Independent People (33 page)

She began to feel cold, and she ran to and fro on the river bank, her trail criss-crossing like the streets in the cities of the world. She was light and impersonal, new-risen from the dew like the mist itself, wonderful in the moist green landscape of the sunlit night. She grew warm again after running about for a little while, and the birds woke up and the sky was radiant with the flickering of gorgeous colours; in an hour’s time the sun would glint in the dew of the lady’s-mantle, and the dew would disappear in the sun, St. John’s holy dew.

With the first morning rays, long before the snores of night had risen as far as the throat, Bjartur sprang out of bed, took a hasty pinch of snuff, and started dressing. Did Asta Sollilja oversleep this morning, the morning of the great day on which she was to see the world? No, let no one say it; she rose up too, and rubbed the sleeplessness from her eyes as she watched him putting his clothes on. Then he went out for the horse. And when he had gone she took out her new underclothes and drew them over the clean body that she had bathed for the first time last night, the body that she had just discovered for the first time, the body she had actually just been given. She put on her petticoat, her new woollen stockings, and her new sheepskin shoes, and last of all she donned the lovely dress, memory of her mother. She tripped up and down the floor, her heart beating high with eagerness and the joy of departure, while her stepmother warmed up the coffee. The grandmother too was awake, sitting up in bed with her index finger between her gums.

“Don’t forget your coat, maiden. You’re badly dressed for a shower of rain.”

That was just like Grandmother. As if Asta Sollilja would even dream of showing herself down-country in such a filthy old rag.

“Oh, it can come on at any moment,” replied her grandmother.

“But there’s not a sign of cloud in the sky,” said Asta Sollilja.

“Fine weather fools fine wits,” said the grandmother. “And heedlessness has its own reward.”

But nothing fills the soul with such perfect confidence as a cloudless morning of this kind; the sun was beaming over the green valley and the Bluefell’s lay resting on the blue of the sky in dreamy security, like the children in a rich house, their faces exalted and happy, as if nothing, nothing would ever cast another shadow on the tranquil sunshine under this deep eternal sky. To drag out a
torn old coat was like an evil thought on such a morning, and Asta Sollilja said good-bye to her grumbling old grandmother.

Then she set off into the world with her father. The cart old Blesi was pulling was heaped with sacks of wool, and when they had reached the road, her father said she might ride on top while he walked in front leading the horse. It was a lovely morning. Never had Asta Sollilja felt the day to be so spacious, never had she been so free. After a short time new vistas were unfolded and she began to feel that she had left the meagreness of all her past existence behind her. The winds that blew over the moors had never smelled so fresh in her nostrils, never had the song of moorland birds sped off to such outer distance. The echos had changed, the voices were altogether different. They no longer heard the old familiar valley-birds, they heard new birds, birds that sang to other landscapes, the birds of the world. The hummocks alongside the road took on a different shape and different vegetation, the mountains changed their positions and new forms peeped out, while old ridges and promontories retreated upon themselves or resolved themselves into independent hills. The streams ran in a different direction, the stones had a different appearance; from the dingles the scent of unknown flowers was wafted towards the inexperienced traveller. So bad was the road that she was shaken and jolted unmercifully in the cart, but her senses were alive to the smallest detail of day and route, the world new as on the first morning of the Lord’s creation.

The road wound backward and forward among the watercourses, ascending gradually to the moors above, and the travellers were met on the crest of every rise by fresh families of moorland birds, which followed them with passionate song to the next escarpment and the next escort. The morning was half spent before they reached the plateau. Here the vegetation was thinner, the breeze colder. The heath spread itself out before the young traveller’s eyes, lonely and grey, with fewer and fewer birds, no brooks. Far, far away sparkled the white surface of a lake. One undulation succeeded another with its windswept, naked crest, its desolate gravel plains, and its tracts of thin soil, stripped of vegetation. Here and there were flats sparsely covered with moss, where mountain ewes and their lambs lay ruminating in the morning sunshine and took to their heels when they approached. The girl jumped down from the cart and walked along by her father’s side in the wide flowered dress, in an effort to warm herself up. The chill isolation of the moorland plateau reigned over these two wayfarers
and they were silent. The dreary monotony of the landscape dulled their senses; she began to feel hungry and no longer looked for or delighted in the things that were strange to her.

Again and again the girl waited for the next hilltop to refresh the eye with some variation, some new prospect, but always it was the same endless repetition except that the gleaming waters of the lake had long since been left in the rear. She had lost all her anticipation and had long grown tired of expecting anything in particular when the road, turning suddenly, dipped downward along the side of a deep ravine with a river at the bottom. And when she looked eastward along the gap, expecting to see another hill in front of her, lo and behold, there was nothing to see; it was as if the world came to a sudden stop before her eyes and the depth of the skies took its place, though with a different shade of blue. Or was it that the sky was supported out on the horizon there by a gleaming wall of blue-green glass? This strange blue colour seemed to embrace all the mysteries of distance, and she stood for a moment overwhelmed by the prospect of such infinity. It was as if she had come to the edge of the world.

“Father,” she said in a perplexed and hesitating voice, “where are we?”

“We’ve crossed the heath,” he replied. “That’s the ocean.”

“The ocean,” she repeated in an awe-stricken whisper. She went on staring out to the east, and a cold shiver of joy passed through her at the thought of being fortunate enough to stand on the eastern margin of the moors and see where the land ends and the ocean begins, the sea of the world.

“Isn’t there anything on the other side, then?” she asked finally.

“The foreign countries are on the other side,” replied her father, proud of being able to explain such a vista. “The countries that they talk about in books,” he went on, “the kingdoms.”

“Yes,” she breathed in an enchanted whisper.

It was not for some time that she realized how foolish had been her question, and that she might well have known that this was the very ocean over which young heroes sailed to win fame in the Rhymes; far, far across this mighty sea lay the lands of adventure. To her had been given the good fortune of looking upon the sea that swirls about the lands of romance; the road to the incredible. And when they halted at the top of the first slope on their way downhill, she had forgotten her hunger and was still staring out to sea in speechless wonder. Even in her wildest fancies the ocean had never been so huge.

The eastern sides of the heath were steeper even than at home. Soon they were looking down upon the roofs of the market town and the coffee-brown vegetable gardens with their arrow-straight paths between the beds. Asta Sollilja had conjured up remarkable pictures of Fjord, but she would never have dreamed that so many houses, every one of them as impressive as the mansion at Utirauthsmyri, could have stood in a row along such a short stretch of road. And the smoke that was wafted up the hillsides from these houses smelled almost sweet in her nostrils, far different from the troublesome reek that poured out of the poor turf at home in Summerhouses. Soon they were passing the first houses on the hillside and beginning to meet all sorts of wayfarers, some walking, some riding, and some driving carts. They even met some finely dressed young men, wearing collars and ties on a week-day and with cigarettes between their lips, and these young men were so pleased with life that they looked at her and burst out laughing and had forgotten her with the next step they took.

“Who were those young men?” she asked.

But her father, it seemed, was not so deeply impressed by these elegant youths as she had been. “A crowd of cigarette-sucking louts,” he replied. And now they were walking on a paved road and there were houses on either side, and curtains and flowers in the windows; isn’t it wonderful the things that grow out in the world? And there, walking towards them arm in arm, came two girls, both wearing laced shoes and coats, one with a red hat, the other with a blue one, and they were both so smart that at a distance she thought that one of them at least must be Audur of Myri, but when they came nearer she thought the other must be Audur too, and could make neither head nor tail of it, but it turned out that they were only two town girls, and they shrieked with helpless laughter as they passed her. The people of Fjord seemed to be extraordinarily generous with their laughter and their happiness.

But her father hadn’t even noticed them. “Who are they?” he repeated when she asked. “A couple of brazen-faced young sluts, of course, fit for nothing but parading the streets and living on their parents like parasites.”

The houses crowded closer and closer together, till finally there was no longer any room for a home-field between them, let alone a decent bit of pasture; all they had was a tiny garden. Townsfolk and travellers, pack-horses and carts crowded along the street, boats on the sea. So many things caught her eye at one and the
same moment that soon she grew tired with asking questions. Her mind was in a whirl, she flitted through it all as if in a dream, and strangers sped off in various directions without a handshake or a word of greeting. Before she realized what was happening, she was standing beside her father in front of the counter in Bruni’s shop itself, gazing at all the goods that the world and its civilization have to offer—snow-white stockings, fifty raincoats, cups with roses embossed on them, an oil-stove, chewing-tobacco. Behind the counter beautifully dressed men of imposing appearance were standing writing things in books or showing people gold watch-chains and biscuits. She stood there bewildered, her dress flapping loosely about her, her stockings round her ankles and mud on her shoes, staring blindly in front of her, her wits scattered by the spectacle of such magnificence. Then the warehouseman came, brisk and impressive. He weighed the wool for Bjartur out in the so-called porch, and looked at Asta Sollilja twice. He said he had never suspected that Bjartur had a daughter who would soon be old enough to get married. “Give her a while longer and shell do nicely for our Magnus,” he said. But Bjartur said there was plenty of time to think about that; “she won’t be confirmed till next spring and she’s all length so far, poor lass.” The dale-girl blushed furiously at this unexpected suggestion of marriage and was very grateful to her father for not coming to any arrangement without further inquiry, and also for excusing her on the plea that she was not fat enough for such things. She did not allow for the fact that townspeople often come out with things that in the country would be thought lacking in deliberation.

Afterwards Asta Sollilja was allowed to accompany her father into the merchant’s office. She had always imagined that the merchant was called Bruni, but it now appeared that his was a name even more remarkable, Tulinius Jensen. She felt as she might have done had she been invited up to the altar in Rauthsmyri Church in the middle of the service, but on her father this signal honour had no effect at all. Nothing on earth could surprise him. Not even when Tulinius Jensen clasped him to his bosom and held him there in loverlike embrace did he show any trace of astonishment. No, the embraces of the great ones of the world were obviously no novelty to her father.

“It is a pleasure to see such a trusty old friend,” said this fine, heavy-built gentleman, “especially in these difficult times when no one seems to value friendship any longer. You have heard about the meeting, of course?”

“This and that,” replied Bjartur. “I won’t say that I haven’t heard rumors of that society business of theirs. And visitors came to Summerhouses in the spring on the same sort of errand. But so far I’ve made it a rule to do what suits myself rather than other people, even when it happens to be the Rauthsmyri pair.”

“Quite right Ingolfur Arnarson has become temporary manager of this so-called Co-operative Society. Their first sorry consignment arrived by steamer a few days ago, and immediately all the farmers that could free themselves deserted me and rushed off to join the society; but I wonder if there’ll be as much enthusiasm among them in two or three years’ time, when they start levelling the rich men’s debts out on the poor and begin distraining on their crofts as they did in the Hrappsvik Society last year?”

“I don’t know,” said Bjartur. “But as long as I don’t hanker after other people’s profits, I certainly don’t want to pay other people’s losses.”

The merchant asserted that co-operative societies could never lead to anything but national disaster; like any other form of monopoly, their one aim was to destroy private enterprise, the liberty and the independence of the individual. “Our warehouses, on the other hand, stand open to you, my dear Bjartur, with all that in them is. But, by the way, that daughter of yours has grown into a big, fine-looking girl, and no mistake.”

“Oh, she’s only a nestling yet,” said Bjartur, “she hasn’t been confirmed even. But she has it in her. And she can read. And knows a thing or two about the classics. What does ‘shield-tree’ mean, Sola? Let the merchant see how much you know.”

“That’s what I call well done,” said the merchant when she had explained the kenning. “Very few people know their Edda these days, I can tell you. I must tell our little Svanhvita about this; she never reads anything but Danish.”