World Light (67 page)

17

It was midsummer again. Ólafur Kárason of Ljósavik stood in his new suit, the gift of
órunn of Kambar, outside the gate of the prison, a free man. He was very pale, his eyes as clear and blue as ever, the sheen of his hair just as golden, his gait as unsteady as it had been when he came to the village of Sviðinsvík for the first time, out of accord with the solid ground he was treading; this man could start floating without warning.

He took care not to venture far from the side of the houses, probably for fear of being surrounded. At the shipping office he was told that the coastal steamer was sailing the next day, but would be traveling the wrong way round and would take at least ten days to carry the poet home. If he wanted a more convenient passage he would have to wait for a fortnight; but it hurts the purse to be a free outsider in the capital, and
órunn of Kambar had gone for a holiday to the country with her husband, so that no one knew the poet at “The Mountain Queen Sophia.” He decided to take advantage of the sailing tomorrow.

His route zigzagged from the prison to the churchyard. The man who had been his first friend and who had visited him in a golden chariot when everyone else had forgotten him—that was the man he was going to meet.

Nothing the poet had seen in the capital could equal this churchyard. How remarkable it was that such a park should flourish around dead bones! One could hardly believe that the flowers were real, so lovely were they. And it was difficult to imagine that anywhere on earth there could be a greater assemblage of celebrities than could be read here in golden letters on artistically carved tombstones. There was not a single resident of this place who during his lifetime did not appear to have carried the crushing burden of conventional, orthodox behavior with ease and complete mastery. It was amazing. And more people than anyone could have suspected had borne the mark of true greatness, held high office, received titles and honors, performed outstanding taks for the good of the fatherland. The women had not only been beautiful but also virtuous. Ashamed of the smallness of his own reputation, this useless poet greeted the righteous folk who dwelt in this park.

But no matter how he searched, he could not find the grave of his friend Sigurður Breiðfjörð. He wandered around the cemetery for most of the day and stopped at every tombstone. Finally he had given up all hope of finding him, and now felt that his journey was only half complete if he had to turn back home without finding what he sought. The sun was already low in the west. Then he met a poor woman who was sitting beside an unpretentious grave and talking to it, and he imagined that this must be a widow who had lost her son and now had no one left in the world any more. He took a króna piece out of his pocket and gave it to her and told her to buy herself some coffee. She thanked him and said, “Do you belong to the churchyard here?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t belong here, in a manner of speaking.” Then he asked her if she could show him the grave of the poet Sigurður Breiðfjörð.

The woman: “Does he lie under a stone, or does he not lie under a stone?”

Ólafur Kárason of Ljósavík: “I’ve heard that he lies under a stone.”

“Then he’s one of those I talked to last year,” said the woman. “I won’t be talking to him this year.”

“Just so,” said the poet. “May I ask why you won’t be talking to him this year?”

The woman: “Last year I talked to all those who lie under a stone. This year I talk to those who don’t lie under a stone.”

Then the poet said, “I hope it’s not too impertinent to ask out of curiosity what you talk to them about?”

“I am trying to prove to them that death doesn’t exist,” said the woman.

“You may well be right, my dear,” said the poet. “I only know one person here, and he isn’t dead, at least not in the usual way.”

“None of them is dead,” said the woman. “Didn’t their mothers perhaps love them? When you look into the eyes of those you love, you understand that death doesn’t exist.”

“How can that be?” said the poet. “One day every eye is extinguished.”

“Beauty itself lives in the eyes you love,” said the woman. “And beauty cannot be extinguished.”

“Beauty?” said the poet in surprise. “What beauty?”

“The beauty of the heavens,” said the woman.

He raised his cap to the sibyl and hurried away, taking care to avoid listening to any more, but letting these words echo in his mind in the certainty that more would not be said however much was added; and he wandered around this park for a long time. But when he was on his way out, through a little gate in the wall, despairing of finding the grave of his friend the poet, he happened to look to his left, and there was the grave. It was really too insignificant for anyone to notice it except by accident, a gable-shaped dolerite slab reaching just above a man’s knee. All the other monuments in the churchyard were of costlier and more enduring stone. This stone was weather-worn and covered with a yellow-green crust, for only Nature tended this grave; the grass grew up to it unchecked. On the front of the stone were carved these words in deep, antique Roman lettering, which grew shallower the more the stone wore away:
Sigurður Breiðfjörð
1799–1846
. And above the name a harp had been carved on the stone, and it had five strings.

He was the greatest of all the penniless folk poets in Iceland. While others went to the university in Copenhagen to study profound sciences and fine arts, he was sent to Greenland to cooper barrels. While the smart set performed heroics of conventional orthodox behavior—set up house, made a delightful home with a beautiful wife and well-behaved children—he sold his wife for a dog. While others rose to the heights of fame and gained high office, titles and honors, he was sentenced to twenty-seven lashes. The leaders of the nation, the major poets and intellectual pioneers, proved by their learning and eloquence that he was a doggerel rhymester and a fool. While worthy men died in style in the bosom of their family, and loving hands laid them to rest, he died of starvation in a cold outhouse and the parish council had the corpse carted away. But the spirit of this penniless folk poet, whom the learned dismissed and the major poets despised, has lived with the Icelandic nation for a thousand years, in the smoky farm cottage, in the destitute fisherman’s hut under the glacier, in the shark-catcher off the north coast when all fishing grounds are lost in the black midwinter night of the Arctic Sea, in the tatters of the vagabond who beds down beside a hill sheep in the willow scrub of the moors, in the fetters of the chain gang convicts on Bremerholm: This spirit was the quick in the life of the nation throughout its history, and it was he who made this poverty-stricken island in the western ocean into a great nation and a world power and the unconquerable flank of the world. The five strings of the poet’s harp were the strings of joy, sorrow, love, heroism and death. Ólafur Kárason of Ljósavík first stroked the cold stone carefully with his hands, then let his fingertips touch the five strings of the stone harp in the name of all the penniless folk poets who have ever lived in Iceland, and he thanked the poet for having come down to him in a golden chariot from the heaven where he had his dwelling.

18

When Ólafur Kárason went to the ship with his luggage the next morning, the sun was dissolving the white mists of the night. The land which emerged, green and blue, from this magic shroud was the kind of land which had nothing to do with functional things but was first and foremost ornamental. The bustle of the quayside and the clatter of the ship’s winch had no part in this world. The breasts of the hovering gulls gleamed like silver over the mirror-white smoothness of the sea. The gods create the world every day, to be sure, but never had they created a morning like this one. This was the one true morning. The poet stood apart from the crowd and gazed entranced at the green mirage of haze where this immortal morning-land was being born.

And as he stood there under the spell of the morning, looking around in the midst of the bustle of humanity but apart from it, a being suddenly appeared at his side, young and fair, and stared in silence into the blue as he did. And as soon as he looked at her for the first time he realized that she and the morning were one, that she was the morning itself clad in human form.

The young girl had halted at a distance from the crowd and remained standing there as if she were waiting. She was wearing a light coat, bareheaded, with quite a large suitcase by her side. What attracted his attention before anything else was the youthful freshness of her skin, the unbelievable wholesomeness of her coloring; yet she was closer to being pale than ruddy. Although something in the skin was related to the creaminess of summer growth, she was nonetheless closer to the plants, especially those which bear so tender a flower that the lightest touch leaves a mark. To protect her, Nature had covered her with a sort of magic helmet of invisibility: this was not the conventional beauty which was obvious to everyone immediately, which conquered its surroundings while it was there and demanded to be loved, admired and worshiped at once, quickly, and by everyone, as if it might be in danger of withering by sunset. Instead of the gleaming golden sheen which arouses immediate delight, there was an ash-gray color in this hair; the locks fell without coquetry in long, simple curves about her neck and cheeks, unevenly bleached by the sun, the fairest on the outside. There are eyes that rouse a man’s admiration in a trice, wild with joy like conquering legions; but what characterized the eyes of this girl was a calm, clear depth, mingled with a hint of innate sorrow.

When he had looked at her for a while he addressed her and asked, “Are you sailing with this ship?”

She noticed him now for the first time and looked at him in surprise, a little offended by being suddenly accosted by a stranger; but she did not know how to deliver a snub. She just gave his question a silent assent and looked as far away from him as she could.

“May I carry your suitcase for you?” he said.

“No, thanks, I can manage it myself,” she said.

She was not entirely at ease; the time of the ship’s departure was approaching and whoever she was waiting for had not come. She pushed a lock of hair behind her ear and the expression on the young face grew more and more downcast. At last the ship hooted for the third time. She gave a start, grabbed her suitcase, and was going to carry it on board in a hurry, and then this stranger was still standing there ready to help her.

In the general confusion when the ship gave the signal for departure, she forgot to object to his willingness to help, and he seized her suitcase and they went on board. There was a mass of people saying Good-bye. She went over to the rail, still hoping to see someone on the quay, and he still stood there at a distance and studied her ethereal profile, the soft slender neck, and the curve of the bosom, which was really more imagined than real. And yet she was not a child, though the line of the leg was so finely drawn, from above and down, that it made the normal almost vulgar. It was precisely the line from hip to ankle which removed her young figure from the world of childhood’s sexless mystery and made her a part of our world where all ideas about beauty are heresy except against the background of ugliness, and all beauty is the more enchanting the more its precincts approach the superior power of its opposite. Then he could no longer restrain himself, but addressed her again and said, “Is your name Bera?”

She realized to her annoyance that this tiresome man still had not gone from her side; but she did not know how to be nasty, and only replied with a quick, colorless No, shook her head at him a little, and went on staring ashore over the rail, full of anxiety and apprehension.

The ship lingered for a few more minutes after the final blast had been blown. But at the moment the moorings were being cast off, the young girl breathed more easily, stretched out over the rail and started to call out.

“Daddy, Daddy!” she cried. “I’ve been waiting for you for such a long time. Why are you so late? Now I can’t say Good-bye to you!”

Her father was a tall, slim man, middle-aged and graying at the temples. And even though he was unshaven and swollen in the face and not a little drunk, with a battered old hat which had obviously been taken by mistake from someone of lower status, he bore clear signs of having known better times. His clothing, his features and his bearing all retained remnants of education and distinction which no ravages can erase completely. He came right to the edge of the quay, took off his hat and crumpled it before his breast, wrung it in his hands with all his strength in feverish desperation, and the tears streamed down his cheeks.

“My darling child!” he shouted, weeping. “My only dearest darling, I beg you in the name of Almighty God, don’t go away from me; don’t leave me!” He went on wringing his hat, his hands raised in supplication toward the ship, and the bystanders grabbed hold of him and pulled him back lest he fell into the sea.

“What can I do?” he cried to those who had saved him from falling into the sea. “Her mother is dead and she’s the only thing I’ve got, and now I’m losing her!”

“Daddy!” cried the girl with greater vehemence than one suspected her capable of. “Can’t I tell Uncle that you’re coming north in the autumn?”

But either he did not hear what she was asking or did not care to reply; instead he shouted after the ship, weeping, “She is my treasure, my jewel, the light of my life. In the name of God’s holy Son be good to her, spare her, give her life. Jesus Christ shield the only thing I possess; protect my innocent darling who is the most precious thing that has ever, ever been created in the world!”

Soon the ship had turned from the quay, and the father was lost to sight among the crowd on the pier. On the other hand the stranger who had carried her case was still by her side, and when she was out of hailing-distance from her father he said, “Bera, will you let me help you as he would have done?”

For the first time she looked at him properly to size him up, but without any inclination to become acquainted, only in silent inquiry. Finally, however, she said, “Why do you call me Bera?”

“Someone told me,” he said.

“It must be some other girl,” she said.

“No,” he said. “It’s you.”

“Who says so?” she said.

“It’s a remarkable voice,” he said.

“Voice?” she said.

“That voice never tells an untruth,” he said.

“You must be hearing things,” she said.

“That would be something new, then,” he replied.

“Where do you come from?” she said.

“From Bervík.”

She did not recognize his place of origin and did not want to know any more; she leaned forward over the rail without paying any more attention to him and became distant.

“You don’t ask me my name?” he said.

“Why should I ask you that?” she said.

“There’s no need to be formal with me,” he said. “I don’t understand it when people are formal with me.”

She did not say anything, and had no idea how to get rid of him.

“I’m called the Ljósvíkingur,” he said.

“Really,” she said.

But when she had gazed pensively for a while at the shimmer on the surface of the water, she remembered her suitcase. It was still standing where the poet had left it in the crush when people were crowding on board.

“You’re no doubt traveling First Class,” he said, and was still beside her and had his hand on her suitcase.

“No,” she said.

“May I carry your suitcase below for you?” he said.

There was much hustle and confusion. Finally she managed to find out where her cabin was. He struggled with the suitcase. Soon afterwards she was gone, her door closed. She had forgotten to thank him for his help. She did not have breakfast and he walked past her door again and again, but it remained closed. That young, tender heart—how tired she must have been, he thought to himself, and wished her pleasant dreams.