Independent People (74 page)

But what of Bjartur of Summerhouses and his friends? How did they fare?

Let us consider first Thorir of Gilteig, the father of sprightly daughters who at one time had had a weakness for silk stockings of inordinate length. Actually things had turned out much better
for them than had seemed likely; the youngest was even married to a fellow of some means in town. And as for Thorir, he hadn’t owed so much that he could become a great man on the strength of his debts, nor had he owed so little that there could be any question of declaring him bankrupt. At the end of the war he could describe himself as a middle-class farmer. He was chosen as Fell King for the parish. The purging of the dogs fell to his lot, along with the responsibilities and the emoluments pertaining thereto. He was chosen parish clerk. He kept well in with both sides, ceased complaining about the flightiness of women and was said to be not averse to a seat on the parish council, if one should ever come his way. Remarkable though it may seem, that which saved him in these days of high wages was his erring daughters, who, compelled by special circumstances to remain under their father’s roof, not only worked for him through the years of the war, but saw to it that their children helped as well. Nor had he risked building a house for the people on his croft; he had built only for the sheep, and, as most people have bitter reason to agree, it is safest for one’s future welfare to do as little as possible for the people.

And the others? They slaved on now the same as before, crushed beneath the burdens of parish rates, debt, worms, illness, and death, while Ingolfur Arnarson’s ideals achieved fulfilment, and prizes and grants and subsidies and liberal terms were showered on the well-to-do. Olafur of Yztadale had entered on a contract to buy his croft, but he was still living in the same turf hut that had been the death of his wife and all his children—human life isn’t long enough for a peasant to become a man of means—a fact that is said to have been conclusively proved in a book by a famous foreign scientist. As for Hrollaugur of Keldur, he had decided, at the end of the war and its concomitant prosperity, to purchase the croft he had rented for so long from the Bailiff, and now it was taking him all his time to keep up the interest. No, he had not been able to build a house, that would have to wait till next war. By that time, probably, the Bailiff would have taken the hut from him again in settlement of unpaid interest; but the future would have to take care of itself for the present, and Hrollaugur, who had never learned to distinguish between the natural and the supernatural, but always took everything in its turn, would take that also in its turn when it came.

And what of Einar of Undirhlith? Though for the space of a year or two he had been able to watch his debts slowly diminishing in size, he had managed neither to buy his farm nor to renew his
buildings, and now his debts were once more piling up and he would be lucky if the sheep he had for sale that autumn brought in enough to pay the taxes and the fodder. The doctor’s bill would have to wait, likewise the refuse fish; human life is human life; but he wrote nice memorial poems the same now as before whenever anyone died, and he was as steadfast as ever in his hope that the Lord would be more favourably disposed towards the peasants in the next life than He was in this, and would allow them to profit from the fact that they had immortal souls.

Then did all the grants and the subsidies, the benefits and the bargain offers pass over these poverty-stricken peasants when Ingolfur Arnarson’s ideals were at last brought to fruition? What is one to say? It so happens that it signifies little though a penniless crofter be offered a grant from the Treasury towards the cost of tractors and modern ploughs. Or a forty years’ loan to build a concrete house with double walls, water on tap, linoleum, and electric light. Or a bonus on his deposits. Or a prize for cultivating a large expanse of land. Or a princely manure-cistern for the droppings from one or one and a half cows. The fact is that it is utterly pointless to make anyone a generous offer unless he is a rich man; rich men are the only people who can accept a generous offer. To be poor is simply the peculiar human condition of not being able to take advantage of a generous offer. The essence of being a poor peasant is the inability to avail oneself of the gifts that politicians offer or promise and to be left at the mercy of ideals that only make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Bjartur was now spending his second winter in the house he had built. It was the worst house in the world and unbelievably cold. Shortly before Advent the old woman began to keep to her bed, though without being able to die, so Bjartur decided to move her into the empty stall in the cow-shed, seeing that she couldn’t die of cold. Even Bjartur himself was so much affected by the cold in the house that he began to have fears that he was growing old, but there was comfort in the reflection that his son, in the flower of life, could not stand it either. The walls of the room sweated with damp and were covered with a veneer of ice during frosty weather. The windows never thawed, the wind blew straight through the house, upstairs there was snow lying on the floors and swirling about in the air. Father and son saw to the cooking themselves that winter, and in no spirit of great cheerfulness; there was not even a grumble to be heard on the farm these days, no one seemed to be in the right about anything any longer.

The following summer Bjartur once more engaged workpeople and once more made hay for his Icelandic sheep, even though no consumer in the world would degrade himself by touching Icelandic sheep, with the exception of foxes and lung-worms. The market fell still further that autumn. No one has any use for Icelandic sheep and never has had; and finally the Government was forced to sell the nation’s right to its principal source of wealth, the fishing grounds, in return for the purchase by a foreign country of a few casks of foul salt mutton, which was then allowed to rot in distant harbours and finally taken out to sea and jettisoned. All that Bjartur felt he could spare for sale that autumn went in wages and taxes, leaving nothing for the interest and capital repayments on his loans—had he sold the whole lot it would have been but a drop in the ocean, anyway. He went down to the savings bank to see if he could come to some arrangement about his debt, but the only person to be found on the premises was a limp, consumptive-looking wretch who languidly turned the leaves of a ledger and informed him that he had no power to make any reduction. It had been decided to open a branch of the Bank of Iceland at Vik shortly and the Fjord savings bank was to be merged with it, so the only person who had power to modify existing terms of savings-bank loans was the governor of the bank himself, Ingolfur Arnarson. The manager listlessly advised Bjartur to go and see Ingolfur in Reykjavik and try to come to some arrangement with him there. Bjartur went home and thought the matter over. Perhaps he didn’t even bother to think the matter over; it’s all the same whether one thinks or doesn’t think, they are all thieves, every one of them. And while he was busy thinking things over, there spread like wild-fire throughout the land the news that Ingolfur Arnarson Jonsson had temporarily given up his position as governor of the bank; he had been appointed Prime Minister of Iceland that autumn.

M
ORTGAGEE’S SALE.
Notice is hereby given that on the petition of the Vik Branch of the Bank of Iceland, the Farm of Summerhouses in the Parish of Rauthsmyri will be sold at auction on the 29th day of May next, in settlement of debts, interest on debts, and the cost of the sale. Sale to begin at 3 p.m. at the property to be sold.

JON SKULASON,
Sheriff

This advertisement was pinned up in both Vik and Fjord and published in the
Gazette
from mid-winter onwards. Some time later, notification to the same effect reached Bjartur himself. He said nothing. It had never been a habit of his to lament over anything he lost; never nurture your grief, rather content yourself with what you have left, when you have lost what you had; and fortunately he had had the sense to hang on to the sheep as long as possible. Of these he still had something like a hundred left, as well as one cow, three old hacks, and a yellow bitch, the fourth generation in direct female line from his first bitch.

That evening, when Bjartur went into the cow-shed, he halted by the old woman’s bedside and stood for a moment looking down at her.

“Perhaps you remember that hut of yours away up north on Sandgilsheath, Bera?” he asked at length.

Hut? She couldn’t say really, her memory had given out ages ago, she remembered nothing about anything these days.

“Huh, I imagine it’s still there in spite of that,” he said.

“It was a good hut,” she said. “I lived there for forty years and nothing ever happened. But here there always seems to be something happening.”

“Oh, well, I’m leaving here now,” he told her. “They’re forcing me to sell up.”

“And I’m not surprised,” she replied. “It’s that dirty old devil again, he who haunts Summerhouses and always has. And always will. Kolumkilli has rarely allowed anyone who lived on this croft to escape scot-free. I say for my part that I have never made this place my home. I have been nothing more than a lodger for the night.”

But the crofter did not wish to discuss ghosts; he had never believed in ghosts, or on the whole in any form of superhuman being except those that one meets in poetry, so he came straight to the point and said:

‘Would you like to lease me Urtharsel in the spring, Bera?”

“The sunsets were lovely at Urtharsel,” she said, “when my dear husband Ragnar had put on his big coat and was riding northwards over the moors in search of his sheep, to clip them wherever he found them. And he had fine dogs too. We always did have fine dogs.”

“Yes, you’re right there, Bera,” agreed Bjartur, “Ragnar’s dogs were always good ones. I remember the time when he had a yellowy-brown one, a marvellous animal that could see in the dark
as well as any other dog in the brightest day. It isn’t often you’re lucky enough to come across a creature like that, I can tell you. But I’ve had my share of good dogs too, you know, Bera; faithful animals, dogs that never let me down, and once I had a yellow bitch, the great-grandmother of my present one, that seemed for all the world to have power over life and death.”

Come what may and go what may, a man always has the memories of his dogs. Of these at least no one can deprive him, though both the prosperity of world war and the fulfilment of important people’s ideals have proved to be no more than a cloud of dust that has swirled up to obscure the lone worker’s vision.

“Well, well, Bjartur, so this is how it’s all ended,” said Thorir of Gilteig with some compassion. It was early in the spring and he and several other peasants were sitting on the pen wall, bloodstained from the marking, with the lambs and their mothers bleating wildly around their legs.

“Oh, it will be your turn next,” replied Bjartur. “There’s no security in being dog-purger, as we’ve all seen.”

“I don’t know so much about that, Bjartur,” said Thorir, not without a trace of temper, perhaps. “I don’t swear by the dogs, of course, because to me the important thing seems to be to have faith, not in dogs, but in one’s own children, whatever happens. That’s what I’ve always done. Whatever happened to my children, I never kicked them out. And the result was that they went on working for me, bless their hearts, and for themselves at the same time. To believe in one’s children is the same thing as believing in one’s country.”

Yes, he had graduated into a middle-class farmer, as was easily to be recognized from his tone. The secret of his success lay in the fact that his daughters had made him a grandfather in his own home and had stuck on there throughout the years along with their illegitimate children. He had thus been provided with unpaid female labour to help him all through the war, and had managed, at the end of it, to attain a position of some honour as well. In addition he had begun to believe in his country: Everything for Iceland.

“My children have never brought any shame upon their father,” said Bjartur. “They have been independent children, my children.”

The company saw immediately whither matters were heading, and that one short step farther in the same direction might result in personal insults. There followed an embarrassed silence, which
seemed difficult to bridge, but fortunately our old friend Olafur of Yztadale was quick to seize the opportunity, for he knew from old experience that he who hesitates to seize his opportunity in any debate will never worm a word in edgeways.

‘Well, personally,” he said, ‘I’ve come to the conclusion that a fellow has no more chance of becoming an independent man these days than he had in the old days, if he goes and builds himself a house. Never in the whole history of the country, from the time of the Settlement onward, has an ordinary working man managed to build himself a house worthy of the name, so I don’t see what good will come of it by starting now. We’ll just have to let the old turf walls suffice. And anyway, what does it matter if a man has to live in a little mud hut all his life when his life, if you can really call it a life, is so short? It would be another matter altogether if folk had souls and were immortal. Only in that case would there be any point in trying to get oneself a house built.”

Einar of Undirhlith: “Well, I’m not like Olafur, and I don’t profess, on those rare occasions when I have anything to say, that my arguments are based on scientific theory. I just say what seems probable to myself and I don’t bother about the opinions of scientists. And I must say on this occasion that it’s simply because I know that the soul exists, and that it is immortal, that I don’t mind though I live in a turf hut for the short while that the soul lingers here on earth. And though life be miserable, one’s house small, one’s debts heavy, one’s provisions inadequate, and illnesses long and inescapable, yet the fact remains that the soul is the soul. The soul is and always will be the soul and belongs to another and a higher world.”