The Fish Can Sing (54 page)

Little Miss Gú
múnsen had sat down in a chair.

“Álfgrímur and I,” she said, “are engaged. We got engaged last night.”

“Hurrah, bravo!” said Gar
ar Hólm. “Isn’t that fun? My warmest congratulations. Now I’m going to shave. Then we’ll have an engagement party. We’ll get some champagne.”

I stood over by the window and looked down into the street, where a farm-hand was herding some cows; and now, when the night was past, I honestly could not help holding back a little.

“Isn’t it a little early to say that, little one?” I said. “Should we really be bringing up this sort of thing in front of Gar
ar Hólm?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean, er, that in reality, perhaps, nothing so very much happened; except that we are just like all other human beings,” I said.

“Nothing very much happened!” she said. “Human beings, indeed! Speak plainly! Show us the kind of person you are!”

“I mean, nothing happened except what usually happens under similar circumstances: a man is a man and a woman is a woman – anything beyond that is external, incidental.”

“So nothing happened, is that it?” she said. “Nothing except the usual! Ha! In other words, I’m just a common slut – isn’t that what you mean?”

“Álfgrímur,” said Gar
ar Hólm. He had now put enough soap on his face, and came over to me at the window and gave me some bank-notes from his pocket. “I think we need some cream cakes. Would you mind popping over to Fri
riksen’s bakery for us?”

He got out his razor and began to whet it on the edge of his hand, and I abandoned my unsolved problems to go and buy more cream cakes.

I had to wait a good while in the bakery, because it was not yet quite seven o’clock: “Fri
riksen is still squirting the cream cakes,” said the shop-girl.

I was rather impatient at having to wait, because although I had not read very many Danish novels, I was suddenly a little anxious at leaving the singer’s sweetheart alone with him and a razor on a morning like this.

“I think,” I said at last, “that I don’t have time to wait for any more cream cakes at present. I’ll just take the ones Fri
riksen has squirted already, and come back for the rest later.”

When I came back with the cream cakes, Gar
ar Hólm had finished shaving. Little Miss Gú
múnsen had gone. The singer was sitting at the writing desk engrossed in doing sums on little bits of paper. He did not become aware of my presence for some time, or else he could not tear himself away from his sums. Finally he thrust the closely written scraps of paper into his pocket and turned round in his chair to face me. The smile came and went.

He said, “I’ve been thinking something over in the few minutes since you went to the bakery shop. I’m thinking of giving a special concert tomorrow.”

“Yes, it’s been in all the papers: the Gú
múnsen’s Store jubilee in the Temperance Hall,” I said.

“That’s not the one I mean,” he said. “I’m going to give another concert in the forenoon: a church concert. It will be for invited guests only: my invited guests; those who would never dream of hurrying to a Store function at Gú
múnsen’s. I want to ask you to give me a little help with this concert.”