Under the Glacier (16 page)

Pastor Jón Prímus: That’s a kind offer and it’s just like you, Mundi, old friend. But I can easily let you have the money, you know. The trouble is I’m not short of anything. Still, it occurs to me that if you ever come across a good-quality horse-scratcher anywhere abroad, do buy it and send it to me by post. Here at home they have nothing but plain cow-scratchers.

Dr. Sýngmann: Horse-scratcher, yes, yes. I’ll try to remember that, John. Good night, John. And you, my young friend, you who are about to launch out into the deep: launch out into the deep.

Exit Dr. Godman Sýngmann, closing the creaking door behind him.

28

The Glacier

When one is describing Christianity at Glacier one must never forget the glacier, at least not for long. Perhaps some of the undersigned’s continuous reflections on this subject, as follows, are not entirely out of place even though they do not perhaps pertain to this particular day; but all other days have been this day at one time or another, just like those that are still to come.

This glacier is never like an ordinary mountain. As was said before, it is only a bulge and doesn’t reach very high into the sky. It’s as if this mountain has no point of view. It asserts nothing. It doesn’t try to force anything upon anyone. It never importunes you. Skilled mountaineers come straight here to climb the mountain because it is one of the most famous mountains in the world, and when they see it they ask: Is that all there is to it? And they can’t be bothered going up. In the mountain range that continues to the east of the glacier there are innumerable mountains as varied as people in a photograph; these mountains are not all-or-nothing like the glacier, but are endowed with details. Some are said to swell up and start booming when the wind is from the north. Some skilled mountaineers say that the glacier isn’t interesting but that Helgrindur is interesting and the people should rather climb Helgrindur, which means the Gate of Hell.

It is often said of people with second sight that their soul leaves the body. That doesn’t happen to the glacier. But the next time one looks at it, the body has left the glacier, and nothing remains except the soul clad in air. As the undersigned mentioned earlier in the report, the glacier is illuminated at certain times of the day by a special radiance and stands in a golden glow with a powerful aureole of rays, and everything becomes insignificant except it. Then it’s as if the mountain is no longer taking part in the history of geology but has become ionic. Wasn’t the fairy ram that Hnallþóra saw actually the glacier? A remarkable mountain. At night when the sun is off the mountains the glacier becomes a tranquil silhouette that rests in itself and breathes upon man and beast the word
never
, which perhaps means
always
. Come, waft of death.

29

Miracle Postponed

It must now be related that your emissary is roused from his sleep early in the morning, after having been witness the previous evening to the conversation that was cited above. There was a hammering with clenched fists on my door—not with the knuckles, however, but with the side of the hand, the way women use their fists for hitting.

Embi jumps out of bed in alarm, half-naked: What’s wrong?

Woman’s voice: The Angler cannot be woken up.

Embi: I’m a guest here. Better have a word with pastor Jón.

Woman: He was called away to Nes to break open a lock.

Embi: Is that Miss Hnallþóra?

Woman: My name is Mrs. Fína Jónsen from Hafnarfjörður and no damned Hnallþóra.

Embi: What do you want with me?

Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Well, the man’s got to be woken up.

Embi: Wasn’t there a twelve-tonner here last night?

Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Jódínus, you mean? To the best of my knowledge I’ve had him between my knees most of the night. I’ve got nothing more to say to that wretch. And besides he’s now on his back underneath the truck and has started tinkering.

Embi: And the winter-pasture shepherds?

Mrs. Fína Jónsen: The ones with the hair and the beards? They’re in fits of laughter out in the homefield beside the calf. The English chauffeur, he knows you’re a bishop and he sent me to fetch you.

Embi: Where’s the man from Langavatnsdalur? He’s nearer to being a bishop than I.

Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Helgi of Torfhvalastaðir has been out looking for horses all night. There’s no one around here in his right mind.

The professor’s shiny black Imperial stands on the overgrown path to the church, gathering dew in the fog.

Your emissary had thought that Godman Sýngmann would be lying in his bed, seeing that he was to be woken up, but the professor had got no farther than the sitting room. He had not had time to take off his big jacket, managed no more than to loosen the collar of his shirt. The crumpled old hat lay in the middle of the floor as if it had been thrown, festooned with flies and colourful tin bait. The man had lowered himself onto a twin settee, had presumably felt a pain, and started to swallow tablets he had in his pockets, because on a small table by his side stood two open phials, the one containing yellow tablets, the other brown. He sat slumped with his head lolling to one side, his eyes screwed up and his mouth slack. The man was dead. In death, the wig had fallen off his head and lay on the floor.

The “chauffeur” turned out to be the man who saw to the housekeeping for the expedition. He greeted me and introduced himself as Mr. James Smith, the Butler. This butler wanted the corpse moved to the bedroom off the sitting room. In the country, the telephone doesn’t open until 0800, so a doctor could not be contacted immediately in order to certify the death. The undersigned asked this butler if it would not be right to summon the professor’s three colleagues.

Butler James Smith: Who are they?

When I had managed to make him understand whom I meant, he says: They’re not asked. If they come in, I go out.

Embi: All the same, it would be a courtesy to talk to them!

Butler: On your head be it!

But it wasn’t right to say that the winter-pasture shepherds were in fits of laughter; in point of fact they were out in the homefield doing morning exercises in accordance with hatha yoga, which consists of raising the god Kundalini who lives in the tailbone and reigns supreme over a man’s life and soul if he is correctly tamed. The men alternately sat in Buddha postures or went down on their knees and bowed incessantly so low that they struck their foreheads on the ground, or lay flat, face-down; and this was what Mrs. Fína Jónsen had taken to be falling about in fits of laughter.

When these men heard what had happened, and that they were expected to carry their master’s body a few paces from one room to another, Saknússemm II, who spoke on their behalf, said that he and his brothers took no account of death and would not lend a hand to the work that was required of them; that sort of thing wasn’t in their sphere. This spokesman for the winter-pasture shepherds said it was high time their lord and master, Lord Maitreya, started attending to his work at home in that heaven where Buddha the fifth dwelt and where there was more to be done than here; he had now abandoned the carcass of an American businessman that he had been using for a while as a casing. The three of them, on the other hand, had undertaken this journey to this North Pole here for the purpose of raising from the dead a high female reincarnation who slept in the snow, and they would attend to no other work until that task was completed. For these men the most urgent need was to strengthen their omnipotence with that fire that lies hidden at the bottom of the spinal cavity in human beings, the snake-fire Kundalini. The lute-player for his part wanted to make up for the indifference that could be inferred from the pronouncement made by the leader, Saknússemm the Second, and began to mutter something, a bit feebly, in rather bad English mixed with Spanish phrases:

Señores
, I suggest,
porque yo amo vosotros
that we shrink his head. We shrink it until it is as hard as rock and the size of a potato. Then we shall use it as a weathervane on the cathedral of the North Pole. Then the one who had it on loan and has now gone home to the fifth heaven can continue to talk to it, through it, and for it to us,
también muchas gracias
.

The sleeping master Epimenides rose smiling to his feet, turned his back, and took three steps away from the others. His garland lay on the grass. Nearly all the flowers in it were gone, and unfortunately there was little likelihood that new ones would grow in their place. Then he went down on his paws and rested his forehead on the ground.

Then something came to light that no one had noticed because of the morning’s preoccupations—the glacier, which men from the four corners of the earth had been determined to climb that very morning, had vanished completely. Everything shrouded in fog right down to the farms, and Helgi of Torfhvalastaðìr out in the fog looking for horses.

Jódínus Álfberg the poet: The Tycoon is dead, but he had already paid up. He paid well, because he was a Supertycoon. But now that Helgi of Torfhvalastaðìr cannot find the horses and is himself lost and the glacier gone to the devil, what’s the point of twelve tons and eighteen wheels? Kindly tell the English sheriff that Jódínus is now going off with the twelve-tonner and the scrubbing job and will come back when the weather clears up. Tell the sheriff that though I am not a gentleman but only an ordinary workingman and an Icelander and poet to boot, I don’t cheat a dead man who has already paid.

One might add that this was one of those mornings when it’s as if all the holes and rents in the world had been plugged and caulked, not even a chink for a miracle.

30

Four Widows or a
Fourfold Madam

The undersigned was present at the doctor’s examination of the body and translated the death certificate for the butler. As soon as that was over he composed four Xp-telegrams to New York, Sydney, London, and Buenos Aires. The telegrams were all addressed to the same addressee, “Mrs. Professor Dr. Godman Sýngmann,” in the American style of giving titles to wives. Mr. Smith asked me to dispatch them by telegraph. The operator complained that the telegrams all seemed to be for the one person although the addresses specified different countries: the telegraph office doesn’t send to the same addressee the same telegram from the same sender to many addresses. The text of the telegram was as follows: “Dr. Godman Sýngmann died last night stop heart attack stop kindly send instructions stop James Smith butler.” The telegraph staff said they were taking the liberty of talking plain sense, and maintained that since the addressee appeared to be not an international company but rather the widow of the man whom the telegram described as being dead, then surely this woman could only be found at one place.

Conversation between the undersigned and Mr. Smith (hereinafter called “the butler” or even “the butler of the household”):

Embi: The telegraph staff refuse to send the same person the same telegram in four countries at once.

Butler: It will be paid.

Embi: I know nothing of the marital status of the deceased nor does it concern me much. But I thought I caught a hint that Dr. Sýngmann was a widower. Who is the woman who has these four addresses, if I may ask?

Butler: That is my problem.

Embi: I am telling you the regulations of the telegraph office.

Butler: It so happens that I am the butler of this household.

Embi: I am the emissary of the Bishop of Iceland.

Butler: Bad luck. However, the telegrams I have signed are my own responsibility.

Embi: Though a special case like this is outside my scope, there is no hiding the fact that we are not indifferent to what we bury here. It’s not as if we are piling a cairn over a horse. Judging by your telegrams, Dr. Godman Sýngmann seems to have been a somewhat ubiquitously married man. Though this doesn’t concern me directly, it is the custom here in Iceland, when strangers die and are buried, to inquire about their age, address, nationality, and marital status.

Butler: Strangers? What are you talking about? This is one of the greatest men in the world.

Embi: Leave that aside for the moment. To revert to the telegrams: if this address is the name of a firm that has branches in many countries, that would be a different story. But why then doesn’t it have either “Limited” or “Incorporated” at the end? If, on the other hand, the man had four wives as the telegrams imply, I would think that none of these women is a lawful party to this case, but that they must live separately somewhere behind lock and key. In all the countries that are named in the telegrams, polygamy is a major crime.

Butler: Will you have these telegrams sent or not, sir?

The bishop’s emissary advised the man to talk to the management of the telegraph office, and the upshot was that the telegrams were sent.

31

Your New Instructions,
and a Work-Report

Pastor Jón the locksmith asks me not to leave until everything has been attended to. The clergyman says yet again that the responsibility of the office weighs heavily upon him. He says he hopes that aeroplanes from the four corners of the earth would arrive soon to quarter Mundi’s carcass and remove the parts each to its own continent. Axlar-Björn the highway-man, the most famous man ever known at Glacier, was buried under three cairns, says the parish pastor, and likewise he has heard that kings of the Ming dynasty were each laid to rest in twelve mausoleums.

The day wears on without replies being received from the four widows. The butler drives off to do some shopping in the Imperial limousine; the twelve-tonner with Jódínus the poet follows like a dog. Pastor Jón and I stay behind and await events, and I keep an eye on the winter-pasture shepherds so that they don’t take the head off the corpse and shrink it. I say I’m going south because my mission here is finished, and this makes pastor Jón a little depressed, until he gets the idea of inviting me out to the shed, and says that an old woman at Nes had given him some smoked brisket. He cut thick slices from it and we ate it raw and it was a wonderful delicacy and besides I was starving. He put the kettle on and boiled his strong kettle-coffee, and there was plenty of rye bread and butter and moreover dried halibut for all of £20 sterling. Eventually a telegram arrived and we both held our breaths in suspense over what the fourfold woman of the world would say.