BOOK FOUR
THE BEAUTY OF THE HEAVENS
1
Where the glacier meets the sky, the land ceases to be earthly, and the earth becomes one with the heavens; no sorrows live there any more, and therefore joy is not necessary; beauty alone reigns there, beyond all demands.
While people in the remote bay were toiling to lay in their winter supplies, and the wife, Jarþúður Jónsdóttir, was working at the haymaking for the bailiff in Greater Bervík, the husband was lying on the grassy slope in front of Little Bervík, a landless, deserted hut, contemplating this remarkable meeting of land and sky where heaven and earth at last understood one another to the full.
“It’s fine weather today,” said the wife when the sun shone from a clear sky at breakfast time. “You should go and rake hay with the Bervík folk to make yourself useful.”
“Please leave me alone,” he said imploringly.
He drank the milk she had brought him the night before and gave her back the empty bottle, went out into the aroma of summer, and lay down on the grass. A bluebottle was already up and buzzing at the wall of the house, there was still an echo of nesting time in the chirping of the birds, the dandelion was not yet in bloom.
It was best to forget one’s own world, both the world one had to endure and the world one longed for, the world one had lost and the world one might perhaps achieve, forget one’s own life in the face of the beauty where mortality ends and eternity takes over: perfection, beauty as the supreme arbiter. No day which gave a clear view of the glacier could ever become commonplace; as long as the paths of heaven were open, each day was a festival, peaceful and yet without any connection with death, beyond poetry and painting. Other people’s animals came and grazed on the slope around the poet.
Some other day he got to his feet and wandered off like a sleep-walker. The river was called Berá, or Bergá; it was clear spring water with no trace of clay although its source was at the roots of the glacier. In the upper reaches it ran through ravines, but lower down it flowed over sandbanks. The poet walked upstream toward the mountain, the valley narrowed, the ravines deepened, the current grew stronger, a waterfall. He sat down on the brink of the ravine and listened to the purl of the water in the narrows blended with the shrill, echoing cries of a pair of merlins which flew in circles over the ravine, where they had their nest. There were copses in the hollows, small bushes growing on the ledges in the ravine, rosewort and ferns in the cracks. From here one could see out over Bervík parish, this small, remote community with its infertile lowlands, its sandy harborless bay sheltered on two sides by almost-barren mountains; their nearest trading post lay in another district, on the other side of a mountain pass.
The poet made his way farther up alongside the gorge, towards the glacier. And suddenly there was a little valley with yellow-green mossy bogs along the banks of the river and small, marshy patches below wooded hillsides, and here at the foot of the forest slope he suddenly came upon a tiny farm in a homefield facing the sun. There was an age-old man scything the homefield and a girl, with a head-scarf pulled down to her nose, was raking behind him. On the mown grass lay the pet lamb and the farm dog. When the poet approached, the dog began to bark, but the lamb stood up and stretched itself and tossed its head and wagged its tail. On the doorstep sat a little boy, who started to cry and called out to his mother.
“Who is the man?” asked the farmer, and began to whet his scythe.
“My name is Ólafur Kárason of Ljósavík.”
“And where would he be going?” said the old man.
“I don’t know,” said the poet. “I didn’t know there was a farm here.”
“Oh, it’s a farm only in name,” said the old man. “You might be a stranger in these parts?”
“I’m the funny man who got married the other day and moved into the house at Little Bervík,” said the poet. “Most people think I’m crazy. There’s been some talk of letting me give the children religious instruction this winter. You must have heard of me.”
“Nothing but good,” said the farmer. “Helga dear, show the man inside and ask mother to make some coffee.”
The daughter was somewhat taciturn, with a rather simple expression and eyes like a scared animal; it was hard to guess which of them was the more hostile to the visitor—the girl or her son on the doorstep.
“The summer mornings are nowhere as bright or long as in this nook of the glacier,” replied the old woman, when the poet asked politely about their health. “We can feel the fragrance of the forest in our sleep.”
The couple’s other daughter was paralyzed. She lay bedridden under the window, silent, and was called the Invalid, and had a little mirror which was hanging from a nail on the bedpost.
“Our daughter lost the use of her limbs when she was fifteen years old,” said the old woman. “But God has given her patience, and patience is stronger than might. The mirror is hung in such a way that she can see the glacier in it. She sometimes watches the glacier all day in the mirror. The glacier is her life.”
“Forgive me, old woman, if I make an observation. Isn’t it the beauty of the skies that is her life?” said Ólafur Kárason.
“I’m told you are a poet,” said the old woman. “How lovely it is to be a poet.”
“Tell the little boy that he has no need to be afraid, my dear,” said the poet. “I am a child myself, even more of a child than he is. I am still in swaddling clothes.”
“Little one,” said the old woman, “we only need to look into the man’s eyes to see that he is a child like us.”
After the coffee he asked the old woman for permission to lie outside on the garden wall and look up at the sky.
The glacier was no more than a few feet above the top of the wooded slope; its presence was the image of pure divinity, lovely but merciless. The poet felt that those who lived in the presence of such a magic whiteness must be preternatural; this was the realm of mythology.
The old man mowed his field until evening. He neither swung the scythe nor disturbed the grass, but did everything smoothly and effortlessly, with barely perceptible movements. He let the sharp edge of the scythe do all the work; he cut the grass at the roots without felling it; his working methods were those of Nature herself. The old woman came out with her rake; the little boy fell asleep on the mown grass beside the dog and the lamb. The late-afternoon work went on under the still glacier. Then the day was over. At suppertime the poet still lay on the garden wall. They said it would not be much but invited him to have supper with them.
The daughter had gone to bring home the cows, the old woman put on the porridge, the farmer seated himself on his bed, took out his clasp knife, and began to whittle some brazilwood for rake teeth, taking care not to let the shavings spill from his palm to the floor. They did not say much unless spoken to, but dealt with all questions most conscientiously and always spoke as one. When the farmer was asked how long he had been farming there, he looked at his wife and said, “Mother, how many years has it been?”
“We’ve been crofting here for fully forty years, Father,” said the woman.
Then the farmer answered the visitor and said, “Oh, forty years we’ve been scratching a living here.”
The visitor asked if they had had many children, and the farmer looked at his wife as if he expected her to answer the question direct.
“It was sixteen children we had, Father,” said the woman.
“Yes, sixteen were the children we had,” said the farmer.
The children had all scattered to the four winds long ago, of course, apart from these two girls, the one paralyzed physically, the other morally. Half of them had died in childhood; some of the sons had been lost at sea; some had settled down as farmers in far-off places. The most the old couple had managed was two cows and twenty sheep.
“Have you always loved one another?” asked the poet.
The farmer stopped whittling for a moment and looked at his wife in some embarrassment.
“We have always loved God,” said the woman.
It was as if the poet awoke from a dream; he looked up in astonishment and asked, “God? What god?”
“We have always believed in the one true God,” said the woman.
“Yes, the one God we have believed in,” said the farmer.
They looked upon their lives as a living example of how God loves people and is good to them. The poet said Thank you and prepared to take his leave.
“Patient girl,” he said, “if your mirror should ever break, will you allow me to give you a new one?”
“Poor dear man,” said the old couple, and the little boy was no longer frightened but brought his toys—sheep’s leg-bones and shells—and laid them at the visitor’s feet in farewell. In the faces of these people was the image of the long, bright summer mornings with the fragrance of the woods through their sleep. Not only did they have souls, but so did the things around them. Although everything was on its last legs—the little cottage, the farm implements, the household utensils—every object was in its place, everything clean and polished. It was not thanks to the cohesion of the material that the articles here did not fall apart. What would happen to this wooden bucket if they stopped milking into it morning and night? It would fall apart. The cottage would cave in the day they stopped walking in and out, turning the door handle gently, and with careful, kindly steps on the floorboards. It was unknown here to treat things as if they did not matter. Even the ladle in the pot was an important, independent individual with duties and rights; nothing seemed ever to have been done here haphazardly or casually. Every humblest task was carried out with a rare respect for Creation as a whole, with affection, as if each task had never been done before and would never be done again.
He threaded his way down the sheep paths alongside the ravine; in some places they were extraordinarily close to the edge. The fragrance of the grass and the heather blended amiably with the smell of the path. He met the farmer’s cows, grunting with repletion, their udders bulging, curiosity shining from their eyes, ears and noses, but not unmixed with the disdain of the sated. He stepped politely off the path so that they would not have to inconvenience themselves for him.
The girl was sitting on a jutting rock, staring down into the ravine. She had taken off her head scarf, the curls of her auburn hair were bleached by the sun, she had red cheeks and a not-very-intelligent face, and had lost her happiness all summer. She pretended not to see the man approaching. The lamb lay innocently at her side with its head held high, chewing the cud with rapid jaws, while at the other side lay fidelity itself, the old farm dog, and it could not be bothered barking at the same man twice in one day. The merlin in the ravine was still flying round in circles, calling, and its cries went on echoing from the cliffs.
He raised his cap and said Good-evening, but she scarcely acknowledged his greeting.
“Don’t look down into the ravine for too long, little girl,” said the poet. “There’s a bird of ill omen in that ravine. But in the glacier there lives a divine nature; you should look at the glacier instead.”
She made a reply, but glanced for a moment at the glacier to see whether the man was speaking the truth. Then she looked down into the ravine again. It could not have been because of wantonness that such a girl had had a baby; on the contrary, it must have been from an excess of modesty.
“Perhaps you don’t dare to talk to me because you think I’m crazy?” he asked.
She looked at him, and an attempt to answer flickered in her eyes; then she shook her head and gave up trying to say it.
“I’m one of these madmen who do no one any harm,” he said. “I’m in search of peace. That’s all.”
This time there came a suggestion of warmth into her eyes, like a warning of tears to come. But she did not know how to weep, either. She looked down into the ravine.
“The day comes when one forgets those one has loved,” he said. “On that day one can die in peace. The deepest wounds heal so that you’d hardly notice.”
Then the girl said, “It’s no use talking poetically to me; I don’t understand what you say. And there’s nothing wrong with me.”
“There’s no point in being so formal with me,” he said. “I’m neither a major poet nor a national poet, not even a district poet, and I’ve never had anything published. If I’m a poet, I’m my own private poet. Apart from that, I’m just a person near a glacier, like you.”
“I don’t understand you,” said the girl. “Don’t talk to me.”
“But what if I have business with you?” he said.
“Business? With me? That’s impossible.”
“A message.”
“A message? For me? From whom?”
“From a man,” he said. “A man you knew not so long ago.”
“Leave me alone; you’re crazy,” she said.
“He asked me to remind you that whenever people’s lives appear to be harmony itself—perfect love, an ideal family, comfortable circumstances—life isn’t real, either, and certainly only half a life. A whole heart—half a life. He asked me to tell you that life is governed by opposites and is always in conflict with itself, and that’s why it is life. To have lost what one loved most is perhaps the only real life. At least, anyone who doesn’t understand that, doesn’t know what it is to live; doesn’t know how to live and, what’s worse, doesn’t know how to die. That’s what your friend asked me to pass on to you.”
“As if he’d talk nonsense like that!” said the girl. “He never talks nonsense.”
“Yes,” said the poet. “A lot of people think he’s become a bit funny of late. But I think, on the other hand, that he’s become more experienced and mature than he was.”
The girl forgot her shyness for a moment and now looked him full in the face; the lamb and the dog had also raised their heads sternly and were looking in the same direction as she. He felt as if he were standing before three judges.
“Are you lying to me? Yes, you’re lying to me,” said the girl.
“No,” he said, looking as sincere as he could. “I call all good spirits to witness that I’m telling the truth.”
“Then didn’t he give you any other message for me?” she asked wide-eyed, from the depths of her heart.