The Fish Can Sing (44 page)

He came originally from Mi
nes, one of the poorest fishing
villages in the south. In his days, a penniless person in an Icelandic fishing village had no other alternative, if he wanted to become wealthy, then to economize on food to the point of absolute starvation and use the money he saved to buy drink and sell it at a thousand per cent profit to his comrades when they were stormbound ashore. Over the door of the middle department in this old Danish shop-building there still hung, as I have said already, a small rotten board, the same one that old Jón Gu
mundsson had had made to put over the door of a stone-and-turf shed in a fishing village on Reykjanes when he began the chapter in his commercial career that followed the episode of supplying his comrades with liquor from his food-box. It was a sign of his ambition that right at the very start of his career he should paint the Danicized name
GUDMUNSEN’S STORE
above his door; but the name “Gú
múnsen” had never attached itself properly to the old man himself.

“Now who is this young creature?” said the old man to his grand-daughter, and poked me with his stick after he had grunted some sort of greeting towards his former shop-assistant, Gar
ar Hólm.

“Grandfather, this is Álfgrímur, the student,” said little Miss Gú
múnsen. There were red blotches on her neck and beads of sweat on the tip of her nose, and she was almost gasping for breath.

“Ásgrímur?” said the old man. “Who are his people?”

“He’s the foster-son of Björn of Brekkukot.”

“Björn of Brekkukot!” said Jón Gu
mundsson the merchant. “I should certainly know him all right. We rowed together for the late Magnús of Mi
nes. We had one thing in common, neither of us drank; but the difference between us was that Björn never had any ambition, and indeed he has always lived in the most abject poverty. I’m told that his threshold is never crossed by anyone higher than workhouse paupers, vagrants, and emigrants to America. But he was always a thrifty fellow, old Björn. And there’s no one who cures dried lumpfish as well as he does in the whole of Faxaflói here. I would have no hesitation in taking any boy of his to work behind the counter downstairs.”

I must not forget to mention three other distinguished guests whom it would be difficult to overlook. First there was Madame Strúbenhols, whom some Icelanders referred to as the axe “Battle-Troll”, my music teacher, who has already received honourable mention in these pages if I remember correctly. Next to her I must mention Professor Dr Faustulus, who had been summoned from Copenhagen with doves in a top-hat to display his art to the public at the Store’s birthday party along with Gar
ar Hólm. This Dr Faustulus reminded me of that odd German fellow Faust who had been discussed at the Barbers’ Bill meeting, except that this one turned out to be from the island of Falster originally and had earned himself fame at fairs, particularly in Jutland. Dr Faustulus played an important part in livening up this rather stiff family gathering with his genuinely Danish cheerfulness and inexhaustible inventiveness.

And I must not forget to mention also that imposing frock-coated magnate who was so often to be seen in the streets with a silver-headed ebony cane and gold-rimmed lorgnettes and an imperious air and hawk-like gaze that was often directed all the way up to the rooftops, and iron-starched cuffs and waistcoat-creases filled with snuff: the editor of the
Ísafold
, Member of Parliament, and – I will not say “national poet”, because every second person of any importance in Iceland in those days claimed to be that, but rather just “poet”, as will soon be proved in these pages. But within the Gú
múnsen family circle he laid aside his sovereignty and bowed right down to the ground when he greeted the other guests; he even bowed to me in some confusion and bared his teeth, which were green with tartar, and congratulated me on having graduated from the Grammar School, called me “man of promise”, “Iceland’s white hope”, “student Hansen”, “our nation’s hope of future glory”, and various other things of a kind that was reckoned sheer hysteria in our own house.

But the greeting I received from the host himself was scarcely less meticulous.

“Bonjour
, my dear fellow-countryman and
Herr Stu-dent,”
said merchant Gú
múnsen, accenting the
“-dent”
heavily, as was the custom in those days among people who knew their etiquette.
“An unexpected honour!
Italia terra est. Sardinia insula est
. May I have the pleasure of introducing the
stu-dent
to this world-famous professor and doctor who has come here with doves in a hat? And also to our most distinguished Danish Muse, the axe “Battle-Troll”, whom I shall nevertheless permit myself to call Madame Lorgnette; she has promised to play Liszt’s Rhapsodies for us after dinner.”