The Fish Can Sing (25 page)

Then Nonni must grind peat for his bedding.

Each morning and night: dry peat.

But if it is a heifer, as we all hope,

She is to be called Rose.

We shall give her a pint of fresh milk every feed;

No, wait, let’s make that two. We must not be mean to her.

It will pay dividends in the long run, dear children.

It’s good to put some groats in too.

And boilings from the fish-pot do no harm.

Some people put coffee-dregs

Into the calf’s slops; that’s said to be wholesome,

But more for cud-chewing than nourishment.

Have I written that she should be called Rose?

Oh, how messy all this is,

There isn’t the slightest trace of order in it;

We’ll tear it up and try again:

When our Lykla calves.

When our Lykla calves.

When our Lykla calves:

Yes.”

At this point the woman suddenly began to fail rapidly. I sat on the cobbler’s-stool with the half-written letter on my knee. Just then, Runólfur Jónsson arrived home and began to talk miracles and phenomena.

“Not so loud, Runólfur,” said Captain Hogensen. “She is near the end.”

Runólfur looked into the cubicle and saw how things were.

“So that’s the way of it, well, well,” said Runólfur. “As far as I can see we should be sending for Björn of Brekkukot.”

“I don’t see that there is much point in sending for anyone,” said Captain Hogensen. “Can’t you understand that it’s nearly over, man?”

“Well, then I see no other course than to have a word with the Man who is above Björn of Brekkukot,” said Runólfur Jónsson.

Frost and snow had set in. The woman was taken out the
following day. Old Jónas the policeman had arrived, along with a workman from out east at Kolvi
arhóll who had agreed to take the corpse with him the first stage of the journey; the plan then was to keep the corpse at Kolvi
arhóll until the opportunity arose of giving it to some reliable man who was travelling east over the mountains. In those days it was considered a seven-day journey on horseback from Reykjavík east to Landbrot. But people thought it much more likely that it would take the corpse all winter to travel alone in stormy weather such a long way through vast districts, over moors and mountains and sands such as one meets on the way east to Landbrot, not forgetting some formidable and fast-flowing rivers.

The laying in the coffin and the house-service were combined into the one ceremony, but without Pastor or religious devotions, except that I was made to sing the long coffin-laying psalm because I was by then so accustomed to funerals.

I was told to start the singing as soon as my grandmother had dressed the corpse. I stood singing at the edge of the stairhatch like a bird on a branch while the coffin was being manoeuvred down the steps. Runólfur Jónsson sat on his bed with salt-burn in his eyes and his fingers in his mouth like a little boy. The ceremony was given an exceptionally dignified air by Captain Hogensen, who had got up and dressed to represent the navy. His uniform was carefully brushed, not to mention the gilt buttons and the peak of his cap. He stood like an admiral by the bed-post at the head of his bed, and one could see the coiled blue veins under the parchment skin of his temples. This foreign official of the Danish State, who looked so exactly like His Majesty King Kristian IX, raised his gnarled workman’s hand to the peak of his cap when the coffin was carried past him, and remained standing in that position without blinking while I sang the psalm right through to the last Amen.

Late in the winter, my grandfather Björn started calling me at six o’clock every morning so that I could help him see to the lumpfish-nets in Skerjafjör
ur. These mornings have always remained fresh in my memory.

What happened? Nothing really happened, except that the sun was getting ready to rise. The stars are seldom as bright as they are in the morning, either because one’s eyesight is clearest just after waking, or because the Virgin Mary has been busy polishing them all night. Sometimes there was also a moon. A tiny light had been lit in a cottage on Álftanes; probably someone was going out fishing. Often there was frost and frozen snow, and the ice creaked in the night. Somewhere out in the infinite distance lay the spring, at least in God’s mind, like the babies that are not yet conceived in the mother’s womb.

My grandfather had a large boat, and a small one. The small boat was used for the lumpfishing; it was beached at the high-water mark in front of a shed in which we kept our gear. The boat was easy to launch; it went practically of its own accord if the rollers were placed correctly. And so we rowed out among the rocks and skerries to where the nets lay. Sometimes the gulls followed us in the moonlight. Lumpfish-nets are not normally hauled in; you row alongside them and gaff the fish, or else just grab them by hand, wearing mittens. I kept one oar out and held the boat in position while grandfather used the gaff.

My grandfather was always in a good humour and always reasonably cheerful, but never exactly jolly. He could be mischievous in an innocent sort of way, and enjoyed trying to out-row me. He also laughed if some of his snuff were blown into my eyes when he was taking a pinch, probably because he did not think it was manly to show it if one’s eyes watered. I never knew
what he was thinking about, because he talked mostly in stylized phrases, both about the weather and the fish. But I somehow felt that in this man’s presence, nothing untoward could happen. I often thought to myself how good the Saviour had been to send me to this man for protection and help, and I made up my mind to stay with him for as long as he lived and always to catch lumpfish with him at the end of the winter. And I hoped to God that he would not go from me before I myself was well on the way to being as old as he; and then I would find myself a little boy somewhere and have him row out with me to the nets early in the morning when the stars were still bright at the end of the winter. In the moonlight, the gulls seemed to have golden breasts. If you looked down over the gunwale you could see the lumpfish gliding among the seaweed, feeding; occasionally they would even turn their pink-shaded bellies upwards in the water.

Sometimes we would fill both the hand-cart and the wheelbarrow with this fat fish. And just when the stars were really beginning to pale, we would cart our catch homewards straight across the Sands. Grandmother would give us coffee, and then we would go down town to sell the catch just as people were getting up. Grandfather would stop with his hand-cart somewhere in the square, and people would come along with money to buy lumpfish while others just came to greet him and discuss the weather. I was often sent with a string of lumpfish to the regular customers; usually the maid came to the door with the money and took the fish, but sometimes the lady of the house herself would be there, or else, for some incomprehensible reason, the daughter of the house.

“Aren’t you the one who’s related to Gar
ar Hólm?” said the slip of a girl who unexpectedly came to the back door of one of the houses to take the string of lumpfish from me.

“No,” I said.

“Yes, of course you’re related to him,” said the girl. “It was you he gave the gold coin to. Well, I’ll be absolutely blowed! Fancy selling lumpfish! Don’t you know that it’s a vulgar fish?”

I said nothing.

“Don’t you want to be anything, then, when you grow up?” she asked.

“I’m going to be a fisherman, if it’s any of your business,” I replied.

“A lumpfisherman!” she said. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? And you related to such a great man! Put the lumpfish down on the doorstep there, I’m not going to touch it. Ugh, it’s just like a sea-scorpion. And you related to a world-famous man!”

“I am to get money for the fish,” I said.

“I haven’t any money,” said the girl. “The maid’s left.”

“I am to get money nonetheless,” I said.

She replied. “You can jolly well use the gold coin you got last year, you beastly pig!”

With that she went inside and slammed the door shut, but immediately opened it again and spat out, “And I only hope it was counterfeit!”

Then she slammed the door again for good. The fish lay on the doorstep. I took them back and put them on grandfather’s barrow and said that I had not got the money. To be honest I was a little annoyed that such fine fish should have been abused.

These mornings when we were seeing to the lumpfish in Skerjafjör
ur (and they were really all one and the same morning) – suddenly they were over. Their stars faded: your Chinese idyll ended.

My grandfather had given me a sign to ship the oars. The boat came to rest with its bows on a shelf of rock, and the red clusters of seaweed eddied round the prow in the calm sea as the sun rose. It was almost spring. Grandfather took a careful pinch from his snuff-horn, and then said,

“Your grandmother has been talking to me.”

I kept silent, and waited.

“As you know, my boy,” he said, “we are not really your grandfather and grandmother. We are nobody’s grandfather and grandmother; we are not even married. We are just two old bodies. But I knew your grandmother’s sister here a long time ago.”