The Fish Can Sing (11 page)

Before I end my description of Runólfur Jónsson’s qualities, I must not forget the feat that is the most likely to immortalize his name in history: namely, that this worthy night-companion and foster-brother of mine was one of the first men to be run over by a motor car; he was then almost eighty years old. This came about because, when he was drinking, he invariably walked in the middle of the road, waving a bottle, singing, holding forth and laughing, all at the same time; and he was always followed by a motley collection of drinking companions, idlers, stray dogs, ponies, and cyclists (who were then just beginning to appear, and were Danish). He paid no more attention to motor-cars than to any other tin-cans rolling along the gutter.

So if by some ill chance it should happen that Runólfur Jónsson, that descendant of Chief Justices, should one fine day vanish from this book and that I forget to mark the moment of his disappearance, it is because my foster-brother has been run over by the first motor-car that ever came to Iceland.

Visitors to Brekkukot sometimes talked about “the authorities” and “the gentry”. But there was not much come and go, exactly, between Brekkukot and the doors of the authorities. “The authorities” – for long enough I had no idea what kind of foreign company this was. It is strange to have lived in the selfsame capital in which the authorities of the country sat (for that’s what all authorities did – they
sat
), and yet not know with any certainty
more about them than about the angels that flew upright with a garland of flowers in our picture. But when a man in a frock-coat with a velvet collar, a half-keg, a come-to-Jesus collar and lorgnettes came over to grandfather’s wheelbarrow on a bright summer’s day and raised his hat and asked with dignity and courtesy, “Did you have a good catch this morning, Björn?” while my grandfather laid a medium-sized cod on the scales for him and the man paid with a newly minted silver coin, and was given wire through the cod’s head while others had to make do with sticking a forefinger through its gills, and then raised his hat again, and held the fish at arm’s length as he walked away – that man was one of the authorities. But it happened more often that my grandfather would wheel his barrow to the kitchen doors of the authorities’ houses and sell the fish to the maid. I myself, on the other hand, had no dealings with the authorities until I had grown important enough to enter their presence on New Year’s Day with the late Captain Hogensen.

I am not actually going to describe all the New Year’s Day expeditions I made to the authorities with Captain Hogensen in my childhood days, but only to touch lightly upon the first one we made, for it was somewhat the same as all the later expeditions on the same errand, and had the added interest of novelty.

I must have been about six when I was first appointed to guide Captain Hogensen into the presence of these gentlemen to wish them a good New Year. I want to make it clear that this expedition to the authorities was not memorable to me because of any revelation of the world’s glory that occurred during the visit; rather, I am describing it because I believe it added an unexpected tone to the tale I am now telling.

I take up the story at the point when Captain Hogensen engaged a good man said to be skilled in such crafts to trim his hair and then shave the point of his chin to make him resemble King Kristian IX of Denmark as closely as possible. The Captain woke up about seven o’clock on New Year’s Day, rose from his bed and began to dress himself, slowly and carefully, in the darkness the Saviour had bestowed on him, which neither candlelight, nor oil-lamp, nor the sunrise itself, nor any illumination
other than the light of a dauntless heart, could conquer. Even though he was as purblind as one could reasonably expect of anyone, he invariably polished up the gilt buttons of his finery himself; and if these buttons were not genuine gold, then I have never seen it. By the time others were coming downstairs on New Year’s morning, the Captain was sitting on the edge of his bed resplendent in his blue naval uniform with the gilt buttons, and waiting. The peak of his cap gleamed like a mirror. He would scarcely believe it when he was told that the grey of dawn was not yet showing at the window, and he asked his young attendant to stay beside him and tell him honestly whenever it was light enough for someone with sight to find his way into town.

When I was six, and indeed for some time afterwards, I was, like the eminent Candide, quite certain that the world we live in is best at home, and I therefore had no enthusiasm for anything beyond the turnstile-gate at Brekkukot; and as is common among primitive people, higher civilization was hardly likely to impress me.

“Well, well, may God give you all a good day and a blessed and prosperous New Year,” said Captain Hogensen to the maid at the Minister’s house when we went inside. “The Royal Naval Officer Jón Hogensen is here to pay his respects to the Minister.”

The maid indicated a certain place in the vestibule where we could stand, but said that the public rooms were still being cleaned after the party the previous night and that the government officials were expected to present themselves just before noon, “but I can always try, I suppose, to tell the Minister that you are here, my dear.”

When we had been waiting for a while in the vestibule, rather solemnly and in absolute silence, a man in shirt-sleeves and a fork-beard suddenly arrived, with his braces dangling behind him like twin tails. He was smoking a cigar.

“Well, well,” he said, “a very good day to you, Hogensen, old chap, and welcome, we had better say, even though there is no more time to spare for the navy than usual. But we must look into it, as it were. May I offer you a cigar to puff?”

Captain Hogensen clicked his heels and turned towards the Minister with a salute:

“I wish the King of Denmark and you, his servant, good health and blessings in the New Year, at the same time as I express to you and His Majesty my wish and hope for improved political conditions for us Icelanders on land and sea in this coming year. And may I at the same time present to you this upright and gifted young lad who stands by my side, Álfgrímur Álfgrímsson, foster-son of that honourable and intelligent gentleman, Björn of Brekkukot.”

“Quite so, my friend,” said the King’s Minister and came forward and offered us a finger; he even took me lightly by the nape of the neck and drew me across the floor to a double door which he half-opened, and showed me into an exceptionally beautiful room in which house-maids were at work; and then he pointed out to me on one wall a huge portrait which hung beside the portrait of King Kristian, and said to me, “Young man, do you know who that is?”

And my goodness, if it wasn’t the portrait of that strange person with the Roman nose and the upturned face! And once again I asked myself, but this time at the door of the King’s Minister’s drawing-room: Did this man exist, or was he merely a picture? Or were we who lived at either end of the churchyard perhaps descended from angels when all was said and done? I was dumbfounded!

“That’s the boy from Hríngjarabær,” said the Minister. “He has carried Iceland’s fame far and wide across the sea. You come from Brekkukot: so give a good account of yourself!”

It seemed to me that the Minister’s face lit up at this, but Captain Hogensen, on the other hand, continued on his course with that single-mindedness which the blind have:

“And now,” said Captain Hogensen, “that I have wished your Excellency and the Danish kingdom a good New Year, but particularly my friend King Kristian the Ninth who is a foreign official of the Danish State, just as I am, I should like to ask you to convey to His Majesty my hope that he take notice of the prophecy I expounded to you last year and the year before that and the year before that, here in this very vestibule, and I know that His Majesty will not be offended if I repeat it once
again, namely, that ever since the English and the Faroese and Gú
múnsen were permitted to use drag-nets and trawls right up to people’s back doors, I am tempted to say right up into their vegetable gardens in the bays here, in Brei
afjör
ur Bay as well as Faxaflói, Iceland has been threatened with depopulation all the way from Rosmhvalanes to Látrabjarg. I request that this evil state of affairs should cease.”

“Quite so,” said the Danish King’s Minister, and closed the door to the drawing-room with its famous picture. He took two cigars out of his pocket and thrust them into Hogensen’s pocket.

“The matter demands closer consideration and investigation by the proper authorities,” he said. “I shall try to keep it in mind. We are grateful to you, my good Hogensen. You are really the only navy we have. But as you will understand, I cannot promise anything about this at present. These are critical times, to say the least of it. If the navy is weak, the army is even weaker. All our hopes here in Iceland depend on young men who can make us famous as we were in the olden days – oh, er, give the boy a little chocolate please, my good girl. For the rest, my dear Hogensen, as you can see, I am not dressed yet. But as I say, if there is anything else I can do for you, I shall of course be only too willing to try.”

“As His Majesty the King of Denmark knows,” said Captain Hogensen, standing there on a Persian carpet in the King’s Minister’s vestibule – and every time he mentioned the King he would click his heels together and bring his fist up to his cap in a salute – “As His Majesty knows, it was the will of destiny that I should become the King of Denmark’s man in my prime, and that is more than can be said about most of my countrymen. And although I have now been reduced in my old age to spinning horsehair, as was done in olden times to punish rogues in Bláturn and on Brimarholm, I do not consider myself any the less a man for that, and I have no regrets for the services I did the King and his warriors when they sailed the Brei
afjör
ur in their warships. But it is worth considering whether it would not redound even more to the honour of the Danish kingdom if His Majesty were to send his servant a trifling hank of horsehair from Denmark
to supplement the rump-pluckings which I manage with the most painful difficulty to extract from these practically horseless crofters out here in Iceland.”