Independent People (34 page)

“Oh, Danish,” said Bjartur, refusing to be impressed. “It may be all right for the big countries, but we folk up in the dales have more faith in the geniuses of the past, like Magnus Magnusson of Magnuswoods. Iceland will never see the like of him again. Let the merchant hear one of his maid-songs, Sola, lass.”

Asta began immediately and without complaint to recite the prologue to the twelfth canto in Bernotus. With hanging head and red to the roots of her hair she reeled it off, gasping for breath and running one word into the next at such tremendous speed that it was impossible to distinguish them. But half-way through she got into a muddle with the lines and stood panting for breath and
growing more and more terrified until finally she lost her tongue altogether and felt like sinking through the floor.

“Marvellous,” said the dealer. “A masterpiece. That’s what I call genius”—and saved her by taking both her hands in his in consolation. He felt sure that she had the makings of an exceptionally gifted young lady, and proposed therefore to make her a gift of a bright new penny so that she could buy herself a pretty handkerchief, for the disposition to present everybody with a handkerchief is a characteristic of all great men. Then he opened the door for them and pushed them courteously out into the shop, which, actually, he had just given them with all that in it was.

The rest of the day went in purchasing supplies and in odd errands. Asta Sollilja was allowed to buy her handkerchief, and it was her first handkerchief and had flowers round the border. She was also allowed to buy a string of sky-blue beads, which she hung straightway round her neck in order to be in harmony with this great town. She carried her handkerchief in her hand, since she had no pocket. But that was not all. “I seem to recollect that I made you a promise of Orvar-Odds Saga awhile ago,” said her father, so they made their way to the bookseller’s.

The bookseller was an old man who was no longer able to stand without assistance and had to shuffle about indoors with the aid of a walking-stick. In spite of this he was reputed to keep remarkably well abreast of the times. His shop was at the top of a tumbledown old house hidden behind other buildings, a little room partitioned off from the rest of the garret. The way lay up a dark, creaking staircase that seemed as if it would never end. The book-seller was busy boiling some fresh fish on an oil-stove; the steam from the pan filled the room, and the many shelves sagging beneath the weight of literature were lost like belts of crags in fog. He stood up from his pan, took his stick, and shook his visitors’ hands in greeting.

“Can we get books here?” inquired Bjartur.

“Books and books,” replied the bookseller; “it all depends.”

“Well, it was just something for our Sola here,” said Bjartur. The little wretch has begun sniffing about between the covers, and it seems I must have promised her Orvar-Odds Saga at some time or another. I pay on the nail.”

“Pray God for guidance, man. It’s thirty-odd years since I sold the last copy of Orvar-Odds Saga. The country stands on an entirely different cultural footing nowadays. I can recommend the story of
King Solomon’s Mines
there, all about the hero of Urnslopogaas,
in his own way a great man, and in my opinion no whit inferior to Orvar-Oddur.”

“That’s rather more than
I’m
prepared to believe. Some more of that damned modern rubbish, I suppose. And no one is going to tell me that that fellow you mentioned just now could ever have stood up to Orvar-Oddur, and him fully twelve Danish ells in height.”

“Maybe, but the country happens to have reached a stage in its development when it wants to keep abreast of the times, and we booksellers have to take that into account. Surely you, Miss Sola, will agree that one must adapt oneself to the times? Come here, love, and take a look at my up-to-date books. Here we have a world-famous novel about a man who was murdered in a cart, and here a scientific account of the depravity of the Papacy, all about how those bad people abroad, monks and nuns, led immoral
lives
in the Middle Ages. And here I can show you a book that’s practically new and absolutely the height of fashion nowadays; just look at it, little miss, don’t you think we’d like to read it?”

Though the man was old and decrepit, Asta Sollilja could not help blushing to the roots of her hair at the title he used in addressing her; even in her most extravagant dreams she had never imagined that one day she would be called Miss Sola or that she would ever have literary interests in common with such a man. And when she looked at the title-page of the topmost volume, she was struck with such amazement that her heart almost stopped its beating. That strange, significant business which she had never heard mentioned by its name, but of which both the animals at home and her reading of the Jomsviking Ballads had given her an inkling—whole books had been written about it, then:
The Secrets of Love, Wholesome Advice Regarding the Union of Man and Woman.

Union? thought the girl, trembling with fright, as if she thought her father was about to slap her face—how can there be union of a man and a woman? She hoped and prayed that her father would not catch sight of this book. Seldom has a book awakened a young girl’s curiosity in such measure, seldom has a young girl been so shy of a book. Even if there had been no one with her, she would never have dared to ask for such a book. But although she looked hurriedly aside and pretended not to have noticed anything, the title continued to fascinate her with such power that she could see no other book in the whole of these remarkable premises,
Her father, of course, must choose this very moment to notice it too, and naturally he lost his temper, as he always did when this subject cropped up. This looks like some of the damnable filth brewed by those misbegotten swine in Reykjavik to rot the hearts of the women,” he growled.

“It’s what the women want, all the same,” replied the bookseller. I’ve sold thirty copies of it in the last five years and it’s still in demand. Murder and science are by no means enough. There has to be a certain amount of love in our literature also. Orvar-Oddur was a long man in his time, but who would care to measure the length of love?”

The result was inevitable; Bjartur and the bookseller started wrangling about the spirit of modern literature and the superior skill of the classics, while Asta Sollilja stood looking on in utter bewilderment till the water in the bookseller’s pan boiled over. The visit ended with Bjartur buying his daughter the story of
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

“He has seven or eight bastards, as anyone would expect after seeing the sort of stuff he deals in,” said Bjartur when they stood safe and sound at the foot of the dark and creaking stairs that led to the Secrets of Love.

He trudged along with stooping shoulders and long, clumsy strides that showed how unaccustomed he was to walking on a level surface. Thin and hesitant in her billowy dress, the string of beads round her neck, the handkerchief grasped in her sweaty palm, Asta hurried along in the rear, trying to imitate his gait, for she did not know how to walk on her own responsibility. Everyone watched them as they passed.

In the evening they went to a lodging-house to spend the night. It was a big building, floor upon floor of it, clad in unpainted corrugated iron, and with steps up to the door. And what a house! Asta Sollilja had never dreamed that such hubbub could exist, such shouting, howling, singing, scuffling, such banging of doors, rattling of plates, screeching of girls, and barking of dogs, such jesusing. This must be the famous revelry of the world. Heavens, how much must happen in such a house in only one day eveni The varied life implicit in all this noise affected the bewildered child with a sad sense of her own isolation, her own insignificance; she stood outside the boundaries of life; this great house was to her comparable in its way with the book about the secrets of love, full of seductive charm, but closed. Happy were they who lived here in life’s enchanting tumult and could share in the noisy merriment of
the kitchen. She sat like some crudely finished object on a bench out in a corner of the dining-room, making no complaint whatsoever, while her father mingled with the other men, mostly dalesmen like himself, discussing trade, worms, and this year’s grass. One thing only comforted her: the country folk did not give her such queer looks as the fine people of the town; hardly a soul looked at her at all.

She was tired and hungry, her mind slow-moving after all the multitude of impressions that had met on her consciousness during the whole of that long day. She did not even have the energy to adjust the inner sole that had worked half-way out of one of her shoes and up her instep; she sat staring in front of her with the handkerchief in her hand, and the handkerchief was dirty and crumpled already. Then there entered a big girl with glowing complexion and blue eyes and broad bosom, thrice as broad and full as Asta Sollilja’s; such a girl should be able to fill a dress out all right. She came sailing enviably in out of the uproar of the kitchen, carrying steaming fish on a colossal plate and bidding everyone sit down to table. Asta Sollilja was so thin that she dared not look at her with more than one eye. With a vigour in keeping with her beauty she asked who Asta Sollilja was with, then put her next to her father and saw to it that no one went without his share; and the valiant wrangling of the argumentative guests subsided in the face of such thick slices of fish.

Only when they were preparing for bed were their tongues loosened again. Trade and worms began once more. To make matters worse, there now entered the dormitory a number of queer-looking men who sang for no obvious reason and seemed to find great difficulty in keeping their feet on the smooth floor. They were red-eyed and muddy, and smelled of something yeasty. Asta Sollilja took fright immediately, for she felt that they looked at her so strangely, and besides they began pawing at her, but her father said she mustn’t be frightened, they were only drunk. But they persisted in spite of that, asking even who it was that had a wife so young and beautiful, and Bjartur told them angrily to leave the child alone, she was only thirteen and not even confirmed yet. The men said they could have sworn that she was old enough for a man, and one of them spewed on the floor. No one showed the slightest resentment against the newcomers, and the controversy about business matters continued as if nothing had happened. Opinion divided the disputants into the usual two groups, one warm in its praises of those who wanted to do everything
to help the farmers, the other siding with those who did everything to damn them. It was contended that the whole country ought to set up consumers’ co-operatives the same as the Thingey crofters had done more than thirty years before. Asta Sollilja felt nevertheless that it was going too far to say that the merchants were all bloodsuckers and thieves, since her father stood up for the merchant. But one thing she would never be able to understand was why her father should say so many nasty things about Ingolfur Araarson, that handsome, kind-hearted man who had greeted her so warmly once in the spring. Then again, the secretary’s father had twice given her two quarters for doing absolutely nothing at all; and though the merchant had given her a shiny penny for reciting ballads, she still could not help wishing that her father would stop being so bitter towards the Bailiff’s noble-looking son, who wanted to do everything for the farmers. The dispute grew more and more heated, and finally the girl hardly knew which she could afford to love less, the merchant or the co-operative secretary. She tried only to keep as close to her father as possible. One of the crofters said that the merchants were not only thieves but murderers as well; he knew lots of folk who had had to go hungry simply because Bruni had refused them credit, and he could give them a list of people in his own locality who had actually starved to death for the selfsame reason, and that in the last few years. The co-operative societies, on the other hand, were the farmers’ own stores; in them even the meanest peasant could feel safe against being first swindled, then finally starved to death. Another one said that it wasn’t the small farmers who controlled the co-ops nowadays, as they had done in Thingey originally; the landed men had taken the societies into their service now, or why was the Bailiff of Myri fighting for a society? Was anybody so simple as to believe that it was out of concern for the smallholders? No, it was because his own business in Vik was on its beam-ends. The Vik Co-op had ruined it, and now he was wanting to recoup his losses in Fjord here. No, the small man would be no better off with the co-operative society than with the merchant; there would be the same old pile of debts heaping up again, only there would be a monopoly adding to them as well; don’t you even read the papers, damn you? “I’m in no debt,” retorted Bjartur of Summerhouses. But the protagonists were both in debt, for each of them owned a cow, as was only to be expected, and they had no time to waste on an independent and unencumbered man like Bjartur. The question was not whether
one ought to be in debt or not, but whom one ought to be in debt to, and on this issue tempers mounted higher and higher till one of them said you couldn’t expect common sense from the other anyway, a man who couldn’t even do his duty by his wife. The other immediately called on all present to witness this insult, adding that it was public knowledge that his opponent’s wife had fooled him for twelve years with a farm labourer, and that he couldn’t call the children his own. “No, you’re going a bit too far now,” interrupted Bjartur; “remember there’s a youngster here when you talk such filth”—though Asta Sollilja had noticed nothing filthy about it and had not concerned herself in the slightest about whose the children were. They asked him what he thought the place was, a kindergarten or something, and what the hell was he doing here anyway with a half-grown girl among grown-up men when serious matters were being discussed? One word led to another; they knew to the hour and minute when they had been together, what’s more she was wearing red pants that particular day, and then of course words were not enough, the only solution was a smack across the chops—red pants, did you say? Well, I say a red nose. Yes, and a black eye. Asta Sollilja now began to realize that serious matters were being discussed. Warriors slain in the ballads and heaped to the hilltops were as nothing compared with the sight of a man struck in a lodging-house all because of red pants; so there did exist evil men after all. The others tried to separate them, even Bjartur giving a hand, but they landed all in a struggling mass in the middle of the floor. Asta thought that everyone was fighting everyone else and that they would kill her father. She screamed and started crying as if her heart would break. Slowly the cluster moved towards the door, more and more flinging themselves on top, and at last the enemies were slung out into the open air, where one or two of the crowd took it upon themselves to effect a reconciliation and give them snuff. Bjartur and several others came in again, and the girl trembled and kept on weeping in spite of her father’s efforts to console her.