World Light (27 page)

14

The trawler
Númi
, the property of the Regeneration Company of Sviðinsvík, had been allowed to lie rusting in peace in the anchorage, collecting rats and, some said, ghosts, because they thought they had seen a blue light flickering about on the ship on winter nights. During the years when she had been operating for the Regeneration Company’s account on the best fishing grounds in the world, just offshore, she had only succeeded in amassing higher and higher debts at the bank, tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands in debts, sums which, together with the other debts of this powerful company, would have sufficed to make every single villager a count or a baron. On the other hand, it so happened that all the fish fled the sea as soon as the ship appeared on the scene. Two years ago, the board of the Regeneration Company had finally hit upon the brilliant idea of laying the ship up and letting her collect rats in the anchorage instead of debts at the bank. It was now the general hope that some good man or other would want to buy the estate from the Regeneration Company, just as it stood, debts and all; but buyers were not rushing to come forward. Finally the bank had made it clear that it had exhausted its Christian forbearance, which is such a hallmark of these institutions, and was going to sequestrate the ship for unpaid debts and accumulated interest, and sell her off by auction in the near future.

Then one morning at the start of the haymaking season, when people happened to look out toward the anchorage as the fog was lifting (for there had been a very heavy fog), the people’s trawler had disappeared completely. It was little wonder that everyone was a bit surprised—what had happened to the people’s trawler? Had she been stolen? Or had the bank come for her? People went to see the manager and asked why their trawler had vanished, but the manager only replied, in Danish, that he was no Icelander, s’help him. But later that day word came that a rat-bitten life belt with the ship’s name on it had been washed ashore farther down the fjord, and then it was thought unnecessary to make any further guesses about the ship’s fate. Rats and rust had combined to gnaw through her, and she had sunk.

Strange as it may seem, the loss of the ship caused considerable emotion in the village; on the other hand it did not affect Ólafur Kárason at all, for he had no memories bound up with the ship, much less any hopes for the future. But he could not avoid hearing all sorts of things about the ship’s disappearance, some whispered and some uttered openly. Only now did the people realize that they could probably have lived off this ship instead of carrying rocks for the government, year after year.

At least there had been some vague security in seeing the ship lying there, even though she was red with rust and manned only by rodents and revenants. While the ship had been afloat, it was as if the people nurtured in their hearts some obscurely reasoned hope that one day she would put out to sea with a brave crew from the village, determined to bring in a million-krónur catch from the inexhaustible stocks of the fishing grounds just outside, where other ships, some of them from distant parts of the country and others from foreign lands, harvested wealth and plenty before the very eyes of the local inhabitants. But now the ship had sunk. And when the ship had sunk, it was as if the village woke up halfway down a precipice.

The parish officer wanted to call a meeting of the board of the Regeneration Company at once and come to some decisions, but there were difficulties involved, because the directors were not available: the sheriff lived in another fjord, Pastor Brandur was making a visitation to the remoter parishes, the doctor had been mortal drunk every night for a week, and the manager, Pétur Pálsson, was no Icelander. No one on the board cared in the least, except the fifth member, the parish officer. And since it had proved impossible to arrange a board meeting immediately after the loss of the ship, he set off nonetheless to see the sheriff, leaving no one in doubt about the nature of his errand: he was going to demand a court of inquiry into the whole matter, and call for Pétur Pálsson to be sacked as manager and preferably arrested and taken south in fetters. No one doubted that he himself would be more than willing to undertake the management of the company, especially since the parish was now on the county.

Time passed. Finally word came that the sheriff certainly intended to come to Sviðinsvík at a suitable opportunity and hold a court of inquiry into the trawler case, but getting Pétur Pálsson sacked and taken south in fetters was reckoned to be much more difficult to arrange. Pétur had been appointed manager for five years and enjoyed the boundless confidence of the sheriff and the government, quite apart from the fact that he was the pastor’s sole supporter in spiritual matters and by far the largest purchaser of brennivín from the doctor. In certain newspapers down south he was constantly represented as one of the most notable and capable socialists in the country. And although the village never tired of flaying him behind his back, he was nevertheless the only person the village turned to and trusted when the pinch came, not least the mothers and widows, because he was a man who could not bear to see misery and was always ready to do everything he could for other people.

What was the parish officer to do? This worthy boat-builder and crofter-fisherman, who was as honest as gold and did not know the meaning of fickleness, even though he was totally incapable of thinking and talking like an educated person, had now had enough of a good thing. When all else had failed, he hit upon the good idea of turning to the villagers, to the Regeneration Company’s ordinary members, the small shareholders and those who had mortgaged their possessions to the company for provisions, and trying to get them together for a meeting. He enlisted the support of a few interested villagers, sent out notice of the meeting, and nailed an advertisement to the telegraph pole at the crossroads, in which he explained that since the majority of the board had other things to do, he himself, as the parish’s representative to the Regeneration Company, was calling a public meeting of that company in the village hall tonight at eight o’clock, in order to combat criminal activity and autocratic conduct in the community and to pass a resolution to destroy the weeds and vipers that had been allowed to grow and flourish among the people here on the estate.

Fortunately, this tedious wrangle for the most part passed Ólafur Kárason by—this man who thought only about spiritual values and adored beauty and worshiped love as far as it was possible. And now a love affair had been added to all this, with the special experience it brings when it happens for the first time; his outlook, in a word, was lyrical. He got his friend, Örn Úlfar, to explain to him the mysteries of the sonnet one calm night when the sea was all gold and velvet, and now he felt that no other verse-form mattered.

But when his friend sided completely with the parish officer, that cold-hearted man who had no compassion for poor poets in delicate health who had to carry rocks, and suddenly started going from door to door to summon people to a meeting arranged by this unspiritual, obstinate man against Pétur Pálsson the manager, that friend of the spirit, Ólafur Kárason could not understand his friend any longer. “It’s probably because he always sees his little sister on her bier and feels that she was murdered,” the poet thought to himself, and was sorry for his friend and forgave him. “Perhaps I wouldn’t write poetry either if I had brothers and sisters who had been murdered.”

Haymaking: and over the village there lay this strong fragrance of new-mown hay that one only finds on the first days when the grass is put to the scythe. He was brimming with poetic sympathy for the young grass that was being mown by a scythe, and he himself was the mower—very stiffly at first, to be sure, but improving with every day. All experience is wonderful while it still retains the freshness of novelty and is material for a poem. It is poetic to mow hay—just a little, not for too long. When any experience has lost the novelty of freshness, the poet is no longer happy. It is intensely tedious to mow for a long time.

After a week he had begun to hope that the summer were over, so that he would not have to think about hay but could have the day to himself to compose sonnets. Sometimes inspiration seized him so powerfully in the meadow that he had to write the poem down on the handle of the scythe. Luckily the foreman was drunk and the pressure of work not so demanding. Often, early in the morning when the weather was fine and he had not yet become tired of mowing, he would recall his poems and be quite convinced that he was now a major poet even though he had not yet received any public recognition. He was determined to make his way to Aðalfjörður that autumn and have his collection of poems printed there, so that the public could enjoy the noble thoughts of a young man who had not only borne a heavy cross but had also been allowed to drink from the cup of joy. He was sure that as soon as he was recognized as a major poet his mother would ask his forgiveness for having sent him away in a sack in winter, and he decided to forgive her and stay with her if she so wished. Perhaps she would help him to go to secondary school, and he would not only be a major poet but a man of learning as well.

Recognition as a poet first came to him without warning one day, after great travail. That is how every poet’s major victories come about. He was standing in the meadow one morning, little suspecting that fame was now on its way. It was the same day on which the parish officer had nailed his advertisement to the telegraph pole. One of the manager’s children suddenly appeared in the mown field in front of the poet and handed him this note:

“Present yourself tonight as a living witness to contacts with the next world and compose a good poem about the necessity of science in human society, particularly spiritualism, and bring it to the Psychic Research Society of Sviðinsvík which intellectuals and educational pioneers are due to inaugurate tonight in my drawing room. You will be permitted to read your own poem aloud in your own name in the presence of myself, the sheriff, the rural dean, the doctor, etc. P.S. Bring your hymnbook with you.”

Was it any wonder that this orphan poet was excited, this man who had until now been the outcast of humanity because of his loyalty to the intellect? That is how the wheel of fortune can turn. He, who in spring had been lying like mouldy meat-paste in a corner in a remote valley, was now, at harvest time, being summoned by the most important man of a great estate to help establish a society; yes, and what’s more, a genuine and public scientific society of learned men and gentry to conduct psychic research, and there he was to be allowed to read a poem of his own in his own name. Often he had been on the point of giving up his chosen road. For two years he had lain helpless in bed after suffering the blows of beasts, men, and gods. But he had never given up. Now he was beginning to reap his reward; the time was at hand at last when, as he had always suspected, the spirit would be properly appreciated and would be victorious in men’s lives. Everything, everything one had had to suffer in the battle for one’s self, for the desire to exist, this one thing one possessed—everything, everything, everything was forgotten in the moment of victory, was forgotten and ceased to exist, like the baby’s first tears, the mother’s first anger, the first snowstorm. He laid his scythe aside and praised God.

The sheriff came over the mountain with seven horses and his clerk, because tomorrow there was to be a court of inquiry. He stayed with Pétur the manager as usual. Ólafur Kárason worked away furiously and composed a solemn congratulatory ode to Science and the Soul on the occasion of their visit to the village, hoping that these two parties might find one another in Truth, without venturing to define their nature any more closely. An icy shiver of excitement went through him every time he remembered that the sheriff himself, the man who stood as far above parish officers as parish officers stood above parish paupers, was to listen to this poem, and in the evening he had no appetite, only nausea.

He had the poem in his pocket and was waiting the whole time for the poetess to ask to hear it, but she did not ask. On the other hand she offered to cut his hair so that he would appear before the gentry as an intellectual, and this he accepted. She lent him her husband’s Sunday-best trousers and jersey, but there was no jacket to fit such a slender man.

“How lucky the manager is to have got himself a poet in my place,” she said.

“Aren’t you invited?” he said.

“I’m not spiritual,” she said. “I’m grateful just so long as I’m allowed to stay in a barn loft.”

Then he said, “I do so want to let you hear my poem.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” she said. “Not before it’s in ashes.”

“I don’t understand you now,” he said.

“Poems are best when they’re in ashes,” she replied roundly. “When the lettering is faded and the book burnt, only then does the worth of the poem come to light.”

“Still, I’m quite sure that I’ve seldom or never succeeded so well with a poem before,” he said.

“If you succeed in writing it into the heart of the nation, then it’s a good poem,” she said. “There is no other yardstick.”

She finished cutting his hair. She looked at him with her distant smile, and the evening sun shone through the window. He did not understand her and could not bring himself to say any more, because he felt that in conversation with her he became more stupid than in conversation with other people: those deep, sincere eyes that saw everything but said nothing. But the riddle remained: how was it that Pétur the manager was spiritual, while the poetess was not?

15

The gentry sat in plush armchairs in the manager’s best room; the sheriff sat facing the door with his hands clasped and twiddling his thumbs, his paunch flowing over his thighs, his fat official’s cheeks calling to mind that part of the body which is considered the least related to the face. The pastor incessantly brushed the dust off himself and snorted, his worsted suit threadbare from decades of brushing. The gaunt secretary, bespectacled, sat beside his master, Pétur the manager, swallowing saliva, the movement of his Adam’s apple the only certain sign of life in him. The doctor sat hunched in a chair in front of his wife and stared out into the blue with the swimming eyes of a man who had long ago stopped knowing whether it was night or day. If a spoken word, or a passing face, provoked an association of ideas in his mind so that he felt a desire to express himself, his wife put her hand to his mouth at once and said “Uss!”; whereupon the doctor said “By God,” and laughed in a mixture of bad temper and silliness and tried to bite her, but not hard.

On a row of broken-back seats, three-legged stools, and folding chairs that had been brought in for the occasion, sat three widows and four women who had recently lost their children, and who never moved a muscle, but sat staring straight ahead with an expression of petrified auguish as if their throats were about to be cut. One of them was the woman from Skjól.

The room had been arranged in such a way that those attending the meeting formed a circle. And in the middle of the circle, between the sheriff and the manager, there in a crimson dress and brand-new shoes as if she were going to a Churchyard Ball, with a string of pearls and a diamond ring, sat
órunn of Kambar, the spirit-girl herself, ambiguous, semi-albino and crystalline, sniffing innocently. There was no seat there for the poet, Ólafur Kárason of Ljósavík, and nobody noticed his arrival except the manager’s lean, taciturn wife, who said he could stand by the wall in the corner behind the door.

Since no others were expected, the manager began his speech. When he had given the sheriff a particularly warm welcome to this inaugural meeting, which he said would mark a new epoch in the village, he turned at once to the kernel of the matter. He set forth once again the views which were no longer entirely unfamiliar to Ólafur Kárason, that nothing was nearly so important in this life as science, above all the science which was devoted to proving the existence of an afterlife. He said that the higher powers had become so tangible nowadays that even doctors and pastors no longer needed to feel offended, or feel put upon, even though the influence of intelligent agencies on human life was demonstrated beyond doubt. (The doctor, from out of his drunken stupor: “What are angels—birds or mammals? By God!”)

“It gladdens me that our learned and distinguished doctor is no exception to this rule; he is both bird and mammal and angel in one and the same person, if I may put it that way. As for the pastor and Christianity, on the other hand, I would take the liberty of pointing out that we all know that the church has declined disastrously in Sviðinsvík and elsewhere over the past few years, to such an extent, even, that it has proved impossible to scrape up a congregation for services except twice or thrice a year at the most—for confirmation, Holy Communion, and Christmas Day; and sometimes it hasn’t even proved possible to drive people into church at Christmas.”

The manager said that the cause of this religious apathy was not that God had ceased to exist nor that we had an incompetent pastor. “No,” said the manager, “God is eternal, and he certainly exists. And as for our pastor, I shall be the first and last to testify to the fact that it would be difficult to imagine a better comrade and guide in everything that concerns the prosperity of this village and its regeneration.

“On the other hand, the mood of the times is for science, not faith, and this is something no one can change, however good a pastor he may be, and indeed our own pastor has been the first to realize that the mood of the times demands proofs instead of sacraments, a tangible assurance of the soul’s speedy and decisive victory immediately at death instead of vague promises of an uncertain resurrection on the Last Day. But it would only be half the pleasure to see the learned men of the county gathered here to establish a scientific research society, if behind the founding of this society there were not other pillars, I am tempted to say even stronger pillars, and by that I mean the nation itself, the people. By accepting our invitation to participate, the public has shown that it, too, is ready to honor the highest visions of science. It is with very special feelings, which I find it very difficult to describe, that I take the liberty of welcoming to this meeting the nation, the public, these poor and uneducated mothers and widows. Because for whom is science, the true science, the only essential science—spiritualism? It is for the poor, uneducated women of the people. It is chiefly for our wretched, blessed, poverty-stricken widows and mothers who have had to watch their loved ones depart to a better world in more or less harrowing ways. Because religious faith cannot show these destitute people that existence is by nature divine, then science must do so, and though we may have to do without some trivial things in this world, happiness awaits us in the Summerland to which our loved ones have gone before us. . . .”

“Give me another drink!” bawled the doctor, and bit his wife. “Give me some more of that damned poison!”

“Patience, my dear fellow,” said Pétur Pálsson the manager. “And you, dear friends who are gathered here tonight—what was it I was going to say again? . . .”

“Mm—the English lord, English lord,” whispered the secretary, after swallowing carefully.

“Yes,” said the manager. “The English lord. It so happens that a famous English lord of noble rank, apart from the fact that he is a world-famous lawyer, professor and doctor, and really a most excellent man, hmmmm . . .” And the manager bent down to his secretary again and asked in a half-whisper, “What was his name again?”

“He’s called Oliver Lodge,” said the secretary. “Mm—Sir Oliver Lodge.”*

“His name is Sir Ólafur Lodds,” continued the manager, “and he has established with absolutely irrefutable evidence how earthly men can communicate, through mediums, with another world. This has revolutionized religious life in Great Britain and in America, and in a few years has transformed churches into purely scientific institutions. There are six hundred churches in England and I can’t unfortunately remember how many in America which have changed into scientific institutions in this way in a very short time, to which millions of people flock every Sunday to receive proofs instead of sacraments. In the old days people fiddled with tables and glasses, but people stopped using inanimate objects long ago, and now one can get direct communication while the medium is in a trance and can speak to anyone one wants just like through a modern telephone exchange. There are even several instances from both England and America of the Creator of the world and the Savior being heard through a medium.”

Finally the manager gave the village the glad news that it had now secured a medium with spiritual gifts of the highest order. “So now it will be within our power to seek information from a higher world whenever we are in difficulties, and receive comfort from our dear departed ones and from world-famous spirits in the Summerland when sorrows and cares afflict our homes.

“This girl, as some of you in the village probably know, has been in contact with supernatural powers and higher beings for some time, and many people in this part of the country have given evidence under oath that they were cured of various incurable illnesses through her mediation. But of all her cures, I reckon the most remarkable was that she as good as raised from the dead that young, promising, and poetical parish pauper standing over there in the corner behind the door, who has come here tonight at my request to present himself before this esteemed company and bear witness to the necessity for spiritualism, not only by his presence but also with a poem I have permitted him to write.”

At this point the doctor began to retch, and the manager’s wife slipped out to fetch a pail. The doctor’s wife held her husband’s forehead while he vomited, gave him water to drink when he had finished, made him comfortable in his chair, and spread a handkerchief over his face. There was a pause in the proceedings while the doctor was vomiting, and the promising young rhymester, parish pauper and miracle-ninny stood behind the door shaking with terror at having to make a public appearance at a scientific society. But then the sheriff stopped twiddling his thumbs for a moment and said that as things stood in this parish at present, esteemed members would doubtless have quite enough of seeing this parish pauper and knowing that he had been woken up from the dead at their expense, without having to start listening to him reciting poetry into the bargain, and anyway poetry had no place in a scientific research society; he permitted himself to hope that the experiments would start as soon as possible.

At that the manager said that the sheriff was quite right, they did not have time to listen to poetry tonight. “In a scientific society the only poetry that has any place is that which can produce proofs. British psychologists reckon that nothing is better suited to producing proofs than hymn-singing and the Lord’s Prayer, and that’s why I have asked everyone to bring their hymnbooks; but I hope most of you know a few bits of the Lord’s Prayer already.”

The manager now began to play the harmonium and asked the company to sing.
órunn of Kambar had the lamp turned down. “Praise the Lord, the King of Heaven,” all verses. The doctor was out for the count with the handkerchief over his face.
órunn of Kambar settled herself comfortably in the armchair, took off her shoes, stretched her legs out on the floor and closed her eyes. By the time they reached the middle of the hymn her body began to twitch, she started gasping a little for breath, and a series of rattling noises and small cries came from her throat. When the last verse of the hymn was over she said thickly, “Put out the lamp, and turn your thoughts to the light.”

The light was extinguished and they began to say the Lord’s Prayer. “Again!” whispered the manager in near ecstasy, and the Lord’s Prayer was recited over and over again. When the Lord’s Prayer had been recited about twenty times, Pétur whispered, “Little
órunn,
órunn dear,” but she didn’t reply. “Are you awake, dear little
órunn?” asked the manager, “or have you fallen into the trance?”