Independent People (12 page)

Here somebody observed that the minister’s three daughters looked healthy enough.

Thorn: “Of course. So would you if your father began the year with fifteen hundred crowns from the national purse for doing nothing, not a single solitary thing, but playing the blasted halfwit. Such people aren’t the general public, you know.”

(Thorthur of Nithurkot: “I hardly think it can be true that they pay him fifteen hundred crowns. Maybe they only promise it)

Some of them doubted whether such a large sum of money existed in the lump.

Thorir: “It’s the truth, and I refuse to take a word of it back.”

“Oh, the old freak has his good points, you know,” protested Bjartur then, for he never liked to hear anyone run down the minister, for whom he had at bottom an immense respect because of his breed of sheep. “His rams are right enough, educated though he is. Personally, I’d rather one of his rams any day than all three of his daughters and fifteen hundred crowns into the bargain. But, by the way, have you heard what the mutton’s bringing in this autumn?”

The Fell King retailed all the reports that he had heard, but these, as is usual with information on prices, varied considerably. Hrollaugur of Keldur, a tenant of the Bailiff’s, said that he would let Jon of Myri have his lambs as usual, as it was to him that he had to pay his rent in any case, and if there was one thing to be said for the old crook, it was that he let you have what was over in ready money, and though his prices were low, well, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and down-country they never see a cent whatever they do, there’s nothing but debt there.

Bjartur would not deny that it might be instructive to see coinage occasionally, but when it was a question of whom you had to be in debt to, well, Bruni was the lesser of the two evils—the fellow that usually saw the money in dealings with the Bailiff was the Bailiff himself. The Bailiff was a past master in the art of dealing with those whom Bruni did not care to give credit to; and he gave them only two thirds of what Bruni offered down in Fjord. But how much did he get for the sheep he’d bought when he’d driven them south to Vik? At least half as much again as what Bruni offered. He sold sheep by the hundred where others sold
them by the half-score, and what was more, he dictated his own prices to the merchant in Vik.

(“Oh, that can hardly be true,” said Thorthur of Nithurkot, who could not believe in anything that was on a large scale. “And look at the risks. And it costs a lot of money to hire men to herd the sheep all that way south. And there are often quite a few lost on the way.”)

The Fell King maintained, however, that lots of people had had reason to bless the day that Bruni took them on his books. Bruni never allowed a man of his to starve. Had anyone ever heard of Bruni refusing anyone credit, once he had accepted their assurances? “True, he doesn’t care about paying out in hard cash in these critical times, and there’s been many a year when not a cent has been seen up in the country districts, and as everybody well knows he’s tight with the luxuries; but it’s very seldom that he has allowed any of his men to suffer real want, unless, of course, it’s unavoidable, as, for instance, in the springtime. In any case,” continued the Fell King, “it’s very far from the truth to think that everything depends on money. There’s many a man got on in life and never handled the metal that matters. And by the way,” he added as proof of this, “the Sheriff was asking me at the Thing in spring whether I couldn’t suggest some dependable fellow to help with the doctoring of the dogs.”

“Quite right,” said Bjartur. “It never pays to neglect a dog, and as you’ve maybe heard, I swore on my wedding day in spring that I’d attend to my dog myself if that pissy concoction of yours doesn’t clean them out.”

“Surely no one would care to suggest that there is anything false or inaccurate about preparations I receive straight from the hands of the District Medical Officer himself,” said the Fell King, assuming a look of injured officialdom. “I admit, of course, that no one with all that swarm of dogs to attend to would be prepared to swear on his hopes of salvation that the medicine had been perfectly administered in every single case, which is the reason why the Sheriff is of the opinion that another reliable person should be appointed as my assistant.”

The crofters were all agreed that the situation called for desperate measures, since even in Utirauthsmyri there had been signs of the staggers during the previous spring.

“Yes, I shall have to give the matter serious thought,” continued the Fell King in the tones of one fully alive to his responsibilities.
“It is important work, though of course no more pleasant than any other medical work. And it takes an able man for the job. I should think that with a little persuasion I could get the Sheriff to agree to a pretty fair wage for this proposed assistant of mine. But at the moment I have no authority to promise anything.”

“I say, what about the Bailiff?” said Bjartur, who found it difficult to root this Bailiff out of his mind. “I don’t see why he shouldn’t make quite a suitable assistant dog-doctor.”

This suggestion, made partly in jest, partly in earnest, evoked no real response in either mood from Bjartur’s guests; they merely sniffed or wrinkled their noses slightly in melancholy derision.

At this juncture Rosa brought the coffee, but as there were very few cups, they had to drink in two sittings.

“Drink up, lads,” exhorted Bjartur. “You needn’t be afraid of getting stomach-ache from the cream in Summerhouses’ coffee, but we aren’t niggardly with the beans.”

“What about a shot of Danish cream?” said the Fell King, drawing a small flask from his breast pocket. As he took out the stopper, the formless, rigid faces of the lone workers about him broke into the most beatific of smiles.

“I always like to be able to do something for my friends when we’re out on the mountains,” went on the Fell King. “Who knows, my friends may be able to do something for me when we’re all at home again?”—adding, as he poured a little into each cup: “Heavy taxes have kept the smallholder down these last few years, as you all know, but it may well happen that those who have little to come and go on will have someone to speak for them on the council before long. And there we’ll let the matter rest.”

“Wade into the doughnuts, lads,” cried Bjartur, “and don’t spare that lousy sugar. Pour the Fell King another cup, Rosa.”

“Well, lads,” said the Fell King when the brandy had gone the round, “surely someone has strung together a few Unes over the hay this summer, unsettled though it was.”

“Yes, now’s the time for a nice crafty one,” said the others.

“Well, you needn’t expect it from me,” said Einar. “My views on poetry, as you all know, are such that I don’t bother with this crafty verse, as it’s called. In the few things I set together when occasion allows, I try to pay more attention to the truth of the sense than to the elaboration of the metre.”

It was no secret that Bjartur had a poor opinion of Einar’s
poetry, for Bjartur had been brought up on the old measures of the eighteenth-century ballads and had always despised the writing of hymns and new-fangled lyrics as much as he despised any other form of empty-headed fantasy. “My father,” said he, “was a great man for poetry and was gifted with the tongue; and I owe it to him that I learned the rules of metre when I was still a youngster and have kept them since in spite of all the newfangled theories of the great poets, Madam of Myri, for instance. I inherited my copies of the rhymes from my father, seven of them belonging to the days when there were men of genius in Iceland, men who knew too well what they were about to trip over their feet; men who only needed four lines to the verse, and yet you could read it in forty-eight ways and always it made sense. Not for them this lyric style that’s full of grief and nerves and soggy soulfulness; and no hymns either, they left those to the priests. They were men who didn’t believe in tearing their hair and beating their breasts. Take Ulfar’s Rhymes, for instance, with their mighty battles each more valiantly contested than the last; those were heroes who didn’t crawl round licking a woman’s feet, like these love-poets do nowadays. But mind you, if they heard tell of a famous woman they didn’t stop to count the cost even if she lived in another hemisphere; no, they were off after her with the light of battle in their eyes, to conquer kings and kingdoms and heap the slain higher than the hills.”

They wrangled on without coming to any agreement, the one swearing by the classical form and the heroic spirit of the old ballads, the other unshaken in his faith in the human and the divine. As a result of this difference in orientation neither could be persuaded to recite any of his verse as long as the other was present. “People who like to display complicated technique in their verse are more given to pride themselves on their work than are those who write for their own solace,” said Einar. Bjartur retorted that he had never thought himself much of a poet, but to have to listen to anything less capable than internally rhymed quatrains was more than he could stomach, “and were I a poet,” he said, “I should see that nothing of mine was ever made public unless it was a crafty verse reading the same backwards or forwards.”

Olafur of Yztadale, who was of a scientific turn of mind and interested especially in the obscurities of science, was always out of his element when the discussion was confined to poetry. So far he had been unable to get a word in, but now he could no longer
restrain himself from propounding some question, however small, that would ensure for him his share of the limelight in this daybreak assembly, he whose inquiring mind was constantly busy wrestling with perplexing problems.

“Yes, the world’s a funny place, right enough,” he said, stealing into the conversation like a thief in the night. “They say that Easter falls on a Saturday next year.”

The company sat for a while stricken to silence at this startling news.

“Saturday?” repeated the Fell King at length, thoughtfully. “That can’t be right, Olafur, Easter always falls on a Sunday.”

“Aye, that’s what I’d always thought,” cried Olafur triumphantly. “But I’ve read it twice in the
Patriots’ Almanac.
And it says there that Easter falls on a Saturday.”

“It must be a misprint,” suggested the Fell King.

“A misprint in the
Almanac?
No, out of the question; they wouldn’t dare. But I think I have the right explanation. I believe it was in an old book of the Reverend Gudmundur’s that I read it, when I stayed the night there some years ago. It said that the sun occasionally slowed up for a certain period. If that’s correct, then it’s naturally impossible for time to do anything but go backwards in the meantime. At least a little bit.”

“My dear Olafur,” said Bjartur indulgently, “for goodness” sake don’t let anyone think that you take all that sort of thing seriously. You should beware of believing things you see in books. I never regard books as the truth, and least of all the Bible, because there’s no check on what they can write in them. They can spin lies as big as they like, and you never know, if you haven’t been on the spot. If it was right, for instance, that time went backwards, even a little bit at a time, then it would end up with Easter falling on Christmas Day.”

“Well,” said the Fell King, “all I have to say is that the story tells you that Jesus rose again on the Sunday morning, and I’m sticking to that. Therefore Easter must always fall on the Sunday, whether time goes backward or not.”

“The story can say what it likes for me,” said Bjartur sceptically, “but what I’d like to know is this: Who saw Jesus rise on a Sunday? A bunch of women, I expect, and how much can you rely on women and their nerves? There was a woman from the south in service at Utirauthsmyri a year or two ago, for instance, who came in yelling that she had stumbled over an exposed baby on the landslides there, one late summer evening it was, and she
swore it let out a wail. But what do you think it was? Nothing but a blessed wild cat in heat, of course.”

“By the way,” said the Fell King, who preferred not to encourage the intricacies of a discussion so irrelevant, “I was wondering, seeing that Bjartur mentioned wild cats there, what plans you had for our friend the fox this autumn.”

“Plans are one thing,” they replied, “and deeds another. What about seeing the Bailiff about it?”

“Oh, the Bailiffs hardly likely to be in any difficulties with the dodger,” asserted Bjartur. “Last year he had twenty skins to sell in the south. And got a damned good price for them, too.”

The others were of the opinion that the smallholders’ sheep would suffer just the same, and cursed Reynard roundly for some time in a variety of tones—he had killed last autumn, he was sure to kill this autumn. The Fell King declared magisterially that foxes were undoubtedly among the nation’s worst enemies. And the old man from Nithurkot ended this part of the conversation with the assertion: “He killed last year. He killed in spring. And he will kill again this autumn.”

When all had finished their coffee, the Fell King replaced the stopper and pushed the flask back into his pocket; it was light enough to proceed.

“Well, men,” he said as he stood up, “I’ve travelled over the moors here often enough, but never like this. What a difference! A difference that many a one on a rough winter’s day will be glad of. We’ve been entertained like royalty. If you don’t feel fit enough to foot it round your sheep now, you never will.”

But Bjartur wanted it to appear that his hospitality was a very minor issue. “The chief point,” he said, “and the point towards which I have always directed my course, is independence. And a man is always independent if the hut he lives in is his own. Whether he lives or dies is his concern, and his only. Otherwise, I maintain, one cannot be independent. This desire for freedom runs in a man’s blood, as anybody who has been servant to another understands.”

“Yes,” agreed the Fell King, “I for one understand. The love of freedom and independence has always been a characteristic of the Icelandic people. Iceland was originally colonized by free-born chieftains who would rather live and die in isolation than serve a foreign king. They were the same sort of men as Bjartur. Bjartur and men like him are the free-born Icelanders on whom Icelandic independence and Icelandic nationality have always
rested, rest now, and always will rest. And Rosa thrives well, too, here in the valley; I’ve never seen her looking so plump before. How do you like the life on the moors, Rosa?”