Independent People (22 page)

‘They wouldn’t have thought your wife’s death so natural in my time, Bjartur my good man. And that lambing fold of yours has a funny reputation according to all that I’ve heard.”

“Pshaw,” snorted the minister in angry disagreement. “Urtharsel was swarming with all sorts of ghosts as well. Twice I’ve lost my way over the fell there, both times in broad daylight and the height of summer, so help me God.”

“One or two people from the homesteads did have a pixy to announce them sometimes,” agreed the old woman, “but our neighbours on the moors were good neighbours all the forty years that I lived there, as God and men may witness.”

“Mother means that we were never haunted except when certain people were coming,” said the daughter in explanation. “But we had good friends there on the moors, and they were often very useful to us.”

“I refuse to discuss anybody whose name isn’t in the parish register,” said the minister.

“We had many a nice cup of coffee from them in dreams all the same,” said the daughter. “And they were never anything but liberal with the sugar.”

“Um, we’d many a tasty bite and sup from them,” confirmed the old woman reverently.

The minister paraded the floor, snorting his disapproval, but Bjartur declared that he had never denied that there was much that was strange in nature. “I consider that there’s nothing wrong in believing in elves even though their names aren’t on the parish register,” he said. “It hurts no one, yes and even does you good rather than harm; but to believe in ghosts and ghouls—that I contend is nothing but the remnants of popery and hardly fit for a Christian to give even a moment’s consideration.” He did his utmost to persuade the women to accept his views on these matters.

O
N
Saturday morning the bearers came trudging over the marshes with their dogs. There were four of them, all old acquaintances: the Fell King, Einar, the poet of Undirhlith, then Olafur of Yztadale, friend of the incredible, and lastly the father of the deceased, old Thorthur of Nithurkot. They were walking not in a group, but at a great distance from one another, like men who have set out on
journeys of their own to destinations that do not concern the others. The Fell King arrived first, and the others trailed in one by one after him, Thorthur of Nithurkot last. They were all in their Sunday clothes, with their socks turned up over their trouser bottoms.

Bjartur was not the one to harbour his grief; he welcomed his guests in royal style. “Step into the palace, lads,” he cried; “it’s biting sharp today, but comfort yourselves, the womenfolk have the kettle on.” They took out their knives and began scraping the snow from their clothes. It had been terrible going, they said, hard on top, soft beneath, slippery. The old man, groaning and reluctant in his movements, cautiously took a seat on the doorstep, his joints creaking as if he were about to break in pieces. He seemed all shrunk in upon himself, blue in the face, rime in the tatters of his beard, the lids and corners of his eyes inflamed and the iris colourless with old age. On freshly cut turf between the sheep’s mangers stood the coffin, decorated by tufts of wool that had stuck by chance to the tarred planks when the sheep crowded out for their midday drink from a hole broken in the surface of the ice-bound brook. The old man pressed his gnarled blue hands here and there on the coffin, as if to test its strength—or were these his caresses? Carefully and with an innate sense of tidiness he plucked some of the tufts from the wood. This outer part of the stable was reserved for the ewes, the inner part being divided into a pen for the lambs and a stall for the horse. The smell of the horse’s urine overpowered all the other smells in the stable, for the drain was out of order.

The two women on loan from Rauthsmyri were busy upstairs with the baby and the fire. They had scrubbed the roof and the floor clean. The men left their dogs outside as a token of their respect for the dead, but otherwise their behaviour was much the same as usual, no impediment being allowed to interfere with their wholehearted discussion of the weather, no fastidiousness to temper the special frame of mind sacred to that topic. The snuff-horns went the rounds. Einar of Undirhlith handed Bjartur the usual elegy, written on a tattered piece of paper, and Bjartur gazed at the superscription with a wry face, mistrustful in advance of the tenor of his friend’s poetry, then stuck it indifferently up under a rafter. The old man from Nithurkot wiped the moisture from his eyes with his snuffed-stained handkerchief. When the company had decided that the wind looked like settling in the southwest, Thorthur gave it as his opinion that it would stay there for the
winter. This was his only contribution to the discussion, for he had reached an age when one begins to lose all faith in the weather, and there was really so little left to him in the world, except the mill-cot by the brook at home. It was not that he felt bitter against anyone, it was only that he found it difficult to speak. Whenever he opened his mouth to say anything, it was as if something suddenly gripped him by the throat; he looked as if he might burst out giggling on the spot. Something idiotic would appear in his features, some dissolution, as if his face were cracking from inside and would fall in pieces at the slightest exertion—even that of making a trivial little remark about the weather.

Olafur of Yztadale declared that a frosty winter was easy enough to understand after a showery summer: the wet and the dry must balance in nature.

The Fell King considered that since the hard weather had begun so early, surely it would thaw before Christmas and then give them a long period of mild weather, like, for instance, the winter six years ago. He was, on the whole, of the opinion that it would prove to be no worse than a fairly good winter and said that there was certainly no need to despair even though it did show its claws early.

Einar of Undirhlith said that in general his prophecies were based on intuition and dreams, and that he had a feeling, in spite of what the Fell King had just said, that it would be a severe winter and that they had better not be too generous with the hay. But he felt sure they would have a fine spring, for in a dream he had seen, at a great distance from him, a beautiful young girl from the south-country.

‘Well, personally I never had much faith in these dreams of women,” said Bjartur, refusing to be infected with such ill-founded optimism. ‘They’re little enough to be relied on when you’re awake, bless them, but still less when you’re asleep.”

“But surely if you could only interpret dreams, you’d find the sort in which women appear just as reliable as any other kind,” protested Einar.

“You’re quite right,” interrupted the housekeeper with great heat. “Certainly they’re reliable; and he ought to be ashamed of himself, the way he talks, and his wife lying there.”

“Let’s forget about dreams for the moment, then,” suggested the Fell King, who was always prepared to act as mediator between these two noteworthy poets. “Well, to turn the conversation to what we were discussing earlier in the autumn, I want
everybody, while I remember, to know that I have now received a new physic from Dr. Finsen. I referred to him the complaints made by several of our local worthies, yours among them, Bjartur, and he wrote for an absolutely special preparation for us. And according to what he said himself, the makers give an out-and-out guarantee that it will cleanse the dogs thoroughly, not only as regards tapeworm, but as regards the blood and the nerves of the whole body as well.”

They said that it wasn’t before time; a fox was a curse and tapeworm a damn sight worse. All of them had the same story to tell of their dogs, every single one infected. Men and beasts were in danger. They demanded that the Fell King strike a decisive blow.

“Of course,” said he, “and you’ll receive from me as soon as possible the annual circular dealing with the subject. My idea was to administer the treatment about the same date as the parliamentary elections, so that you could bring your dogs along with you on your way to vote and get everything over on one journey. It’s a help to the smaller farmer, with no one to do his bidding, to have to make only the one trip.”

“What happened about the assistant dog-doctor?” inquired Olafur of Yztadale, who perhaps, like many another, had dreamed of a morsel of food and honour in this connection. “Didn’t you say in the autumn that the Sheriff was half-thinking of appointing an assistant for the district?”

“Yes, but there are one or two things to be taken into consideration first,” replied the Fell King with some gravity. “These are difficult times, you know, and the county is hardly in a position to increase its expenditure to any great extent. And then again, well, I’ve always been of the opinion that to appoint an assistant in the parish here, when I am supposed to fulfil these duties, would be to pass a sort of vote of no confidence not only in me and Dr. Finsen, but in the government as well, for it is the government that supplies the physic. I would be only too pleased, on the other hand, to resign at any time. And that was what I told the Sheriff; that either I handed in my resignation or I did the work on my own responsibility.”

“Well, it’s the same as I’ve always said,” declared Olafur, whose disappointment had not been so very great. “If the physic was scientific from the beginning, then the dogs wouldn’t be constipated.”

“As I said before,” rejoined the Fell King, “it is the authorities that provide the medicine.”

(“Oh, the authorities will never cheat you,” interposed the old man from Nithurkot, full of gratuitous trustfulness.)

“Quite right,” agreed the Fell King. “I personally consider that the government we have had in the country for the past few years has served the people well. And in the person of the doctor we have had a most public-spirited gentleman to represent our constituency in Parliament, a man who has ever been willing to do everything possible for us, both as a doctor, a man, and a member of the Althingi.”

There was silence for a while, and the crofters, feeling that the conversation was verging on the political, thoughtfully studied the broad, calloused palms of their hands.

“I shouldn’t be surprised if some people didn’t look at the doctor with rather different eyes,” remarked Einar of Undirhlith at last. “And one thing is certain: those who don’t deal with the merchant in Fjord won’t vote for the candidate put up in Fjord.”

“Yes, I think we all know our good Bailiff,” said Bjartur. “If the government was for sale he would buy it up, stick on a percentage, and peddle it round to see if anybody would be fool enough to buy it.”

(The housekeeper muttering to herself in front of the range: “It’s shameful to hear the way he talks about his benefactor, almost, you might say, his foster-father. No wonder misfortune dogs such a person.”)

It was obvious that Einar’s political opinions were not of the healthiest, so the Fell King proceeded in a helpful spirit to show him where he erred. “I don’t suppose, for instance, Einar,” he said, “that you ever had a bill from Finsen for all the medicine your poor mother had a few years ago.”

Einar could not deny that it was still owing the doctor—there were about two hundred bottles of it.

“Yes, it doesn’t take much medicine to add up to the price of a cow,” observed the Fell King.

This silenced Einar of Undirhlith for the moment, because he knew that the others must all be acquainted with the fact that he had mortgaged his cow and half his stock to pay off a debt owing to the Bailiff in Utirauthsmyri; but he added finally that a cow was a cow, medicine medicine, a government a government, and actually he was thinking of sitting at home during the next elections.

But whenever the conversation turned to politics, Olafur of Yztadale was apt to let his attention wander, for his interests lay
in other directions. The baby had waked up and was now crying, so the housekeeper left what she was doing to attend to it. Olaf ur was of the disposition that marvels at these little human creatures, if creatures they can be called, which come thus into the world to replace those that disappear. “It’s marvellous, you know, when you come to think of it: there you have a new body and a new soul suddenly making their appearance, and where do they come from and why are they always coming? Yes, I’ve asked myself that same question many a time, both night and day. As if it wouldn’t have been more natural to let the same folk live in the world continually; then there would have been at least some likelihood of ordinary people like you and me working their way up into a comfortable position eventually.”

But even the housekeeper was unable, or unwilling, to solve this problem. So Olafur of Yztadale continued:

“To me the strangest thing about these little whippersnappers is this, though: that they say it has been proved that new-born children can swim absolutely of their own accord, if you put them in water. Have you ever tried it, Gudny?”

No, the housekeeper had never tried it, and advised Olafur dryly not to advertise it too widely if he ever thought of trying it on his own children—such an experiment might be variously interpreted.

Olafur said there wasn’t much danger of that, he was the type that wasn’t much given to messing about with new-born babies. “But,” he added, ‘I’ve sometimes had occasion to do away with new-born pups, and I can tell you something that’s extremely interesting about them. I’ve lopped off their heads on the river bank at home there, with the clasp-knife, you know, and then flung the bodies out into the river, and now there’s one question I’d like to lay before you: what do you think the bodies do; do you think they float, or do you think they sink?”

This question switched the minds of the assembly away from all consideration of politics and the dilemma that these two candidates, the one from Fjord, the other from Vik, imposed upon the troubled electors. The women thought that naturally the pups’ bodies would sink, Einar was of the opinion that they might conceivably float on top, while the Fell King favoured the theory that they would float under water.

“No-ho,” cried Olafur triumphantly, proud of having diverted everyone’s interest into scientific channels. “They swim; they neither more nor less than swim exactly the same as any grown-up
dog complete with head and everything, and that’s as true as I’m sitting here.”