The Great Weaver From Kashmir (7 page)

Steinn!

Have no fear that I'll ever send you this letter. Never. Just forget, forget, forget! Blessed are those who forget! Never shall a letter from an idiotic girl near the North Pole disturb your peace there in the south. Think in peace about everything great and holy! Think in
peace about God, the great God! I congratulate you on your great God who shines like phosphorescence from the visage of things. I hope that you write a beautiful poem about him, much more beautiful than the one you wrote about me. He rewards you much better than I do. Of course he promises you that you'll reach Heaven. And all that I am is one of his creatures, just a little girl. Forgive me for that.

No, Steinn, I'm not writing because I think that you or anyone else should read this. In any case you wouldn't grant my letters such respect as to read them. God wouldn't allow you to read them. He would call down fire and brimstone over them. There's no glory shining from them. They're nothing but the sleepless blabber of a young girl. I write because I feel so bad. I'm so bored. I'm young, weak, scared, and alone. No one understands me. I feel like a little human child raised by trolls, and one of these days the trolls will come and eat me. At night before I go to bed I look at myself in the mirror. And then I pray to God to help me, because I'm afraid. What am I? At night I don't sleep. I cry.

Everything is dark and meaningless around me. Tell me, Steinn: is anything worthy of a single daydream? Will you never return?

It isn't any fun anymore for me to meet my girlfriends. It's like they've taken sides with the trolls. No one understands me or knows me but you. You made me what I am. I was the clay between your hands. I wanted to be everything and do everything that you wanted. If I never see you again, I'll never get over having sat with you by the sea. And when I think about all of this I find it simply disgusting to be a girl. Steinn, forgive me. Should I become a nun? Or should
I become an actress? Or should I become a dancer? Steinn, I'm nimble and quick. Last evening after my bath I would have dared to let you see me dance.

Sometimes I feel like it's nothing but an illusion that I exist. When have I ever had any inkling of whatever it is that's called reality? Remember when you taught me the poem about “the painted veil, that those who live call life”?
¹¹
What is reality? Sometimes I feel like death is the only reality, and the rest an illusion! My mother died giving birth to me. Isn't it horrible that I should have been born to kill my mother? Why wasn't I allowed to die, and my mother to live? I never asked to be born, and my mother was happy. I'm always full of fear and despair, but there's nothing wrong! I woke up one Sunday last summer at Þingvellir and saw that my life, sixteen-and-a-half years, had been nothing but a dream. I feel that whatever time I have left to live will be uninterrupted sleeplessness. Then death will come.

Sometimes I look forward to dying because then the illusion will come to an end. Sometimes I shudder at the thought of being buried. Imagine it, Steinn, letting your body be buried in the earth! Often when the terror overcomes me I get up out of bed at night, and I take out my picture of Mother. I kiss it and cry. And then I hate my own body, Steinn, because it cost my mother her life. God grant that I never have a child! I'm afraid of my body, afraid of my soul, afraid of myself, afraid of everything. And you're gone.

Steinn!

Since you'll never see this letter then I might as well write everything. Everything? No, so little can be put in words. Words can never reveal the heart. Words are wise, precise, and strict like teachers, and I'm afraid of them, but the heart is none of these things. I usually stayed quiet when you were around because I felt that words couldn't say what was in my heart. I want to speak a completely different language than the one contained in words. As if I could put into plain words how I felt in my heart that day in the summer when you left!

I went to bed and fell asleep after you drove away. When I woke up it was pouring rain. I got up out of bed and went to the window. And Ármannsfell, where the sun had come up in the morning, was covered with clouds. And huge drops fell outside my window. And oh, how everything was dreary! I woke up alone in the wilderness, and your ship had put out to sea seven hours before. And I listened to the rain fall, and memories rained down in my mind. I recalled your words and everything that had happened. Your words are beautiful and terrible. I tremble when you start to speak. Everything that you say and do is beautiful and terrible. Maybe you'll get up without any warning, come straight over to me, plunge your hand into my breast, and take away my heart.

I felt that the farther away you went, the more beautiful and terrible everything that you had said would become, the more beautiful and
terrible everything that had happened. Tell me why we swore oaths! Were we serious? Steinn, is it true that you're going to try to become so perfect? Isn't that just poetic fancy like so much else? How can anyone become so perfect? I'm positive that I can never become perfect. I'm so frightened. Steinn, don't ask me to become perfect, because I don't want to, but tell me that I can believe in you, because that's the only thing that I want to be allowed to do.

Your name was in the paper the next day:

“
Gullfoss
sails today for Leith and Copenhagen. Among the passengers: Director and Mrs. Grímúlfur Elliðason, Steinn Elliði Grímúlfsson, cand. Phil. . . .”

Every time I see your name in print, Steinn, it's as if something seizes my heart. Strangers had printed your name there in black, lifeless letters, people who couldn't care less about you, people who had no clue as to what you'd said before you left, where you'd been your last night here, how you were completely smitten with grandiose plans, how your voice was passionate and inspired, your eyes bright. And you had held the hands of your little tearful girl and made her swear an oath. Steinn, what did we mean? I don't dare to think about you becoming so perfect!

I look out over the lava, gray in the rain, toward the wilderness, and think about you who are gone. And it's like I'm reading a big book. I don't recall anything before you. Once you had a straw hat with a wide brim and a red walking stick with a crook. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was sitting on someone's lap, and you walked with your stick straight through and into the next room. That's my first precise memory of you, because I thought it extraordinary how big you were, with your hat and stick. You're the big boy and I'm the
little girl, just a little speck next to you. I've always looked up to you with awe and admiration, and the same went for the last time, when you drove away from the Ylfingabúð, you sitting behind the steering wheel with your parents in back. A cloud of blue smoke trailed behind the car as it rushed west over the ridge; in the next moment it had vanished into Almannagjá. The last thing I saw was when you grabbed your hat with one hand and pushed it down over your forehead so that it wouldn't fly off in the wind. Now I've been dreaming of you for seven months. I can meet your eyes in the stars, because they're all that we can both see at the same time. But that only awakens an even deeper longing to see you. The language that you speak today is completely different from mine. And your thoughts are like earthquakes.

Do you remember when we went up to Mosfellssveit with your mother and grandmother? Our maid was with us, and a boy from the company drove. It was on a warm, sunny day in the middle of the week, the channel as blue as Esja, the hayworkers with their long wagons on the road. Everything was calm, pure, and blue. Don't you remember how our summer joy was deep and sweet when we were little? We didn't stop until we were a long way out in the countryside; we parked the car on a gravel bed just off the road and hiked up to the foot of a mountain. The boy brought our lunches. We chose a grassy spot by a little stream. The maid heated cocoa; we ate eggs
and bread, crackers and fruit. Oh, how hungry we were! Don't you remember how exciting that was?

But suddenly you were lost. You had hiked up along the stream and disappeared behind a hill. A long time passed, and you were lost. Then I hear a shout, and I look up. And you're standing up on the hill, making a trumpet with your hands around your mouth and calling to me. I ran to you as I always did whenever you called. And you took me by the hand and led me to a little field between two stony hills. You could be so serious and solemn when you were a boy, and I was always scared. “Diljá,” you said, “come here and listen to something!”

And there was a tiny hole in that hard field. It was so narrow that you couldn't stick your foot in it. And grass grew over the opening, making it almost unbelievable that anyone should have been able to find it. And it was so deep that I thought it went all the way through the Earth. And then you said: “There's a dwelling down there, and folk talking.”

We threw ourselves down flat and put our ears close to the hole. And it was true! We could hear people's voices far, far down in the Earth. I still remember how serious you were, but I was scared. “Almighty!” I said. “What if it's spirits? We should get out of here! Come on!”

But you weren't scared; you just wanted to listen longer. And I was tempted to listen again. At first we heard the same murmur of calm, strange speech, as if someone were speaking in the other world, or in his sleep. But the longer we listened, the more eerie the things we heard became. Finally we heard an instrument being played.
Someone had brought out a guitar and was plucking the strings gently, as if playing for a small child. And far, far away it was answered with the deep, deep tones of an organ. We stood up and looked at each other: they played instruments in the other world!

In the summer of 1914 you were twelve, and I was ten. You had gone abroad with your mother, and you didn't plan to be back until the fall. And then the war started. And the sea was filled with mines, and ships were blown up. Good gracious me, I was scared! No, you could certainly never suspect just how scared a little girl can be!

Every night I prayed to God to keep your ship from being blown up. And I said that he could let all the other ships be blown up if he would just protect your ship. And I said to him that even if he had never heard my prayers before, it didn't matter: I could forgive him everything if he would hear my prayer just this once. “Keep watch over them, my dear God,” said I. “Don't let them perish!”

Every morning I asked: “Did a ship come from abroad today?” But my blessed father was serious and strict, much like your father, and he had a lot to think about. That summer Örnólfur was home on his last summer holiday from the university. And Örnólfur was always so kind, the only one at home who had a soul. No better man exists than Örnólfur. He was always willing to talk to me. I often felt like Örnólfur was a little boy, he was so sincere and humble. He always
went and got a copy of
Morgunblaðið
when I asked, and checked on the ships. And ship after ship came, but some were blown up. And finally I started thinking that your ship had sunk.

The atmosphere at home was like this when Örnólfur was gone, that a little girl never dared to say anything about what was on her mind. But I got my chance one morning when Örnólfur was alone in the dining room after breakfast, and I asked: “Örnólfur, do you think that their ship will sink?” He was reading foreign newspapers, but he looked up, stroked my cheek, and said: “No, no, Diljá dear, they don't cross a danger zone. Steinn Elliði will make it home just fine.”

And he stroked my cheek again and looked at me for a long time.

One morning early in September, Örnólfur came to Grandmother and me and said: “The
Bothnia
has reached Grótta. Grímúlfur and his wife sent a telegram from the ship yesterday, but it wasn't delivered until this morning. They'll be in the harbor in half an hour.”

I was overcome by such joy when I heard this wonderful news that I forgot to thank God for hearing my prayer until half a month later. And when we reached the pier the ship was just anchoring. The passengers leaned over the railing, smiling and greeting their friends on the pier. Your father was standing there in his plain black overcoat with its silk collar, serious as usual. Next to him stood your mother in a new fur coat, and you slipped your hand under her arm. I can still see you there, in a blue sailor suit, your trousers reaching down to your heels, with new patent-leather shoes, in a gray, unbuttoned overcoat, not wearing a hat, your hair parted to one side like a grown-up man. I wouldn't let you out of my sight. You disembarked
before your parents and said hello to us. I gave you my hand without a word. I was only ten and you were twelve. And I felt like you'd come home from war. I thought that during the last few months you'd heard nothing but the roar of cannons and seen nothing but fire.

But all I could think was “Jeremiah!” because when it came down to it you were so incredibly full of yourself. You bowed to us as if you were greeting strangers overseas, and when you bumped into someone you said,
“Um verzeihung,”
because you'd been with your mother at a German spa during the summer, while your father was down south in Spain. You were so arrogant that whole day that I didn't dare to look at you, except in secret. I didn't dare to come into the dining room while you ate breakfast with us. I stayed in the kitchen with the maids. Oh, how terribly disappointed I was!

But on the next day you came to us alone. Grandmother gave us chocolate and fruit. You were completely different than the day before: you'd put on shorts, a sweater, and waterproof shoes like every other Reykjavík boy, and you were starting lyceum in the fall. You spoke more naturally and told us about everything you'd seen. You'd seen everything. You'd seen ropedancers, and black men swallow fire, and bears ride bicycles, and horses dance polkas. And you'd seen all the soldiers parading through the streets in Germany. And when you looked down on the soldiers from the balcony of your hotel, it was as if you were looking out over meadows of incredibly tall grass, and wind was blowing through the grass. But that was the bayonets on the soldiers' shoulders, all tilted in the same direction. You said you hoped that the Kaiser in Germany would conquer the whole world. And when Grandmother got tired of listening, you told
just me about everything you'd seen. And I said nothing; I just gazed at you and sighed. No one can believe how happy a little girl can be when she reclaims her playmate from death.