Paradise Reclaimed (22 page)

And now we move on to the point where the girl had said “One minute” and gone below decks after refusing gold. It was around midnight. Her mother was now so weak that she could hardly take her medicine. A light burned faintly in one of those little red lamps which are used at night to comfort the dying. The girl was still keyed up by the warmth she had been given by the goldminer both in the dancing and the music. She forgave him for not having any particular accomplishment such as playing the mouth-organ or mimicking hens. She did not care in the least whether anyone knew how he had obtained the gold, or whether it was pure. And she was most grateful of all to him because it was not he who had been holding her leg above the ankle. She could not bear men like that. And then, before she was aware of it, she had put out the red light which was to have amused the women while they were dying. She tiptoed out again and hurried to the spot where she had said goodbye to him a long time ago. She had somehow got the idea that he was waiting there. But he was gone. Everyone was away except for a man who was embracing a girl against the mast; she almost bumped into them. Of course they were all gone! She could not understand how she could have thought otherwise in the middle of the night. She hurried down below decks and relit the lamp for the women and tried to make her mother drink a cupful of cold water, but most of it just spilled out of the corners of her mouth and ran down her neck. Then the girl went to bed on her bench.

27

One minute

Next day the sea got rougher and the girl asked herself whether she liked the motion or whether she was beginning to feel cold at the temples. But anyway, if one thing were certain, it was that she had completely recovered from that foolishness with complete strangers the night before. Or was emotion just as incomprehensible to her in the morning as it was natural at night?

And then without any warning she saw them come bearing down on her from a distance along the deck. Many a girl has asked herself whether it would not be just an act of courtesy and becoming modesty to look away and show no recognition. Finally they were all three at her side, fully refreshed by their sleep. They greeted her with the words that constituted the spiritual connection between them—“One minute”—and surrounded her. Before she knew it, she was once again standing beside the bright-haired goldminer. The other two at once started to perform for the girl to make up for the language deficiency, such as turning somersaults and playing leapfrog, and Blue-Hands tried to trip up the one with the hare-lip, who thereupon dropped down on all fours and bounded about the deck roaring like a wild animal. But the goldminer did not have to do anything, because he had the lump of gold in his pocket. When his rivals had started to stand on their heads and walk on their hands for the girl, he just stood there beside her without a word and put his arm around her waist.

It had become the custom for her to go to see old Þjóðrekur in the morning, after breakfast, and take charge of her son for the rest of the day while she looked after her mother. It had truly been a happy day that dawned in her life, now that she was a fully-grown woman, when she had got to know this little boy whom she had not understood when he was born. And when she got to know him, she felt sorry that she had missed all his first attempts to talk; and she also regretted the tears that she had not been allowed to dry for him. But on this Atlantic morning with storm in the offing and a long slow swell, her new-found friend, the one who wore a frock-coat, had all at once slipped her mind completely. She did not come to until Bishop Þjóðrekur was standing beside her in his topboots and hat, with the boy in his arms. He asked who these nincompoops were who were standing on their heads nearby, but she could give him no answer.

“Who are you, gentlemen,” he asked in English, but they did not understand the language.

“I don’t understand them either,” she said, disengaging herself from the man who was steadying her as the ship rolled, and went over to her son. “The fair-haired one is the Goldminer,” she added, just to give the bishop some satisfaction. “The dark one with the chilblains I call Blue-Hands. But the one with the hare-lip I think of as the Hen-Keeper, because he can make the cockerels crow and the hens lay eggs. But now it’s time to see to my son.”

It is not too much to say that the three artistes were shocked when they saw this girl of little more than confirmation age take a child in her arms and betake herself off with an ancient old American with grease-proof paper around his hat; they felt that this madam had played them a really dirty trick. But later that day they had found out all about these people from the ship’s officers: the passenger list said that the one with the grease-proof paper around his hat was a bishop, and the girl a widow. With that their spirits rose again; they forgive the widow and set off to find her again.

And now the little boy found companions who did not stint the fun; they became his playmates, just as they had been for his mother: Blue-Hands with somersaults and music, the Hen-Keeper with a flock of hens, to which ducks had now been added, and even pigs, and finally a howling dog. People gathered round from all sides to listen, and the entertainment was received by the audience with great enthusiasm. But happiest of all was the girl from Steinahlíðar at being able to sit close to a young man who was not associated with any earthly phrase or image but could yet have been the father of this little boy, and feel how he enveloped her with a warmth that was above any games or tricks.

A topic that sometimes succeeds in being fully resolved with the help of long explanations in speech or writing, with arguments and letter, but more often fails the harder it is pursued, can be resolved by dumbness in a single hour. That is why sages believe that language is one of mankind’s blunders, and consider that the chirping of birds, with appropriate gestures of the wings, says far more than any poem, however carefully worded; they even go so far as to think that one fish is wiser than twelve tomes of philosophy. The happy assurance that two young people can read in one another’s eyes becomes incomprehensible in verbal explanation; silent confession can turn into a denial if the magic spell is broken by words.

Oh my darling, oh my darling,
Oh my darling Clementine. . . .

When Clementine had begun to reverberate again and everyone had found one another on the dance-floor which often reared up like a cliff as the ship rolled, the girl from Steinahlíðar and her Goldminer had also found one another in that all-expressive wordlessness which books can never articulate. In one day they had poured over one another in the language of fish that light of truth which a whole year of daily letters with constantly reiterated vows of eternal fidelity cannot create, not even when accompanied by philosophy and poetry recitations or even songs. They had not been able to tear themselves away from one another all day, when most people had crawled into their bunks and begun to vomit. But the girl somehow felt that the Goldminer shrank from disappearing for a single moment from the sight of his comrades; and she noticed also that they were just as careful not to leave his side, but went on confirming their togetherness with skill and ingenuity, as if each and all of them, by prior arrangement, had a share in any gold lump that any one of them dug up. “How wonderful it can be,” she said to herself, “and what nobility it proves in young men, when they pledge one another a friendship that can never be shadowed by selfishness, envy or jealousy.” It was also a proof of the Goldminer’s high-mindedness that he treated his comrades in every way as his equals, the Hen-Keeper no less than Blue-Hands. The humility which displays itself in valuing the lowest on a par with the highest, and being a true brother to the one whom nature has inflicted with a cruel handicap—this was something that Icelanders had been taught in theory on the principle that the Saviour had bought all men’s souls equally dearly. She was quite prepared to acknowledge this ideal in practice, although she was ashamed to have to admit to herself that she could not hit the right rhythm with his comrades when dancing but trampled on their toes and they on hers until she landed in the arms of her Pan again.

Some authorities think that the attachment between a boy and a girl is in some way less valid if the time factor is not given sufficient attention. Others think that implicit in the theory about the necessity of a period of courtship are subconscious associations with the fermentation of certain drinks, such as mare’s milk, or the peculiar fluid which in the
Edda
is called the mead of poetic inspiration; or even the need to bury certain delicacies in a midden for three years. But one thing is quite certain: that whereas the patriarchs and greybeards required lengthy negotiations to conclude the betrothal of a man and a maiden, Nature often requires only one minute, if she has her way.

In the evening Bishop Þjóðrekur came over to the group of young people who were struggling to dance in the heavy seas to snatches of mouth-organ music played by a drunk. Seasickness was so foreign to them that they delighted in the towering waves which tumbled them all over the place according to the laws of physics. The bishop put his hand on the shoulder of the girl from Hlíðar, who had just been pitched into a man’s arms in a corner. She rose to her feet in confusion and brushed a stray lock of hair from her hot cheeks; the pupils of her eyes were dilated, glowing.

“I have just come from your mother,” he said. “She has taken a turn for the worse, I fear. Your brother and the boy are both in bed in my place, and I am now going back to see to the child. If I were a young girl I would not hang around so much with vagrants from Galicia tonight.”

The girl flinched at this admonition from the bishop, and the terrified look of a sleepwalker invaded her face. She disengaged herself from the Goldminer’s arms with the formula they had established: “One minute,” she said, and ran.

It was now quite late and there were no other people about apart from those whose incontrollable glandular activity compelled them to dance in a howling gale at night on a floor that tilted fifteen degrees. From cabins and salons all over the ship came the sound of people retching or vomiting and groaning with seasickness. But the girl walked the heaving decks cheerfully and felt no discomfort. She tried to tend her mother, and gave her water and drugs as the doctor had prescribed. She tried to tell the exhausted woman about the weather. She said that young people who could not understand one another welcomed all the pitching and rolling, and she cheered this listless woman with the news that she had met some foreign gentlemen who were very nice to her. Although the woman did not react with any exuberance, she was not dead; she even half-opened one eye and smiled with one corner of her mouth towards her daughter in this aforementioned small red glow, as if to say that the happiness of youth is a beautiful thing and that people should enjoy it while they could: “I understand you, my daughter,” she seemed to be saying with that half-smile, “and I will not reproach you for as long as I can see you with one eye, by the grace of God.” And with that she fell into a coma.

The girl began to struggle out of her clothes in the tossing of the waves. The ship creaked as it plunged into a trough, or clambered up a mountain of water so steep that the propellers rose threshing above the surface. There was no pause in the groans and screeches of the engines.

One minute. The words still rang in her ears as she stood there half-naked and numb as the ship pitched under her, holding on tight to avoid a fall. The sound of the door being opened was drowned in the din. It was her Goldminer, intent on compensating her for the brevity of their leave-taking a short while ago, to say goodnight and take her in his arms. And now she recalled Björn of Leirur, who always used to put out the light at this point. As if nothing were more natural she turned down the lamp without moving from his embrace, and caught a gleam of his blond wavy locks at the same moment as the light went out. While the women carried on breathing their last she inhaled this youngster who by his mere presence held sway over all her veins. The moment had arrived that some authorities consider all-important—so important, even, that nothing further awaits when it is past. But nevertheless here were no proposals made nor promises, no confession, compliment nor poetry, let alone any argument about morals and philosophy. At this moment which could just as well contain the true essence of a whole life, no other words were uttered than the magic formula: One minute.

Time dissolved in the heat of this night of oblivion on the heaving ocean rollers that hurled the ship from wave to wave, to the sparse breathing of the suffering women and the strains of the lost and gone forever Clementine. The sensations and dreams of the blood’s dark night merged into a strange picture-book or ebbed away into oblivion to the accompaniment of the protesting propellers that reared into the empty air on the crests of the waves; and of the mouth-organ outside. She had fallen asleep, and was aware of nothing until she awoke at the man’s presence again. The hands which clasped her like an urn were now cold, and refreshed her. And the fire of this wordless night burned on from sleep to sleep, from distant memories of Björn of Leirur’s aromatic beard all the way up to the cackling of hens.

As was mentioned earlier, Bishop Þjóðrekur had thought the woman from Hlíðar in rather worse shape when he had visited her the previous evening. The bishop had found her daughter mixed up with some crowd of rascals and admonished the girl until she went below. Then he went to the dormitory where her brother and small son were lying in bed paralysed with seasickness. The bishop could not sleep for worrying about the distaff side of this family he had been sent to fetch home for God safe and sound to a holy land. Again and again during that night he was on the point of going to visit the woman once more to see how she was doing in this tempest, but hesitated to leave the ailing little boy. There was a sage old Mormon from England in there, however, who always woke up at the crack of dawn and started chanting to himself a beautiful Mormon hymn about a poor sorry wayfarer. And now early in the morning, when Bishop Þjóðrekur heard the old Mormon starting to chant, he left the small boy in his care and went off to visit the sick and the wretched, according to the Gospel.

The sea was still high and the sky leaden, but the storm was abating and day was dawning. He groped his way aft along corridors and companion-ways. There was not a soul afoot. Dim lights glimmered here and there. He opened the door of the sick-bay, and found that the light inside had gone out and the patients were lying in complete darkness. He brought out some matches and struck a light. He glanced towards the bench where the girl had her bed, and was astounded to see lying beside her an oldish-looking man, far from handsome, bald, and with a hare-lip, his mouth wide open, and snoring. Beside him this young girl lay sleeping peacefully in all the bloom of her beauty. This sight astonished the bishop so much that he forgot for a moment his mission and went over to the bench and shushed at the sleepers with the sort of noise one makes when driving sheep to their night-pastures. The girl was the first to stir and she opened her eyes. She saw the bishop standing at her bedside, and lying beside her a creature which in her semi-waking state seemed to her to be a monster. With a scream she cringed away against the wall, covering her naked breasts with her hands. At this point her bedfellow awoke too. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and giggled, so that the deep cleft in his lip gaped wider, but into his eyes came the bestial look so typical of those whom nature has disfigured in this way. He also mumbled a few unintelligible words in a nasal voice as he grabbed for the first clothes he could find to cover up his nakedness, a lean, sinewy, bony, hollowchested man. He slipped into his shabby shoes, tucked the rest of his clothes under his arm, and went off without a word of farewell. The girl still sat there crouched in a huddle as if she were turned to stone, with her hands fastened in a cross on her breast and fingers splayed, staring after the man in a craze of anguish.