The Fish Can Sing (55 page)

“Then we’d better hurry up and get the invitations out,” I said.

“Today we’ll invite the guests,” he said. “And I’ll see Pastor Jóhann about the church.”

“Madame Strúbenhols will be available, of course?” I said.

“I was thinking of asking you to play the accompaniment for me,” said Gar
ar Hólm.

I cannot say that this absurd suggestion took me completely by surprise, but as can be readily understood I demurred and raised all kinds of objections; and these were actually not merely pretexts, because no one knew better than I myself that anything like that was quite out of the question.

“I have scarcely ever been near an instrument, except your battered old harmonium at Hríngjarabær,” I said. “Until a short
time ago some of the keys in it did not even play. In the cathedral, on the other hand, there is a pipe-organ which needs a special man to tread it, and that in itself is a difficult enough task.”

“There’s a handy little instrument in the vestry that we can use,” said the singer. “Every second note in it was silent when I was a boy. Let’s hope that the other half has fallen silent by now as well.”

This kind of melancholy jesting about music from the lips of the maestro left me speechless. But what really showed up my naiveté was that I did not start laughing, instead of trying to find rational excuses. The world singer looked at me and smiled again that extraordinary smile – which was perhaps the reverse of its negation.

“Drop in at my mother’s on your way home and tell her that she is invited to a concert in the cathedral tomorrow morning,” he said. “I’ll come and fetch her.”

When I was on my way home in the middle of the forenoon, there was an old long-beard walking in front of me, smoking a pipe; he had a pile of tabloid-sized advertising posters under one arm and a paste-pot in the other, and he was pasting these big posters up on buildings. It was an advertisement about the Store’s function in the Temperance Hall the following night; each poster had three portraits printed on it, a large one of Gú
múnsen himself with cigar and decoration, and underneath it two smaller pictures, one of Gar
ar Hólm in his youth, when one gazes at heavenly chariots, and the other of Dr Faustulus with his top hat and a dove. Round the pictures were columns of print in that ever-valid classical narrative style, full of obligatory praise for these excellent men, but particularly about the Store.

When I walked past the Temperance Hall I saw that the building had been painted grey-pink, or as they would say nowadays: grey-violet. In later years, when I tried to recall this colour to mind, I have often doubted whether such a colour ever existed; my memory must be deceiving me in this matter, I thought; until I saw this remarkable colour with my own eyes inside hotel rooms and other dwelling-houses in Paris, many years later – and even had the odd experience of staying in a grey-violet room myself in that capital of culture, what’s more. The Pope calls it a penitential
colour, and it is used on Maundy Thursday. Garlands of linen flowers and greenery were being put up here and there in the Temperance Hall, both inside and out, so that a simpleton who had never come across this sort of thing except in Biblical pictures could not help being reminded of Palm Sunday.

Part of my daily round, as I said earlier, was to look in on Kristín of Hríngjarabær every morning and evening, particularly since she had become unsteady on her legs through old age, and poor of sight and hearing. This time I had a more momentous errand with her than to bring her fish and milk.

“You can’t be right in the head, child,” she said. “My son left here only a short time ago, and he said nothing about a concert in the church.”

“But it’s true, nonetheless,” I said. “This is going to be a concert for his own specially invited guests, the ones who wouldn’t fit in with the Store’s guests.”

“Is that so?” said the woman, and began to think. “He wants, of course, to show the authorities appreciation because they supported him with almost a hundred
krónur
a year while he was studying to be a singer.”

“And perhaps he also wants to sing for his mother,” I said.

She replied, “Yes, he should know, my little Georg, that it’s always been my hope and dream to be allowed to hear him sing. But I have now had so many dreams; and though few have come to pass, to have had this boy makes up for it. I’ve really nothing against him singing not just for old Jón Gu
mundsson the liquor merchant and his people, but also for the ones who deserve it, like the ministers and bishops, and of course the Danes. Yes, and not forgetting the Catholic bishop at Landakot here. But tell my little Georg that there’s no need to invite an old woman like me who’s not fit to be seen in public.”

I roamed around Hríngjarabær for a long time, up in the churchyard and out in the fields, in a strange fit of depression; and I began to envy some ponies because they did not have to play the accompaniment at a concert the following morning, but could just carry on grazing. Surely this must be some sort of joke on his part, I thought: or is he somehow planning to get his own back on
me because I had inadvertently and involuntarily ended up with his sweetheart whom he had come to Iceland to fetch? Was he now cast up on a skerry in his life, perhaps? Was the tide creeping up on him? And was it perhaps I who had driven him out on to this skerry? If so, was there any way out of the dangers into which I had stumbled? Now at last I could understand people who resort to suicide to steal a march on death.

I looked in on old Kristín towards evening as she sat there on a three-legged stool with her blind eyes open, glowing with gratitude for her son. When she realized that I was there, she said, “Thank God you came, child. I simply had to talk to you. What’s the news?”

“Oh, nothing very much,” I said.

“Isn’t the town all excited?” said the old woman.

“I should certainly think so,” I replied.

“I’m so slow at thinking nowadays,” she said. “I didn’t remember until you had gone this morning that I wanted to ask you to do me a little favour. It’s said to be a courtesy to give singers flowers. Now though I am humble as everyone knows, I am still going to ask you to pick some flowers for him and put them somewhere close to him tomorrow morning when he sings. And say nothing to him about where they came from. He will then perhaps think they came from some fine great lady.”

I cannot say that the future accompanist himself had a very much clearer idea about concerts than old Kristín of Hríngjarabær; it had not even occurred to me that flowers would be required. Flowers were very far from my mind at that moment.

“We are almost in autumn,” I said, “and the outfields are being mown, and all the flowers have bloomed and withered a long time ago; except perhaps horse-daisies and such-like that are considered weeds.”

“Oh, come now,” said the old woman. “There are all sorts of flowers all around that are still blooming while the outfields are being mown. Meadow-sweet is like an aromatic seed-pod around this time; or the mountain dandelion, honeyed and dark red, which nods its head so nicely late in summer, or the stone bramble, with the berries that are the brightest red to be seen in
Iceland towards autumn. And there’s not much wrong with the heather at the end of the hay-harvest.”

“One has to go miles out into the country to find flowers of that kind,” I said. “There isn’t enough time.”

“I’m sure your grandmother at Brekkukot would lend you Gráni to go on this errand for me,” she said. “There’s a lovely slope near a little lake at a certain spot in Mosfell district; and two swans on the lake. The flowers grow on that slope. I walked there once when I was a young girl.”

“Isn’t it less trouble, Kristín dear, just to pick a few flowers in the churchyard here, for instance at the late Archangel Gabriel’s grave or that of some other foreigners who have been dead for fifty years and have no descendants alive here?”

“What a terrible thing to say, child!” said the woman. “Not a petal from the churchyard, I say! Not a single horse-daisy. It would be reckoned against us. The churchyard belongs to the Saviour alone.”

“Aren’t there a few little flowers on the grave of the late bell-ringer?” I asked.

“But they’re the bell-ringer’s flowers,” said the woman. “The dear bell-ringer, he never wanted to see or hear my little Georg. We’ll leave those flowers alone.”

I could not avoid promising to pick the right flowers for her, and she said, “Bless you for promising to do it. And now I’m going to ask you to find my best skirt for me, it’s hanging in the corner there behind the curtain. I never managed to get myself a full costume, never mind all the bodice-work, because I was never more than the bell-ringer’s housekeeper and therefore never had to sit in church in the place where his wife would have sat if he had ever had a wife. But I have a nice day-bodice from the old times, blue with black roses.”

It was now nearly night-time, and somehow I could not be bothered making an expedition to Mosfell district for flowers; instead I made do with picking a few pansies and marguerites in the churchyard. I suddenly felt that these flowers were owed to me by the residents there because I had sung there so often when I was younger.

I had been back to the hotel over and over again all day to see Gar
ar Hólm; there was so much that I felt I had to say to him. But Gar
ar Hólm was away all day, and I never managed to track him down. That evening a card reached me, in which he asked me to sleep in his apartment that night again, since he was still at a party and would be staying up all night.