World Light (53 page)

18

No one had much doubt who would win the seat in this election; but even so, interested voters stayed up through the night while the counting of votes continued, waiting for the result. Some people had been lucky enough to get hold of brennivín, and there was cursing and swearing, shrieks, vomiting, fighting, broken bones and other amusements. Many were lying helpless in the ditches by the road. Júel and Pétur Pálsson walked up and down in a zigzag along the main road with the stick-bearer between them, all drinking from the same bottle, while a few sober anti-patriots watched the Fatherland owners for a while, one lesson the wiser—or the unwiser. They all knew now that it had just been a joke when the station had opposed the stick-bearer and the stick-bearer opposed the station—because where did Júel get his money from? From the stick-bearer, of course. The stick-bearer was both the government candidate and the spokesman of the common people, and the money came from the common people and was put into the state bank for Júel to build stations, erect churches and buy constituencies. The necessary arrangements had already been made to unite the Laborers’ Union and the Society of True Icelanders under the leadership of the parish officer. There was really nothing left but to let the station go bust, and everything would be perfect. The opponent went on carrying his stick as if it were a cross between a candle and a bouquet, and Júel J. Júel and Pétur Pálsson the manager bent over him in turn as they led him along, and kissed him behind the ear where the mental notes of Jarþrúður ’s request were kept.

“They thought I was an Icelander!” said Pétur Pálsson the manager, and roared with laughter. “But I’m no Icelander, s’help me! My name is Peder Pavelsen Three Horses. And my grandmother was Madame Sophie Sørensen.”

And the village went on celebrating.

The sun was high in the sky and the shadows were beginning to shorten when the poet got home to his shack. He made as little noise as possible in the hope that he would not wake his intended. But it was to no avail; she heard him come in—perhaps she had been lying awake for him. He went straight to his writing desk and took out his writing materials in the rays of the morning sun. She half sat up in bed and started abusing him at once; there was a dangerous glint in her eyes.

She said she had taken him under her wing wet from the seashore, defiled by whoredom; she had nursed him, given him life, rehabilitated him, made a man of him again when it was obvious that neither God nor man thought him worth helping. For all that, she said, she was ready to endure whiplashes. She said she had also borne him two children and aborted a third; she had sacrificed her virtue and honor to him in sin and shame and thereby put the salvation of her soul in eternal jeopardy; she had endured without complaint all his evasions to avoid making an honest woman of her and calling in the pastor. And on top of all that she was ready to endure as many whiplashes as need be. Whiplashes, whiplashes, she repeated greedily over and over again, as if such a treat were some sort of blessing. Hunger and cold she was also ready to endure. With gladness of heart, she said, she had watched her children give up the ghost after protracted tuberculosis; she had stood calmly over their clay as she commended their souls and hers to the Savior’s almighty mercy and grace. Even her own death she was ready to endure at the hands of this dreadful man, Ólafur Kárason. She was even ready to forgive him when he stole a glance at women here in the village, as long as they were respectable. But though she could endure from him whiplashes, hunger, cold, sin, death and respectable women, there was one thing she could not endure, and that was that he should lie with whores all through a bright spring night and come home in the morning with syphilis.

The poet looked up from his writing while she ranted on, but did not straighten up and made no attempt to interrupt. His expression betrayed nothing beyond a hint of amazement at this extraordinary eloquence, and curiosity about what would come next or how long she could keep it up. Like a man who knew he was innocent, nothing was farther from his mind than trying to excuse himself. Perhaps his silence hurt her more than words; she raged more and more furiously; finally her speech was nothing but incoherent curses, dire prophecies and oaths, and ended in a loud storm of weeping. He was not moved. She writhed about on the bed for a while, howling, then the paroxysm left her and at last she lay face down, exhausted, racked by sobs, with the corner of the pillow crammed into her mouth. A long time afterwards, when her sobbing had begun to subside, he laid his pen aside and calmly put his manuscripts tidily away in his writing desk; and a voice which he himself really did not recognize, even though it came from his own larynx, said these words: “Jarþrúður dear, we won’t be staying together any longer now. Tell me where you want to go, and I shall take you there.”

For a long time after these words had been spoken she went on lying as before, face down, motionless except for the sobs, with the pillow in her mouth. But when she did not reply and he had begun to doubt whether she had heard what he had said, he asked: “When do you want to leave?”

At last she raised her head warily and peered at him with the eyes of a cornered prey that knows the wild beast is standing over it, ready to tear it to pieces. But when she saw how calm he was, how far removed from letting emotion affect his decision, she slid very gradually under the eiderdown and pulled it over her head without answering him. He waited for a long time yet, but she did not stir, and when he had completely given up hope of a reply he wrapped the blanket around himself and lay down on the floor to sleep without taking off his clothes.

He awoke at nine o’clock in the morning to the smell of pancakes.

Now, it so happened that hot pancakes were the greatest delicacy which this poet knew, the pinnacle of epicurism, and he sat up amazed in this aroma, and in his half-awake, half-asleep state he did not know where he was.

She was standing behind the cooking stove, baking, looking at him tenderly as if nothing had happened, searching for a conciliatory gleam in his eyes. Then she made the coffee and brought it to him with hot pancakes. But sleep had not melted him; his resolution was not to be shaken. He drank the coffee without a word, but did not touch the pancakes. It was as if he had changed completely; he was suddenly a totally different person from the Ólafur Kárason of Ljósavík whom Jarþrúður Jónsdóttir had known before.

“I shall help you pack your things, Jarþrúður,” he said. “Where do you want to go?”

She let herself sink down on a chair and started to cry into her blue, gnarled hands which for all these years had laid claim to dominion over a poet, had worked for him, touched his nakedness, nursed his children in happiness and sorrow and closed their eyes for the last time. But this time she wept without violence, a quiet weeping, just with deep, wordless grief.

19

A few days later, Ólafur Kárason removed his former intended, Jarþrúður Jónsdóttir, from his house. It had been decided that she should go back over the moor to the farm at Gil where she had been staying before she came to live with the poet. They crossed the fjord on the ferry, and on the other side there was a horse waiting for her which had been sent across the moor. The poet had decided to escort his former intended to the county boundary, and be back home in Sviðinsvík himself by nightfall. The route was the same as when he had been taken on a stretcher by the poet Reimar long ago.

The journey was rather a silent one. He walked ahead, threading the winding bridle paths up the mountain, sweating, bent, with his hair in his eyes. He was in no state to look back and see how the vista widened behind him the higher up they went, nor to breathe in the fragrance from the green dells of the mountain; he plodded onwards like a soulless old jade and never lifted his eyes from the path. She sat astride her belongings, wrapped in black shawls and wide skirts in the June sunshine, and the tears fell in brief showers with clear periods in between, and dried of their own accord before the next shower. Finally they reached the brow of the mountain and were met by the fresh, cool breeze off the highlands.

Halfway across the moor, at the boundary line—a little brook reddened by bog ore—the poet stopped and said: “This is where I turn back, Jarþrúður. I want to be home by tonight.”

“Home?” she repeated tonelessly, and could no longer weep; defeat was frozen into her face.

“I’ve no doubt you can find your way from here,” he said. “You traveled this route by yourself when you came.”

No reply.

“I’m sorry I’m not in a position to give you a present now that we’re saying good-bye. But so as not to part from you like a dog, I want you to accept my watch.”

He had got this old timepiece in payment for a poem the previous year, and although he had never discovered how to make it work for any length of time, and seldom accurately, it was still the only thing this poet possessed which could be valued in money.

“Keep your watch yourself, Ólafur,” she whispered.

“No,” he said. “I want you to have it.”

He thrust the watch into her skirt pocket, whether she liked it or not.

Then she said: “Ólafur, aren’t you even going to pray to Jesus for me?”

“I know there’s no need,” he said. “Your invisible friend will be with you whatever he’s called, perhaps Jesus, perhaps Hallgrímur Péttursson. Whoever you believe in will be with you. And now I ask you to take this parting sensibly. Remember that all people have to part sometime, however much they have loved one another, yes, however much they still love one another. It’s better to part before anything happens which could leave a stain on one or both of them. It is beautiful to have been together, Jarþrúður, but it is also beautiful to part. It is right to have been together, but it is also right to part. And now, good-bye, Jarþrúður. And thank you for everything.”

He gave her his hand and made haste to take it back again. He was even so hard-hearted as to give her horse a little smack as she started crossing the brook. Then she was over the brook and in another county.

He hurried away in the opposite direction. His steps were as light as a criminal’s leaving the scene of the crime, or a man walking over burning coals; and yet he avoided running, so as not to hurt her if she happened to look back, but he quickened his stride as the distance between them grew, feeling anything but secure while she was still within hailing distance. At last when there was a hillock between them he took to his heels. He was ready to run to the ends of the earth. He ran as hard as he could, he ran with seven-league strides, he vaulted over everything that stood in his way, he flew. He had never run like that before, nor had anyone else. Yet there was no effort to this running, quite the contrary; it was supernatural running, it was redemption, it was freedom itself. The land beneath his feet was small and distant as in a bird’s-eye view. He sang, he yelled, he shouted the names of trolls, gods and elves he had never believed in before; in a dell he started to turn somersaults and walk on his hands or else lift them to heaven thanking the Almighty with tears—“God, God, God.”

Finally he lay flat among the grass willow and dwarf azaleas of the highlands, a free man under the blue sky, and listened to the beating of his heart. There is nothing so glorious on earth as to have been in a dungeon and to be freed. This was the most wonderful moment he had ever experienced, or anyone had ever experienced. He felt as if his childhood would now return to him anew with all its mystical music.

20

On a bright night he stepped ashore at Sviðinsvík a free man. After six years in a dungeon he saw this village in the light of a new promise. He was not quite twenty-five years old.

The village was asleep; there was a soft night-murmuring of birds gliding softly over the creamy-calm sea. It had been arranged between them that the girl would be waiting for him when he returned from this journey. His expectation, the knowledge that he would be meeting her as a free man and staying with her without interference from God or man made him feel dizzy, made his blood seethe with joy, brought a hot flush to his cheeks, animated his body with a feverish lightness as if he had taken a drink.

When he walked up to her house he saw a glimpse of her behind the curtains of her room. He closed the garden gate as quietly as he could. As he walked up the steps the door opened as if of its own accord. She was standing inside; she gave him her hand and pulled him quickly across the passage and into her room, and locked the door carefully behind them. Then she came to him. Nothing was said, they embraced one another blindly, drowned their shyness in each other’s kisses.

And the night went on passing. All life’s threads were entwined into one cord, all its laws reduced to their fundamentals, love reigned alone. The first rays of the morning sun found a man and woman, naked, smiling mankind’s eternal smile at one another, and the murmur of the birds had grown louder and the sea was ruffled by the morning breeze, and they had started whispering to one another and telling one another the story of their love.

“What on earth kept you her prisoner for all these years?” asked the girl.

“I wasn’t her prisoner,” he replied. “I was the prisoner of those in distress. But when you looked at me at the fish yards one day and said ‘Do you let yourself be turned back?’ I felt then that something had happened in my life, which would never let me be the same person again.”

“Here,” she said. “Here in this room is your home—if you like. Nothing shall happen to you ever again which isn’t worthy of a poet. You shall never go without again. We here in Veghús have green fingers—everything we touch comes to life.”

In the glow of dawn he looked around this room which surpassed all other human abodes, profoundly moved, grateful and speechless like a sinner who awakes in paradise after death. Was it true that in this lovely house he was yet to compose the immortal poems of his adult years and write thick books about mighty heroes, who were not perhaps entirely real but were at least more real than living people, and who made the world new or at least made beauty more alluring than ever before? Was it true that he was yet to stand pensively at this curtained window on many a tranquil summer’s day and look at the sky mirrored in the deep? Was it true that on countless winter nights when the roar of the sea and the storm could be heard outside, he was yet to sit here safely by the fireside and lamp, wrapped in her love that was the symbol of all that was noblest in earthly life? Was it true?

“I’m going off now to burn my shack with all the loathsome lumber it contains,” he said.

“What will the owner of the estate say to that?” she asked.

“No one can say anything if a man burns his own house when he’s tired of it,” he said. “Don’t you think it’s a wonderful feeling to see the past ascending to heaven in flames and to rise from the ashes oneself, a new man?”

She asked him to leave before her stepmother came downstairs; it would take time to prepare her for the news of this betrothal, but she was nevertheless going to tell her about it at once, that very day. She embraced him again and again and said, “Kiss me, Ljósvíkingur, hold me tight, let me feel you, no one has ever loved so passionately as this.”

The parting kiss at the door was never going to end, and it was touch and go that everything would not start up all over again.

He roamed for a long time alone, out in the cool of the morning while the sun rose higher and higher; he was tired from lack of sleep and lethargic after a night of burning love, and longed to slip into a deep slumber.

He stopped on the hillside at The Heights and contemplated his shack, which was still a little lopsided after the war damage of the spring, and looked forward to setting fire to it. No one had ever hated any house so much as the poet had hated this house. No one could ever have suffered more in any house, and yet escaped with his life. In this house he had never passed a happy hour. In this house he had never been himself, never spoken a true word, always kept silence about his real inner self like a crime. Every single time he had stepped across this threshold in all these years it had meant a victory over himself, a victory which often demanded all his strength. This house was not only the one place where every life-process had been an agony for him, but also the only place where he had been as wicked as deep down in his consciousness as everyday conduct reached, deeply and inevitably wicked. He had wasted the six best years of his life in Hell—and it was this house. What a joy to be able at last to see this Hell going up in flames!

He opened the door, and the smell of the house assailed him after being away for twenty-four hours—putrid fish, rancid old puffin feathers, the ever-present stench of smoke, mildew. But as he stood in the doorway, wrinkling his nose at this familiar stink, he caught sight of a heap on the floor, wrapped in black clothes covered with mud and dust and horsehair. It was a human being.

At first he had some difficulty in believing his own eyes—had he gone mad? He went inside with hesitating steps in the hope this vision would dissolve before he made himself ridiculous by trying to touch it with his hands. But the vision did not dissolve. And he touched the heap on the floor. He took it in his arms and raised it to its feet. And it turned out to be alive.

She opened her terrified, tearful, beseeching eyes.

“Jarþrúður!” he said. “I don’t understand. Why have you come back?”

She sank down at his feet, embraced his knees, and begged: “In God’s name, kill me!”

“Stop it,” he said, and pulled her up again. “Tell me what you want.”

She fell against his shoulder, weeping, with her arms round his neck.

“Dearest Ólafur, dearest darling Ólafur, my own one, if you will let me die here with you, I shall belong to you in death just as I have borne your children and buried them. But if you let me live, I shall endure any suffering you want to cause me. If you think me wicked you can beat me, if you think me ugly you can go with other women, anything, anything except casting me from your sight into the outermost darkness!”

At that he stroked her awkwardly on the cheek, his eyes a little troubled, and said: “Poor little Jarþrúður, how could I ever imagine that I, the poet, could forsake those in distress? Stop crying, my dear, and I shall try to be good to you.”

He felt her lips burning on his skin, and her salt tears, and into her weeping there came an exalted, convulsive jubilation as if she were about to fall down again.

“Are you then going to go by the will of merciful God, Ólafur?” she asked through her tears.

“God and his mercy have nothing to do with me,” replied Ólafur Kárason. “On the other hand, I’m going to go by the will of man. Soon we shall publish the banns. But at this moment I only ask you to come away from here with me.”

“Yes, I shall come,” she said humbly. “Where are we going?”

“Away,” he said. “Away—to the west, over the mountains, to far-off places, perhaps up into the remote valleys, perhaps to another corner of the country, just so long as we come away at once, before the sun is high.”

“And leave everything behind?” she said.

“Leave everything behind!” he said. Everything. All his dreams. All his poetry. All his hopes. All his life. Everything.

He sat down at the table by the window and looked out dully over the roofs of the village. She wanted to make coffee before they left. She lit the stove and it smoked; she opened the cupboard and out gushed a smell of stale bread. He leaned forward on his elbows, put his palms against his temples, and went on staring out of the window. Like a man in a stupor he perceived without seeing or hearing, he knew without reasoning or thinking; cowardice or compassion, whatever it was called—he did not go back on his pledges to life at the hour of decision; or rather—he
did
go back on them. He was a real man. With his hair over his forehead he continued to stare at the first light of day for a while with the glazed eyes of a condemned man. Gradually his eyelids grew heavy. He sank down onto the table, stretched out his arms, buried his face and slept.