World Light (15 page)

At this county boundary he was once again seized by that paralyzing terror that had reigned in his breast for so long before he became ill, but which had never filled his consciousness to a greater degree, perhaps, than during those last two years when he lay helpless under the sloping ceiling: the uncertainty as to which of those two forces that battled for control of the farm he should obey, Jónas or Júst; how he should choose between those two extremely present gods when the one said “Go!” and the other “Stay!”; the one “Down here in the meadow!” and the other “Up the hill!” What punishment would Júst mete out to him if he obeyed Jónas, or Jónas, if he obeyed Júst? Which of them was right and which wrong, which good and which bad?

It also occurred to him now whether the elf doctor, Friðrik, might be the devil himself, so that each step he took towards such a creature could affect the salvation of his soul. But he did not dare to discuss such matters with a man who was so insensitive to everything spiritual as Reimar was. When all was said and done, however, there was no one to say that these newly discovered supernatural powers west of the mountains might not be stronger than the familiar powers to the east. In reality one never knows what supernatural power will conquer in the end, so it probably is more sensible to believe in them all, or at least to show them all the same politeness, in the hope that one or the other of them will prevail in the end and will reward neutrality and courtesy. And on these grounds the boy agreed in a whisper to put his fate in the hands of Friðrik and
órunn, in the hope that it was God’s will that he should be cured in Jesus’ name. It was actually uniting east and west, meadow and hill, and wiping out all county boundaries—and he hoped that with such an inoffensive declaration he would not offend anyone.

On the other hand, Reimar answered this by saying that God had no will and did not care about anything and had no attitudes about anything, and that is just why He was God, because otherwise how could He be God, the way things were happening abroad these days?— if any God existed at all, which he said even the most renowned foreign scholars were still unable to prove. “No, there’s no point in looking at me like that, my friend; I can’t help it, it’s not my fault, and as far as I’m concerned God can exist if He likes for all I care. But whether there is a God or not, the main thing is to will something yourself, and if you will something, you must use your brains to think up the dodges needed to bring about whatever it is you want; that’s intelligence, you see. And now I’ll lash you to this stretcher for the last time, because tomorrow you’ll be running about in the fields like a calf on a spring morning. No, it’s no problem to cure one damned illness nowadays, I can tell you, my friend. And now let’s have a party with the Kambar girls tonight!”

23

The evening shadows were getting very long when they were at the foot of the mountain on the west side; around midnight they were in a narrow valley girt by towering mountains, with crofts and their homefields scattered here and there. The farm of Kambar stood under the crags down by the sea.

“That’s the landing the Kambar girls sail from when they go to the dances at Sviðinsvík. Yes, and no question of studying the weather when they’re going anywhere; they don’t give a damn if the sea’s a bit rough, my friend. Yes, they’re certainly freedom-heroines, these girls!”

When they neared the farm, Reimar left the bridle path and set course straight for the farmhouse, so delighted was he at the prospect: “Just go direct, my friend,” he cried, and drove the horses pell-mell over hummocks and through impassable bogs where they sank up to their bellies, while the stretcher threatened to break apart.

The little homefield round the farm was crowded with ewes and their lambs, no attempt had been made to keep them out; but four fierce dogs sprang down from the wall of the house and raced towards the visitors with extraordinary vehemence. Two dilapidated wooden gables faced towards the sea, but otherwise the farmhouse was just a shapeless pile. A woman in dun-colored rags came out on to the paving as if by accident, shaded her eyes with her hand and saw the visitors approaching over the bog, and shouted in through the open door; a second appeared, and a third. They stood in the yard for a moment, plain and colorless, and then disappeared into the house and closed the door behind them.

“They’ve seen us,” said Reimar confidentially, and winked at the invalid.

When they reached the farmhouse the yard was empty and the door locked, while the dogs went on raging round them like mad things. Reimar led the horses right up to the front window and knocked on the door. There was no reply. He went on knocking for a while, and when the knocking had no effect he tried shouting a greeting through the window, and when that too proved of no avail he climbed up onto the roof and shouted down the chimney, but that made no difference either; the house was dead. This went on for a long time. The house was in a state of seige. Reimar showed not the slightest sign of giving up. At long last they caught a glimpse of the farmer’s eye peering out through the half-opened door. He asked what the hell all this hammering was about, who was out there making such a row?

“Just a couple of fellows,” said Reimar.

The farmer came halfway out through the door, with one hand on the latch and holding up his trousers with the other. He had been in bed, and he greeted Reimar with only moderate cordiality; but Reimar leapt at him and embraced him and kissed him and blessed him with a torrent of fine words.

“What the devil have you got on these pack horses?” asked the farmer. “Is it timber?”

“It’s a patient,” said Reimar.

“I’ve been in bad health all my life, but no one ever put me on a stretcher and forced me on other folk,” said the farmer.

“Yes, but this one has nothing left to do but give up the ghost, by your leave, my friend.”

“What the devil, what’s wrong with him then?”

“Oh, every damned thing’s wrong with him, I can tell you, both in body and in soul.”

“No, I’ve had enough of this,” said the farmer. “I’m absolutely sick and tired of it. There’s no profit in it at all, and to tell you the honest truth I think it’s best to let that brute of a doctor hack them to pieces.”

Then he caught sight of the boy and said sympathetically, “Oh, it’s only a wretch of a boy. Who’s responsible for him?”

“I’ve brought him over for someone in Sviðinsvík. Actually he belongs to the parish, and it just sort of occurred to me on my way past whether Friðrik would care to have a look at him.”

“I don’t know anything about any damned Friðrik,” said the farmer, and refused to countenance it at all. “I’ve told the girl again and again to stop meddling in things that don’t concern her at all; it always leads to an evil end. The house has been full of raving lunatics most of the winter. And what do I get out of it? Nothing but distraints and legal actions.”

“If
órunn wanted to attend to him, it would be well worthwhile for the parish to compensate her—although unfortunately I don’t have the authority to promise anything like that. People like this are a real burden, and it’s anything but fun for the parish.”

“How long has he been bedridden?”

“Four years.”

“Four years? No, now you’re lying. Isn’t he just mad, then?”

The farmer came right out of the house now to have a look at this long-suffering person and gave him his hand, although none too cordially. “As I was saying, I can’t offer you any hospitality here. The wife’s not right in the head and there’s nothing for visitors to sleep on, and my own insides aren’t feeling too good; so it’s better not to hold you up any longer.”

The farmer kept shivering; he jerked his shoulders and scratched himself here and there, looked up at the sky, and yawned.

“What d’you think the weather will do?” asked Reimar.

“Oh, someone would have said sometime or other that it would do something,” said the farmer. “But luckily it won’t do anything. Except that everything is going to Hell, bit by bit.”

But Reimar had no intention of giving up, and tried to spin out the conversation as much as he could and turn every reflection to more optimistic conclusions, and was always having a peep at the windows, while the young poet waited on the stretcher, ravenously hungry, aching all over and racked with headaches, having abandoned all hope that any miracle would happen there, and the horses hungry and restless after traveling for twenty hours.

“Yes, that’s the way it is, my lad,” said the farmer, with ever more inserts and additions the longer his tale of woe went on. “I obviously don’t do it for fun, turning people away who come here on stretchers in the middle of the night—but what can I do? Have I done anything to deserve to be a free hospital for the whole nation? I say free, because though the occasional person might slip a króna or two to
órunn or hand the old woman a pound of butter, what’s that? It’s like pissing into your own shoe. No, it’s all going the same way, the sheep dying, no grass in the homefield, the cow had to have the bull yet again last Saturday, not a fin out of the sea, a distraint yesterday, I’m liable to prosecution and legal action from the authorities, the old woman ill,
órunn up to her eyes in miracles, and I myself refused a bit of tobacco on account by the high-ups in Sviðinsvík. I ask you—is it any sort of life?”

24

But just when the conversation between farmer and visitor had reached this chapter of the jeremiad, the door was suddenly thrown wide open, and on the doorstep there appeared three lovely young ladies, all attired in the most brightly hued dresses. Smiling radiantly they came up to the great poet and greeted him affectionately, bade him be welcome, and invited him to come in and make himself at home; the farmer himself had completely vanished from the scene, as if the ground had swallowed him up. Never had Ólafur Kárason of Ljósavík imagined that three such refined ladies could emerge from such an unprepossessing house. One was clad in red, the second in blue, the third in green. They lent the beautiful spring afterglow a particularly festive air as they stepped forward in greeting, and in their cheerful smiles there lurked no trace of inner tension. To be sure, the young patient on the stretcher was incapable of distinguishing between their individual appearances. They affected his senses like some overwhelming abundance of blossoming womanhood, at once impersonal and formless, almost liquid; it was like looking at the sun—one cannot see the individual rays. But the poet Reimar— now there was a man who knew how to respond to such courtesies! He let go the reins of his horse, turned towards these comely ladies, embraced them vigorously, and kissed them one after the other, and this ceremony was accompanied by many and varied blessings, sighs, invocations to God and girlish shrieks.

“Dear Jesus!” they said when they began to get their breath back. “You haven’t got a dead man with you, have you?”

“No,” said Reimar, “he isn’t dead, but he’s damn far gone, poor creature. Someone asked me to bring him west over the mountains. You see, he’s been bedridden at the parish’s expense for nearly eight years, but recently he got the confounded idea of proposing marriage to some woman, I tell you, my friends; so the people felt unable to take any further responsibility for him on behalf of the church authorities and reported it to the parish council. Apart from that, he’s a lad of intelligence.
órunn dear, how d’you feel about this? There’s often been need but now there’s necessity, as the saying goes, to rid the parish of a heavy burden.”

“Come in, dear, do!” said one.

“Stay the night, dear, do!” said the second.

“Yes, and do be entertaining, dear!” said the third.

But the boy thought he heard one of them add carelessly, as if it did not matter at all: “It won’t take long to cure one patient, heavens above!”

“But I’d much rather leave the horses outside the homefield, when the grass is so nearly ready for mowing,” said Reimar.

“Pooh!” they said, and laughed. “Just leave the damned old hacks in the homefield, man. Everything grazes in the homefield anyway; Daddy can jolly well drive them out tomorrow morning. And now in with the corpse; yes, he shall certainly be resurrected, that one! And now there shall be pancakes baked at Kambar!”

The horses were let loose in the homefield, and the patient was carried into the house. He was laid down on a bench. It was a room painted blue, with a picture of the King of Britain, God Bless This House, the Virgin Mary with the heart exposed, and a porcelain dog. The girls bent down over him, one after another, and examined him politely, but not thoroughly, and touched his hair lightly because it had a reddish tinge and was so soft.

They kept up a cheerful conversation with Reimar for a time, amusing stories about various people and their love affairs or drinking bouts, and they recited the latest verses about them from Sviðinsvík. Reimar was blue in the face with laughing. Ólafur Kárason had never imagined that such hilarity could exist here on earth.

“That’s enough now. Out you go, girls, and take Reimar with you to where he likes best to be!”

Suddenly everything was very quiet and still, and the patient was left alone in that blue room with
órunn of Kambar, the Virgin Mary, the King of Britain and the handsome porcelain dog. She stood at the window gazing out at the unreal landscape of the spring night and had suddenly become serious. He felt that she saw him and only him all the time, even though she was looking in the opposite direction. She said nothing. He was so uncanny that there was no one like him in that parish nor in Sviðinsvík; yes, there are all kinds of incredible people in Iceland. His trousers were so patched and darned that they seemed to have been handed down from one generation of parish paupers to another for more than two hundred years. He had on a discarded duffel jacket with a shawl under it, and a coarse cold-weather scarf wound round his neck. There was a weird contrast between this coarse clothing and the man who wore it; it was quite clear that it was not his own personality, but the thinking and feelings of others, which was expressed in what he was wearing. He himself was delicate and radiant, like a tender plant; every line of his body suggested a personal life, every movement an expression, every proportion a grace; his skin was smooth and bright, so that one felt it would leave marks and stains if one touched him; the structure of his features was neat and regular, his reddish hair flowed in large locks over his cheeks and ears, and by virtue of that pleasing color the eyes shone doubly blue, deep and sincere, grave, questioning.

She went on gazing out the window. Nothing was said. When at last she looked at him, he felt there was resentment in her glance, but the longer she regarded him the more her expression softened. He smiled back at her, unreservedly, gratefully, candidly, like a child. In that sudden smile his whole soul was revealed to her, the way a whole landscape is revealed in one flash of lightning at night, and one knows precisely where one is.

“So you have come to me.”

“Yes,” he whispered.

“Why?” she asked.

“To be cured by you.”

“Do you believe that I can cure you?”

“Yes.”

“I alone?”

“No.”

“Who else?”

“Friðrik.”

“Do you believe it with all your heart?”

“Yes.”

“And with all your soul?”

“Yes.”

“And with all your body?”

“Yes—insofar as the body can believe.”

“Then why didn’t you come to me before?”

“I didn’t know about it until today, up on the mountains, when Reimar told me.”

“Oh, was it he who told you about it!” she replied, and was not very impressed. “I should know well enough what he believes in, the damned rascal! Never believe anything Reimar tells you about me. Will you promise me that?”

“Yes,” whispered the patient.

“Now you know what to believe,” she said. “And what not to believe.”

Her voice had two different registers, which made it more attractive than any voice, just like a spring plant that has its roots in the dirty soil and a single blossom which opens to the clean air. In her presence he felt most distinctly that all the truths east of the mountains had become invalid and that new truths had taken their place. She had glowing eyes in which red or green fires glinted briefly, depending on how the light fell on them, but when you looked more closely you saw they were neither red nor green; they were more like white-hot iron by daylight. The expression of her mouth, the smile— that was something quite impersonal and yet very special, something one recognizes in other people and animals and oneself without it concerning anyone; it came and went in a flash, fleetingly.

Soon she stopped talking to him and began thinking about something else, and hummed the “Giants’ Dance,” absentmindedly; she was staring out of the window again and was thinking about something far away. In this way she was obviously at one with the spirit that inhabits two worlds. But when she had finished gazing out the window and had stopped humming absentmindedly, she remembered him again and gave him a fleeting smile and came over to him and squeezed his hand as a sign that she was back.

“We must have maturity,” she said, as if in direct continuation of the “Giants’ Dance”—“spiritual maturity. What is spiritual maturity? It is to be receptive to those currents that are all around us from good and willing friends. We must love one another like invisible beings in space. God is love. You must pray for Iceland.”

“Yes,” he said.

“All the air around is full of currents,” she said. “You must believe that.”

“Yes.”

“One thing is essential. Do you know what it is?”

“No.”

“It is to find the right current; the current of love; the current of spiritual maturity; the current of perfection that roots out everything base and earthly and physical. It is that eternal current of love which created the solar system and holds the firmament together so that it doesn’t fall apart. I see light.”

Then she started looking out of the window again, out into the night, forgetting herself as she had done before and absently humming the “Giants’ Dance” again; then she came to, once more, looking at him, laughed in a deep voice and asked, “Is it true that you were proposing to a woman? Fie on you, that’s wicked.”

He blushed furiously at this question, but she got no other reply, because his tongue lay paralyzed in his mouth. She touched that red hair of his and asked, “How old are you?”

“I’m past seventeen.”

“I don’t care. It’s wicked nonetheless. We must have spiritual maturity in order to make contact with the right currents. We must work for the victory of goodness. We must sacrifice everything to beautify the soul. We must pray. We must see light. Listen, what else did Reimar tell you about me on the mountains today?”

“He said you had had six letters of proposal from men.”

“He’s lying in his teeth, the damned ram!—a parish pauper himself many times over, with a wife and children in Sviðinsvík, apart from all the illegitimate brats. It was he himself who wrote all the letters to me on his own behalf, but that won’t get him very far, even though he’s so liberal-minded and can cobble the odd verse together; it would take a greater poet than that to lift the skirts of little
órunn of Kambar!”

Then she sang another snatch of the “Giants’ Dance,” out of the blue, and added, “Besides which, I’m going south soon with Friðrik and buying a house.”

She gazed out at the spring in a trance and went on talking to him out of the trance and humming snatches of the “Giants’ Dance” between sentences. “I get money from people all over the country, who are dying. They just write me letters and ask me to send Friðrik, describing the plan of their house in detail and telling me exactly where their bed is so that Friðrik won’t lose his way in a strange house; and they send me piles of money, bank notes, man, silver, even gold, what’s more. Will you come to my house in the south?” And once again she touched his hair.

“I thank you with all my heart,” he said, and only wished she would go on singing, talking and sitting. Yes, it was wonderful to live like that, just listening and holding hands and letting her touch his hair and feeling the right current, and seeing the house in the south reflected in her eyes. He had never felt such a sense of release in the presence of any other person.

“Do you know why I’m touching your hair?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“It’s because there is gold dust in your hair,” she said.