Independent People (51 page)

“Isn’t there a door into the house?” inquired the visitor.

“No,” they replied, “but there’s a hole down through the drift.”

“Will you kindly show me the way into the hole at once, then?” said the visitor. “I am afraid I am ill. I still don’t understand how I wasn’t frozen to death on the heath. This has been a terrible storm for me.”

While Gvendur took old Blesi along to the stalls, the other children led the newcomer into the drift and showed him how to crawl over the doorstep. “Not too fast,” he complained, “I have to use a stick to walk with, you see.” Then he scrambled up the stairs, greeted the old woman, and stood shivering and far from erect on the floor near the hatchway. He was badly equipped for mountain travel, a townsman obviously. He said he thought he had frost-bite, with possibly a touch of pneumonia. Later the children often thought how funny it was that he should have seemed quite an old man the first time they saw him in the croft, he who afterwards grew so youthful in appearance. No movement of his, no button in all his clothes, escaped their greedy senses, which so passionately had hungered for some incident in this world of desolation where there was not a speck of bare ground to be seen—yes, he was even wearing patent-leather boots, a very fine gentleman indeed. The grandmother was the first to collect her wits sufficiently to inquire where the gentleman hailed from; and he hailed from the coast.

“Yes, I thought as much, poor man,” was her reply. “Sola girl, see and give him a hand with his boots and stockings if he wants to take his outer things off, and hurry up and heat something warm for him. May we ask whether you would care to stay the night?”

Yes, he was going no farther, and a good job too, he whispered. Yes, he whispered, everything in confidence, one felt that it simply must not be allowed to go any farther. Asta Sollilja hoped and prayed that he would not get pneumonia, she was so afraid
that she would not know how to look after him; she felt that hers was such a great responsibility, for she had been put in charge of everything inside the croft and out, and this was the first time she had had a visitor. Oh, if only she knew what to do for him, what to offer him, how to nurse him, what to say to him. But in the end it was he who broke the silence and whispered, no, thus far and no farther: “I was sent here by one Gudbjartur Jonsson, who, though he forgot to mention it explicitly, must certainly have sent his best wishes to all of you. I am the teacher who has to stay with you till spring. I don’t believe it myself, but it’s true nevertheless.”

He took off his threadbare town overcoat and he took off one of his boots, but the other boot he did not take off; the other boot was inanimate, expressionless, and quite devoid of any living nature, for all the world as if it had been frozen through and through, and she was on the very point of asking him whether she ought not to pull this boot of his off for him and then examine his foot, when it occurred to her that perhaps it was not altogether proper for a young girl to concern herself with a man’s foot, even though there seemed ample reason to suspect that it had been frozen. He then lay down
on
the parents’ bed and bade Asta Sollilja cover him up, arid she had never covered a man up before, and her heart began to pound, but she tucked the man in all the same, just as she had tucked the boys in when they were little, right up to the chin, but not over the boot on his right foot, which he did not even draw beneath the clothes. It stuck out from the bottom of the bed, motionless, and it grew gradually more and more difficult to know exactly what attitude one ought to adopt towards it. He had a high brow and thick hair which swept up from his brow perhaps rather in tangles than in curls; a regular face, deeply lined, which grew more and more pleasing as the skin recovered from its exposure to the cold. And when she was covering him up, she noticed that he was wearing a brown shirty yes, once again a visitor had come to stay on their land, and he had come in confidence and was making the loft here his dwelling-place. No one would ever find out, she would invite no one in all winter through so that the news should not spread, so that there should be no danger of his being taken away from her like the other visitor long ago when she was little.

“And how is everything down-country?” asked the grandmother. But instead of retailing the news, he began to speak of
the incomprehensible labyrinth of fate that had sent a man of his health on so hazardous an expedition in the depths of winter, after he had dwelt for tens of years in the genial warmth of the world’s clamorous, stove-heated cities.

“Oh
yes,”
said the old woman, “but I’ve heard that these so-called stoves are by no means all that they’re supposed to be. I never saw a stove in my day, and yet I never ailed a thing, at least as long as I could really be called alive, except for nettle rash one night when I was in my fifteenth year, though it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t get up next morning and see to my work. It was caused by some fresh fish that the boys used to catch in the lakes thereabouts. This was in the south where I was brought up.

The man did not answer for a while, but lay pondering in silence the medical history of this incredible old creature who, without ever having set eyes on a stove, had suffered no ailment for the past sixty-five years. At length he replied that when all was said and done, the stove flames of world civilization were probably the very flames that fed the heart’s inextinguishable distress, and it is also an open question, old woman, whether the body itself is not better off in an environment colder than that engendered by the flickering flames of civilization’s stoves. True, the world has great superficial beauty when it is at its best, in the murmuring groves of California, for instance, or in the sun-gilded palm-avenues of the Mediterranean, but the heart’s inner glow grows so much the more ashen the more brilliantly the diamonds of creation shine upon it. But for all that, old woman, I have always loved creation, and always tried to squeeze out of it all that I possibly could.

“Yes,” replied the grandmother, who had misunderstood what little she had heard of the teacher’s words of wisdom, “and that’s why I simply can’t see what Bjartur means by sending decent folk here in this sort of weather, and making off himself.’

“Have no fears for me, old woman; the time has come that I must rest awhile from the Elmo’s fire of civilized life,” whispered the visitor meekly. “I have dwelt out in the great world for many years and have long gazed out over the ocean of human life. When a man has suffered what I have suffered, he begins to yearn for a tiny world behind the mountains, a simple and blissful life such as may be found in this loft; but unfortunately it is not everyone who can escape thither, for the world is unwilling to
release its prey. I thought I would perish out on the mountains, like those men, spoken of in books, who fled from their enemies into the hands of enemies worse still; that is to say, out of the frying-pan into the fire; and I felt that the least I could expect would be a fatal illness. But now that this slender maiden steps forth like a flowering plant of human life with coffee, I feel that I have yet a little longer to live. No, old woman, a man is never so wholly destitute but that good fortune will not favour him with one more smile before he dies.”

He sat up gratefully to welcome the coffee and the slender flowering plant of human life, but the booted foot still protruded as stolidly as ever from the bottom of the bed. The boys went on staring spellbound at this distinguished extremity, which, together with the walking-stick, was to remain for them the surest token of the man’s unquestioned nobility. Yes and she had sugared the dripping that she gave him on his rye bread, a thing that she never did for anyone, except for herself sometimes on the sly, which was the highest she ever attained in luxury, this marvel of beauty and talent. And he had never tasted anything half so delicious, and God be praised, he added, that there are still girls who blush, for she blushed every time that he thanked her. How could he really be thankful to a thin girl in a colourless frock, out at one elbow, he who had gazed far out over the ocean of human life? How humble great men always are! With every word of thanks she grew the more determined to do everything to please him, this man who had travelled over snow-clad mountains all the way from the murmuring groves of California and the sun-gilded palm-avenues of the Mediterranean in order to teach them many good things. She who for so long had dreaded the thought of waking was now of a sudden looking forward to rising first thing in the morning to make him pancakes for his breakfast. True, he had not the sort of face that smiles of itself without smiling, which was hardly to be expected, as he was a winter visitor rather than a summer visitor, but he had wise, serious eyes, full of good-natured fun, which gazed in blithe understanding deep into her body and her soul, eyes such as seem capable of solving all the body’s problems and all the soul’s problems, eyes that one thinks about perhaps when one
is
unhappy, knowing that they can help one; no, she wasn’t really shy of him any longer even though she did blush a little; she even found the courage to ask about Father.

“Yes, my dear,” said he, “He’s a real viking, that man; but that he should prove to have such a pale little daughter with chestnut hair was more than I would ever have dreamed of.”

“I hope Bruni has been able to give him something to do,” said the old woman.

“No, far from it,” was the visitor’s answer; “those days are over. The days of autocracy and monopoly are no more in this district. At last we are mature enough to enjoy the blessings that democracy brings in its train.”

“Fancy!” said the old woman.

“Now it is Ingolfur Arnarson Jonsson who counts, old woman,” said the visitor. “Those who batten on widows and orphans have as last received their just deserts. For lo, a better age is here our woes to assuage and boldly challenges the ancient wrong; cries justice for the poor and those oppressed of yore, and feels itself unfettered, great and strong, as it says in our ‘Ode to the New Century, Power has passed into the hands of those who carry on trade on a healthy foundation. Tulinius Jensen departed with the last ship before Christmas. We have fought for the commercial ideals of Ingolf ur Arnarson and we have won. This young aristocrat who returned to Iceland inspired by the commercial ideals of the world’s humanitarian economists, and who proceeded to break the shackles of debt forged by merchant power, offering credit even to those who for years on end had been denied an ounce of rye meal on their own account—we have placed him in an unassailable position. I know a poverty-stricken father, with a large family, who couldn’t afford a thing because all his inclinations lay towards literature and foreign learning; Ingolfur Arnarson sent him half a firkin of salt mutton in the fall of the year, as well as a large box of colonial goods. What do you think of that? Furthermore, he gave him a fortnight’s employment in the slaughter-house, while many local heroes were out of work and had nothing else to do but hang about on the street corners playing mouth-organs, all because they believed in autocracy and oppression, and thought their salvation lay in the leech that had sucked their own blood. Yes, old woman, Ingolfur Arnarson is a great man, a genius who could twist the whole world round his finger, a philanthropist who gave up his position, which was in close contact with the government, that he might risk his life and his reputation for the sake of the scorned and the neglected. Because they aren’t very particular what they write in the newspapers about anyone who enlists himself on the side of the downtrodden.
But in spite of that we have now managed to instal him in Bruni’s abode. And when I last saw him, Gudbjartur Jonsson of Summerhouses was moving Ingolfur Arnarson’s furniture into the Tower House. I understand that when that was over he was to be given some sort of a warehouseman’s job with the cooperative society.”

“Yes, I know,” said the old woman. “One comes when another goes, as has long been the case. Many people speak ill of the merchants, and it is true that coveted wealth is hard to keep safe. The new one is always thought to be the best, and the last one is always the worst, I have outlived many merchants, bless you.”

The teacher, realizing that there would be little point in going into greater detail with a woman so ancient, closed this part of the conversation with the remark that tardy though it be, the sun of justice would rise in the end. There’s a better time coming for all of us now.

Yes, there’s a better time coming for all of us. This refrain of his, this new motive, rose singing with sudden joy through winter’s sombre music, to warm winter’s chilly hearts, crushed beneath the laws of an inflexible calendar, and lo, festivals were no longer in great demand, and tobacco ceased to be the only conceivable remedy for a Maker whom no one understood. Presently he began to unpack his traps. He allowed the children to stand some distance away in a semicircle.

Up from the mouth of the sack he drew first of all his own belongings, his own luggage, those possessions which bind a man to life with the strongest ties, or at least make life tolerable for him. And what were those possessions? They were a patched shirt and one solitary sock, heavily darned. He fondled these treasures with mysterious gravity as if they possessed some cabbalistic virtue, then stuck them both under his future pillow without saying a word. The children watched these two articles disappear under the pillow as a proof of how great men reveal themselves in small things. Next he produced those articles which were directly concerned with the children themselves—the educational apparatus that he brought them in the power of his office. And he stroked these rectangular parcels affectionately and said: “Now then, children, here we are: in these parcels lies the wisdom of the world.” And such, indeed, appeared to be the case. From the packages there emerged new, fragrant books, each wrapped in glossy, colourful paper and tied round with white
twine; books in all the colours of the rainbow with pictures inside and outside, full of the most incredible reading, one about unknown animal species, another about dead kings and irrelevant peoples, a third about foreign countries, a fourth about the peculiar magic of number, a fifth about Iceland’s long-desired Christianity—everything, everything that the soul thirsts for, regiment after regiment of marvelous tidings to lift the soul to higher planes and banish desolation’s manifold gloom from the lives of men. Yes, there’s a better time coming for all of us.