The Fish Can Sing (56 page)

“And be ready in the church at the crack of dawn tomorrow,” it said. “Enter by the vestry door.”

Next morning very early I was down at the church with my false flowers like a man in a dream who has to carry out whatever the dream imposes on him, however afraid he feels. Never have I felt such apprehension about any concert. I stood behind the church peering furtively in all directions, rather like a man who is not quite sure whether he is in his right mind and would like to have it settled one way or another; and I stared in amazement at the flowers I was carrying. I was hoping that it would all turn out to be some sort of trick, and that the vestry would be locked; one thing was certain – everything was quiet in the square, there was no one within sight who looked as if he were going to a concert. Two carpenters were on their way to their work at a house farther down the road. A peasant wearing skin-boots had just set off with a few pack-ponies laden with dried cods’-heads which he was obviously going to transport all the way home to the east, doubtless a journey of several days, and I was not very far from envying him. But when I turned the door-handle, the vestry proved to be open. The nightmare went on. Had the guests arrived already, perhaps, seated in the church, and all now waiting for me?

The vestry was poorly lit and I felt my way forward until I found the door into the chancel; it was ajar. I peered in. The church was empty. I went on into the chancel. The rays of the rising sun did not penetrate here, because there are no windows in the east gable of such buildings. Inside there was only a colourless light, clear and dismal, with reflections off the gloss-painted ceiling and walls and pews; it reminded one of the glitter of a fresh-water lake under clouded skies; and this lustreless light fell on the gilded image of the Risen Lord above the altar.

I stood with the flowers in the silent chancel of the Cathedral,
in front of the altar-rails, and looked around. And lo and behold – there stood a dusty old harmonium; I had been clinging still to the hope that it had only existed in a dream. But however shocked I was over this wretched harmonium, which did not concern me in the slightest, how much more extraordinary was it that I should be standing there myself! If someone should see me there now! I hurriedly laid the flowers down on the floor as if they had nothing to do with me. But then it occurred to me that the floor was no place for flowers. Should I not rather put them on the altar-rails? Or up on the altar itself? But what would Pastor Jóhann say if he came upon these flowers on his altar? – for he would undoubtedly recognize them and know they had been stolen. I picked the flowers up from the floor again. It feels as if I am still standing there with these flowers in my hand as I write these lines so many decades later. I do not remember ever having got rid of these flowers. Where was I to put these flowers? What was to become of these flowers?

Then the main door of the church opened and two guests entered: an elegantly clad, distinguished gentleman in the prime of life, and beside him a poor old woman. He led her up the aisle. She hobbled forward on her frail, numb legs, leaning heavily on her son to draw strength from him for this walk. She was wearing her pleated skirt and the day-bodice, and she had tied her best fichu round her shoulders. She had become small again, in the way that old people shrink, not unlike a little girl who has had polio; and on her face was that dull, blind expression that is directed towards another light elsewhere.

Gar
ar Hólm carried himself with all the air of a celebrity, an emperor of art making an appearance in the soaring halls of Thalia before the thousandfold gaze of a distinguished and discerning audience and warmed by the special admiration of a public which is deeply moved that he should be leading this poor woman, his mother, by his side: at the highest peak of his fame, he was remembering his humble origins. And he inclined his head with a modest smile towards the empty pews on either side, as if he were catching sight of some important face and did not want to fail to show his respect on this solemn occasion. There
were even a few guests here and there who required no less deference than that he should stop in the middle of the aisle to click his heels and bow. And the old woman went on leaning against her son as he paused in the aisle and bowed to men of rank.

He led his mother right up the aisle and into the chancel, to a chair that had been placed up against the altar-rails. He placed her on it and settled her into her seat with tender solicitude, with respect and affection in every glance and gesture as if he were assuring her that even though there were many people there of higher rank than she, she was not to feel ashamed of herself, for this was her place in the eyes of God and man. And now she sat there in front of the altar, transformed and exalted in her best pleated skirt and her best black fichu, and folded in her lap her gnarled, rather swollen hands with their black veins and white knuckles.

Gar
ar Hólm turned to me.

“Sit down at the harmonium,” he whispered.

I sat down.

“Start playing,” he said.”

But – but …” I said.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.

“But I-I-I.”

“It doesn’t matter in the slightest what you play. I’ll sing to anything. Just start playing!”

No sooner had I touched the pedals than the harmonium began to shrill of its own accord, so that the empty church resounded and echoed as if the whole place were coming down in ruins; all the vents were so leaky that the notes bellowed of their own accord, with loud sucking noises whenever the pedals were trodden.

And now Gar
ar Hólm pulled out all the stops of his voice. The concert began.

I want to repeat once again what I have often implied already in these pages, that I am not the right person to describe properly Gar
ar Hólm’s accomplishments. We were born and bred each on his own side of the same churchyard and have always been called close kinsmen, and many people have confused us and some have even taken the one for the other. But even if that had
not been the case, I would still be bound, in any talk about this idol of my childhood, to preserve that courtesy which each man owes himself, according to the English maestro who wrote in his thirty-ninth Sonnet:

People have kept on asking me: did he sing well? I reply, the world is a song, but we do not know whether it is a good song because we have nothing to compare it with. Some people think that the art of singing has its origins in the whirring of the solar system as the planets hurtle through space; others say it comes from the soughing of the wind in that ash-tree called Yggdrasil, in the words of the old poem: “the ancient tree sighs.” Perhaps Gar
ar Hólm was closer to that unfathomable ocean of unborn song than most other singers have been. I shall not compare Gar
ar Hólm’s singing with that of other people who may have sung in Thalia’s palaces all over the world, in the Teatro Colon, Küssnacht, St. Peter’s Cathedral (or was it perhaps St. Petersburg?), or before Mohammed ben Ali. But no one has ever heard the like of the singing I listened to in that least-known of all cathedrals; and I do not believe that anyone would ever have been the same after hearing it. And indeed the ears for which it was intended were deaf.

It may well be that this was the only time in my whole life that I ever really heard singing, because this singing was so true that it made all other singing sound artificial and affected by comparison and turned other singers into frauds; and not just other singers, but myself and all the rest of us as well – the woman from Landbrot no less than Chloë, Ebenezer Draummann and Captain Hogensen just as much as Runólfur Jónsson and the superintendent. And this sound affected me so deeply that I saw no alternative but to tread that old wreck of a harmonium with all my strength, heart and soul, in order to drown the singing or at least to challenge it, in the hope that I could survive.

What did he sing, people ask? I ask in reply, does it matter? No, there was no printed programme. What songs? Perhaps it was these new-style songs which will achieve recognition if time continues to go backwards towards its origins and communication becomes more simplified than at present, so that people will be content to bellow the vowel “a” to express their thoughts on everything, instead of inflecting verbs and nouns; it may also be that what was sung there was the song that the ass and the ox sang for the angels on Christmas Eve. Yet I still have the feeling that in the midst of this singing of a time still unborn there was a jumble of incoherent fragments of important old texts:
exultate, jubilate; si tu ne m’aimes pas, je t’aime; se i miei sospiri
.