The Fish Can Sing (35 page)

She had said everything and there was nothing more that could be said. And I had seen a girl disintegrate in water. She made an effort to take solid shape again by lifting the hem of her dress to her eyes to dry her face as she sat there. She had not come to herself enough to consider me a person, much less a man, when she lifted her skirt all the way up to her face. When she had wiped her face dry she stood up and breathed out her sorrow in a great sigh. The light of the early-morning sun still lay red on the blue mountains beyond the water and the green, dew-covered aftergrass in the home-fields and the summer-weary tansies on the graves. It was so early in the morning that there was not even a wisp of smoke showing yet from my grandmother’s chimney to the south of the churchyard. I collected my thoughts and realized that there was nothing to wait for here – better be off home before people started getting up.

“Goodbye, I’m off,” I said.

She pulled her stockings up and smoothed her dress down and sniffed vigorously with an air of finality, as if she had come to the conclusion that there was no point in this sort of behaviour. Half in helplessness and half in defeat she asked me not to leave her behind like this.

“Don’t make me go into town alone,” she said. “There are fierce dogs and drunkards in the streets.” She brushed her hair back from her forehead and said, “Am I an awful sight?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Do I look a terrible mess?” she said.

“Yes,” I replied. “But it doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters,” she said. “But how can you expect to look any better when you have to crawl out through your own window at home? Let’s get going, then.”

When we were a good way down the path from the churchyard, she started up again:

“Why do you dislike me so much?”

“You mean, why do I like you so much that I accompany you all over town at this time in the morning instead of going home to sleep?” I said.

“Do you dislike me because you’re poor and I’m rich?”

I was at a loss to know how to answer her, and looked at her in some amazement. I had never before now heard that I was poor – such a thing had never even occurred to me. I took it as a rather ill-chosen bit of teasing.

“If I dislike you it is because you are poor and I am rich,” I said.

“You should be ashamed of yourself!” she said, and I thought she was going to begin all over again. “You should be ashamed of yourself for wearing his shoes and not even telling me what has happened to the man himself.”

“What do you really want with him?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you that if you will tell me where he is,” she said.

“That’s quite a different matter,” I said.

“Well, then it’s none of your business what I want with him.”

“Oh well, this is as far as I go.”

“No, don’t go,” she said, and took hold of my arm. “I won’t ask any more questions. I won’t say another word. I know I have no claims on anyone. I’m just a stupid girl who sneaked out through a window. But there’s one thing you can tell me: do you actually know where he is even though you won’t tell me?”

“I know nothing about anyone,” I said, “and least of all about him.”

Outside the office of the
Ísafold
in Löngustétt and all the way out to the Theological Seminary the festivities were still continuing. A remarkable assembly had gathered to ensure that there should be no premature end to the party that had been held the evening before; and this was no mean company either; as far as I could see it was the millennium itself that had come on the scene, as it is portrayed in holy writ.

In the middle of the street a train of fifty pack-ponies stood tied, nose to rump, unable to move off in any direction; many of the beasts had fallen asleep where they stood with lower lips sagging and pack-saddles under their bellies; the bundles of fish-heads
had fallen off and in the confusion lay like debris in the mire. A few loose horses from the town itself had arrived on the scene along with some foals to keep their colleagues company. Three hoarse farm-workers in skin-boots were sitting on a doorstep trying to sing
O’er the Icy Sandy Wastes
while they kept the bottle circulating. A committee of exhausted mongrels had lain down on the edge of the pavement with their tongues hanging out. Two sporty Danish shop-assistants who looked as if they were on their way up Mount Hekla, were standing nearby leaning against their bicycles and studying this aspect of national life in a Danish colony. Up on the balcony of the
Ísafold
office with its handsome lathe-turned pillars sat a handful of cats, above it all in more senses than one, because they pretended not to see one another nor their enemies, the dogs, down in the street below. Two French fishermen had lain down in the gutter and were sound asleep with their clogs for a pillow in the light of this unbelievable midnight sun right up at the North Pole. On the steps of the Theological Seminary across from Gú
múnsen’s Store there was a man who was making a sunrise-speech while the world still slept; from the circumstances one might have thought that this was the holy St. Francis of Assisi, or some other of the famous saints who preached with such skill to dumb animals:

“That drunkard is trying to get at my daddy,” said the girl, and tightened her grip on my arm and quickened her stride: “Let’s cross the road quickly.”

We hurried past. We practically brushed past the nose of the man who was making the speech. But either he did not see us, or else he thought we were ponies and Frenchmen.

One day, late in the winter, a man half-carried his wife through the turnstile-gate at Brekkukot.

“Her name is Chloë,” said the man.

“Glowy?” said my grandfather wonderingly. “Where does that name come from, if I may ask?”

“It is the Greek shepherdess whom Daphnis loved so much”, said the visitor. “And one of the poet Horace’s favourite ladies.”

Then I realized from what I had learned at school that the woman’s name must be Chloë, but as everyone can see, a name like that is extremely difficult to write in Icelandic, and even harder to decline. After a while we had no other choice than to call her Kló.