World Light (51 page)

“You don’t believe in life!” said the girl. “You think that the Creator cannot keep the world going without your idiotic pity! You— you who are a poet, come down off this disgusting cross!”

At the same moment he felt her lips on his mouth, hot in the frost, almost fierce; only for an instant, and then she was gone.

14

The Laborers’ dealings with Pétur Pálsson the manager had no results. He flatly refused to acknowledge their union as having a right to negotiate and said he would provide work at the wage rates of True Icelanders and not of anti-patriots. The struggle went on all day, and the Norwegian freighter was not unloaded. On the next day, when the True Icelanders tried to go to work and launch the lighters to unload the ship, the anti-patriots barred their way and prevented them from doing any work. These were mostly young men, right down to confirmation age, but there were some middle-aged men there, too, who still had not succeeded in understanding the Soul— including the parish officer, who had always had the parish purse as his God, and believed that it would be better off if people could push their wages up. Here, too, the skipper, Faroese-Jens, was going berserk, but he was first and foremost a Faroese. On the other hand the young men could see their fathers and kinsmen facing them among the True Icelanders, old quarry laborers who had been part of the place for decades on end, owned variously by the Privy Councillor, the Regeneration Company, the Psychic Research Society, and now finally by the station owner who was revealed in the person of Pétur Pálsson the manager. The fellow from Skjól was here, there, and everywhere, issuing instructions and setting father against son. The manager was also out with his stick, morning coat and high-crowned hat. He said he was not really surprised that people with Irish slave-blood in their veins who had let their parents die like dogs were now rebelling against the nation; he could also understand Faroese-Jens, who was a Faroese and therefore wanted to bring Icelanders under Danish rule anew after a four-hundred-year struggle for independence; but he thought it was going a bit far when the parish officer, Guðmundur—who like all other honorable embezzlers and forgers had made out bills for footwear and coffee for bedridden lunatics and had charged twice for the same coffin for skinny old parish paupers—should now find himself in company so far beneath his dignity.

But one thing was obvious: Pétur did not think it advisable to encourage the True Icelanders to attack, and when people had been standing for a few hours on the beach, on the pierhead and on the quay, looking at one another and exchanging sardonic comments, the manager summoned his men to a meeting for a renewed bout of national awakening and hymn-singing in the primary school. A little later it was reported that he did not have enough confidence in the fighting qualities of the True Icelanders, because he mounted the pastor and the secretary on his best horses and sent them up the valley to enlist reinforcements. Peasants who wanted to earn themselves some fame were urged to come to Sviðinsvík and there support the nation’s cause against foreign political extremism. Iceland’s independence was in danger; Russians, Danes and Irish slaves were rampant on the estate and tyrannized all those who wanted to protect their nationality for fifty
aurar
an hour. The older and more sober-minded farmers snorted into their beards and said they had never heard that Egill Skalla-Grímsson* or Gunnar of Hlíðarendi, who had no need to apologize for their nationality to Pétur
ríhross and this Júel Júelsson, had ever allowed anyone to ask them to fight for fifty
aurar
an hour, and they refused to take part in a battle where such meager booty was offered. But there were a few younger farm workers, of a different temper from their elders and less familiar with the Icelandic Sagas, who thought it more honorable to follow the standard in Sviðinsvík than to bother with the back-ends of cows in the remote valleys.

So it was no easy matter to get the child of a neutral poet into the earth as things stood. When Ólafur Kárason went to see the pastor again, this time with the funeral fee in his pocket, this chaplain of God had gone on a military mission up country; and when the poet tried to ask the parish officer to make a coffin for him for hard cash, he had become a military commander down on the beach. Everyone was intent on shooting people, yes, just shoot them, shoot them, but no one seemed to have any interest in getting into the ground a child who had already been shot.

He walked back home again in the late afternoon after his fruitless efforts in all directions, but, despite everything, feeling grateful and glad that he had a dead child and private sorrows, and with that a deeper understanding of human fickleness, when other people were so committed to the economics of this wretched life that they were hell-bent on shooting. He was disturbed in these reflections by an unexpected sight; around his shack there was a crowd of men with cudgels in their hands, while others were in the doorway, and inside it. At first he was extremely frightened. Since he belonged to neither of the warring parties, and despite the fact that he knew most of these men to speak to, it was impossible to say which were friends and which were enemies of poets in uncertain times like these; perhaps they were lying in ambush for him in his own house, ready to murder him simply because he loved peace—that sort of thing had happened before. But there was no mistaking one thing—the war had occupied his house first, the friend of peace. He stopped and looked irresolutely towards his house in the dusk of early spring.

Then the men shouted: “Come here, poet! There’s no need to be afraid. We’re fighting for you. We’re fighting for all the poetry of the world put together.”

The poet was grateful for this handsome invitation and stepped closer. At that moment his friend Örn Ülfar came to the door and repeated the invitation, saying hospitably that the poet was welcome in this house. The men were sitting wherever they could, and had turned upside down everything with a bottom to use as seats; a few were sitting on the floor. The poet first looked to see that everything was in order in the closet behind, and so it was: the little corpse lay there under its shroud on its humble bier. But when the intended, who was standing tear-stained behind the cooking stove, saw Ólafur arriving, she drew herself up and screamed: “They are disturbing the peace of the living and the dead, they are desecrating my house, they are dishonoring my corpse—heavenly Jesus, let fire and devils rain upon them, they are criminals!”

A few of the men grinned, but most of them paid no attention to her.

The poet was told what was going on. Örn Ülfar was to be arrested and taken to Aðalfjörður for breaking the laws—of TB prevention. He had left the sanatorium without permission. Telegrams from the health authorities confirmed that he was still an infectious case; the district doctor at Sviðinsvík had reported him to the sheriff and asked to have him removed so that he would not infect other people on this healthy estate. The anti-patriots had immediately mounted a guard to protect Örn Ülfar. Could they stay there that night?

“The house is yours, Örn,” said the poet.

At these words the intended let out a wail and started to pray aloud in even more specific language than before. Some of the men looked in rather foolish amazement at this Jesus-crying creature, but many of them turned away because it offended their sense of decency. Those who had tobacco in one form or another brought it out and treated themselves and others to it, then cards were produced, and the friendly cursing and swearing of the visitors took over from the housewife’s prayers. Someone fetched oil, another fetched water, a third coffee, and sugar appeared from somewhere. The poet helped to serve. In the end the intended stopped praying and sat exhausted behind the cooking stove with her knitting.

Late in the evening, when several of the defenders had given up hope of any action and had gone home, they got warning of the manager’s troops: “You in The Heights—be prepared!” Soon afterwards a crowd of men moved up the hillside with lanterns and cudgels. Both doors in the poet’s house had been barred as carefully as possible, the light was put out, and inside the men took up defensive positions at doors and windows. Soon there came a knock at the door, and when the visitors thought there was not a quick enough response, they started hammering on the walls. The poet went to the window, opened the upper pane, and asked who was there.

“Nationalists!” came the reply. “Icelanders!”

“Indeed,” said the poet, for he had not the nerve to utter that wicked word “really.”

Then some stranger declared that he was here by the sheriff’s authority to fetch a tuberculosis patient. “Will you hand him over?”

“My child died of tuberculosis yesterday,” said the poet. “Perhaps you good people will help me to bury her?”

“Open the door and hand the man over,” said the emissary of the authorities.

“I’m afraid I’ve gone to bed,” said the poet.

Now Pétur Pálsson came waddling up; he had fallen behind coming up the hillside, because he was too short of breath for climbing.

“There’s no need to ask anyone to open the door, I own this house,” he said. “It is I who says when and how this door is opened. But first I’m going to say a few words to Ólafur Kárason. Ólafur Kárason, you who call yourself a poet, I’ve come here to tell you that you are no longer a poet at all. You’re a pornographer, a blasphemer and a foul-mouth who poisons the minds of the young. For too long have I tolerated an idiot and a rat like you. I have forgiven you even though you besmirched the name of Sviðinsvík by writing about people who have never been known on this estate, thieves, drunkards, naked vagabonds, and louse-ridden men who maltreated their wives. And though you have turned against God and the Soul both in word and in deed, I have forgiven you and never tired of giving you a chance of becoming a good poet. But all my efforts to make you a good poet have been in vain. And now my patience is exhausted, my lad. We knew one another to speak to before, right enough, but when you become an official emissary for the anti-patriots against the Home Rule movement, against the nation’s independence, against me, we no longer know one another. I’ll just show you all, I shall crush you, I shall grind you, I shall have your guts out! Don’t think for a moment you can hold someone in defiance of my wishes. Boys, if the door isn’t opened, make the ropes fast and pull the house off its foundations.”

Nest morning the poet’s house lay on its side.

During the night the True Icelanders had fastened ropes to the shack and overturned it to have easier access to the nest. But this act of war had not succeeded in its object. The anti-patriots had managed to extinguish the True Icelanders’ lanterns, they had scuffled in the darkness for a while, and in the tumult Örn Ülfar had escaped. The result was that the poet was left without a roof with the corpse of his child in his arms and a Jesus-wailing intended who nevertheless had not been enough of a True Icelander for her fiancé’s poetry to escape the severest criticism. They were allowed to take shelter with the corpse and the poetry in the nearest house. But at dawn the antipatriots returned and put the poet’s house back on its foundations.

15

The day after the failure to arrest Örn Ülfar the state of war at Syiðinsvík-undir-Óþveginsenni reached a higher pitch than ever before in the history of the estate. These were difficult times for the leader of the Home Rule movement, Pétur Pálsson the manager. Throughout the night people had been searching up hill and down dale for the Irish slave, and the guard on the hoyden had been doubled. Early in the morning, after a sleepless night, the manager drew up the troops which had been pressed into service the previous evening and issued them strong cudgels; one or two of the men from up country had brought breech-loaders with them. All teaching came to a stop in the village; the primary school was turned into the Icelanders’ headquarters, the church was converted into a medical center and stocked with first-aid equipment, and the secretary was sent up into the steeple with orders to ring the bells as soon as Pétur Pálsson gave the signal to attack, for this was a holy war. The True Icelanders’ plan was to drive the Laborers off the quay into the sea, and the attack was to be launched from three sides. But now it transpired that the Laborers had not left it to the True Icelanders alone to call out troops; they, too, had been out in all directions raising an army and had not only found good support in the nearby valleys but had also (which was more important) attracted reinforcements from other fjords, and it was quite clear when the armies appeared on the field of conflict that morning that the Home Rule movement would have their hands full in a battle. Indeed, Pétur Pálsson the manager ordered his men not to attack for the time being.

It was a mild spring day with a calm sea. Various guesses were now made about what the manager’s tactics would be next. He was known to be utterly unyielding, and if he failed to come up with a stratagem today, even though he was up against overwhelming odds, it would be for the first time. He was seen to summon two stalwart seamen. Then he had a motorboat launched, and headed down the Fjörður with all the speed the engine could produce.

A few people shouted that the manager had fled the field.

The explanation for this move spread from the True Icelanders’ camp. It so happened that the Danish warship which had been entertained at Pétur Pálsson’s party the previous year had been patrolling the nearby coast for the last few days and was still visible off the mouth of the fjord. This was the ship with which Pétur Pálsson suddenly had such urgent business. It was never possible to establish irrefutably by sworn evidence just what this business was, to be sure, but all the same the purpose of his sortie was on everyone’s lips that day and later; and though it was often denied, sometimes not without a touch of nervousness, there was no one who ever thought this story more incredible than anything else that could happen at Sviðinsvík. When it became clear that the anti-patriots were a match for Pétur Pálsson the Homelander and could easily seize control of the estate and thereby acquire a homeland for themselves, he thought it best to seek assistance from the warship and to impress upon the Danish commander the necessity of bombarding the village with his guns, or at least of lending the True Icelanders a cannon.

As things stood, it was little wonder that people did not worry very much over one poet who wandered from house to house with his corpse, his writing desk and his intended; no, the times were too serious for that. The most remarkable thing that happened that day, however, was that Ólafur Kárason of Ljósavík himself forgot that he had to bury a child. Of course, no one would suggest that much would be lost if the Danish warship were persuaded to reduce to ruins this little fjord village which unfortunately could not boast too many True and Freeborn Icelanders. “Worse things have happened,” would have been its epitaph. On the other hand it could not honestly be denied that Icelanders, whether true or untrue, had been under the Danish yoke for the last four or five centuries, a flogged, robbed and cheated people; and it was now only a few years since these true and untrue people had succeeded in throwing off this foreign yoke once and for all. But though the hearts which beat in a little village under high mountains could only in a limited sense call themselves truly Icelandic and freeborn, and were only run-of-the-mill Icelanders, if that, there was no heart so indifferent that it had not been uplifted when the Danish yoke was thrown off. And therefore things had come to such a pass today that even the poet Ólafur Kárason, who had only a run-of-the-mill Icelandic child on the bier, had had enough when True Icelanders tried to persuade Danes to fire cannons at this dead child.

He had left his corpse and his intended behind, and before he knew it he was standing as a recruit in the ranks of the anti-patriots on the quayside by the fish houses. The prospective M.P. for Sviðinsvík, Örn Úlfar, was making a speech, and the people were packed all round him. It was clear from people’s expressions that they believed what he was saying; many of them nodded at one another, others could not tear their eyes from his lips. It gave them great confidence and pleasure to have him among them, so unlike them and yet flesh of their flesh. They all felt themselves grow greater by having him for a friend, and when he was present they felt they had the measure of their enemy, and when he spoke they felt that now for the first time they understood their own thoughts, now at last they saw who they were and where they stood. Ólafur Kárason, too, was in a state of exaltation. There was a throbbing in his temples and a lump in his throat, and although this condition made it difficult for him to understand the spoken word and appreciate rational arguments as they were delivered, a certain faculty of mind asserted itself which absorbed the mood of this meeting and had a deep-rooted understanding of its soul.

Örn Úflar said that our banner symbolized the lifeblood of all mankind. He said we were the representatives of all men on earth who yearned for liberty and fought for liberty. The others, he said, the others think that your cause would be lost if I were removed from here by force. What shortsightedness! No, it is not my image, nor the image of any single individual, which will decide the outcome of this struggle. My image will soon be obliterated; it was only an illusion. But, he went on, even though I may fall, even though my image may be obliterated, there is one thing that will never fall and can never be obliterated, and that is the yearning of those in chains for liberty. It could well be that the ideal of liberty is not a particularly remarkable ideal, but it is the noblest ideal of the fettered, and as long as there is a single slave left in the world it remains valid in the same way in which the ideal of repletion remains valid as long as there is a single hungry person left in the world. He said that the history of mankind was the history of the struggle for liberty, and in that struggle nothing could be lost because mankind was by nature triumphant. He said that mankind was standing on a firmer footing than ever before. The law of life was on our side. He said that the enemies of the people could never bring any charges against us which were not first and foremost ridiculous; and even though these enemies of mankind fired cannons at us, he said that did not matter. He also said it made no difference how many individuals among us were killed on the field of battle or how often we had to retreat; our defeat could never be anything but an illusion, because we had nothing to lose and everything to gain, and our victory is an inevitable law of life, whatever the others do, and on the basis of this law the whole world rests.

The poet no longer recognized his friend as the man he had known. That somber, taciturn expression had disappeared like a discarded mask. The look in his eyes and his features had been freed and exalted to a quality which did not concern this man alone but was stronger than any one man, the quality of human harmony—impersonal, unfettered and prophetic, exalted beyond place and time. He was the hidden, undeclared thought of them all, spoken out loud, both those who happened to be there as well as those who were dead and those still unborn. Such was his secret; he awakened this murdered people from death.

Under the red banner that symbolized the lifeblood of mankind stood a young girl, fair and enraptured, with a high strong bosom and the light breeze of spring ruffling her hair; and the poet said to himself, “She is the Living Image of Liberty,” and suddenly he understood her image to the full. On his lips still burned the hot kiss she had given him in the frost, as the sun kisses the earth in spring, and he felt he might blossom forth at any moment.

But suddenly in the middle of his speech Örn Úlfar fell silent. He gasped as if he were suffocating, then bent forward and clutched at his chest with one hand and his face with the other, and sank to the ground. Something had happened to him. People crowded round him in agitation. In a fever of haste Ólafur Kárason pushed his way through the crowd, slipped through like an eel until he reached the center of the ring where Örn Úlfar was being supported by Faroese-Jens and someone else, pale as death, eyes closed, with blood at the corner of his mouth.

“Ólafur, take the banner,” said the girl, while she herself started policing the crowd, calming people down, keeping them away, sending for a blanket; and the patient was carried away by four comrades. Ólafur Kárason was left standing by the banner.

A moment later the girl came back and said, “It’s not too serious. But Faroese-Jens is nevertheless going to start up the engine of his boat and take him to hospital in Aðalfjörður. Now I’ll take the banner again.”

“May I carry it a little for you?” said the poet.

“No,” she said. “Not for me, but for those who will overcome their enemies because the law of life is on their side.”

Örn Úlfar was carried to Faroese-Jens’s boat and made comfortable in the cabin. A few stalwarts had been called in, and not a moment was wasted. But as they were about to cast off, a girl came running down to the quay. She was bareheaded and her dark-brown curls were unkempt; she had just thrown a coat over her shoulders and pulled on a pair of rubber boots over her pale silk stockings.

“I’m coming, too!” she shouted breathlessly, and waved to the men. “Don’t leave without me!”

The men paused for a moment and looked suspiciously at the manager’s daughter, and pretended not to understand what business she could have in their boat.

“Someone has to look after him,” she said.

“You least of all,” said Faroese-Jens.

She did not wait for his permission but jumped on board and disappeared down into the cabin in a flash.

“The damned girl’s mad,” said one of the deckhands.

Faroese-Jens peeped into the cabin and saw her sitting on the edge of the bunk, leaning over the patient.

“Is she out of her mind?” said the deckhand, ready to chase her out of the cabin.

“We’ll cast off,” said Faroese-Jens, and bit off a chew of tobacco and grinned as he went to the engine room. “The goddess of love has made her a hostage.”

A few quick puffs from the engine, and the boat was under way.

At the same moment, Pétur Pálsson’s motorboat ran onto the beach in front of his house. People now assumed that the secretary would shortly be given a signal to ring the bells; but things turned out differently.

The manager asked where Faroese-Jens was off to.

“He’s gone off with Örn Úlfar and your daughter,” someone said.

“Where to?” said Pétur Pálsson the manager.

“I don’t know,” said the man. “Some say they’re going to get married.”

At first the manager looked blankly at the other for a while and said “Eh?” But he was not angry; he was speechless. He walked out to the end of the little pier in front of his house and waved his hat idiotically at Faroese-Jens’s boat, and called out three times “Dísa!” loudly at first and then in a whisper. But no one paid any attention. Faroese-Jens’s boat receded rapidly into the distance. The manager stayed there at the end of the pier for a while, his legs apart, bowlegged, looking anything but a military commander, with his Júel-hat in one hand and his pince-nez in the other, and went on gazing after the boat, and the wind ruffled his thin, graying hair and flapped his coattails.

If he had gone out to the Danish warship like a lion, he stepped ashore like a lamb. It was obvious that the Danes neither wanted to shoot at Sviðinsvík nor lend the True Icelanders any cannons. Instead of climbing the church steeple and making the shivering secretary announce that the sword of the Prophet had been drawn from its scabbard, Pétur Pálsson went into his home and made a telephone call to the capital.

“Well, my dearest Júel, Grandmother’s in a bad way now.”

The station owner in the south: “Shut up!”

Pétur Pálsson the manager, in Sviðinsvík: “She’s a corpse. She’s dead and gone.”

The station owner: “Oh, go to Hell!”

Pétur Pálsson the manager: “Icelandic nationality is up against it in Sviðinsvík.”

The station owner: “Yes, you’ve always been a damned blithering idiot.”

Pétur Pálsson the manager: “They would rather shed their blood than work for the True Icelanders’ wage rates. Can you send reinforcements from the south?”

The station owner: “I’ll send men straight from here to give you such a thrashing there won’t be a bone left unbroken in your carcass.”

Pétur Pálsson: “Are we then to surrender Icelandic nationality unconditionally to the lash of the anti-patriots?”

The station owner: “If you cost me the constituency, I’ll murder you myself with my own hands.”

Pétur: “All right then, good-bye my dearest Július, and may God always be with you.”

The station owner hung up without replying.

And with that the great war over wages in Sviðinsvík was over, and the secretary, stiff with cold, was recalled from the steeple. Next day, preliminary work on the station was started at the Trades Union rates.

That evening the poet found himself alone in his resurrected house, a new man, and thought back over the events of the day while his intended slept. In two days’ time his daughter was to be buried; and as soon as the first earth had been sprinkled on the coffin, what would there be left to tie him any longer to this wretched house which had been pulled down the night before? There were hail showers blowing straight at the window; there were cracks in the panes and the hailstones were trying to get in; in between squalls the wind dropped and the clouds parted and there was clear, green sky; and he saw one star shining. He closed his eyes, but without wanting to sleep, and felt this star stepping down to him from heaven, and between sleeping and waking he heard its dancing footsteps outside, blended with the memory of the historic tumult of the day that had passed; and to a music that streamed forth in sad delight he heard deep in his breast a song being sung about the girl he called the Image of Liberty: