisoners, and harlots – their life is the true asceticism. Monasticism does not mean asceticism to anyone but lustful gourmands, and not even to them. Don Quixote-ism! All this time I've been fighting against windmills for Dulcinea del Toboso!

Fais le testament de ta pensée et de ton cœur, c'est ce que tu peux faire de plus utile.
¹²⁴
Make a pact between your flesh and your spirit, those savage combatants, calm yourself and make peace between your heart and your mind, impulse and reason, and pay to each its own! Nothing in the world is more prudent! No one achieves a goal more glorious than to be a human being as God has created him. I will shed the skin of the supernatural monster and start a new life, as a human being, a servant in the kingdom of reality, a simple son of my nation:

And when he looked out at the ring of mountains surrounding Þingvellir, a sight that appeared before the eyes of the fathers of the country for a thousand years, he thought to himself that it was indeed of consequence to have a fatherland, that it befitted the dignity of the inexpressible, and he concluded that no one could wish for a better lot than to be fitted out with all of the preliminaries necessary for becoming a good Icelander. Nothing could be more worthwhile than to be a good Icelander.

Ostende. Hotel Windsor Castle, 10 Sept. 1926. R.F. Dom Alban O.S.B. Dearly beloved friend and Father. I returned to the continent two days ago, and now write to you a few lines while I rest after the voyage, respectful and beloved Father, to make you aware of my expected arrival at Sept Fontaines in several days.

My stay at home in my native country became for me a true wellspring of satisfaction and self-recognition. Whereas I had previously thought that the first step was to have realized that all is vanity, I am now much more inclined after my trip home toward the view of the ancient Greek philosopher who proclaims that the beginning of happiness is for a man to know himself. I wish therefore that you would view me in a somewhat different light than you did last time, as I view myself.

I am the living incarnation of the type of man who has seen the light of day the last ten, twelve years, but never existed before: an Icelandic Western European man of the spirit of those times that have pilloried the history of mankind, my mind free like that of a
man who rained down from the stars in August 1914 and afterward lived his life in world news bureaus and editorial offices. A poet grown from the cohesive hereditary culture starting from ancient Greece has nothing more conterminous with me than a fossilized fern from earth's prehistory. My thoughts play on the stage of the most gruesome expressionism and most nonsensical surrealism, and will never be compatible with the calm, faultless, and simplistic in the life-view of noblemen in wigs and ladies in crinoline, not to mention lapdogs and commodes in the Rococo style. I could never imagine citing a book composed before 1914; although I have read all of the most important ones, to me it's all the same old porridge in the same old pot. I forbid any man to try to understand me or to form an opinion of me on the basis of the classical criteria that have been in vogue up to the days of the French psychological novel.