The Greenlanders (32 page)

Pall Hallvardsson’s eyes opened wide, and he ran his hands over his head. Finally he said, “No, indeed. Ghent is such a compounding of mankind and buildings and animals and machines and noises and smells and sights and colors that it might seem to be Hell at one moment and Heaven at the next.” Then he considered for a moment and added, “Or Hell to one man and Heaven to the next. For folk lie about in the street who have neither arms nor legs, but only a voice to cry out to those passing for alms, and children raise their faces to you as you pass and they are lepers, with no noses and great sores eating into their flesh, and many of these folk have no homes, but only lean against a particular bit of wall, day and night, summer and winter, until they are no longer there, and have died and been tossed into mass graves, for these cities spawn cities of the dead, as well.”

Gunnar said, “But there is Heaven, too?”

“Of a sort. There are houses where rich men have gathered together belongings of such grace and beauty of form that the eye rather eats them up than looks at them. Many statues might be placed about a garden where flowering trees and a carpet of blossoms perfume the air, and fountains spew mists into sky, and amidst it all, a dwelling rises thirty ells with towers and winding staircases and banners afloat and the sunlight bouncing off a galaxy of window lights. Such a thing might be called heaven, or paradise, although those men who dwell within are fallen, as all men are, through the sin of Adam.”

Now Gunnar reflected for a moment, and asked, “When as a child you looked out in the morning, what did you look out upon?”

Sira Pall Hallvardsson closed his eyes. “Neither mountains nor oceans, neither sheep nor fish drying racks, but always this, a little space of green between the dormitory and the church which was a neat pattern of herbs and vegetables planted in the form of a cross with four equal arms inside a circle which was itself inside a square, and behind this a row of ancient apricot trees set against the church wall. Along the edge of this garden ran a paved path, and upon this path, no matter how early I might look out, I would see robed monks or else servingmen going among the dormitory and the kitchen house and the church and the rectory offices, and if the stones of this path were not flat and smooth and clean, it was said that in this way the path to heaven was strewn with snares and overgrown with sin, unless all were to exercise the utmost vigilance, and so the little boys went out and tore up the grass and moss growing between the stones, and swept the stones carefully with bunches of twigs. That is one thing I remember clearly.”

“Where did the sheep pasture, then? Were they never allowed into this homefield?”

Pall Hallvardsson smiled. “I was a grown man and had gone far from this place before I ever saw a sheep, although the monks kept two cows and a few chickens and geese for eggs. On the other side of this church there was a small hospital for old men, and beyond that a row of houses. In front of the church ran a road paved with flagstones and along the other side of that was another row of houses, so, you see, sheep would have had to look far and wide for the merest blade of grass. And when I lifted my eyes, I saw towers, but never mountains, for the earth was as flat as the surface of the fjord in midsummer, and ran this way as far as a man could see in any direction.”

Sometimes Gunnar related these wonders to Olaf as they were repairing the stone fences, or to Birgitta as they lay with little Kollgrim between them in the bedcloset. But Olaf merely grunted at the news that Pall Hallvardsson had never seen a sheep until he was a grown man, and said, “It is true that he goes among his sheep in this way, like a man stepping into a cold pond on a spring morning, as if he would rather not.” Birgitta listened with more care, but then asked Gunnar questions he could not answer, such as where were the mothers of these children whose noses were gone, or what folk did inside these rows of houses, or how, with things cramped together in this wise, children were able to get such air and sunlight as they needed to grow? And did each family keep a cow when there was no pasture, and what did folk eat in such a place? Some turnips, some bread, oats cooked with water, greens, wine, and beer, said Gunnar after his next talk with Sira Pall Hallvardsson, and Birgitta replied that she had never heard of such things before, and pitied folk if they were true, for though winter famine and hardship were the lot of Greenlanders and all northern folk, yet at the end of the famine, when a ptarmigan was roasting on the spit, or reindeer meat seething in a stew, such odors arose as were nearly rich enough to fill the belly, and how could some oats boiled with water do the same? And after this, when Helga complained of her whalemeat or her fish seethed with milk into a kind of soup, Birgitta asked her if she would like to eat oats boiled with water, as cows eat, and people in the East, or green grass, for according to Sira Pall Hallvardsson, such greens were their daily meat, as well. The result of this was that Helga ate without complaint.

One day before Yule, a man came from Sira Jon at Gardar, with greetings, and a neatly carved soapstone ewer, the work of one of the Gardar servants. There was other news from the south as well, for the skraeling Kissabi had succeeded in killing Ragnvald Einarsson at his new home in Hrafns Fjord, after casting a demon spell upon him and causing him to fall to the ground in fear. Then the skraeling had shot an arrow at him from a close distance, and this arrow had lodged in Ragnvald’s throat, and Ragnvald’s folk had themselves been thrown into such a state by this spell that they had been too frightened to defend themselves, and allowed Kissabi to come into the steading and kill the daughter, Gudny, as well, and her little son who was at the breast. And when this devil had cut off Ragnvald’s arm and raised it above his head and shouted a great curse in the skraeling tongue, they had not known what to do, and allowed him to get away. Folk who traded with the skraelings said that he was already gone off to the wastes of the east, where he had disappeared among the hordes of his fellows, and he would probably never be seen again. When he heard this, Gunnar only said that it surprised him that a respected man such as Ragnvald should have fallen so low, and proved himself so cowardly. Lavrans continued to trade with the skraeling man he had always traded with, and Finn consorted with the demons as much as ever, but Yule was not held with any great joy, either at the steading or in the church of St. Birgitta, or anywhere else in Hvalsey Fjord.

And this was another piece of news, that Isleif Isleifsson had come to Sira Jon from Brattahlid and told him in secret that Margret Asgeirsdottir had gone mad at her little steading. But Gunnar would hear no more of this news, and forbade Pall Hallvardsson from relating it to him, and went out of the door of the house. Birgitta was just then taking Kollgrim from the breast. Now she sat him upon her knee and looked up toward the roof, saying, “Where is my Kollgrim? Where is my boy Kollgrim?” Now she looked behind herself and said again, “Where is my little Kollgrim?” Gunnhild and Helga peeked out from the bedcloset where they were keeping warm and began to laugh, and Birgitta looked over her other shoulder and spoke in a louder voice, “Where is that little boy? Oh, Kollgrim, where are you?” And at this the little boy managed to creep toward her face and grab her chin, bringing her eyes to his. “Ah! My Kollgrim! There you are! Why do you run off like that, where your mother can’t find you?” Now Gunnhild and Helga were jumping up and down and laughing, and Lavrans and the priest were laughing, too, and Sira Pall Hallvardsson leaned forward and looked in Kollgrim’s face, so that Kollgrim opened his eyes wide and stared back and then pinched the priest’s nose.

But when Sira Pall Hallvardsson got up to leave at dusk, Birgitta put Kollgrim into the bedcloset with his sisters, and followed the priest out into the snow, and she declared that it was her hope that Margret Asgeirsdottir was not afflicted with a frenzy, nor left alone in her suffering, for it was said that devils sought out those who were alone and entered into them and possessed their souls, and this was something folk who lived far from others must fear above all things.

Sira Pall Hallvardsson tied the thongs of his skis without speaking. Now he stood and looked down at her and took a pole in each hand, and asked what news the Gunnars Stead folk had had of Margret since their parting with her, and Birgitta said that none had come to her ears. Did Birgitta know of the death of the boy Jonas Skulason of starvation, perchance? Birgitta replied that she did not, nor had she known how the boy was baptized, or whether, indeed, it had been a boy or a girl. Sira Pall Hallvardsson glanced across the ice at the church, then back at Birgitta, and said, “This thing I told Gunnar Asgeirsson was overheard by a servingwoman, and related to two or three people before it came to me through my visitor from Gardar, and so the cup is much cracked, and most of the truth has spilled out before it was our turn to drink. Isleif Isleifsson lives at Brattahlid with his mother, Marta, the sister of Osmund the lawspeaker. They are prosperous folk. It is said that Margret Asgeirsdottir is spending the winter with these folk.” After this, he skied away, and Birgitta returned to the house. Gunnar came back after the evening meat had been cleared from the table and folk had gone to their beds.

Birgitta lay with her eyes closed and her cloak wrapped tightly about herself and Kollgrim. In the next bedcloset, Thora, the servingmaid, lay with the little girls, for the frost in these last nights since Yule had been especially deep. Gunnar piled turves against the bottom of the door to keep out the draft and renewed the seal oil in the lamp that always burned through the night, then slipped under the polar bear skin. After a moment he said, “Where is she?” Birgitta replied, “With Marta the sister of Osmund Thordarson.” And this was all that passed between them.

At this Yule, Margret Asgeirsdottir and Asta Thorbergsdottir gathered their things together and removed themselves to Brattahlid, where they went to work serving Marta Thordardottir. Margret was to weave her a large piece of fine two-by-two wadmal and then to decorate this with a wide band of tablet weaving, such as she had learned to make from Kristin of Siglufjord. It was agreed that after the mass of St. Hallvard, Margret would return to Steinstraumstead with Asta and twenty of the Brattahlid sheep for pasturing above the little farm. In the autumn she would bring the ewes and the lambs back to Brattahlid, and spend another winter there, weaving and spinning. Marta was much pleased with this arrangement for, she said, anyone who had been taught by Kristin of Siglufjord would know the patterns Kristin’s mother had learned as a child in Jaemtland, and she spoke of this woman, Ashild, who had been most jealous of her skills at the tablet and loom, and had never allowed her servants to see how she threw her shuttle or set up her warp. And Marta spoke so much about this woman Ashild that Margret was persuaded, and she spent her days at the great Brattahlid loom.

But she spoke little, and had little flesh on her bones, and even after staying among the Brattahlid folk from St. Andrew’s mass to the feast of St. Stephen, she looked to be starving, and so Isleif had gone, without consulting Marta Thordardottir, to Sira Jon just before Yule, and declared that the woman was mad with melancholy, but that it was not the habit of Marta to note such things, nor, said folk in the district, to consider the views of her son, Isleif, with much seriousness. Since Osmund always paid heed only to his sister, he, too, had no concern for the young woman, and cared little where she was sitting or where she was staring, but only that she was out of the way. And Isleif asked Sira Jon what he, as the woman’s priest, might do to encourage her to look to God for help.

It was not Sira Jon’s wont to leave Gardar during the winter, for Gardar was low and damp and warm and everywhere else in Greenland was high and dry and chill. And so Sira Jon told Isleif that it did not sound to him as though the woman was making any trouble for these folk at Brattahlid, but was calm and self-contained, and Isleif said that this was so, and Sira Jon declared that it would be best to watch her, and see if the grace of the Lord came to her in the course of the spring. To this Isleif replied that it might happen that she would starve herself before the spring was over, but Sira Jon said that this could not be done, that treatises of the Church showed that the flesh must cling to the flesh, and could not become spirit through an act of will, and so the body could not deprive itself of life, but the woman must eat in the end. To this Isleif replied that she might be possessed with a devil, and Sira Jon inquired after her behavior. But she was not speaking aloud in strange tongues, nor averting her eyes from the Cross nor turning her prayers backward, and so she could not be possessed in this way, although Jon admitted that such slackness as she showed was as a door left ajar for demons, true enough. And to every question Isleif made, Sira Jon answered with the observations of such authorities as would know about these things, and so Sira Isleif went back to Brattahlid somewhat confused in his thoughts, but reassured.

And so it happened that Sira Jon grew very restless during Lent and complained bitterly of the winter cold, although others of the Greenlanders were remarking that this winter was less difficult than others, with a thaw in January, so that the sheep could get to some forage, and then another deep snow, but no ice storm such as every district had been receiving every winter, not once but three times and more. The priest was displeased at every bit of news, whether good, such as the news that there would be plenty of hay for the winter and some left over to give to more desperate folk, or bad, such as the news that two cows had gone through the ice of the big Gardar pond and been lost. He always looked out for folk from Brattahlid, and when they came, he asked them about the madwoman living with Marta Thordardottir, and sometimes they had news of her and sometimes they did not. For Lent, Sira Jon set himself a strict regimen of fasting and prayer, so that he grew very thin and big-eyed, and Sira Audun was left to look after the daily business of the household, although folk said that after so many years, the servingwoman Anna Jonsdottir looked after all the business that needed to be looked after. Sira Audun, it was said, was working at composing another hymn, or perhaps some other sort of verse.