Under the Glacier (12 page)

Miss Hnallþóra: I noticed last night that the bishop wasn’t much for rich cakes with spices, so I made up some plain dry-cakes and ordered from Akranes a few Prince Polo biscuits, which are so much in fashion now and thought most genteel down south.

Embi: Thank you, but I think I’ll wait until the master is seated.

Miss Hnallþóra: The master? Pastor Jón? Seated where?

Embi: I hope the pastor will be so obliging as to eat with me.

Miss Hnallþóra: This is just a cup of coffee.

Embi: Thank you, but it’s my custom not to drink coffee until after the meal.

Miss Hnallþóra, astonished: The meal? What is the bishop talking about?

Embi: Fish, for example.

Miss Hnallþóra: It has not been the custom here at Glacier to serve fish to the gentry. I am not going to be the first to offer a learned gentleman fish. I would be the butt of the whole county.

Embi: Why?

Miss Hnallþóra: Why? It isn’t genteel.

Embi: What is genteel?

Miss Hnallþóra: Nothing less than seventeen sorts is thought genteel here.

Embi: But the pastor must eat fish every now and again, surely.

Miss Hnallþóra: The pastor has something out of his pocket wherever he happens to be. The ladies send him a loaf of rye bread occasionally; that’s how they show their love for him. The drivers, too, sometimes leave something in the shed. Those who go out fishing from the glebe-lands give him a brace of fish now and then as his share of the catch, and he dries them himself on the old fish-racks out in the lava; sometimes a flounder, what’s more. His dulse he dries on the rocks. And there is water in the streams. One could say that the pastor lives off the abundance of the land.

Embi: You yourself could hardly avoid tasting this, er, stuff sometimes, on the quiet.

Miss Hnallþóra: What stuff ?

Embi: F-fish.

Miss Hnallþóra: It has never been thought fitting for better-class women to gorge themselves on fish in public here at Glacier.

The woman walked out, and I could see she was offended with me. This time she did not stay by me, as was the custom of the country, to ram the cakes down my throat, but left it to me to crawl out of the mess on my own. Perhaps this arrangement was a step in the right direction. Perhaps I could expect to get a simple piece of bread tomorrow or the day after. But I regretted having shocked the woman’s maidenly modesty by mentioning fish. Yet now it was easier to understand why such a woman was bound to have seen a fairy ram, and likewise why Úrsalei and her kinswomen had never been seen to eat.

22

Strange Moment
of Time

0415 o’clock: the sun already up and shining on the face of the pastor’s sleeping guest. He swings his legs out of bed, determined to be off as soon as possible, and starts to get dressed. Consider myself in no way obliged to put up with hunger and misery here a day longer for the sake of an affair in which I think few people take much interest, least of all the parties concerned; besides, another day is unlikely to add much to yesterday as regards the prospect of salvation for souls in this part of the world. I start packing my equipment, the tapes and shorthand notes, into the duffel bag in the hope that I haven’t entangled myself in anything for which I shall have to suffer later; and secondly, that I shall never be reckoned other than an impartial reporter about Christianity at Glacier.

If pastor Jón Prímus has fled the farm on my account, I send him my greetings. If Miss Hnallþóra is annoyed with me because of inhumane attitudes towards sweet-cakes, she’ll just have to argue it out with herself. Consider myself beholden to no one in this place, hope that in the end the calf will get the cakes mixed in its swill. I have decided to spend the morning strolling over to the cliff-edge at the bottom of the homefield to hear what the kittiwake colony has to say, that colony where everything is multiplied a million times compared with what can be read in my report. Pastor Jón reckons that one million kittiwakes live in the sea-cliffs on this stretch of coast, which the pastor’s homefield touches at one point, reaching to the edge of the cliff as was said earlier. But it seems to me just as probable that one could multiply by seven the number of these white inhabitants on the black cliffs. Most of the birds are nesting now and have started laying—and excreting. The coal-black cliffs are white. Those who love the metropolitan cities of the world would doubtless call it salvation to be allowed to sit here for the rest of their lives.

The cries of these birds are a function of their flight, for when they are sitting they are silent. Just now there reigns in their bleating that contentment which is in the nature of this strange moment of time poised between daybreak and morning. The pitch is at once gentle and full; overpowering, unerring, rhythmic. Or am I perhaps describing the audio-perceptions of the person himself who has woken up, young and healthy, while the morning is officially not yet arrived and all mankind sleeps? Every now and again there is a deathly silence. Is it an artistic silence? Or sudden news of disaster?

The egg on the very brink of the cliff is for these folk their bank account, status symbol, and confession of faith. The female goes on sitting close to her man whatever happens. It is as if her senses have been disconnected. Many of them sit motionless for hours on end and seem to be doing mental arithmetic. A few are gliding without any effort over the deeps in front of the precipice on some inscrutable errand, like snowflakes drifting in a calm. Perhaps watching out for the enemy, the fulmar. The kittiwake is
larus
and has the title of
tridactylus
, that is to say a three-fingered gull. This is like looking into another world. It is as if one gets a vision of sentient beings in the galaxies. Sometimes there is a reading from an uninspiring book or someone gives a lecture or even stumbles through a homily; here and there an old woman argues with herself in an undertone all the while. But just when they are all about to doze off in the fine weather there’s always someone who starts up, though probably not necessarily the same one, and he’s thought of something curious while he was sitting beside his wife and the egg; who knows, he may have felt a touch of patriotism when he was falling asleep and now bursts our with O Iceland, Awaken ! Another one gets idealistic all of a sudden and wants to save the world without delay and takes wing with these words: Anything is better than being passive! Yet another makes himself heard above all the din just to tell a joke. A moment later there is ecstasy on the cliff again.

23

Winter-Pasture Shepherds

To pick up where we left off, when three winter-pasture shepherds had arrived here from far-off nations: the undersigned caught a glimpse of them yesterday when they got down from Jódínus Álfberg’s twelve-ton truck and sat down round Hnallþóra’s calf in the homefield. It is not the undersigned’s job to keep an eye on bearded men. The bungalow and its people don’t belong to my field of investigation.

As I stand there at the head of an inlet where the homefield ends, with a view of the cliffs to both sides, it seems to me that a shower of stones breaks over the middle of the bird colony. Stones are being hurled from the edge of the cliff west of the inlet towards the eastern face of the cliff, where the population is densest. Some of the stones miss their mark, but eventually a bird is struck and falls injured from a niche in the rock, is unable to save itself, and dies in the sea. Two or three birds that sat next to it fly up in surprise but settle again, and the accident arouses no widespread interest on the cliff. And yet a bird has just been killed there. When I look around for the cause of it I see the three men sitting on the cliff-edge.

We are loving, flower-giving apes, says the bearded one who is their spokesman and talks academic English, but out of the corner of his mouth, the American way. Beside him sits a man with a crown of flowers on his head, and my interlocutor plucks from this man’s wreath a flower and throws it to me. The flower was not a genuine one. The flower-wearer’s dead smile, on the other hand, was genuine, the chisel-shaped teeth regular and white as when men smile from the shadow of the mango tree in the lands where famine is routine. The white of his shining black eyes was of the same kind; his beard was a little blue; his complexion halfway between chocolate and cream-coffee. He sits there in a Buddha posture with the garland in his hair on the edge of the cliff, with his back to the ocean and facing the glacier.

The third curly-bearded one crouched on his knees with his heels under his buttocks and plucked rather feebly at some kind of a lute, and stared hard down at the instrument while he plucked, wondering what would come, then raised his eyes to the sky and watched the sound drift away, then peered muttering into the instrument as if he had lost something, before he tried again, but never quite stopped the music altogether.

It’s a wonder that such dishevelled people, scantily shod and wrapped in rags, should be allowed in through Immigration! Men like this exist in Iceland only in old books and folktales, and occur in modern novels and plays only through an anachronism on the part of the authors. They herd sheep in snowstorms and wrestle with ghosts at Christmas and walk after death when the ogress has snapped their backbones. From them originates the demand in Iceland that people should be given their food without prevarication. Although violent ghosts came to an end centuries ago, it is in our natures as Icelanders to recognise these men whenever we see them, even though they are dressed in beggars’ rags with lute and garland.

The bishop’s emissary asks if these loving, flower-giving apes aren’t winter-pasture shepherds.

First winter-pasture shepherd: I am Saknússemm the Second, the famous alchemist, the one and only person who knows the secrets of Snæfellsjökull—reincarnated in California. The one with the flowers is Epimenides. He doesn’t speak. He has been asleep for fifty-seven years. He doesn’t even talk in his sleep. But in his sleep he summons insects to life or kills them with his eyes. When he wakes he will speak. And Siva will stop dancing. The musician with the lute, he’s the Drop; a geophysical drop.

Embi: Who has baptised you, if I may ask?

Saknússemm II: Lord Maitreya, who kindled us into human form by cosmobiological induction, has connected us with the geophysical both in the theological and historical sense. And he also baptised us. He is our lord and master.

Embi: This lord, is it a man or what?

Saknússemm II: He is bodhisattva.

Embi: Has he any quarrel with these birds?

Saknússemm II: He owns them.

Embi: Why are you annoying these birds?

Saknússemm II: They are there.

Embi: Have these birds done you any harm?

Saknússemm II: Never seen them before.

Embi: Do you know what birds these are?

Saknússemm II: Never heard of them.

Embi: Why do you want to kill these birds?

Saknússemm II: Because we love them, sir.

Embi: I don’t understand.

Saknússemm II: Why do people pick flowers? Have people any quarrel with them? In our innermost selves there is something that is analogous to them. They are too good to live. We pick them and make garlands of them for ourselves because we love them.

Embi: It is certainly instructive to hear you preach, sir.

Saknússemm II: Why do people shoot animals? Because people love them, love them as themselves, love them so dearly they could eat them. The flower dwells defenceless in your innermost self.

Embi: Is this meant to be an argument for killing birds? Saknússemm II: If someone doesn’t understand, it is because he doesn’t understand Siva.

Embi: Who is Siva?

Saknússemm II: Siva signifies the creation of the world and the destruction of the world. To create is to destroy. To induce life is to destroy life.

Embi: Where is that written?

Saknússemm II: The two things happen simultaneously; it is called the Dance of Siva, our god.

Embi: You sound as if you’re from America. Why have you come here?

Saknússemm II: We brothers are life-inducers (NB: He actually said “bioinductors,” a word the undersigned has never heard before nor seen in print. I hope this man is not a professor from Los Angeles). We have come here to bioinduct Snæfellsjökull.

Embi: By killing birds?

Saknússemm II: Killing birds is a game, like war.

Embi: Why do you Americans travel to foreign countries in order to kill birds?

Saknússemm II: War has always been the chief amusement of humankind. Other amusements are a surrogate for war. What are the Olympic Games? Bullshit.

Embi: It is monstrous to amuse oneself by killing defenceless creatures.

Saknússemm II: It has always been popular to attack the weak. A great temptation to take them on—no matter whether they are white, black, or red. A bitter disappointment when it turned out they could defend themselves; tragic; it’s like pricking oneself on a rose.

Embi: Attacking the weak is considered cowardly and contemptible here in this country!

Saknússemm II: Bullshit. The weak—that’s the one who dwells deepest in my innermost being. He and your flower are one. While that flower dwells inside you, you are defenceless. Destitute people know no other amusement than killing destitute people. Of all the creatures that man kills for his amusement there is only one that he kills out of hatred—other men. Man hates nothing as much as himself. That is why war is called the leprosy of the human soul.

Embi: I’m afraid that is only half the truth, my friend. At least I don’t like that wording. I am a theologian. The soul has no flesh.

Saknússemm II: The soul loves lepers so dearly that it’s prepared to go to the trouble of killing them all if it can kill itself at the same time. Why did the Germans tramp cheering and singing to Stalingrad? Because the Russians are the only people the Germans hope are even greater wretches than themselves. Why do we Americans travel halfway across the globe with the most complex guns in the history of the world to shoot naked peasants in a country whose name we don’t even know? It is because we love these people as ourselves. We adore them. We gladly pay a million dollars to be able to shoot one peasant. We are prepared to spend the last gold coin in our treasury to be allowed to shoot a peasant.