Under the Glacier (17 page)

But this was a telegram from your Grace the Bishop of Iceland—to me. Attached herewith:

“On behalf of the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs kindly supervise funeral of Australian engineer of Icelandic origin who died at Glacier this morning, to be buried there according to cabled request received this minute from Mowitz & Cattleweight Ltd., Solicitors & Brokers, Securities Corporation London W. C., etc., as follows: Mr. Sýngmann of Australia died in Iceland this morning. Kindly bury the man immediately. Attestations of responsible authority requested. Costs payable in this London office. End quote. Delegate you responsibility for lawful preparation and execution of desired ceremony. Those officials concerned, in addition to foreign representatives, will be attending. Bishop of Iceland.”

Embi: It’s probably best to start putting windowpanes in the church, pastor Jón.

Pastor Jón: Oh, the church hasn’t any funds left.

Embi: The London people will pay.

Pastor Jón: What difference would it make to them to take him away to London? After that they could take him to Australia, now that they reckon he belongs there. Or what do his three colleagues have to say?

Embi: They want to shrink his head. That’s the only suggestion they have to make. Better pay no attention to them.

Pastor Jón: Perhaps you would like to bury him yourself?

Embi: What gives you that idea! I am not ordained. I cannot even sprinkle earth, by law. On the other hand I have my instructions here in a confirmed telegram from the bishop. They state clearly and unmistakably that I am responsible for the lawful execution of this business. As far as I can see, it is you, the parish pastor, and none other, who is the responsible authority concerned.

Pastor Jón: Don’t you think it at all comical to be burying people from my church? In my churchyard?

Embi waves the telegram: Here are my instructions!

Pastor Jón: It so happens that I haven’t the stomach to hold a funeral sermon over this man. We were rivals in love. He was such a magician that he changed our sweetheart into a fish.

Evening. The butler arrives from the south in the Imperial and Jódínus trundles along behind with the coffin in the twelve-tonner and no other cargo except for Mrs. Fína Jónsen in the front seat. There is also a builder in tow, whose task is to see what needs to be done to improve the church; he says that carpenters will be sent tomorrow. The parish pastor starts looking for a crowbar, because now the windows are to be opened up again; furthermore, the bars are to be torn from the door— and he having nailed them in place so carefully yesterday after the bishop’s emissary had made his inspection. Mrs. Fína Jónsen waits outside with the scrubbing brush, and now the way into the church is open. It is forty-eight centimetres up to the threshold, as was stated earlier in this report, but Mrs. Fína Jónsen says it doesn’t matter, she can easily take thresholds of this size in her stride. But in this church neither the scrubbing brush nor soap were of any avail, not even a bristle broom; instead, Jódínus says he will fetch a man with a shovel tomorrow. The builder takes notes, promises to come with a gang tomorrow as well, and drives off home.

The body had to be coffined. We carried the coffin into the bungalow. The winter-pasture shepherds had lain down to rest on the veranda under the portico, where it doesn’t rain; it is not their custom to enter human dwellings except in wild weather, cf. foxes have their dens, etc. They peer out from their sleeping bags without saying good evening, and curl up under cover again. We pushed the furniture aside in the sitting room and stacked some of it against the walls, then set up the bier in the middle of the floor. Mrs. Fína Jónsen washed the body where it lay on the bed, and we lifted it as and when required to ease her task; it was very stiff. The knee-joints, which had in fact been indistinct in life, were solid as blocks of ice. Mrs. F. J. produced a shroud from her bag and says, I sewed this from material for a nightdress I had intended for myself. Then we dressed the body. When that was done the woman says Such is life, meaning that a nightdress she had intended for herself was now being used for the greatest angler in the world. After that we carried the body into the sitting room and laid it in the coffin and the undersigned was allowed to support this famous man’s head. It was quite an effort to cross the arms over his breast. Now he lies there. His face was no longer a mottled blue, but brown from old suns in hot countries. Then the following exchange takes place:

Butler: Is no one here saying a prayer?

Pastor Jón Prímus, rather weakly: Oh, praying, I’ve been away from it so long.

Embi to the butler: You are the butler.

Then the butler started to mutter an English prayer in an undertone, but very fast, so that the undersigned could hardly tell whether it was the Lord’s Prayer or “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.” Your emissary thought pastor Jón looked as if the prayer made his skin crawl. Mrs. Fína Jónsen looked at the men as if to ask if that was all they proposed to contribute. It seemed so. So the woman produced an old hymnbook, rather worn but with gilt edges, and tucked it inside on the dead man’s breast. She made the sign of the cross over the face, expertly, first with a perfectly straight movement of the hand up and down, thereby delineating the upright, then forming the crossbar with a flat hand, the palm downwards. Finally she spread a veil over the man’s face, saying: May the Lord be praised for your life.

That was all, and nothing more was needed, really. Pastor Jón said that Miss Hnallþóra was offering coffee and cakes over in the parsonage.

32

Night Vigil

At your request I shall prolong my stay here for those days while Dr. Godman Sýngmann’s body lies on the bier, although I do not dare to take responsibility for anything that might happen here. Incalculable agents are involved in this. However, I promise to do everything in my power to prevent the body being taken up onto the glacier, its head removed and shrunk, etc.

I have noticed that the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs is cooperating with the deceased’s butler, Mr. Smith, an Englishman, as well as his Icelandic errand-boy in the district, Jódínus Álfberg. It is presumably through this cooperation that windowpanes have been put in the church, the roof mended, and so on. The undersigned also wishes to note, with gratitude, that the church has been completely mucked out and the doors repaired a little, although they have not been entirely cured of the creaking. There have been some minor repairs around the altar. I also think it of importance that a set of steps, 48 cm high, has been placed against the church door so that most parishioners who are reasonably hale and of normal length of leg and mobility now have the opportunity of achieving entry to God’s house at Glacier—if the church door isn’t nailed up again sooner than expected. In addition a stepladder was placed in the bell tower, so that now one can scramble up and ring the bell.

Concerning the altarpiece already mentioned in this report, I would point out that I have prevented the old paintings on it from being scrubbed with caustic soda with the kind of scrubbing brush that Hafnarfjörður people use for scouring the scales off haddock. Perhaps it would be possible to clean the altarpiece with specially prepared materials if a qualified expert could be found for the task.

As regards the boards from the pulpit, which had previously been tied together in a bundle, and also a valuable chandelier in German baroque style that was lying on the floor in 133 parts, I think it likely that these items were cleared by the shovel when the church was mucked out, and the undersigned wasn’t quick enough to lay hands on them.

The three winter-pasture shepherds are still here, settled on the veranda of the bungalow, and say they will be delayed in their task because of the fog: with that done, the “butler of the household” will see to their passage home.

These people have been asked to what denomination Dr. Godman Sýngmann had adhered; and furthermore, if it were likely that a representative of the church in question would want to travel to Iceland and conduct the funeral if the parish pastor here pleaded difficulty, on grounds of faith, in having Lutherans involved in the business.

These people are not always agreeable in their replies. They say of Dr. Sýngmann’s body that this is the carcass of an international businessman; their master had had this container on loan. Skip it! Their master had no religion. He was himself Buddha. Buddha frequently pops down here to earth on important business without being reincarnated; this time he came to put into effect a special revelation in six volumes and to carry out a rather urgent resurrection mystery. The revelation was accomplished, but the miracle will be performed as soon as the rain stops. The Lord himself has now discarded his coarse container and has gone home to his heaven. From there he will come in a reincarnated image as the fifth Buddha after about three thousand years or so to redeem the world and complete the work of deliverance he has previously instituted in books and miracles.

The undersigned cannot judge whether this doctrine is Buddhism any more than anything else. The one certain thing is that I recognise bits of it although I am not a Buddhist. The undersigned is not trying to explain anything nor add anything, but in my judgement the aforementioned body is, according to this doctrine, entitled to be buried in accordance with universal Christian faith with any necessary adjustments. It’s another matter that one of the winter-pasture shepherds, the lute-player, is obviously descended from the headhunters of South America, and has suggested obtaining Dr. Sýngmann’s head for shrinking.

I have impressed upon Mr. Smith the necessity of keeping careful vigil over the body, on behalf of Messrs. Mowitz & Cattleweight Inc., Solicitors & Brokers, etc., and I entrust him with the responsibility for it while the body is lying in the bungalow; but as soon as the church is in order, the undersigned will keep vigil over the body on behalf of the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs in accordance with instructions and by agreement with the parish pastor.

The evening before the funeral. The carpenters have gone and the grave-diggers have been at work. The coffin has been moved into the church. Only one thing is still uncertain regarding this funeral, and that is whether it will take place. Pastor Jón Prímus has not yet given his unequivocal assent; he vanished this morning before people were up, and has not been seen all day. Phone calls have been made in vain all over the district.

Night; darkness and drizzle. The winter-pasture shepherds are asleep on the veranda of the bungalow under the portico. The body is in its place and the coffin open at the head, and the lid will not be completely closed before the proper authorities have compared it with their documents. I decide to lie down for an hour and forget my worries, in the hope that the Creator will somehow or other find a way out of the morning’s difficulties.

I have hardly been in bed for more than a minute when I hear fugitive footsteps on the farmhouse paving—are the winter-pasture shepherds now on the move with the head? But when I went out to investigate, it turned out to be sheep on the run; they announced themselves by bleating. The night was wet and heavy. It was the kind of rain that makes the whole body feel cold regardless of the temperature: rain of the soul. I lay down again, exhausted by worries that were demonstrably premature. This time I fell into a doze, but almost at once a nightmare began. I seemed to think I had forgotten to put out the candle at the coffin’s head, and now the candle had fallen to the floor and blue flames like some sort of floating matter were beginning to flood the church floor. I put my shoes on again in a trice and rushed out to the church. But there had never been any candle, of course, far less a light. In my doze there had come to my mind vague recollections of chiaroscuro paintings of vigils with the gleam of a candle at the feet of the deceased.

It is dark in the church, to be sure, despite the new windowpanes; but it never gets so dark at night between May and June that one cannot see the glimmer of thick moisture on grass that is sprouting outside.

The altarpiece is nonetheless darker than ever before. I was wondering whether it had not been interfering on my part to forbid Mrs. Fína Jónsen to treat this ancient art with a scrubbing brush and that powerful caustic soda; hadn’t she undertaken the whole thing at hourly rates? Somehow I felt as if these pictures looked at me with heavy accusation from deep within their silent ruin, and it could be that they were right and that it was wrong to invent a cleaning polish to bring out what has disappeared.

I had now got out of bed twice. I did not think it worth the trouble to go to bed a third time. The winter-pasture shepherds think they are at the North Pole, and that this is the cathedral there. This was perhaps exaggerated, in a way, but still there is something afoot here, like walrus ghosts, and my mind is full of untimely thoughts; I am only twenty-five years old, after all. I sat down at the foot of the bier and dozed off with my chin on my chest.

There was a diabolical squealing in the wretched hinges, and I woke up again. Someone was entering the church: pastor Jón Prímus. He half-dragged himself through the door. Seemed to be all in. Soaked to the skin, poor man. Nor was his footwear a pretty sight after wading through mud and ferrous water. I was sure I was dreaming, but said good morning nonetheless to be on the safe side.

Pastor Jón Prímus: Good morning.

Embi: I see you have been out for a stroll, pastor Jón. Where did you land in such a mess?

Pastor Jón Prímus: Here at Glacier we have the most celebrated mineral springs in the world. I landed in them.

He sat down on the altar rail and took off one of his shoes and then the sock, and then he said: I have turned my ankle slightly; I want to see if it is swollen. He rubbed his ankle and remarked: Probably a little suffused with blood; and he recited a verse from the Psalms of David:

“I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices, because thy burnt offerings are always before mine eyes; for every beast of the forest is mine; and the cattle upon a thousand hills; all the fowls do I know; the lilies of the field are with me.”