Independent People (32 page)

“Why can’t that blasted cow leave the poor bitch alone?” said Bjartur, who always took the bitch’s part against the cow.

Bjartur was rather worried about the children. Day after day they showed ever less liking for the so-called refuse fish, salt catfish, coalfish, codfish, and the sour sausage from last autumn, so he felt that it was unseemly of his wife to bless the creature that
deprived the children of their natural appetite for the food that he bought at such exorbitant prices down in Fjord.

Then one day the cow was driven out to Krok, which is a place along by the mountain, heath with grassy hollows. The spring shoots had grown through the withered grass; the marshes were green, the whole valley green. But the cow did not feel happy alone in her pasture and tried to run away over the ridge. Next day the elder boys were sent to look after her, but such company did not console her; she wanted her stall-sisters in Utirauthsmyri and stood for hours lowing up the valley in their direction. Eventually she lost all her respect for the boys and ran off. It was a great chase. They caught up with her in a trench half-way over the ridge, bridled her with cord, and led her home. She stood on the paving exhausted and forlorn, the veins in her neck swollen, her ears twitching in despair, nor did she stop complaining till Finna came out to her and stroked her and talked to her about life. When life is a weariness and escape impossible, it is wonderful to have a friend who can bring us peace with the touch of a hand. After this Finna decided to tend the cow herself. She took little Nonni along with her. Those were good days. They were serene days and quite undemonstrative, like the best days in one’s life; the boy never forgot them. Nothing happens; one simply lives and breathes and wishes for nothing more, and nothing more.

Those were the days when the willow twigs were budding on the heath, when the bilberry opened its fragrant flowers in red and white and the wild bee flew humming loudly in and out of the young brushwood. The birds of the moor had laid their first eggs, yet they had not lost the love in their song. Through the heath there ran limpid little streams and round them there were green hollows for the cow, and then there were the rocks where the elves lived, and then there was the mountain itself with the green climbing its slopes. There was sunshine for a whole day. Mist came and there was no sunshine for a whole day, for two days. The heather-clad hummocks rose up in the mist, but the mountains were no more. The moss grew brighter in colour, the fragrance stronger and stronger; there was dew in the grass, precious webs of pearls in the heather and on the soil where the ground was bare of turf. The mist was white and airy, overhead one could almost glimpse the sky, but the horizon was only a few yards away, there at the top of the dingle. The heath grew into the sky with its fragrance, its verdure, and its song; it was like living in the clouds. The cow curved her tongue round the grass and
cropped away steadily; she even stretched out for the willow twigs that hung over the brook. And the boy sat with his mother knitting on the edge of the hollow, and they listened to the cow and the grass and the brook and everything.

“There was once a man. He was on his way home. It was a dark autumn night. He was very tired. He had been in such trouble with the bailiff and the merchant, probably there would be nothing but the parish for him now. He had not been able to pay his debts, the dealer would not give him any more credit, and the bailiff had threatened to sell him out. Perhaps the council would make him flit; then the children would be sent here, there, and everywhere, to be starved on weekdays and thrashed on Sundays. They were waiting for him at home now, and he was returning empty-handed from the town; he was so proud that he could not bring himself to ask others to buy him anything. Yes, his footsteps were heavy. Many a heavy footstep has this country felt above it and no one has known. What was he to do?

“Then all at once he sees a light among the rocks.

“He had passed this way scores of times, both in daylight and darkness, and he did not know what to make of it, a light shining there among the rocks. So he made his way towards the light, and there stood a little house. A man was standing at the door, a pleasant-featured young man; it was the fairy farmer. He did not say very much, but all his words were kindly. He had the pleasant, thoughtful air of the elves, the elves have no worries, they look for what is good and find it. In the rocks he was given coffee with plenty of sugar and cream, and before he was aware of it he was telling this kindly young man all about his troubles. When they parted, the elf farmer said to him: When you wake up tomorrow,’ he said, ‘you must look in the passageway at home.’

“So the crofter set off home and he and all his family went to bed. He had not dared to tell them of his troubles. In the morning when he came down into the passageway, what do you think he saw? The whole place was stacked up with provisions. There were sacks full of flour, cases full of sugar, and some lovely fish in a bag. The people on the croft there had never tasted such lovely fish before. There was even a little jar of syrup.

“And there was once a little boy. He was a foster-child with some people who lived in a valley up on the moors, and he was not allowed to go to church, though all the others went to church. He had no brother and no little sister either, because they had been taken away from him. It was one Sunday in the summertime.
They had all set off for church in their Sunday clothes, each of them on his horse, and he was standing on the paving watching them draw farther away, and how the puffs of dust rose from the horses’ hoofs on the paths along by the riverl Don’t you think he must have taken it to heart?

“He wandered, weeping, away from the farm and up to the rocks at the foot of the mountain, quite overpowered by the evil that seems so often to prevail in life and even to rule it. But what do you think he heard from the rocks at the foot of the mountain? Why, he heard the most delightful singing! Who could it be that was singing so beautifully? It wasn’t a solo or a duet, and it wasn’t a trio either; it was a whole congregation singing. A service was being held; never had the boy heard such a lovely hymn before. And where was all the singing coming from? Then the boy saw that the fairy rock was no longer a rock, but a church, and the church was standing open in the sunshine, and the elves were all sitting in the church, and the priest was standing in front of the altar in vestments of green. And the boy went into the elves’ church. He had never seen such people before, so noble and happy. Such is life when it is lived in peace and in song. When the hymn was over, the priest mounted the pulpit and preached a sermon. Never had the boy heard a sermon so beautiful or so touching. And never afterwards did he hear a sermon like it. All his life through he remembered it, meditating upon it in secret and trying always to live up to it; but the theme of the sermon he told to no one. Some people think that it must have been about how in the end good will be triumphant in the life of man. Then the priest went to the altar and intoned in a warm, gentle voice; quite differently from our priests here on earth. It was as if a good hand was laid over his heart Then when the last hymn had been sung, all the people stood up and went out. And the boy stood up too and went out But when he looked around, the people had all disappeared and the church had gone too. There was nothing to be seen but Fairy Rock, as bare and steep as it had always been, and all he could hear was the twitter of some birds flying in and out of the clefts, probably they were white-tails. He never saw Fairy Rock open again. But he kept the memory of this Sunday ever afterwards in his mind and it consoled him when he had to do without the happiness that others enjoy in life; and he grew up into a man pleased with what he had and contented with his lot.”

From the white heaven of mist where the sun was hidden like a delightful promise there dropped into her hair a thousand
precious glittering pearls as she told her stories. She pursed her lips at the end of each with solemnity, almost with adoration, as if they were sacred chronicles. Gently she smoothed the loops on her needles; the landscape was shrouded and holy, breathe quietly. Her best friend had been an elf-woman and she had known an elf-man, too, the elf-woman’s brother; but all that had been long, long ago, when she was at home in Urtharsel. “Have I dropped a stitch?” she asked, and sighed. “Ah well, it doesn’t matter. What is gone is gone. And will never return.”

But the boy felt that it mattered. He proposed that they should go to her friends and become elves with them, when Father and Asta Sollilja were down in Fjord. “And we’ll take our Bukolla along with us,” he said.

“No,” said his mother pensively. “It’s too late now. Who would there be to look after Grandmother?”

That was more than the boy could answer; he simply kept on gazing into his mother’s face, which was the noblest and most exalted of all things that lived in the world, unequalled in its goodness, its beauty, and its sorrow. And when later in life he thought of those days and of the face that reigned over them, then he felt that he too, no less than the blue mountains, had been fortunate enough to experience the holiness of religious contemplation. His being had rested full of adoration for the glory which unifies all distances in such beauty and sorrow that one no longer wishes for anything—in unconquerable adversity, in unquenchable longing, he felt that life had nevertheless been worth while living.

His mother taught him to sing. And when he had grown up and had listened to the world’s song, he felt that there could be no greater happiness than to return to her song. In her song dwelt the most precious and the most incomprehensible dreams of mankind. The heath grew into the heavens in those days. The songbirds of the air listened in wonder to this song, the most beautiful song of life.

S
T. JOHN’S EVE;
those who bathe in the dew may wish a wish.

Young and slender she walked down by the brook, down to the marshes, and waded barefoot in the lukewarm mud of the bogs. Tomorrow she was to go to town and see the world for herself.

For weeks the prospect had filled her day-dreams with pleasurable anticipation; every night since the Bailiff came she had gone to sleep in the middle of a dozing reverie crowded with fancies of the promised journey. In daylight or in dreams she had seen herself set off a hundred times, and lately she had been so reluctant to waste time in sleeping that she had lain awake till early morning, savouring the delight to come. The hours today had passed like a distant breeze, her fingertips had been numb, her cheeks hot, she had heard nothing that was said. She had knitted herself underclothes of soft blue-grey yarn and had laid them aside for this excursion, looking at them only on Sundays. And she had knitted herself a brown petticoat with two stripes round it, one blue, the other red. And a few hours ago her father had opened the clothes-chest, which was the only receptacle in the house that had a lock to it, and had taken out a flowered frock wrapped in his Sunday jacket. “Though you’re maybe a shade too thin to fill it,” he said, “it’s time you began wearing your mother’s best frock. My daughter shall lack nothing outside or in, the day she goes out into the world.”

She had blushed with pleasure, her eyes sparkling. It was a solemn moment. The dress was crumpled of course, the material crisp and thin with old age, but neither moths nor damp had ever touched it. It was printed with the fertile vegetation of foreign
countries and had numerous flounces on the bosom. But though Asta Sollilja had grown at an incredible rate these last few months, her figure beginning to round to life’s youthful curves, she was still a leggy stripling and far too slight to fill such a garment. It hung loosely from her thin shoulders and billowed widely about her waist. “She’s like a scarecrow in the meadow at Utirauthsmyri,” said Helgi, and his father pushed him away downstairs. Apart from its size the dress suited her admirably.

She threw her arms round her father’s neck in gratitude and found the place on his throat and hid her face there. Her lips had grown thicker. When one looked at her profile against the window, one saw that she had a heavy lower lip, rather like a charming curl; her mouth was beginning to look so mature, poor girl—and his beard tickled her eyelids.

The lukewarm mud spurted up between her bare toes and sucked noisily when she lifted her heel. Tonight she was going to bathe in the dew, as if she had never had a body before. On every pool of the river there was a phalarope to make her a bow; no bird in all the marshes is so courtly in its demeanour on Midsummer Eve. It was after midnight, wearing slowly on for one o’clock. The spring night reigned over the valley like a young girl. Should she come or should she not come? She hesitated, stole forward on her toes—and it was day. The feathery mists over the marshes rose twining up the slopes and lay, like a veil, in innocent modesty about the mountain’s waist. Against the white sheen of the lake loomed the shape of some animal, like a kelpie in the pellucid night.

A grassy hollow on the margin of the river, and leading up to it through the dew the wandering trail left by two inexperienced feet. The birds were silent for a while. She sat on the bank and listened. Then she stripped herself of her torn everyday rags under a sky that could wipe even the sunless winters of a whole lifetime from the memory, the sky of this Midsummer Eve. Young goddess of the sunlit night, perfect in her half-mature nakedness. Nothing in life is so beautiful as the night before what is yet to be, the night and its dew. She wished her wish, slender and half-grown in the half-grown grass and its dew. Body and soul were one, and the unity was perfectly pure in the wish. Then she washed her hair in the river and combed it out carefully, sitting with her feet in the water and her toes buried in the sand at the bottom. Those strange waterfowl still swam round her in strange curves, turning about courteously when least expected and making her a bow for
no reason at all. Nor was there anyone else in the whole of the world who could make so fine a bow.