The Fish Can Sing (22 page)

“I thought it was myself,” said Gar
ar Hólm; he was out taking a stroll with his cane like all fashionable people.

I gaped at him at first, tongue-tied, and finally replied, “No, it’s me.”

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m buying pepper for three
aurar,”
I replied.

“Just like me,” he said. “Can’t I offer you something?”

“No,” I said.

“Not even a five
-aurar
cake?” he said.

“There’s no need at all,” I said.

A cream cake little bigger than a five
-aurar
piece cost at that time as much as enough fish for ten people. It happened all too seldom in those days, unfortunately, when I had the taste for sweet cakes, that I was well enough off to invest in business of that kind. These delicacies had another drawback as well, for it was impossible to hold them in the mouth for more than a fraction of a second; the cake melted away on the tongue like snow in sunshine and slid unbidden down one’s throat just when the good taste was beginning to make itself felt. And one never had the money to buy another one. It was no trifling matter to be invited to a party where a treat like that was in store.

He made me walk beside him down Löngustétt. Everybody who was anybody raised his hat, and ladies of standing inclined their heads. Some people stopped and turned and stared after him as he went by.

“Now what’s your name again, old chap?” Gar
ar Hólm asked me.

“I’m called Álfgrímur,” I said.

“Ach, what am I thinking of!” he said. “It’s just so difficult to believe it. What I meant to say – have you set your heart on anything?”

I said, “I’m thinking of going down to Austurvöllur on Sunday.”

“What do you want to go there for?” he asked.

“I’m going to hear you sing.”

“Why?” he asked.

I thought for a moment, and replied, “There’s something I want to hear.”

“Something?” he said. “What do you mean?”

“I want so much to hear that one pure note.”

Gar
ar Hólm woke up suddenly like a sleepwalker in the middle of the road, stopped, and stared at me.

“What are you saying, child?” he said at last. “What kind of talk is that?”

Suddenly my shyness left me and I looked at him directly; and then, as if nothing could be more natural, there in the middle of Löngustétt I put to him the question that had been troubling me for three years, ever since Pastor Jóhann had talked to me in the churchyard:

“Is it true,” I asked, “that there is only the one pure note?”

“Certainly it’s true,” said the singer. “I almost said – unfortunately.”

“But if one should perhaps achieve this note?” I said.

“Ha, did I not suspect it was myself I was meeting here in Löngustétt buying pepper! So you too have started talking to Pastor Jóhann, then?”

When I was growing up, it was only beautiful belles and fine ladies who were entrusted with the task of looking after those indescribable treasuries of confectionery art which filled our baker’s shops in Reykjavík, richly arrayed on every tray and counter and every shelf on every wall. A baker’s shop like Fri
riksen’s, for instance, could only really be compared with Persia itself, plus half of Syria and a part of Constantinople, as these places are described in the Úlfar-
rímur
. And indeed, no sooner were we inside the door of Fri
riksen’s basement shop than the world singer tore off his hat and bowed low, I might almost say right down to the ground, and reverently uttered this one word: “Madonna!”

Here at last was a man who knew how to conduct himself fittingly towards shop-girls at a baker’s. And the one who stood behind the counter here, wearing the national costume with silver
filigree on the bodice, smiled too in the correct style and blushed suitably; but she did not swoon; perhaps the singer had been there before.

In front of the counter stood a plump little girl, a full year or so older than I, who was buying two French loaves. When the singer entered the baker’s shop and started taking off his hat, and the madonna started blushing, this little dumpling was also thrown into a dither, and she dropped a curtsey with a look of ecstatic alarm in her eyes. At this the singer caught sight of the girl, and recognized her. He went over to her and kissed her on the forehead and caressed her crimson cheek and asked her what she had to say for herself.

“Nothing,” said the dumpling, beginning to recover herself a little. “Except that Daddy and Mummy are always saying that you never come to see us.”

“I am coming at once to have some toasted white bread,” he said. “But first I want to introduce you to this young lad who will soon be as big as you are; he is myself, you see, as I actually am, what’s my name again?”

He looked at me and no doubt expected me to answer, but I did not dare to speak my name in such a strange environment. Since I made no reply he went on, “This is little Miss Gú
múnsen. Her mother toasts white bread better than any other lady in Iceland.”

It was as if a cloud passed across the young girl’s face, and she said haltingly, “Is – that one with you?”

“We are all with one another, my children. Do help yourselves to a five
-aurar
cake.”

“No thanks,” said the girl, and went on measuring me up and down, uncomprehendingly. “I have to hurry back home.”

“There’s no hurry, little Miss,” he said. “Madonna, could I possibly ask you to fetch me that broad white tray standing over there?”

The madonna laid a tray filled with cream cakes on the counter before us. It nearly made one’s heart ache with spiritual and physical joy to look at these delicious works of art.

“Help yourselves, dear children,” said Gar
ar Hólm.

I took a cake and was going to eat it nicely, as I had been taught to do; I was moreover trying to pick out the cake which was the
least spectacular in colour and shape, because my grandmother had firmly impressed on me that when I was visiting I should always choose the plainest-looking piece. But if one takes such a cake and tries to bite it politely, one is left with very little more than a tiny smear on the fingers. But then I caught sight of the singer himself tackling the cakes. It is not too much to say that he dealt with them like a man of authority. Never had I seen a performance like it; there was certainly no question now of choosing the ugliest cake first. Little Miss Gú
múnsen looked on as well, and the madonna smiled at every cake that disappeared into the singer; for they disappeared, or to be more accurate, they flowed into him in rapid streams, one after another, sometimes two or three at a time. And while he ate he never paused in his promptings to us dear children to help ourselves. I was so thoroughly unnerved that I cannot properly recall whether I ever ventured upon cake number two; I seem to remember that I contented myself with standing there like an idiot with the smear from number one on my fingers.