Under the Glacier (24 page)

Embi: It’s an Icelandic enterprise. Clowns build them with a subsidy from the State, then they get a subsidy from the State to run them, next they get the State to pay all the debts but finally go bankrupt and get the State to shoulder the bankruptcy. If by some accident some money ever happens to come into the till, then these clowns go out and have a party. Now a million has been provided to repair one such enterprise here on the other side of the mountain, and then of course the first thing was to send for pastor Jón.

Woman: Is this thing by any chance anything like the things they used to call icehouses in the old days?

Embi: Similar idea; different generation.

Woman: Why did he go?

Embi: You know pastor Jón.

Woman: He is my husband.

Embi: I told him you had arrived.

Woman: I hope he isn’t feeling annoyed with me for any reason?

Embi: I have no authority to explain anything, madam. Indeed I have been forbidden to put forward any opinions, because in that case there’s a risk that the bishop and the others would be deprived of an opportunity of thinking. I think all the same that I’ve sort of almost caught hold of pastor Jón’s tail. He is one of the few people in the world who are so rich they can afford to be poor. Perhaps madam would like to say something on her own behalf?

Woman: You should drink your tea while it’s hot, my dear. I’m going to my room now to do myself up a bit, put on some stockings and so on. She produced from her pocket a pretty little book in Spanish for me to glance at while she was in her room. It was the poetry of Saint John of the Cross.

I started on the first poem and planned to let chance decide how far I got with the book; it’s called “Dark Night.
”
This poem tells how the Soul goes out at night to meet God. This dark night is even sweeter than the first gleam of dawn itself,
noche amable más que el alborada
. Thereafter the Soul unites with God in that love of loves which is the light of transformation itself, the light of lights: O noche que juntaste / amado con amada
/ Amada en el Amado transformada
. Against this poem the woman had put a red mark.

When she came back in and sat down opposite me she was wearing silk stockings high above the knee under the dressing gown; these stockings she must also have fetched from the car before people were up and about. I wanted to ask if she hadn’t noticed the birds when they were eating the fish, but did not feel it right: people’s sleep is their own private affair. But if she was sleeping, she must have been sleeping soundly. When she saw that I had the book open at the poem “
Noche oscura
,” she couldn’t resist reciting it in that language which is the loveliest of all languages.

Embi: How beautiful Castilian sounds in your mouth, madam!

Woman: I also have Spanish flesh, my dear. Some say a little bit of Irish too, worse luck.

Embi: You didn’t have far to go for your Catholicism. Woman: Isn’t that a beautiful poem?

Embi: Yes and no.

Woman: Can you imagine anything more beautiful?

Embi: Yes, yes, it’s a fine poem, no doubt. But if I include it as an accompanying document with my report, I’m afraid the bishop wouldn’t understand it. I don’t think it clarifies the matter; at least, it throws no particular light on what the ministry has instructed me to investigate. Far from it.

Woman: It comes back to what I said yesterday: you are undoubtedly rather a limited young man. What do you think is really wrong with this poem?

Embi: I don’t find anything wrong with it, actually; not directly. It’s as if it had been composed by a woman who thinks fondly towards her lover after successful intercourse. You mentioned Saint Genet. If the poem had been written by him I would think a depraved man was writing about another depraved man.

Woman: What astonishingly wicked thoughts you can have, a nice young man like you and soon to be a bishop! Don’t you realise that Juan and Theresa were top saints? Don’t you understand that this is the Soul talking to God? How can it be said in any other way?

Embi: Is such poetry not some sort of mockery on the part of the saint?

Woman:
Mais qu’est-ce que tu veux, mon petit?
There is always some sort of mockery. From one mockery to another! What should saints and poets take as an example, if not this mockery! Always some new mockery or other, and mankind never the wiser. It’s like conjugating irregular verbs in German,
immer gleich schön!

Embi: Because I hope you are both a top saint and a puritan, madam, I want to ask you about a small matter before we part: when nothing is any longer right or wrong, why have we human beings come into existence, and what are we to do?

Woman: Why are you concerning yourself with that, my dear?

Embi: Is any person so lowly that he doesn’t carry the universe on his back like Godman Sýngmann? If human intelligence fails, what is there for a person to lean on?

Woman: Wouldn’t you rather try to take part in human folly, my dear? It’s safer. But remember, you have to do it with all your heart and all your heart and with all your heart—and what was the third thing again? Yes, consider the birds of the air, I had almost forgotten that.

Embi: How did you yourself manage?

Woman: Manage what?

Embi: To keep these looks, that colouring, that shine in the hair—

Woman: Gently, gently, my love, never say too much to women of my age, and least of all about their skin and hair, because then they might start getting mixed up. As you know, we are hunted for our skins. To tell the truth, I put a tiny bit on my face before you came.

Embi: When I talk to you I know well that you could be my mother, and I have no right to demand answers from you. And yet, I know you have lived different lives, sometimes many at a time, and must have suffered disappointments and sorrows more than most people—how do you manage to stand erect?

I play blind, said the woman.

Embi: Do you mean that the one who doesn’t take the game seriously won’t get disappointed?

Woman: Do you know that the birds ate my fish while I was asleep?

Embi: Yes, it was a rather unsuccessful sequel to the Easter story by the bioinductors, I think; at least not an entirely felicitous execution of the idea.

Woman: I’ll have to invite you to a party at home instead.

Embi: Thank you. Well, that’s just about everything, I think. My bus leaves around noon.

Woman: I’ll take you in the Imperial, of course.

Embi: Thank you very much, madam, but I’ll take my scheduled bus. Anything else might be misunderstood. And now I’ll say good-bye. Hmm. But there was one thing I wanted to ask you before leaving: I ask out of pure curiosity, let me point out; and you don’t require to answer.

Woman: You’re welcome.

Embi: The first time we met you told me quite casually that you ran an establishment in South America for a time. Was it of your own free will, or against it, that you became matron of such a house?

Woman: It was a fine house. It was like any other first-class nightclub that opens in the evenings and has dancing and various numbers featuring naked girls. Dinner is at half past midnight, with honest delicacies like cuttlefish à l’Espagnol, which I still miss. It’s another matter that young girls find it rather monotonous in the long run to start the day by sleeping with notables of the republic, and to be woken up at night to go up on a platform and display their bare midriffs to the public.

Embi: And you didn’t find it at all immoral?

Woman: On the contrary. Never a drunk to be seen. Only rather boring. More fun knitting sea-mittens.

Embi: Not unnatural at all?

Woman: Everything very natural. And extremely Catholic. The obverse side of Catholicism. Yet I never understood brothels until I started living with the nuns. Evangelicals never understand brothels, any more than they understand the Vatican.

Embi: May I put it on record that you rate immorality and convent life roughly on a par, madam?

That I don’t know, said the woman. But in our society the rules about love are made either by castrated men or impotent greybeards who lived in caves and ate moss-campion roots. Sometimes also by perverted celibates who walk around in skirts, some say wearing women’s knickers underneath. Decent women would hardly have cared to have a Church Father as a table companion.

Embi: We have now heard that the popes have become nice people.

Woman: God created all souls equal, and therefore it would be unchristian to suppose that there are fewer saints among popes than cowherds. It’s another matter that when I was in North America, a woman sent an inquiry to the Vatican about a trifling matter: she asked if it were lawful to sleep with a man without starting a baby; and secondly, if a baby were conceived against the law, what did the pope think should be done? The kernel of the answer was very clear once the rhetoric had been scraped off it: beget children or else go to hell.

Embi: I thought the pope talked in Latin.

Woman: I hope nonetheless that you now understand why we have both the Vatican and the brothels in Catholicism. When I had given up my psalter in South America and had started to read advertisements in North America, the only literature in the world that nowadays preaches the good and believes in life and fills the reader with confidence and optimism, I became so enamoured of an advertisement for a cream to produce non-smell intercourse that I hurried out to buy a tube.

Embi: I’ll note that, madam.

Woman: Yes, and add that it’s a great mercy for a woman who thought she had long since stopped being aware of herself, to be allowed to talk to a polite and well-brought-up young man: you would have been just right for my daughter.

43

Uncertain Balance, Etc.

I put the notebook away in my pocket and brushed the report from my face like a swarm of midges.

The woman rose from her chair. It was still the time of day when few genteel ladies are stirring. She walked over to the window and as she brushed past my chair she patted me on the cheek once again, this time with the palm of the hand, and I caught an aroma of woman. She stood at the window and looked out to sea. Her profile was heavy with melancholy with a hint of fierce decision: an uncertain balance. Such a profile evokes in my mind an association with the pungency of a cold rose thawing the hoarfrost off itself some autumn morning. Where does creation end and destruction begin? The distinction is indeterminate, like certain decimals. The wolf-fetters you find in some works of art, fashioned from cat’s footfall, bird’s spit, and woman’s beard—they are also present in such a profile.

Woman: Don’t stare like that, my dear. Say something instead.

Embi: Where are you going, madam?

Woman: Why do you ask?

Embi: You offered to drive me—where to?

Woman: To wherever you say: there’s nothing better than a polite travelling companion.

Embi: Madam, if I wanted to turn around in my life and asked to be allowed to go with you to the ends of the earth, do you think it would be out of politeness?

Woman: Haven’t I told you that I have come to join my husband?

Embi: Didn’t I tell you that the pastor had gone to repair a quick-freezing plant?

Woman: Are you sure I’m not a ghost?

Embi: So much the better.

Woman: Ghosts have
mauvaise odeur
.

Embi: You are fragrant.

Woman: Oh my dear God, to hear the child speak! I blush! I have never been shy like this with a man. I’m sweating! How on earth is it possible to talk like that to a woman who has had daughters and seen them into the grave! I feel giddy. (At that the woman dived into the pocket of her dressing gown for a mirror and a lipstick and did herself up half in confusion, half as if to gain time. Then she put the things away.) Haven’t I told you that I adhere to the Roman Catholic faith? I can never say a word to you again, now.

Embi: I don’t want to talk either. It’s enough for me to have found you. I follow you in silence.

Woman: And also when I am in a wheelchair?

Embi: A wheelchair makes no difference.

Woman: And also after you have slept with me for one night?

Embi: I am a puritan.

Woman: It’s terrible to hear the child talk! God in heaven help you! A puritan—where did you learn that word? Have you never been in love with a girl, or what?

Embi: Not particularly.

Woman: A little?

Embi: Yes, just a little.

Woman: And what happened?

Embi: I was shy. Not all men can command the cruelty needed to enter into marriage: there are some horrible practices involved—especially towards young girls.

For a while the woman had been looking at me out of the corner of her eye as if she were secretly amused even though of course the innocent chatter of such an inexperienced man shocked her. I was prepared for most things—except that she would burst out laughing. She tried to hold herself back at first, certainly, but that only made bad worse. Soon she lost control of herself completely. The next thing I knew, she had flopped down beside me in midlaughter. I couldn’t see any special reason for such excessive laughter; perhaps there never are any logical reasons for laughter. But I was all the more aware of how the woman rose and fell, swelling, on the settee beside me. Am I so funny or something? Until I realised if I was not mistaken that the woman was crying. She fell against me with the salty weight of the surf and sobbed bitterly into my shoulder. She seized hold of my knee with her long, strong hand, the white skin on the back so strangely rough in texture.

I have no doubt said more than I should, I said, because I’ve never been used to women, least of all a woman like you. Now I’ll get up and try to get away and ask you not to hold it against me, madam.

Woman: Can’t you see yourself, man! Don’t you understand that you have awakened me? It is because of you that I am aware of myself again after a long sleep. You are bound to the one you have awakened. You shall follow me to the ends of the earth. Now I am going to touch you naked.