15
It had seldom or never happened before, but now it happened frequently: he would open his eyes in the morning in joyful anticipation of the coming day. He waited impatiently for the people to leave the house to attend to their various tasks. At last they would all be gone. Magnína appeared in the loft, brought out her book from under her apron, sat down beside him and started to read. She said nothing by way of preamble, and when she had finished reading she went away without a word. Sometimes she would stop reading suddenly if she thought she heard sounds of movement downstairs, and she would glance down in alarm, but her ears had deceived her. She never once looked in his direction while she read. She read everything with the same devotional intonation, whether it was about the depravity of Lemelie or the virtues of Concordia; it all had the same pious, mystical effect on her. He often had the feeling, however, that she was reading first and foremost for herself; it never occurred to her to ask whether he found the book enjoyable, indeed she always seemed to be a little bad-tempered, and often he wondered what wrong he could have done her; it was as if some unfriendly force were compelling her to read for him against her will. Previously she had sometimes addressed him of her own accord, but since she started reading to him she had never spoken to him. Sometimes, during the reading, she would forget how time was passing; there would be movement downstairs, the women would be back from the barn and she had forgotten to see to the meal. She would stop in midsentence, thrust the book under her apron, and disappear. Who would have believed that this girl could react so quickly?
There was a man named van Leuven, a most excellent man. His wife was the splendid Concordia whom the whole nation knows because she was not only beautiful but also endowed with all the virtues which can adorn a woman, and her name will never be forgotten as long as there is life on earth. On a sea voyage with this exemplary couple was the promising young man Albert Julius. They were shipwrecked on a desert island called Felsenburg. The fourth person who survived the shipwreck was the scoundrel Lemelie. This villian seized the first opportunity of doing away with the estimable van Leuven with a view to gaining Concordia’s love. A few days after the murder, however, this Lemelie luckily had the misfortune to impale himself on a bayonet held by the promising young man Albert Julius, and that was the end of Lemelie. Before he died, however, he had the consideration to confess his sins to the widow Concordia and Albert Julius, and to cut a long story short there were few sins in that catalogue which were milder than rape, incest, and infanticide. But when the story reached the point where Lemelie had burned his two illegitimate children “in a crucible,” Magnína stopped reading. She laid the book down in her lap and stared straight ahead in some perplexity. Ólafur Kárason was also somewhat perplexed. He was convinced that she was filled with horror at the depravity that exists in the world, and he felt he had to say something to comfort her so that she would not take it too much to heart.
“Magnína dear,” he said gently, “don’t you think this could have been a little exaggerated?”
But once again he had miscalculated completely, as he had done before.
“Do you think I’m reading you some damned lie?” she said, and looked at him angrily.
“No, I didn’t mean it that way,” he said. “I only meant that some people think that some things might be a little exaggerated even though they’re written in books.”
“No, you certainly don’t deserve to have someone read to you out of one’s own book; indeed I should have known all along that those wretches who go in for composing obscene verses in their childhood, and carry on doing it from then on, wouldn’t benefit very much from having someone read to them from a remarkable and true Lutheran book which describes the wickedness of men as they really are!”
She slammed the book shut, thrust it under her apron, stood up and stalked over to the stairs. “It’s just like these wretches to be unable to bear to hear the truth about themselves,” she muttered as she was going down the stairs, but loud enough to ensure that he could hear it.
He suffered greatly from remorse of conscience for the rest of the day; he was all the men in the world in one, you see, and all the sins of this unhappy sex from time immemorial afflicted him at once in a mysterious way and robbed him of his peace of mind. He slept very badly that night, and felt that some terrible punishment was looming over him. So it was little wonder that he was relieved next morning when Magnína came up to the loft and started reading to him from the book, the book she had given him all too clearly to understand he was unworthy of hearing. The horrible confessions of Lemelie continued, but this time she did not let it affect her; but when she had been reading for a while, she interjected this warning:
“I’m going to tell you once and for all that if you’re going to interrupt me when I’m reading from this book, it will be the last time I read to you. This book is against sin, and it’s my own book, and I won’t have a single word said while I’m reading from it.”
Bathed in sweat and with palpitating heart, the boy listened while the confessions of Lemelie continued, and did not dare to say a word. Then Lemelie died. And now Albert Julius and the widow Concordia were alone on the desert island of Felsenburg.
The love which demands nothing but beauty itself and lives in selfless worship, as when he beheld Guðrún of Grænhóll standing before him in the landscape—that is the love that no disappointment can ever conquer, perhaps not even death itself (if that existed). This was the love that the story described in the chapter about young Albert and the beautiful, virtuous widow. In this love story it was as if he heard anew the origins of his own soul after a long silence, that ethereal music of divine revelation which is so rare in literature but which Nature alone preserves, if you know how to listen. He listened.
Albert Julius lived for a long time in selfless adoration of that beautiful lady of all the virtues. He contemplated her beauty and nobility, and his heart was deeply moved, but without saying a single word, however much he wanted to. But one day, when he thought that Concordia was elsewhere, he could not resist taking the widow’s lovely infant daughter in his arms, kissing her many times, and addressing her distractedly with these words:
“ ‘Oh, you darling little angel! How I wish you were fifteen years old already! Merciful God, give me the strength to stifle completely the natural instincts for marriage that are innate in all men! You know my heart, and You know that my love has nothing to do with lechery.’ ”
But Concordia herself was hiding somewhere in the background and heard everything that Albert had said to her darling infant daughter. And next day the young man received a letter from Concordia, dated January 8, 1648, which went as follows:
“ ‘Dearest friend: I heard nearly everything you said to my daughter at the North Rock yesterday. Your wish is natural and reasonable and in accordance with the laws of God and man; I am a widow who has suffered much, but I know that all fortune and misfortune come from God. But even though I am thereby free again and beholden to no one, I could scarcely have brought myself ever to marry again had not my heart been moved by your pure and ardent love, and had not your honorable behavior prompted me to offer myself to you as your wife. So now it lies within your discretion whether tomorrow morning, the day of your birthday, you want to unite the two of us in matrimony (there being no pastor here) after we have prayed to God and His holy angels to be with us, and then live together as lawful Christian man and wife. I know that you are such an upright, honorable, and sincere man that you will not consider it a sign of promiscuity if I offer myself to you like this.’ ”
And finally: “ ‘Take then unto yourself your dearly beloved, the widow of the late van Leuven, for your own wife, and live in the most joyful matrimony with her from now onwards; may God always be with us. When you have read this letter you will find me, feeling rather shy, down by the dam. Concordia van Leuven.’ ”
Magnína’s voice never reflected her emotions; it did not soften at all at the reading of this touching letter. On the other hand she stopped reading when she reached the end of the letter. She sat for a long time in silence. Ólafur Kárason, too, was silent. Only the silent music of admiration echoed in the room. Finally the girl closed the book, sighed, and said, “Yes, that could happen there. Provided it’s far enough away. And long enough ago.”
He was eager to comfort her and said, “I’m quite sure, Magnína, that true love can dwell in every Christian heart, even nowadays, if one is fortunate.”
“No, it isn’t possible here,” she said, like a person answering in his sleep when you hold his little finger, and went on staring into the blue without moving. “There are so many people around. Everyone believes ill of everyone else. But two people alone on a desert island where there are no other people around, that’s a different matter entirely. It’s as if that’s what God intended in the beginning when He created two people and left them by themselves.”
But nothing could cast a shadow over the literary happiness of this moment in the boy’s soul; it was a new day, and goodness was no longer infinitely distant as so often before. Guðrún of Grænhóll, he thought—she was like a brilliantly colored cloud at sunrise on a spring morning, an unreal vision on the banks of a running stream: what youth, beauty, and courage; it was not real, in fact, and even if it had been real it was only half true, and perhaps not at all true, even, nothing but an apparition and a revelation. And when would he ever become man enough to pursue and catch an apparition and a revelation? The only woman on whom he could build his hope was the mature Concordia of reality, van Leuven’s widow, who would look at him with maternal compassion, who would make the final decision for him where his courage faltered, ready and willing to acknowledge his virtues and to care for him. “I believe,” he whispered at last, “that life’s Concordia will be victorious sometime in my life.”
He started up from his trance at his own words, and noticed that a long time must have passed in silence; Magnína still sat slumped on the edge of his bed, fat in the back and flabby, the book limp on her lap. But what amazed him most were the tears that trickled down her cheeks like a strange leak from somewhere, uninterrupted and without any sobbing. For a long time he watched her weeping and wondered what was causing it. Was it just ordinary water that flowed in the ordinary way? Or did it come from some inward emotion? Did she understand the spirit? Did they perhaps understand one another after all? Had their souls at last met in admiration for that true art which places honorable courtship uppermost of all human values, Christian marriage excepted?
She went on weeping like that for a long time, as if in some kind of comfortable, effortless madness. Finally she stood up without any fuss, smoothed her apron modestly down over her hips, and was gone. Later that day she came up with a piece of buttered flatbread and gave it to him; it was the first time she had given him a tidbit since he was little. Yes, that is how literature can melt the frozen springs of affection in the human heart. He was grateful to God that it had pleased Him at last to open the heart of this stout girl to spiritual things.
16
Then it was Holy Week with its long devotional readings, spring cleaning and westerly storms, and there was no mention of literature, in general nothing that touched the heart, only the story of the Passion. The girl who had given him a little piece of flatbread because they both had begun to understand spiritual matters now paid no attention to him at all for days on end, as if he did not exist. He had stopped knowing what to think.
Easter morning was a clear day with hoarfrost, and the women were looking forward to going to church and hurried through the work in the barn. But there was only one riding horse available, and the question was who should ride it, the mother or the daughter— because they were both too fat to walk. It was decided in the end that the mother should ride to church, for she had many things to see to as a farm-owner and few opportunities to meet people. So everyone went off to church except Magnína, who stayed behind at home with the Lord’s crossbearer. She said she had always been disregarded all her born days; everyone had their hopes fulfilled in this life except her. No one had ever asked her what she herself wanted, no one tried to understand that she might enjoy meeting Christian folk, too, no less than others did, even though it was only during church feasts. In fact she did not understand why she owned any Sunday-best clothes; her Sunday-best was allowed to rot at the bottom of her clothes chest while some people who did not deserve to have Sunday-best at all got the opportunity of wearing them. Yes, she said she really could spit on some people, and their morality was such that they would be in grave difficulties if they had to answer the pastor about this or that concerning the condition they were in, while decent people did not even have the opportunity of going to God’s House on the blessed Easter Sunday of Our Savior. She sat at the window, dejected, after the others had left, and sniffed, and made no attempt to tidy herself up, did not even have a wash on the blessed Easter Sunday of Our Savior; she had never been of any account among people.
“Well,” she said at last, breaking the silence when she had been pottering there for a long time. “I suppose I’d better fight my way through the lesson, seeing it’s the day it is.”
“Yes, do that, Magnína,” said the boy, delighted that she was going to do something, or at least had said something.
“Do that?” she echoed haughtily, and looked at him. “I could give orders myself if I were obeyed.”
“I didn’t mean to give you orders, Magnína,” he said. “I only said it was only right and proper to read the lesson in Jesus’ name on Easter Day itself.”
“In Jesus’ name?” she repeated. “Well I never! Is this creature now using the Lord’s name, too! Not that I’m going to, but it would be no more than you deserve if I were to read the lesson over you; it’s anyway the only thing one can do with such chronic wretches who will never thrive.”
He did not dare to say anything more about the reading after that, because he did not know whether he ought to talk about it as a blessing or a punishment in order to be somehow in agreement with Magnína; so he said piteously, “If only one soul in the world would be good to me and show me a little affection, even for only one day a year, I’m sure I wouldn’t take long to get better.”
“Yes, I’m sure of that—to have everyone waiting on you hand and foot; that’s the only thing that’s wrong with you!”
“I yearn so much to find God in people,” said the poet. “That’s the only thing I yearn for. I’m sure that if I found that, I would be fully cured that same day.”
“Well, I’d better bring out the
Book of Sermons
,” she said, wanting to break off this spiritual and emotional conversation as quickly as possible when she felt him getting the upper hand. “Since you insist,” she added.
She waddled off and came back after a long time with a book. But it was not the
Book of Sermons
she had brought as threatened; it was
The Felsenburg Stories
. In her other hand she was carrying a piece of flatbread with newly churned fresh-smelling butter on it, and a lump of brown-sugar candy. She put them down in front of him and said, “This certainly ought to make you better; someone’s being good to you now, as far as I can see.”
His eyes filled with tears and he could not refrain from telling her straight out, in a tearful voice, that he had known for a long time that she was the only person in that house who could forgive those who were in distress, and that was precisely what spirituality was about; and he began to nibble his way through the flatbread.
She scratched herself a little here and there and sat down on the edge of the bed and began to leaf through the book, and while she was trying to find the place he looked at her from the side and studied the fat on her back; the swelling began at the vertebrae of her neck and spread like a shield over her shoulders and down over her upper arms, and right down to her broad rump, so that her waist was actually just a notional line; and she sniffed, and it seemed that she was never going to find the place in the book where she had stopped. And then she found it.
“Yes, following her directions he had found her, feeling rather shy, down by the dam, that’s where we had got to.”
And with that the love story of Albert and Concordia was really over. Soon they were married and began to have children, which unfortunately is so often the sad ending to love stories; time passed and there was really no romance in life any more, only the tedious tranquillity of marriage without excitement or curiosity, the dull routine of making a comfortable living with nothing to nourish the imagination.
The kind of problem which appealed to the reader’s attention did not arise again until the children grew up, when the question became urgent—how were these decent and well-brought-up youngsters to be provided with marriage partners to prevent them “committing incest by marrying one another when the sexual urge overwhelmed their reason and virtue,” as the book expressed it with its candid Christian lack of tolerance towards sin and the Devil.
But one fine day at about the time that the children were all of marriageable age, by good fortune another shipwreck occurred and new castaways were washed ashore on the island, including two excellent sisters from Middelborg in Zeeland, who promptly married the sons of Albert and Concordia. But it is no wonder that people should now ask, how was this Christian tale to be continued, since marriage was at once the climax of the story and the ultimate aim of morality? But luckily it turned out that the young maidens had been engaged in a fierce struggle with the Devil as he manifested himself in man’s unmarried state, and outside of that state nothing worth relating seems to happen in Christendom. The cause and origin of these events was that some philanderers had lured these sisters on board a ship, in concert with their godless brother, on the pretext that a decent and decorous party was being held there; but instead of escorting the young ladies home after the party, they got well and truly drunk during the evening, weighed anchor, put to sea with the ladies on board, and headed for the Banthamis and Molucca Islands. Apart from the philanderers, there were on board this ship two mysterious French damsels, well-spoken girls of pleasing appearance, although experience was later to show their real characters. The two sisters soon found that the social courtesies dwindled the farther they sailed, and to cut a long story short, that very first night the philanderers drank themselves into a state of such insenate intoxication that they tried to take carnal advantage of the sisters there and then. The sisters defended themselves with bread knives, and the outcome of this first encounter was that the philanderers found it prudent to retire to their own bunks.
But virtue’s struggle with the unmarried state that prevailed on that ship was by no means at an end thereby, far from it. It was only just starting. As the days passed, more and more of the ship’s distinguished passengers found occasion to reveal publicly their inner beings, including the two beautiful and well-spoken French girls and an exceptionally handsome French gentleman. “ ‘We sisters eventually let ourselves be persuaded to go down to the saloon. But horror of horrors, never had I seen anything like it!—that handsome French gentleman was sitting stark naked between those two depraved harlots, and in such a disgusting attitude, that we screamed aloud and covered our eyes and took refuge in a corner.’ ”
At this point a shudder ran through Magnína and she had to stop reading. She stood up and closed the stair-hatch carefully because of the draft, then searched for another pair of stockings in some agitation, found them, and put them on as well. She made no comment, and did not look at the boy. Then she sat down again on the edge of the bed and started to read once more. She read for a long time about the instructive and exemplary battle waged by these high-minded German sisters to preserve their maidenhood in this company of French-natured people who, when they were out of sight of land, seemed to hold chastity of no account and marriage even less; and the pupils of the listener’s eyes went on dilating, the sweat broke out on his forehead, his veins swelled, and his heart trembled.
“ ‘At last the lechery of these debauched villains could no longer be cooled in any way but was inflamed into a dreadful blaze of lust; and one night three rogues suddenly burst in on us with the obvious intention of trying to rape us. But each of us always had an open pocketknife lying ready under our pillows. . . .’ ”
The shuddering that now overwhelmed Magnína seemed as if it would never end; soon she was quivering, not like a leaf but like a mountain; she stared straight ahead with the vacant, foolish expression which characterizes people when they are shivering, and tried to bite on her teeth as hard as she could, which only made them chatter all the more.
“Are you feeling cold, Magnína?” said the boy. “I don’t know what it can be, but I’m feeling cold too.”
“I simply can’t understand it,” said the girl. “I’ve read it often enough to myself. But it’s so terrible to read about godless people to others. I simply can’t understand how I could bring myself to do it for any living soul. May Jesus God in Heaven never let anything like this ever happen to anyone. I couldn’t bear it!”
In a shaking voice which kept on cracking, and through chattering teeth, she made one further desperate attempt:
“ ‘But this shameful comedy was suddenly transformed into bloody tragedy; for as soon as we could get our breaths and could use our knives which we were secretly holding in our hands, we thrust them, both at the same time, into those accursed lechers, so that our clothing was quite drenched with their blood.’ ”
But then she could go no further. The book fell shut and sank into her lap and slipped all the way down to the floor. “Dear God, I’ve actually read that aloud, I thought that was something I could never do aloud for any living soul. I must be out of my mind. Let me come into the warmth beside you for a little so that I don’t catch pneumonia.”
She did not waste any time, but slipped off her shoes, lifted the bedclothes, and was in bed beside him, and the whole bed groaned as if every plank would break; she was like an army in herself and there was scarcely any room left over for him, and though she only lay half on top of him he felt as if a whole nation were lying on him. She was almost sobbing for breath, as if she were drowning. He felt sorry for her, and hoped and prayed that she would stop shivering and recover. She lay there twitching, this big, heavy person, and every now and again she flowed over him in huge billows, like surf.
But when he touched her he found that she was bare above the knee, and then he realized at last that all those stockings had nothing to hold them up—poor girl, no wonder those broad thighs of hers were always cold. But the more he tried to squeeze up against the wall, the closer she pressed against him. There was no escaping her, she was everywhere around him, her smell filled his senses, one of his cheeks was wet from her lips. In reality it was just like the world itself which is everywhere about you and even inside you; he was no longer aware of her as the individual, Magnína, but in some way as his atmosphere and reality, and he himself was actually only a small part of her, as a fish is part of the sea, suddenly he was living her in the same unconditional way in which a fish lives the sea, nothing was more straightforward, this was the natural life. He had loved Guðrún of Grænhóll and Concordia of Felsenburg before, in daydreams when he was alone in the loft; that was the love that begins in the soul and gradually spreads outwards, it had never been essentially natural; this time the love started in the body and spread inwards, so that in a flash he thought this bulky girl to be everything the soul yearned for, everything he had had to miss in life, the world itself—at last he was no longer alone. But after all it was just like any other flash of lightning which touches the soul in the midst of melancholy; it was gone again, and she was all around him once more like a wall of treble thickness and threatened to suffocate him, her smell was stronger than ever before, she hurt him and he winced, and she rose up on one elbow, her face gleaming with sweat and her hair disheveled, and looked at him angrily and said, “What’s this, then?”
“I can’t help it,” he said miserably, then turned towards the wall and pulled the bedclothes over his face.
“I suppose it was obvious,” she said. “I should have known. A useless wretch and weakling and pauper like you!”
She got out of bed and snorted; she was no longer shivering; she was hot and bedraggled.
“Luckily I haven’t made much of a habit of going to bed with men until now, and I’m still innocent of men. And I hope to God I always will be.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” said the boy from under the bedclothes.
“No, I suppose it was all my fault that I felt faint and had to lie down for a little! Was it perhaps my fault that you couldn’t leave me in peace? No, I should have known, one is never left in peace by these male wretches, no matter how useless they are. But let me just tell you this, that if you ever touch me again, I shall tell my mother.”
“I couldn’t help it,” he protested, almost in tears. “I didn’t mean it. It wasn’t my fault.”