“These needles will come in handy,” she said. “What was often a need is now a necessity—if only my eyesight were better. Yes, I’ve heard many an unbelievable story in my days, and yet true. And it’s many years now since I began to get this feebleness in the head and this weakness in the heart, so that I’m ashamed to say I scarcely know whether I’m in Heaven or on earth. But one thing I’ve always known: the All-Wisdom is just as close to my Steinar whether he’s alive or dead. Fancy him sending me a packet of needles! The Lord be praised. And now it wouldn’t come amiss to have a scrap of thread!”
“The All-Wisdom can never be over-praised, missus,” said the bishop.
Somehow, the woman was so entranced with this packet of needles that she forgot to ask any more questions. Or else she felt that the man who had sent her a packet of needles must be living in such a state of grace in Heaven and on earth that there was no need to ask anything further. Faced with a weather-beaten traveller from afar, she could only think of the rivers which constitute such a severe obstacle to travel in that part of the country.
“Have the rivers not been terribly high after all this rain?” she asked.
“Are you much for rivers, missus?” he asked.
“No, thank the Lord,” said the woman. “I’ve never had to cross a river in my life, except for our farm-brook. My Steinar forded big rivers.”
“That may all have to change, missus,” said the visitor. “I have come to fetch you and take you to him. I have his letter here to prove it. I’ll show you it. He is building you a brick house.”
“Excuse me, but to whom am I speaking?” she asked.
“My name is Þjóðrekur, a Mormon,” he replied. “Are you hard of hearing, missus? I was sent to you by your husband, Stone P. Stanford, in the Territory of Utah, in America. He wants you to join him there.”
“You look such a calm person, and you certainly sound reliable,” she said. “But since I am now keeping an eye on my grandson here, I don’t think I’ll be doing very much travelling. My Steina is still only a little girl, and the parish council decided that she was too young to have maternal instincts, so they handed him over to me. Now I have become nearly as fond of him as of his grandfather. I hope I shall always have a Steinar by me as long as I live. A thousand thanks for bringing me this packet of needles. He was a very gifted man; and he was a very skilled man; and he was a light. Yes, and how attached he was to his children. Who knows, perhaps he will come down to us out of the clouds one day! And now I mustn’t stand here enjoying myself any longer, there’s all the work still to be done in the house.”
24
The girl
Everything on the other side of the river now belonged to Leirur. Björn the agent bought up the crofts that had stood on the coastal plains listening to the thunder of the surf beyond the sands for a thousand years. He broke up the farms and added the land to his own estate.
One late-summer evening, on the way home from the hay-making in darkness and drizzle, she waited for an opportunity to lag behind the others: Yes, I am the girl. While the others went to have their supper and rest their weary limbs, she turned back and headed down towards the river. She knew the ancient ford that the old crofters, now long since gone, had once used; she had made a little cairn of three stones at the point where the ponies could cross. Despite the darkness, she managed to find her stone marker. Then she waded into the river. The water seldom reached above her knees, but in places the river-bed was treacherous underfoot. In daylight she knew where it was safe to cross, all right, but in the darkness she could not pick out the landmarks; twice she blundered into quicksands and had to turn back. At the third attempt she thought she could just make out the far bank about twelve feet away, when suddenly without any warning the water was up to her armpits and she was gasping and calling to God for help. As on so many other occasions, God was not slow to react, and created a sandbar for her that had never been there before and now rose up in the middle of the river. And just as she was losing her footing in the icy water she managed to scramble on to this newly-created sandbar. Luckily the river was shallow on the other side of it, and soon the girl was standing on the grassy bank and was wringing out her clothes.
Björn of Leirur was the only one of the peasantry in those parts who used lamplight, even though it was now nearly autumn— but seldom more than for one evening at a time, for this great traveller was seldom at home for many days in succession. When he was at home he used to sit downstairs in the room facing east. If he were not chatting to visitors from here, there and everywhere, he would be going over his accounts. His was the only light that shone inland, and on late-summer evenings it could be seen all the way from the main track that skirted the mountains. Sometimes it glowed all through the night. It was not only a sign that the agent was at home; it was the light of the world for the whole district.
She was worn out after a summer of drudgery, long days of toiling in the rain with her rake far into the night. But now all at once it was as if an exhausted traveller had been wafted on to well-rested horses, or as if the wings of fairy-tale had sprouted from her shoes. Her feet bore her lightly over clogging mires, moors and bogs as if they were level fields. So sure-footed and keen-eyed were these magic steeds that they never once stumbled even in this unfamiliar country in the rain-driven darkness.
The light that cast its wan rays over the plain drew nearer, until she was at the house itself. The big downstairs windows of the east gable-wall belonged to his study where his lamp now burned, that intermittent light. The curtains were not drawn. She pressed her face to the window-pane and peered in. The lamp stood on his desk. He was sitting hunched over his letters and ledgers with his nose right down to the paper, holding a magnifying glass to his eye with one hand, and with the other restraining his beard from flowing over the pages. She rapped on the pane with her knuckles, and he gave a start and looked up. He did not call out the customary response to the person who greeted him in God’s name, but laid a finger to his lips towards the window as a warning not to make a sound. Then he left the room. He opened the outer door, groped his way along the side of the house and round the corner, and caught hold of this stranger. He quickly realised that it was a girl, and led, pulled and carried her in, all at the same time. When he had brought her into his room he drew the curtains.
“What a terrible mess!” he said, and kissed the drenched girl. “Did you fall into the river? Welcome, anyway. It’s a long time since anything flew into my arms.”
“Do you recognize me?” she asked.
“I hope you haven’t mistaken your man,” he said. “And even if you have, I’ve never yet mistaken a girl.”
“I knew I wouldn’t need to make any apologies to you, Björn,” she said. “It may well be late, but we’ve met one another at night before now. We girls are no doubt all the same. I am probably not the first who was afraid of not reaching you before your light went out.”
“Old philanderers never get to bed until all hours,” he said. “They want to put off waking the wife as long as possible. We are mourning the fact that we no longer ford glacier-rivers on horseback, which is the next best thing to sleeping in a maiden’s arms; we are becoming unduly storm-bound by our firesides, we old fellows.”
“I have stared across the river towards you all the time since the nights started drawing in,” she said. “I sometimes see your lamp burning. Twice I have waded across the river to you, but each time I waded back over to myself and went home and took off my wet clothes. But now I have come all the way. I want a word with you, Björn.”
“Are you going to start discussing important matters with an old fellow like me at this time of night?” said Björn of Leirur. “Well, say your piece, my lamb, but keep your voice down, for sound carries far in this house. I must build myself a stone house some time. Now I’ll light a pipe. It is anyway just about the only wisdom you’ll get out of me, if I can puff out a little smoke.”
“Because we are all the same, and it’s impossible to be mistaken about girls, I know exactly what you imagine I am going to speak to you about, Björn,” said the girl. “But you are wrong. I have come to ask you what you think about my father.”
“Your father? What might the matter with him be?”
“Do you think he will ever come back again?”
“Why do you ask me that?”
“I must sound funny, talking like this,” said the girl. “Other people don’t understand how attached we were to him. I used to pray to God every night to be allowed to die before father ever released my hand from his. One day he rode away on our white horse and came back on foot.”
“He would have been better to sell me the nag,” said Björn of Leirur.
“Another time he set off with his wonderful casket.”
“He got the mahogany from me,” said Björn of Leirur, realizing at long last who the girl was and whom they were discussing. “Incidentally, what was in the casket, again?”
“There was a big compartment for silver,” said the girl. “And a drawer divided into many small compartments for gold and precious stones.”
“What the devil for?” said Björn of Leirur.
“And finally there was a secret compartment for what is more valuable than gold,” said the girl. “But he never came back, not even on foot.”
“He was a queer fish, right enough,” said Björn of Leirur. “I think he is best left where he is, my lamb. You wouldn’t be any the happier for seeing him again. People say I don’t do much for my children; but what did he do for his?”
“He did a lot for me,” said the girl.
“Such as what?” asked the agent, who was now puffing at his pipe with furious energy.
The girl said, “I remember once outside a church. There was a fearful crowd of strange dogs there, as always outside a church. They were crawling round people’s legs everywhere. I was only about five years old, I think. Somehow or other I got separated from my parents. I couldn’t see anyone nearby who could rescue me if the dogs were to bite me. And I started to whimper. Then suddenly a big warm hand enclosed my own. It was Daddy. He had such a big warm hand. And now I have come to you, Björn, because I have no one else to go to, and I know you would never dream of telling me anything but the truth: is he dead?”
“What an absurd thing to ask! What, Steinar of Hlíðar dead? Him? Dead my foot! Don’t you know he’s with the Mormons, child?”
“Is there some truth in the story, then, that these Mormons exist? I have always had the suspicion that when someone had gone to the Mormons, it was the same as saying he had passed away or been gathered to his fathers. I have always thought that Mormons were in Heaven.”
“You surely don’t think that everyone is dead and gone to Hell except those you can actually see with your own eyes up to the crutch in the marshes, do you?” said Björn. “If you want to hear about someone who is dead, I’ll tell you who it is—it’s me. It’s me who is sunk deep into this quagmire. What good have I got out of fording glacier-rivers night and day to bring people gold? Not a single damned thing, except my rheumatism. And almost blind, at that. No, my child, our Steinar is not dead. I am sure he has at least seven wives over there with the Mormons.”
“Though he had only one wife at the other end of the earth, or even none at all, he is dead just the same,” said the girl. “We would not recognize him again. It used to be quite enough just to be able to see father’s face, and then everything was right with the world; he did not need to say anything. It did not matter in the least if one of those snowstorms blew up in Steinahlíðar, a blind blizzard driving in from the east; inside our house it was sunshine. Even though we had nothing to breakfast on, it didn’t matter. One morning we woke up and he was gone. Anyone to whom we have said goodbye in our thoughts is dead. Night after night during that winter he did not come back, when I had gnawed the blankets all night and could feel the dawn in the air and my mouth was dry and swollen—I would suddenly find myself whispering, God, God, God, yes, yes, yes, You may keep him beside You because You created the world. And with that I would fall asleep.”
Björn of Leirur gave a perfunctory laugh, bent over the girl and kissed her. “You can be quite sure, my lamb,” he said, “that the day will come when I no longer have a bite to eat and can only crawl around the house here, blind and crippled; and then you will catch a glimpse of someone coming from the west, and it will be old Steinar of Hlíðar on his white horse, with his saddle-bags bulging with gold and schnapps.”
“I don’t think I would even dare to stroke his horse’s muzzle,” said the girl. “The person who comes back is never the same as the one who went away. And daddy’s little girl no longer exists either. No one knows that better than you.”
“Listen to her!” said Björn, and yawned.
“A man has arrived in the district,” said the girl. “He came to me out in the meadow today and told me to sit down on a tussock because he had something to tell me. He is from the land of the Mormons, and has come to fetch me. He said he was sent by my father. He gave me two days to get ready.”
“Are you crazy, girl?” said the agent, waking up. “Do you know where the damned place is? It’s on the other side of the moon. You must just have fallen asleep on the tussock there and dreamed it all.”
“Then I was also dreaming of my death,” she said.
“If in fact it was a man, and even a Mormon, probably that devil from the Landeyjar who has been slinking around the country recently according to the papers, well then, what are you going to say to him when the two days are up? What are you going to do?”
“Oh, nothing much, I don’t suppose,” said the girl. “I shall just wait out there in the fields until he arrives with mother and my brother Víkingur and takes me along too.”
“What about the boy?”
“What boy?”
“Our boy.”
“Is he yours, then?”
“Whose do you think he is?”
“I gave him to mother.”
“No one is taking the boy a single step out of this district, least of all to that arsehole of a place on the other side of the moon,” said Björn of Leirur.
“You have always said the boy wasn’t yours,” said the girl. “And so he wasn’t mine either, of course. He just started growing there inside me of his own accord, just as when God created the world out of nothing and then Himself at the same time.”
“There’s no need to pretend to be any more stupid than you are, my girl, when you’re talking to me,” said the agent.
“Do you think I didn’t know you did something funny to me when I pretended to be asleep?” asked the girl.
“There is no bridge between a man and a woman,” he said. “No man knows what any woman knows, and it will never be known until a pair of conjugated twins are born, a male and a female child in one body.”
“Whose business was it what I knew?” said the girl. “Mother’s? Or my sweetheart’s? Certainly not. Perhaps I should have started preaching about it to Pastor Jón? Jesus doesn’t care at all how mammals breed, as the sheriff said. And besides, they could never prove that I had been awake. But those days are past now, like other days. Whether I was dreaming or not, there’s one thing certain: in two days’ time I shall not be here.”
He put his arms round the damp, warm girl and clasped her to his beard and his corpulent body, and stroked her.
“Call me your little scamp once more before I go, and then I’m away,” said the girl.
“My poor little scamp,” said Björn of Leirur, kissing the girl with that huge beard of his that reeked of snuff and cognac. “I’m going straight to the sheriff tomorrow to adopt the boy. I rode past the croft this summer and saw him playing among the tussocks. He has the looks of my late grandfather, who was a great man and a poet. I promise you that I shall make this little boy a sheriff. I shall make him a national poet. We’ll go and fetch him. You shall not spend another day in these marshes. Don’t think for a moment that I’ll ever let you fall into the clutches of the parish council again, let alone the Mormons. I’m going upstairs to wake the men and tell them to fetch horses. We’ll ride away.”
“Where to?” asked the girl.
“Who the hell cares? I’ve had quite enough. I’m packing it all in—marshlands, shipwrecks, cognac, mahogany, horses; and these highflown plans for a steamship with these rich fellows in Reykjavík; and the rheumatism; and the great Vestmannaeyjar monster. We shall ride west tonight and board ship, you and I and the boy, and arrive in fairyland before bedtime, ahead of the Mormons. Now I’ll pop upstairs and put on my topboots.”
He released her from his embrace where she had snuggled half-suffocated under his beard. She stood there in the middle of the room. There were pools on the floor from her sodden shoes. She had seen everything through a haze until now, when for the first time she noticed the leather-upholstered mahogany chairs he had accumulated from many shipwrecks. Although one did no more than breathe in this room, one could not escape the smell of cognac and tobacco. A cat lay motionless on a cushion in an armchair, asleep.