The Greenlanders (24 page)

One day Olaf Finnbogason took the small Gunnars Stead boat, and rowed to Gardar. As he had not been there in four summers, he was much surprised at the change he found, although, as before, folk greeted him in a familiar way, as if he had been gone only a few days. Here, of course, the hay crop on the huge homefield was as green and thick as ever—so thick that a man could hardly find the earth under the grass with his fingers. But there were few servants, boys, or priests running from here to there. The herd of cattle had diminished somewhat—about thirty cows and fifteen calves grazed on the hillside above the homefield. Even so, they were lovely big beasts, with shining red rumps and patches of white spreading like snow over their necks and shoulders. The Gardar bull grazed in a separate pen, as big as a rowboat and vigilant, able to graze and watch the comings and goings of the cows at the same time. He eyed Olaf. Olaf found much to admire in the animal—the Gunnars Stead bull was old and mild, and Olaf was fond of him, but it seemed to him that it would be a fine thing to care for this beast, a daily test of wills dangerous not to win. After looking for a long while at the bull, Olaf approached the hall.

Only a single figure leaned over some writing, and there was no singing. Sira Pall Hallvardsson lived now at Hvalsey Fjord, and Olaf did not know this man, who was dressed as a priest. A servingwoman named Anna Jonsdottir came up to him wiping her hands on her gown, and greeted him by name and asked him his business. Olaf inquired after the bishop. Anna replied that the bishop was sleeping, but that Sira Jon was anyway in the habit of receiving all visitors and she took him off with her to find the priest.

When Sira Jon came forward, Olaf pulled off his hat and, with little grace, dropped to his knees and kissed the priest’s ring. Jon looked at Olaf for a long moment, and then declared, “Olaf Finnbogason, you are so changed that I would not have known you, although I remember you well from your earlier visit.”

“Many say this of me, and ask me if I have been ill, but I have not,” said Olaf. Now Sira Jon asked for the news of Gunnars Stead, and sent Anna Jonsdottir away for a bowl of milk and other refreshments, and he invited Olaf into his chamber. The man’s clothing was so soiled and humble that Jon could not forbear staring at it, for the folk at Gunnars Stead were known for dressing well, in the thick, purplish Gunnars Stead wadmal that was so desirable. Even folk who laughed at Gunnar’s womanish weaving were not slow to trade for some of it when they could. The two men sat without talking until Olaf had finished his meal. Olaf kept his eyes down and ate carefully, for even though those who knew him as a child at Gardar had died long ago, Gardar reminded him of how he had been teased for eating like a beast, snorting and snuffling into his food as if he had never seen a spoon in his life.

After eating, Olaf pushed away his bowl and turned to Sira Jon. “I beg you,” he said, “to prevail upon the bishop to let me be made a priest now, for I am but thirty winters old, and that is of an age with Petur, the plague priest, when he began his training.”

Jon sat back and stared at him.

Still with his eyes down, Olaf went on, “Once I had everything by memory, every book that I was read, word for word, so that even though my eyes may be ill-suited for reading now, I know what should be said, and when to say it. Those things I have forgotten, I might learn again, for though my memory is not what it was, it is still larger than is common, and a trial would prove it.” He looked up. “My mother did intend me for a priest, after all, as the bishop himself well knows.”

Sira Jon cleared his throat. “It is true,” he said, “that of the seven churches in the eastern settlement, only four, including Gardar, have resident priests, and Sira Nikolaus at Undir Hofdi would surely have retired before now if such things were ordered in Greenland as they are in Norway. But why have you changed your mind? Why do you so suddenly wish to serve God, when you did not have this wish before?”

“Indeed, Sira, I do not think that I knew my own wishes before, because I was young, and I blindly shunned the sign of God. I have since found cause to regret my mistake, and I seek with all my heart to correct it.” As he spoke, he pressed his spoon against a drop of sourmilk and brought it to his tongue. Sira Jon turned away, and called for Anna to take away the vessels.

After she had left again, Jon addressed Olaf as follows: “It is well known that the bishop has been unwell, both during this summer and for much of the last winter. Such business as I do from day to day is beyond his strength, although he thinks clearly and often on more important matters, and we have great hope of his returning to health. Until this event, no new students can begin, for only the bishop can divine the true nature of their calling, and only he can conduct their religious training. When they are trained, only he can ordain them and guide their progress. Greenland is full of boys who will repay their training with years of service.” His voice faded into silence, but the import of this last was not lost on Olaf. They sat quietly again.

After a bit, Olaf said, “I might also come to Gardar as a servant. I have the reputation of a good cowman in the Vatna Hverfi district, and I am often called for when something goes wrong at a calving or a bull is difficult to handle. In fact”—Olaf smiled—“I noticed the Gardar bull as I was coming to the residence. The like of such an animal I have never seen before, and not just his size and strength, but his spirit, the way his gaze seeks everything, and the way his skin quivers over his flesh in the sunlight.”

Sira Jon frowned and said, “You speak more warmly of the bull now than you spoke before of the Lord.”

Olaf fell silent again, and Jon got up and began to pace around the room. Finally he told Olaf that he would pray over a decision and send him a message. Olaf stood up and put on his cap. When Jon turned to him, Olaf said, “From these words I know that there is no place for me at Gardar,” and he spoke in his usual low, rough tones, so that he sounded angry. Then he walked out.

And now, Sira Jon, who had been pleased enough to receive Olaf and entertain his supplications, was seized with such anger that he desired to run after the other man and give him his death blow. He remembered nothing of Olaf’s words or demeanor, but only his disrespectful attire and sullen manner of speaking. This was not the first such fit to overtake the priest. As gently as possible, he closed the door of his chamber and threw himself full length before the carved ivory crucifix on the eastern wall, although Satan himself prevented his eyes from lifting to the lovely somber face of the Christ, just as he prevented Jon’s soul from rising out of the fire and shame of his anger. This anger appeared to him as a pool at the bottom of an abyss, and each day of his life in Greenland was spent in threading his way around this flaming tarn on a narrow and rock-strewn ledge. Many days Satan threw him in, propelling him with slight and unexpected provocations, and these days did not get fewer, nor did the fire burn less fiercely. Worse, these angers went unconfessed and unabsolved, as Jon could not bring himself to portray their full intensity to the bishop for some reasons nor to Pall Hallvardsson, for other reasons.

Now he lay on the floor in a state of rigid supplication for a long while, never lifting his eyes to the crucifix but knowing it, even as he knew the knock of Anna Jonsdottir, who was calling him to the bishop. He had, in the past few days, ceased fighting Satan, and now only hoped to contain him within this chamber and within his corpus.

The bishop sat beside his bedcloset in a chair that had been carved for him by his brother in Norway when they were both young men, and it had gone with him everywhere. Now it had come to Greenland, and he sat heavily against the back rail instead of upright, disdaining support, as he had always done. At the front of one of the arms was carved the face of a pig, for St. Anthony, and at the front of the other, a lion, for St. Jerome. The bishop’s eyes were half open, and Anna Jonsdottir was speaking to him as she put morsels of steamed fish into his mouth. “These are good bits, indeed,” she said. “Just as your excellency likes them, with a bit of thyme and butter.” His jaws worked intermittently, but nothing dropped out, and when his mouth was full, he swallowed. “Not the least bone,” she said, and it was true, she was especially careful about removing even the smallest bones. When this delayed her feeding, he groaned, as if the wait were unbearable. Sometimes she put a cup of milk to his lips, and he sipped it. At last his arm flew up, signaling that he had had enough. Anna snatched the trencher away, so that it wouldn’t be knocked across the room, as had happened, and she helped the bishop up, for he had slid far down. He opened his eyes wider. “There you are,” she said, “that bit of fish has strengthened you,” though privately she thought that folk did better with seal blubber and reindeer meat. The front of his gown was covered with a white napkin, and this she took away. Now it would be time for the coming of Sira Jon, and she cocked her ear for the other man’s step. Bishop Alf, too, appeared to be listening, although it was well known to the servingwomen in the residence that he could hardly hear anything anymore. Anna herself had once dropped some utensils and a heavy iron pot, through stumbling over an unevenness in the paving of the floor, and the bishop, sitting in his chair, hadn’t flinched at all. Now Anna turned from the bishop and began arranging the furs and rugs in his bedcloset. Her nose twisted from the smell.

Sira Jon came in, his face white but his manner bustling, and Anna curtsied and moved back toward the wall. Jon began talking at once, saying how well his grace looked today, and that he hoped the bishop had had a pleasant meal. He always talked to the bishop in this way, without stopping for an answer to any of the questions he asked, and without looking into the bishop’s face. Even so, he appeared to Anna to think that the bishop heard him, and that the two were following each other’s thoughts. Indeed, it was true enough that even before his illness the bishop had spoken little but expected Jon to know his thoughts. The servingwomen often gossiped among themselves about how peculiar these Norwegians were, and some attributed their behavior to this, that they were Norwegian, and others declared that it was because of their clerical training. Soon Sira Jon signaled to Anna that she could leave, for he had weighty matters to discuss with the older man in private.

It was always thus that Jon came to his uncle, and always thus that he sat on a low stool at the older man’s feet. When the bishop had been confined to his bedcloset, Jon had sat on this same three-legged stool beside the bishop’s head and leaned in to catch whatever words the bishop uttered. When the bishop had been well and in his high seat, Jon had sat on this same stool with his eyes down, making a similar report. When the bishop, then not a bishop but a simple priest, had come to his sister’s home in Stavanger district, the boy Jon had sat below him thus, and reported upon his progress in learning and holiness.

Now he began with the beasts. “My uncle,” he said without looking up, “I have it from the herdsman’s boy that two lambs have been taken by foxes, and this is one fewer than last year. All of the cows are in good health, and the illness that struck the herd in the spring has, by the grace of God, run its course. Alas, only fifteen calves have survived, but all of them good-sized beasts, as if the sickness culled the weaklings. Surely this, too, shows the care of the Lord for His servants. Stein expects to bring every calf and every cow through the winter. Of the horses, there is this to say, that Lofti is a little lame in the left hind leg and Nonni’s eye still runs with matter, although nothing can be found in it, nor any scratch. So much for the beasts, with them all is as well as can be expected.” And in this way Sira Jon went on talking about first the servingwomen, then the servingmen, then the boys (of which there were but two, but very good boys, from prosperous Brattahlid families, who had brought much property with them), then the assistant priest, Audun, the Greenlander who had been set to the work of making a copy of the liturgical calendar as his first project (although his hand had little grace or beauty, it was clear and readable, perhaps a quality more necessary among the Greenlanders than other qualities).

Above his head, his uncle groaned and shuffled, but it was not Jon’s habit to raise his eyes. Then he spoke of Olaf, although not by name, saying, “It is the case that an older man has come as an applicant, wishing to be trained as a priest, but indeed, he shows little respect for the Lord or His servants, being dressed in tattered, soiled clothes and greedy for food rather than for knowledge of the ways of the Lord.” Here, Jon paused, but the bishop said nothing. “The man,” Jon said, “looks to be unskillful in any but the most menial work, and has no property that he might bring with him to enrich the see. Altogether, considering recent straitened circumstances, a place that might be opened to another should not be opened to this man.” Again Jon fell silent, for the bishop had from time to time chastened him for being hard and fastidious, and dazzled by the surfaces of things. But now the bishop said nothing, and it is a saying in old books that in silence there is approval.

Now Jon enlarged upon a project that he had cherished for some time. “My uncle, the feast of St. Bartholomew is near at hand, and I wish to say mass in the cathedral on this day, and to clean the cathedral and repair and polish all of the altar furniture with this in view, and not only that, but also to bring out some of the rarely used drapery and vestments.” The bishop made no response, and it occurred to Jon that in silence there might also be disapproval, and he said, “This would be an occasion to announce the Lord and His coming more strongly to the Greenlanders, especially as the time is approaching when rents and tithes are to be paid. Such a mass and celebration I have cherished in my heart for some time, as a way of bringing the Greenlanders to thoughts of the Lord, for this is the time farthest from Yule and Easter, and the thoughts of the Greenlanders are wholly fixed on the harvest and the seal hunt and the slaughter of livestock. Indeed, it seems to me that they show the fury of pagans in this slaughter.” Here, thinking of these things, Jon expected the Devil to fling him into the lake of anger, but it did not occur; he passed safely on.