Paradise Reclaimed (18 page)

23

Delivering
a packet of needles

Meanwhile, Bishop Þjóðrekur had been travelling around Iceland for two years preaching the faith to people and immersing them, after spending a winter in Denmark composing a pamphlet for the Icelanders and having it printed. In Iceland he spent most of his time in areas where no Mormons had been before; his preaching provoked very little interest and even fewer beatings. As regards his pamphlet, this Apostle has declared that it is the only religious book which has been hawked around Iceland by special permission of the Danish king directly against the will of the populace, particularly the sheriffs, and the first book composed by an Icelander in Icelandic in which the religious ideas were not all on loan from the Danish king. He said he never grudged the Danish king’s destitute slaves in Iceland the beatings they gave him; their blows affected him about as much as when a pauper beats dried fish up in Langanes. Of King Kristian Wilhelmsson, Bishop Þjóðrekur has said in print that the king was the only person in the kingdom who considered the Prophet Joseph’s authorized missionary his equal in matters of faith, and for that reason he had Bishop Þjóðrekur’s undivided respect; indeed, this king was a countryman of the spiritual father of the Danes, Luther himself. Þjóðrekur the Mormon had now been beaten up so often and in so many places in Iceland without any result that most people, one might say, could no longer be bothered with it. Wherever Bishop Þjóðrekur took jobs during his missionary tour he earned everyone’s respect, according to the weekly
Þjóðólfur.
The Mormons have a law, instituted by God through the mouth of the Prophet, that the Apostles of the Gospel should not set forth with a purse, but should earn their own keep on missionary journeys. Bishop Þjóðrekur had been a labourer for two summers up north, and worked on a fishing-boat for a season in the east and one in the west.

Towards the end of the second summer that Bishop Þjóðrekur spent in Iceland on this occasion, he remembered that he had an important errand to perform south in Steinahlíðar before he left the country—to deliver to a woman there a packet of needles, etc. This he had promised to some man or other in Copenhagen nearly three years previously. It so happened that he had to pass through this district on his way west at the time of the autumn round-ups. He had nothing with him except his hat wrapped in grease-proof paper according to American custom; in his knapsack there was nothing but a shirt, a rye-loaf and a little candy for children. His pamphlets were all used up. His topboots were still in as good condition as they had ever been. It is said that on rugged mountain-tracks with razor-sharp stones, and also on the trackless lava wastes, over sands and through swamps, even when he waded across rivers, he always took off his topboots, tied them together by their laces, slung them over his shoulder and walked barefoot. This earned him respect in Iceland.

It was the time of year when the hay from the home-field had long been safely gathered and the grassier meadows mown; the sparsest patches were now being scraped. When Bishop Þjóðrekur reached Steinahlíðar he asked the way to Hlíðar. People looked at him in amazement. Some did not know of any farm of that name. Others said, “You must mean the gravel patch where Björn of Leirur grazes his wild ponies.”

Finally he reached a spot where the main track led past a ruined croft. Here there were high walls of stone, most of them in a sorry state. The famous dykes that once had enclosed the home-field were also dilapidated, and in some places it was obvious that gaps had been deliberately torn in them to make access easier. The grass had been so cropped to the quick that nothing remained except a clump of marsh marigolds, and where the earth had been stripped clean of turf there was chickweed growing. But there were still plenty of stray animals, both sheep and ponies, regaling themselves on the roots. The rock-falls from the mountain had been sufficient by themselves to make the homefield uncultivable. The farm itself was derelict. The roof had been torn off and all the timber carted away. The tumbledown walls had been engulfed by dock-plants. Two redpolls flew startled out of the herbage and vanished. The bishop had not had any dinner, but yet he seated himself on the door-paving and picked his teeth with a straw for a long time. An air of desolation breathed over the ruins.

“There have been rare goings-on here,” the Mormon said at last to some passers-by who roused him from his trance.

“What makes you think that?” they asked.

“Two redpolls flew out of here,” said the Mormon. “Where are all the people, bless them?”

He got little information out of these wayfarers except that the people had long since been scattered to the winds: the husband was believed to have run off and taken to that Mormonism heresy, and the agent at Leirur had appropriated the farm; according to some he had given the daughter a baby, but he had certainly never acknowledged it. None of the passers-by was so well-informed that they knew exactly where the rest of the family had ended up. “The parish council placed them,” they said; one thought in the uplands somewhere, but another thought that some of them at least were down by the coast.

“It’s heavy hay in this damp!” said the bishop when he eventually found the girl busy raking. The ground was level here, and the pasture ran in a pointed tongue to the sands. Here one could hear the ceaseless muttered thunder of the south-coast breakers. It was on the banks of one of the rivers from Steinahlíðar; at this point it had become calm and broad and no longer entirely clean.

The girl pushed back the damp hood from her forehead and looked up. He walked over to her and offered his hand and greeted her. She stared at him without a movement in her body or soul.

“I was told that you would be the girl,” he said.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I am the girl.”

“I cannot remember exactly whether I was to bring you greetings, but I’ll do it anyway, even though I have been chewing on them for long enough,” said the bishop.

“From mother?” said the girl, and a spark of life stirred in her.

“No, from old Steinar—I don’t remember his patronymic—of Hlíðar in Steinahlíðar, if you know of him,” said the visitor.

At these words the girl became even more speechless than before; until her face suddenly disintegrated. The days of her childhood suddenly came rushing back to her without any warning, all in the same flash, when she heard the name. She let the tears course freely down her cheeks, like a child, without lowering her head or trying in any other way to hide her face; and without making a sound.

“I would have come to see you earlier,” he said, “if I had suspected how things were.”

The girl turned away, sniffed loudly, and started to rake again.

“I had no idea how it was until two birds flew up out of the ruins of your old home,” he said behind the girl’s back. “It is the story of us all. How often have birds flown up out of my own ruins! Sit down on that tussock, my dear, while I see if I haven’t got anything left in the bottom of my bag.”

He brought a piece of candy out of his knapsack and offered it to the girl; she stopped raking again, accepted the candy, and put it in her mouth. Then she dried her eyes and thanked him. “But I cannot sit down,” she said. “I’m in service here.”

“You are an honest girl,” he said. “But while a visitor is talking to you, no one can order you about. Courtesy comes first.”

She paused with her rake in mid-swing and began to stare at him again.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“My name is Þjóðrekur, I am called The Mormon.”

“Is it true then that they exist?” she asked.

“Unless they have all dropped dead,” said the bishop.

“Is there no one who tells the truth?” said the girl.

“I don’t expect your father would have voyaged far across land and sea if he had thought me a liar,” said the bishop.

“It’s no good telling me fairy-tales any longer,” said the girl. “Do you think I don’t know now that Heaven and earth are two different things?”

“Thy Kingdom come, on earth as in Heaven,” said the Mormon. “Is that just a bit of sarcasm by the Redeemer?”

“I don’t understand Bible talk,” said the girl. “Not any more.”

“God’s Kingdom is in Utah, which is adjacent to Heaven with no gap in between,” said the bishop. “In that Kingdom lives your father.”

“Either he exists or he doesn’t exist,” said the girl.

“In the eyes of Mormons, no one is dead. With us there is only one Kingdom which is and ever shall be,” said the bishop.

“Yes, it’s just as I thought,” said the girl. “And now I must carry on with the raking.”

Now the bishop became a little irritated.

“And I say not!” he said. “You shall not carry on with any raking whatsoever. I have come to fetch you all and take you to your father. Where is your poor mother? And there is also a brother of sorts, I believe—yes, and that’s not all, according to the stories I have heard. Direct me to them all.”

“If I had not stopped believing in fairy-tales, I would think you were Death,” said the girl. “Or at least the old ogress Grýla.
^*
Excuse me, but are you a pastor?”

“I come from your father,” he said.

“Are you quite sure you haven’t got the wrong person? Was it not some other girl you were looking for?” she asked. “Don’t you think you’ve got the names mixed up?”

“Was it perhaps not he who had the horse?”

“Yes, we had a horse,” she said.

“And a casket?”

“A casket?” she said. “How do you know that? Is it then absolutely true that my father is still alive, not according to any Bible, but as if he were sitting here on this tussock? Am I not dreaming, as always?”

The bishop met the boy at the other end of the district, where he was working for his keep. He was busy bringing in dried peat on pack-ponies. He also had peat in his nose and mouth. The boy wore a hat much too large for him, and under it was a shock of matted hair, discoloured by sun and rain.

“You look as if you haven’t had a haircut since the first day of summer, lad, just like me in my young days,” said the bishop. “What are your plans?”

“I’m going to drive these peat-ponies home,” said the boy.

“Leave them be,” said Bishop Þjóðrekur.

“My master is at home waiting for them,” said the boy. “He’s stacking peat. I don’t suppose I could ask you for a pinch of snuff? I’ve run out.”

“Let me see your nose,” said the bishop. He went up to the boy and scrutinized his face closely. “My goodness, if it isn’t tobacco. I thought it was peat! That’s something you won’t have learned from your father.”

“My father is dead, somewhere abroad,” said the boy.

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that, my lad,” said the bishop. “I don’t suppose he is any more dead than I am.”

“I don’t believe he would have let us all go on the parish if he had been alive, for he was descended from both Egill Skallagrímsson and the Norwegian kings, and Harald as well,” said the boy.

“Go over to that stream, my lad, and wash your nose, both inside and out, while I lead these pack-ponies home and hand them over to the farmer,” said Bishop Þjóðrekur. “I am going to release you from your contract. Then I am taking you with me to show you how dead your father is.”

“Has he got some terrible illness?” asked the boy.

“Oh, just the usual things, my lad,” said the bishop. “A cold when there are colds about. And perhaps a little flatulence from eating too many pancakes at Christmas and such-like.”

“Did you see him yesterday?” asked the boy.

“Yes, yesterday about three years ago.”

“Was it after he disappeared?”

“You might say I saw him off,” said the bishop.

“Was he buried?” asked the boy.

“Not that time, lad—however often they may have buried him since.”

The boy gaped at him inanely, took off his hat and scratched his head, and pondered how he should react to this news.

“I still think there must be something in the story that father’s dead,” he said at last, but perhaps more from obstinacy than conviction, and stared after the bishop as he led the string of ponies back to the croft. After hesitating for a while, however, the boy walked down to the stream and started washing his face.

Steinar’s wife was traced to a croft far in the uplands, where she toiled to support herself and her two-year-old grandson.

She was now broken in health and unfit for outdoor work, so she was left to look after the house while the crofter and his wife were out in the fields. She came to the door with Steinar junior. Bishop Þjóðrekur greeted her with a handshake and delved in his pockets for a lump of sugar for the boy.

“The people are out in the fields, bless them, late as it is,” she said. “They said they would be on the far side of the six o’clock cairn, cutting hay for the pastor’s lamb. I’ll direct you to them.”

“Who are you, missus?” he asked.

“I am a widow,” she replied. “We used to live at Hlíðar in Steinahlíðar. Give the man a kiss for the sugar, Steinar dear. I don’t recognise you, although I lived for many years on the main track. You must be from the east.”

“You can certainly say that again,” said the bishop. “So far east that it has become west again.”

“Oh, the poor man,” said the woman. “I’m just a parish pauper, and I’m afraid I can’t act the housewife. But I need hardly say that my dear departed husband would have invited you in to rest your weary limbs on the bunk while you were giving us your news, if he had still been with us and in my shoes.”

“The thought is as good as an offer,” said the visitor. “And thank you all the same. But it so happens that here in Iceland I feel more at home at a tethering-block than on a bunk. It was at a tethering-block that we first met, this man you mentioned and I. You were asking for news, missus. I’m not particularly well-informed, but there’s one small item I can tell you. You called yourself a widow, but I can inform you that you were wrong there, missus. You’re no more a widow than I am. Your husband sent me to you and asked me to give you this packet of needles.”

The woman brushed the mists of the world from her eyes with one hand while she accepted the packet of needles with the other. For a long while she peered at that little black paper folder; her eyesight was failing her now.