6
Oh, how bitter it was to be young and full of yearning for God and all that was good, to know that God’s image was revealed all around you, and yet never to have time to enjoy it—to have to endure, instead, constant tyranny and distress and frightful ailments in the chest, back, stomach, and head! While he was in this darkness of despair of human life, he learned that his mother had recently established herself as a seamstress in Aðalfjörður; and in some people’s eyes it was regarded as a sign of no little arrogance for an uneducated woman to set herself up as a seamstress in the largest market town in the province, when other people had to be content with earning a living in the usual way. Hitherto it had never been thought to bring good fortune to have ideas above one’s station.
In his heart the boy had often felt very bitter toward his mother for having sent him away in a sack in the middle of winter, to be brought up among strangers; indeed he had heard, more than ten years after he had been parted from her, that he had cried so hard that everyone thought he was going to burst; a northeasterly gale had been blowing. How could his mother have brought herself to send him away in a northeasterly gale, considering how much he must have loved her! A long, long time afterwards, when he began to think about it, he had vowed in revenge never to go back to her, whatever distress he might be in. But later, when he had once spent an entire day helping the brothers cut roofing-turf, he had been so sick with terror of the big, sharp turf-cutters they were wielding that he resolved to go back to her, unconditionally. He forgot that his mother had sent him away and imagined to himself that she lived in a timbered house with a door on one side and a window on each side of the door, and a high roof, and a chimney. He could even see the room, and in it a divan, yes, and window curtains just as in the pastor’s house, and a picture on the wall, what is more, and most certainly a calendar. And he was with her.
He had come across mountains and deserts. She welcomed him with open arms, smiling, and embraced him hard and wept because she had sent him away in a sack in winter, and said that he was to stay with her forever. He forgave her, and wept. It was so lovely to be with her again. Yes, in the darkness as he was falling asleep, the way to her was smooth and easy to find, and the distance was hardly more than a stone’s throw. But when he woke up in the morning and went outside, the air was gray and dank as usual, bereft of any enchantment or stimulation; all distances had suddenly become real once again; the mountain had sheer cliffs and sharp ridges. Other mountains rose on either side of the fjord. The way to his mother lay over many mountains, high moorlands, deep dales, and skerried fjords.
In the summer the brothers quarreled incessantly about the running of the farm, although no one apart from themselves could see any essential difference between their methods. But their greatest bone of contention was over the right to play around with Kristjána before they took a nap after the midday meal in the fields. The girl was quite willing to resolve this stubborn problem by letting each of them have one of her thighs on which to rest his head during the midday break. But neither of them would accept this simple solution.
As summer declined, the evenings began to darken and the birds fell silent; and that secret promise which characterizes the sky of early summer, those light, white clouds which sometimes piled up over the blue mountaintops in untidy heaps, soft and fresh as newly curdled milk—where were they now? The rain clouds of late summer spread over the whole sky, gray and heavy. The time for bringing the sheep down from the mountains was approaching, and there was still a lot of hay lying out in the meadows. Then came a dry spell, but it lasted only for two days; on the evening of the second day the storm clouds started gathering, and the rain was imminent again. Gather the hay! Gather the hay! The brothers were going berserk. On such evenings, people who work in the hayfields are like men possessed, striving to bring in the hay before it is too late. Dusk was beginning to fall.
Somehow or other it had been agreed that Jónas should truss hay with the hired hand, and Júst with Kristjána. But as the evening grew darker, the elder brother, Jónas, called out to Ólafur Kárason to go over to where Júst and Kristjána were working and help them with the rakings.
The younger brother heard this order from a distance, but instead of answering his brother directly, he went over to the boy and asked his dear little friend to go up the hill for him and fetch some horses, so that the hay could be taken home before it started to rain.
The boy stood there in the meadow with his masters, one on either side of him; the one told him to stay, the other told him to go, with rain threatening and not a moment to be wasted.
“You’ll stay down here in the meadow, wretch,” said Jónas.
“You’ll go up the hill, friend,” said Júst.
Kristjána came closer, and laughed.
Now, Jónas was certainly the older and stronger of the two, and it had been proved that when it came to a fight in earnest he could get the better of his younger brother; so according to the rule of force, it was better to obey Jónas. But on the other hand, Júst was considered the cleverer of the two, and for that reason it was difficult to predict what measures he might resort to if he were worsted; he could say “My friend” with a smile, and cut your throat. If you valued your life at all, it was safer to obey Júst, even though he were in the wrong.
“Up the hill, my friend,” said Júst sweetly, and came a step closer to the boy.
“You’ll stay down here!” bellowed Jónas, and he, too, came a step closer.
“Do as I tell you,” whispered Júst.
“Do as I tell you!” roared Jónas.
It had now reached the point where young Kristjána was beginning to enjoy herself; she clapped her hands and shrieked. The hired hands, too, looked over their shoulders for a moment, even though it was now absolutely vital to carry on working. In no time at all the brothers’ struggle for the boy’s soul had reached the stage where each felt his honor was at stake.
Even though the boy had felt like running away only a moment ago, he now could not move a muscle or a limb and stayed where he was. He stood stock-still. But though he stood still, he was not doing so to disobey Júst’s orders or to obey Jónas’s command; he stood still because the terror in his heart was stronger than all other forces, internal or external. He was paralyzed. It was as if the blood had congealed in his veins. He felt as if a whole eternity had passed, even though the whole business, from beginning to end, had lasted for no more than a few seconds. He could never remember clearly what actually happened—one never tries to recall such moments afterwards. He only saw the fists being raised.
7
Some hideous memories and still more hideous forebodings drifted through his consciousness as he came round. It was nighttime, and an oil lamp glimmered faintly; rain drummed against the window. He heard himself groaning as if it were a stranger far away. Then the girl bent over him, and suddenly he realized what it was she smelled of—it was verdigris. But when she tried to raise him up and give him a drink of cold water, he began to see terrible faces in front of him: savage dogs, bloodshot eyes, fangs. They were going to tear him to pieces and kill him. Then they tore him to pieces and killed him.
He came round like that, time and again, and lost consciousness at once. At last he managed to remember who he was and where he was: the farm was Fótur-undir-Fótarfæti, the loft was such-and-such a size, Magnína was Magnína, and so on. In short, this was the world. But unfortunately he had once again forgotten what it was she smelled of.
If the pains in his head ever happened to ease for a spell, it was only to give place to other ailments in his body—a stitch in his side, gripes, pains in the back; he never had a moment of well-being. But the womenfolk on the whole did their best for him, and Magnína once even gave him hot scones. The two men in command, Jónas and Júst, left him in peace for most of the time, because he would be dying soon anyway. Instead of having to toil for eighteen hours a day, he now lay brooding over the cross he had to bear. Whenever the pains gave him any respite, he tried to compose a poem or some verses, mostly of a religious nature, but sometimes in the style of the old ditties that everyone knew. Otherwise he just lay there, the very embodiment of human helplessness, and stared up at the sloping ceiling.
But as the autumn passed, people’s respect for his afflictions began to dwindle; their Christian attitude gradually gave way to talk of “the parish” in his presence. He was given to understand that the parish council at Sviðinsvík had been informed that he had taken to his bed and that they would have to start paying maintenance for him.
During those dreary autumn days when the only prospect facing the crossbearer was to be on the parish for life, he found consolation in remembering Guðrún of Grænhóll in the green glory of spring, standing like a vision beside a broad, calm river, with the top button of her cardigan undone; and he was determined to compose a poem about her so that the unborn generations should never forget her. He searched for a model in all the poetry he knew, and tried out various different verse forms, but thought her too exalted for any of them, either psalms or ballads. In the end he came to the conclusion that she belonged in folktales; and when he at last discovered this, he was able to compose something in a style worthy of her, and he scrawled his poem on a scrap of paper that evening.
An evening rare beyond compare,
The river glistened;
And standing there a maiden fair,
Her dress at the top unfastened.
Let mine be thine, and live with me forever;
Mankind’s sorrows will afflict thee never.
Her fresh young gaze and winsome ways
Charmed each meeting;
With kindly phrase to him she pays
A tender greeting.
Let mine be thine, and live with me forever;
Mankind’s sorrows shall afflict thee never.
Her shining eyes and fond replies
Will leave him never,
Until he dies and buried lies
Alone forever.
Let mine be thine, and live with me forever;
Mankind’s sorrows shall afflict thee never.
Next day he could not find the poem anywhere, even though he was sure he had put it under his pillow the night before. But when the younger members of the family were eating their breakfast in the loft, through the bedclothes he sensed from their conversation that some grave misfortune had befallen the house.
“Yes, they’re a charming lot, these wretches who lie groaning in their beds at the expense of impoverished far-off parishes. And I’d be extremely interested to learn who the wench was in this valley who’s supposed to have unbuttoned her dress in front of him.”
“If you ask me, Jónas, I think that all smut and lecherous talk is beneath me and therefore no concern of mine,” said Magnína. “I think the most sensible thing to do in a case like this is to heed the old saying that ‘pauper’s talk means nothing.’ ”
“Her dress unfastened at the top! I’ve never heard such filthy talk in a poem about an innocent woman in all my born days,” said the elder brother. “All I can say is that it’s a mercy her clothes weren’t unfastened lower down as well, whoever she was!”
“If you’re going to carry on talking like that over this God-given food, I’m going down to the kitchen to call my mother,” said Magnína.
“Well, as far as I’m concerned, and I’m the oldest and most experienced man in the family, I say that if there’s going to be any more of this open obscenity here in this house, then it’s going to be me who’s in charge of the birch from now on. I don’t care what anyone else says.”
The younger brother, Júst, who had taken no part in this conversation so far, now had this to say:
“Let me tell you a little story which I know you will think very peculiar, even though it’s absolutely true. I got it from a reliable man from the west who was my shipmate last winter, and he was told it by an old woman who remembered very clearly when it happened. There was once a parish pauper at Saeból, in Aðalvík, and would you believe it—he, too, began to use obscene and blasphemous talk openly in the house that gave him board and lodging. He started composing doggerel of a kind that even if I knew it by heart it would never even occur to me to let it soil my mouth. And what ploy do you imagine the people of Saeból thought up to get rid of him? They sold our little friend for bait to a foreign fishing-smack, to tell you the honest truth. And the fishermen tied our little friend alive to the mast and hacked tiny little bits off him as required. No, there was certainly no question of killing people on that boat! But it’s said that for six days his screams carried all the way to land while they were fishing on the offshore bank there; on the seventh day, however, no more was heard, and it’s said that they had caught enough fish and put out to sea. It was thought in the west that the last thing they cut from him was his heart. Yes, that’s how they dealt with their parish paupers in the western fjords if they didn’t behave themselves properly!”
The patient lay screaming the whole afternoon, and Magnína felt obliged to sit beside him and give him cold water to drink after her brothers had gone out; his sufferings so affected her that she could not give full vent to the loathing and disgust at his obscene doggerel that shocked and bruised all her finer sensibilities.
“I can’t see anything for it but to write a description of your illness and send it to the doctor,” she said that evening.
“Couldn’t that be a bit dangerous?” he asked between groans.
“Dangerous?” she said. “To get oneself cured? What a ridiculous idea!”
“I mean, if the cure should be too quick,” he said.
“Too quick?”
“Yes, and cause a relapse. It’s bound to take a long, long time for someone in my wretched state of health to get fully cured.”
But a few days later she was sitting in the loft, and the boy was crying out with pain again. He groaned loud and long, but she was getting used to it now and could not be bothered doing anything about it. Finally he said, “Yes, I think I’ll just have to ask you to write out a description of the illness, as you were suggesting.”
But Magnína was not quite so enthusiastic about writing anything now. It was not until several days later that she brought herself to it and came up with pen and paper. She sat down at the window and stared vacantly out into the blue, tilted her head sideways in resignation, and heaved a deep sigh. She appeared to be in real distress over it, and he almost felt a little sorry for her.
“I simply don’t know what to write,” she said.
“Just write that I’m ill,” he said.
“It’s not so easy to write that sort of thing,” she said, and pondered again for a long time. “Where do you feel it?”
“In my whole body,” he said, “but especially in the head, chest, back, and belly. You can safely say that I’m not too bad in the arms and legs. But you’d better say that the worst pains are in the head, and that it’s as if something in my head were broken.”
“How do you think I can write when you speak so quickly? And if you’re going to suggest that someone in our house, where everyone’s so good to you, has broken your skull, then I might as well tell you that it’s no part of our job to write out a description of that kind.”
“No, I had no intention of doing that, Magnína. How can you believe anything so wicked of me? Here in this house where everyone’s so good to me! I just meant that my head feels as if my brain had begun to grow out into one ear. But if you don’t want any mention of the head, we can just take the chest and those parts.”
“I could always mention the head, I suppose,” she said drily, “but I don’t want to make all that much of it. I can say that the brain has started to grow out into the ear at one place, because that’s like anything else which comes from inside and therefore can’t give rise to any misunderstanding. But even so I think it would be best for all concerned if we confine ourselves to the chest.”
“Yes, you can feel for yourself how my breastbone is sticking out,” he said.
She felt his chest and noticed at once that the breastbone was sticking out a lot.
“In fact it feels as if there must be a cyst under the breastbone,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if everything there has congealed into a malignant tumor—cyst, liver, lungs, and pericardium. At any rate the cyst’s in a dreadful place. But as far as the lungs themselves are concerned, it’s no exaggeration to say that one can hear the rattling of the tubercles from far away.”
When the chest ailments had been recorded as accurately as possible, it was the turn of the belly complaints; that was another long and complicated story.
The preparation of the whole catalogue took the best part of the day; then it was sent to the doctor at Sviðinsvík at the first opportunity, with a request to send medicine as soon as possible.
The doctor at Sviðinsvík sent back word that for illnesses of this kind there were no effective medicines in the accepted sense of the word. He said that to cure illnesses of this kind there was nothing for it but to consume a whole pharmacopoeia costing up to two thousand krónur—and who could afford that in these difficult times? The doctor said he had never heard of anyone, man or woman, as ill as this boy was. If he had to give his honest opinion, he reckoned there was no hope for him at all; more than anything else, he would like to do an autopsy on him, he said.