Independent People (42 page)

The majority of the ewes had lung-worm. Bjartur segregated several and fed them inside, but they hardly looked at the hay. In the mornings one or more would be lying unable to move or already dead. He ordered his wife to knead some rye-meal dough; some took it, others refused. The rye meal was running short, and at this rate would not last very long even though the family economized on bread. In the evenings he tried to entice the sheep home by walking backwards with a cake of dough stretched out towards
them and allowing them to nibble at it every other step, but it was extremely slow work, and it was only possible to coax them along one at a time by this means, and before he knew, they would be lying sprawling. The children did what they could to help him in this novel method of herding. Yes, there is a great difference between a sheep in the summertime, that haughty creature, pride of the mountain pastures, queen of the moors, as it struts proudly about the hillsides, snorts warily from a hillock, or peeps mockingly from the withies, and the tragic caricature that one sees in the marshes in spring. He cut the throats of more and more.

A fair number of ewes, however, were still keeping their strength remarkably well and feeding with good appetite. For these it behoved him to do everything possible, and not to spare the manured hay while there was a single blade left. And the stack diminished day by day, the cow grew thinner day by day, her yield less and less.

Her supply was by now nowhere near sufficient for the family, though they were making it their custom, by no means unusual in the spring, to eat only one meal a day. Men and animals starved. At length Firma got busy and whittled a piece of wood down to a shape with a knob at one end which she fringed with coarse yarn. The children gazed at this contrivance with wondering eyes. “What’s that supposed to be?” they asked. “It’s a whisk,” explained Finna. “Once there was a woman who was very poor. And Jesus came to her and taught her to make a whisk and whip up the milk to make it go further.” Finna put some rennet in the few drops that could still be squeezed out of the cow, then whipped it up in a pan, and in a few moments the milk had increased so much in volume that it filled the pan to the brim; no one knows how much further it might have gone had she kept on stirring. The children had whipped milk to drink and were all very impressed with Jesus.

Then one evening Finna said:

“Bjartur, you’ll have to go up-country and see if you can’t get some hay from someone.”

The crofter rarely opened his mouth at home these days, and when he did speak, it was mostly in abrupt commands like a skipper in deadly peril at sea, but this request made him jump as if pricked by the point of a knife.

“Me? Up-country? I have no debts to collect from anyone up-country.”

“But, Bjartur dear, the cow’s almost dry and it’s terrible to see her hunger. The poor creature is wasting away before my very eyes.”

“That’s no business of mine,” he replied. “I don’t intend to be in anyone’s debt up-country. We are independent people. I am beholden to no one. I am a free man living on my own land.”

“We have so much to thank poor Bukolla for,” protested his wife.

“Yes, I know that,” he said. “And we’ll probably have more to thank her for before she’s finished. Especially if she manages to kill off all that’s left of my sheep.”

“If it was only a truss or so of good manured hay,” begged Finna.

“No power between heaven and earth shall make me betray my sheep for the sake of a cow. It took me eighteen years’ work to get my stock together. I worked twelve years more to pay off the land. My sheep have made me an independent man, and I will never bow to anyone. To have people say of me that I took the beggar’s road for hay in the spring is a disgrace I will never tolerate. And as for the cow, which was foisted on me by the Bailiff and the Women’s Institute to deprive the youngsters of their appetite and filch the best of the hay from the sheep, for her I will do only one thing. And that shall be done.”

“Bjartur,” said Finna in a toneless voice, staring at him in distraction from the impassable distance that separates two human beings, “if you are going to kill Bukolla, kill me first.”

T
HE SAME
weather, no sign of improvement, ugly skies, frequent hail-showers. The whole croft stank with the putrid smell of maggoty dung, the worms were growing more virulent, the rattling cough of the ewes blended with the moaning of the cow. The maggots wriggled out of their nostrils and hung like threads from the matter about their noses; every morning one or more would be lying trodden in the muck, sometimes still faintly breathing, and he killed them, dragged them out to a turf grave, wiped his knife on the moss, swore. Twenty-five gone, all of his own rearing. He had known each one’s pedigree, had been able to recognize every one of them from the day of its birth; a picture of each was graven on his mind as sharply as the features of any close friend, both
appearance and personality. Beyond his memories of these animals he saw the passing of many seasons; he remembered them healthy and heavy-fleeced as they came down from the mountains on autumn days, proud of their frisky sons; he remembered them in the spring as they licked their lambs, new-born and helpless, in some green dingle. Each of them had had its own characteristics, its own temperament. He remembered minutely how each one’s horns had been, tufted on one, grey-spotted on another, yellow-streaked on a third; one was as timid and as shrinking as the shyest maiden, another would spring impudently on to the walls or swim out into impassable rivers, a third liked to slink about in the gullies—and he had had to cut their throats. The worms had writhed out of their bleeding trunks, their lungs had been as riddled as rotten carrion. Hringja, Skella, Skessa, and the others—these creatures had been the mainspring of his existence and its strongest support. Twenty-five. Which will be next?

Heavy snow, not a chance of letting the sheep out to graze today, three ewes doomed to death this morning, Kupa, Laufa, Snura. Not a word spoken in the croft; the last of the hay broached; the cow had refused to stand on her feet. As day advanced, the intervals between showers grew shorter and shorter till once more a blizzard was raging. There was darkness on the little window, and the smoke blew down the chimney to add its discomfort to the stink of polluted dung from below; it was almost impossible to breathe.

And elsewhere in the world there was an orchard and a palace.

Then had the world quite forgotten this little croft in the valley? Had it, then, abandoned it altogether with its anxious hearts, its heroism unchronicled, unrecorded in books? No; oh no. There were visitors at the door, the snorting of horses in the storm, the champing of bits, strange voices—sudden expansion of mind from its mute, congested fear, unexpected pleasure for man and dog.

Through the hatchway there emerged a snow-beaten girl whose generous curves were accentuated by her close-cut riding-breeches; whose grey-blue eyes were complacent, and comely cheek ruddy with the wind. She dusted the snow from her clothes down through the opening, showed her healthy teeth in laughter, and swore here and there, hahaha. Her riding-whip gleamed expensively in these surroundings where not a single article would have fetched more than a dime, Audur Jonsdottir of Myri. Her escort, one of the Bailiffs men, followed her up into the loft. He
was taking her down to Fjord to catch the mail-steamer south tomorrow, to Reykjavik and a happier clime.

“Dear little lady, how she spreads amidships!” cried Bjartur, clapping her courteously on the buttocks. “Still fed on the fat of the land, I see. Make her coffee good and strong and don’t spare the sugar. She wasn’t reared on dish-wash, bless the darling little head that hardly reached my middle when I married the first
time.”

Lining up shoulder to shoulder on the floor, the children stared at her in admiration, greatly impressed by her size, her self-confidence, the length of the journey she was undertaking, and the expert manner of her swearing; and presently she had finished dusting off the snow and was standing there like some ripe, fertile plant that bows beneath the weight of its newly opened flowers, soon to seed.

No, to set out across the heath in this weather was unthinkable, a blizzard like this would be the end of any woman; she would have to stay here until it cleared up. She looked around for a seat, but the coverlets on all the beds were equally uninviting. Finally she was persuaded to perch on the foot-board of the parents’ bed. She didn’t want to trouble them at all, hoped the weather would clear before evening, asked politely about the sheep.

“There was somebody or other afoot here at the end of February who ear-marked a sheep for me. But that will be nothing to what you have to report from up your way, I imagine.”

Yes, there was gloomy news from up-country, confirmed the escort, gloomy news. Olafur of Yztadale had lost forty or so in spite of all his science, and Einar of Undirhlith over thirty, though possibly they would find greener pastures in the next world. Thorir of Gilteig wouldn’t even say how many he had lost now that his youngest daughter also had gone and given birth to a bastard (the Bailiff’s daughter: “Why don’t they marry the fellows decently?”); but Bjartur said that as you sowed so must you reap, and laughed. “It’s all the cows’ fault,” he said. “They end up by eating a man’s soul out of him, the bloody parasites; their bellies are as bottomless as the Mediterranean.” Things were not too bad with the Fell King, however, continued the Bailiff’s man, and at Myri they were giving them dough, but some of them were very listless, as so often in the spring, and they had had to cut an occasional throat.

Quite, Bjartur knew all about it; it was an old custom at
Myri. One black pudding more or less at slaughter-time never had made much difference to the Bailiff as long as his saddle-horses were well fed.

The blizzard refused to abate and the girl grew restless. Again and again she went downstairs to look outside; the snow blew straight in through the door, straight into her face; blizzards are never so biting as in the spring. She cursed for some time, then stopped cursing and grew thoughtful, then had a fit of hysterics, which culminated in her losing all control of herself. “My brother Ingolfur’s expecting me tonight,” she cried. “He’s certain to think I’ve been lost in the hills. Heavens, if I miss that ship!”

“Oh, its bound to clear up tonight.”

“Merciful heavens, if I miss that ship!”

“It’s letting up a bit now.”

“God Almighty help me if I miss that ship.”

“Oh, there’ll be another ship.”

“But if I miss this ship!”

“Reykjavik will still be there though you miss one ship and catch the next.”

“Yes, but I must go with this ship,” she insisted. “Even if I do die in the hills. I must get to Reykjavik on Saturday.”

What was all the hurry?

No answer; despair. She complained that she was on the point of suffocating, refused to eat or drink. But she stayed the night in
spite
of all the stench; there was nowhere else to go. She did not undress, but lay down on a couple of boxes after wrapping herself in one of her own horsecloths. She would not hear of lying in bed. Through the night she could be heard sighing and groaning; time and time again she crept down the ladder in the darkness and out. Did she want a pot? inquired Bjartur. No, she had only been looking at the weather. And being sick. She would have to reach Reykjavik by Saturday.

There was little sleep for anyone on the croft that night. What was she after in Reykjavik? Who could it be she was going to meet? Had not Asta Sollilja a high brow and full-curved eyebrows as well as she? Asta Sollilja was no longer slim either, she also was a young girl full of longing and despair. His house stood by itself in a wood, not with a girl in front of it, as on mother’s cake-dish, but by itself in a wood, as on the calendar that fell downstairs the year before last and was trodden into the muck under the sheep’s hoofs. She had had him first, he had been a guest on their land, not hers. Dear God, what dreams she had dreamed all winter
through and into the red death of the spring; she too was lying awake tonight and wishing just as passionately as ever before, more passionately than ever before. Some are left sitting behind in the death of spring, when others are on their way south.

Asta Sollilja was awakened early next morning after a short doze by the sound of clear joyful laughter; the storm was over and the Bailiff’s daughter happy and wolfing down her sandwiches with plenty of time to catch the ship. Her escort, it was true, maintained that the outlook was none too good, but the Bailiff’s daughter laughed and asked what the hell that mattered, and having recovered her powers of swearing, went out to her horses, and shouted up to her escort at frequent intervals: “Oh, come on there, isn’t it time we were going?” But he happened to be busy upstairs drinking coffee with the family. “What a damnable row she makes!” he said.

“She’s not long of one temper, bless her.”

“True,” agreed the guide, noisily swilling his coffee. “These womenfolk are all on edge when they’re getting married.”

“Am I wrong, or is she fattening in that direction?” asked Bjartur.

“It doesn’t take much of an eye to see that.”

“Someone or other has passed that way, I suppose?” said Bjartur.

“Huh, do you think they try their rods out only on your land, these co-operative heroes from the south?”

“Oh-ho, so he was one of that gang, too, the swine,” said the crofter. “I might have known.”

But in spite of that he showed his visitors as far as the road.

The wind was raw, probably more snow in the offing. To hell with it all. “Isn’t it time those lazy little devils were out of bed yet?” He took down two butcher’s knives in a piece of sacking, unwrapped them and laid them on the bed at his side, took a whetstone from the shelf, spat; the noise of whetting clawed through living and dead.

“Helgi, up with you, boy. I want you.”

The lad got sullenly out of bed, pulled on his trousers, began searching for the rest of his things. Bjartur went on whetting. The other children peeped out from under the bedclothes. He kept on whetting for a while longer, then, plucking a hair from his head, tested the edge. Next he took a rusty screwdriver from the lumber-box, wiped it on his trouser-leg, and sharpened it.