Independent People (41 page)

This new minister, tut, he was no minister at all, a bald-headed youngster, what did he know about sheep? It wasn’t that he didn’t do his best, for he was always eager to talk sheep and pretending that he had a natural flair for the animals. He was continually dishing up some theory or other from the
Agricultural Journal,
and just now he was trying to persuade everybody to keep a ewe-book, and mark the lambs and write each lamb’s number in the book so that they would know the pedigree of every lamb in the autumn—it was a deadly sin against one’s stock, one’s self, and one’s family to retain the smallest lambs in the autumn just because their carcasses wouldn’t bring much in, and thus allow the worst dregs to shape the coming generation—and so on.

“The Reverend Gudmundur never talked sheep with anyone,” said Bjartur. “And he never kept a ewe-book, nor any other book except his Hebrew book. But he was a great man with sheep, for all that. His men used to swear that he knew his own hoof-marks
from anyone else’s. We shall never see the like of him again in this parish.”

They agreed finally that Asta Sollilja should be allowed to wait a year after Helgi. But the minister insisted that they must both go over to the homesteads next winter, before they were confirmed, to learn the rudiments of religious knowledge and the other subjects that were prescribed by law for such confirmation: geography, zoology, Icelandic history. “By the way, did you say geography?” They knew every inch of the valley, every crag, every hummock, every curve of the brook; whatever the weather, they couldn’t get lost if they tried. And as for zoology, they knew every single sheep on the place; they had been brought up with animals and knew as much about them as anyone. And Icelandic history—“Who was Grimur Algir, Asta?” Asta Sollilja, shyly: “Gongu-Hrolfur’s enemy.” Bjartur: “Right first time. And where did he go when he was killed?” Asta Sollilja, shamefacedly down into her bosom: “To hell.’

“There you see what happened to him anyway,” said Bjartur with a loud guffaw; and a little later: “Good-bye, then, Reverend Teodor, and see and look after yourself.”

It was early in March and Bjartur was making one of his frequent journeys down to the marshes to herd the sheep home. The weather had been very unsettled most of the day—showers of wet snow with fair intervals and even sunshine. The boys had been taking turns watching over the sheep. As he was rounding them up, the crofter suddenly noticed that one of his ewes, Hetja by name, was bleeding copiously from the head. At first he thought that she had cracked a horn, but on closer examination he found that the sheep had been, of all things, double ear-marked in his own pastures. The discovery astonished him greatly, as was only natural. Cautiously he fingered the bloody ears, trying to discover what sort of mark it was and what trickery was afoot, but the ears had been clumsily and even viciously cut, and though he detected resemblances to one or two of the conventional markings, he could not be certain which had been intended. There was more of the phenomenal than of the accidental in such an occurrence, and it gave him much food for thought. On arriving home he inquired closely whether anyone had been seen in the valley that day, but the answer was in every case definite: no one.

If it is true that there has been no one about, then it’s the first time in all these years that anything has happened in the valley here,” and he told the news of the marking.

Helgi remarked gratuitously:

“I thought I saw someone riding into the lake in one of the showers.”

“Into the lake? Are you mad, boy? What colour of horse was he riding?”

“I couldn’t make that out clearly,” replied the boy. ‘It didn’t seem to be a horse at all.”

“Who would you say the man was like, then, you little idiot?”

“I couldn’t make him out; it was in that heavy shower, you see. He didn’t look like a man at all.”

“What was he like, then?”

But the boy couldn’t say, it was just some sort of a bundle, that sort of rolled along through the shower and made off out into the lake.

Bjartur sat heavy in thought. They all sat heavy in thought. The old woman muttered this and that to her needles, a bad sign, better look out with the spring. We’ve all noticed a thing or two on this croft, and folk know more or less that the ghost isn’t dead yet, but to take a sheep from the flock and mark it in broad daylight-

The days that followed, mild days of warm breezes, springlike rain, and snow melting on the lowlands, did much to dispel the gloom cast by this phenomenon. The valley emerged yellow-brown with its withered grass, the hollows grew rapidly green, and colour spread over the home-field. The river was free, the ice broken on the lake; Finna stood in the doorway to feel the lightness of the breeze. The farm ravens had flown.

Little Nonni took his sheep-bones out on the hill to play. It was he who one day came in with the news that there was a dandelion in bloom on the wall of the croft. Rare occurrence in an isolated valley at that time of year. The children and their mother went round to inspect the little dandelion, which spread its petals bravely and so happily in the winter sun, those tender young petals. One small eternal flower. Long, long they gazed in pious admiration on this new friend, this harbinger of summer in the very depths of winter, so gay and adorable. In silent devotion, like a company of the faithful touching the bones of some saint, they felt it with their fingertips. It was as if they wished to say: “You are not alone, we also uve, we also are striving to live.” There was a brightness over that day. The apprehensions of winter disappeared all in one day. The cloudless brightness of that day lay infinite over the soul as over the vault of heaven; it was one of
life’s happy days, and they remembered it as long as they lived. Then the plover was heard, and the plover’s first cry has a marvellous ring. It is at once shy and grateful, as breathless as the first greeting after grave danger, and yet bursting with quiet joy.

And the young girl who knew nothing of Christianity, winter had passed in her soul too. Had she, then, felt no anxiety in the foul weather and long darkness of winter? Yes, she had often been anxious. They had all been anxious. The nights were very long. And the days were no days at all. One lives for the spring, and yet one does not seem to believe in the spring before it has come. One dandelion, one plover, and it was as if everything was coming, everything that one lives for till one dies. Soon the marshes would be green and humming with life the same as they were last year, with the phalarope preening itself in courtesy on the surface of the deep pools. And the little waterfall up in the mountain would be flowing backward in the sunny breeze. And he, he who came from afar—

Good Friday arrived, the longest day of the year. They suspected that someone had been crucified on that day, God or Jesuspeter, but otherwise had very vague ideas about how people were crucified, for they had never seen a cross, let alone crucified people, and didn’t care very much whether they saw them or not and asked no questions; the countryside was seething with old rumours. But on that day of all days of course the weather would have to break; it started freezing and by evening a high wind was blowing and the sky was thick with cloud. By bedtime snowflakes had begun to drift. Bjartur of Summerhouses was also gloomy of appearance that evening, and about midnight, after slipping on his trousers and shoes, he went down to look at the weather. It was blowing hard and the snow lay almost an inch deep. By morning it had grown to a howling blizzard with a biting frost.

It was Bjartur who had found least material for rejoicing in the period of fine weather that had just passed, the tokens of spring had left him unmoved, he was not the man to place much faith in the blooming of a flower or the piping of a bird. The truth was that in spite of the exceptionally fine weather so far, his sheep were not in good condition, the hay was of very poor quality after last year’s wet summer, and the lack of snow had tempted him to graze his sheep in the open more than was good for them. But one fact had disturbed him more than any other: time and time again the sheep had shown signs of lung-worm, with all the concomitant symptoms of cough, sluggishness, and foul-smelling diarrhea. It
was as if the sheep were eating to no purpose; some of the ewes had grown so lifeless that he was anxious for them and had been thinking of taking them home and feeding them on home-field hay, even cooked food. Now it had blown up for an Easter gale, goodness only knew how long it would last. The sheep had got used to being in the open and had begun to crop the spring grass in the marshes; now they would have to be penned in again, a return to misery for an indefinite period.

It was an incredible blizzard. It was one of those peculiar gales when the mountain sang above the croft as if the trolls that inhabited it had gone demented and taken out their drums; the dog hung whining about the trapdoor, shivering in every limb. And Easter morning was one of those comparatively rare mornings when old Hallbera recited her gale-hymn from beginning to end, while the children huddled beneath the bedclothes like a stricken host—the extraordinary hymn of the storm and the maniac, which lived in their minds as the most unpleasant poetry in all the world: then there came a madman, of evil spirits tormented, naked, raving, wild, demented. The horrible hero of the gale-hymn continued to haunt their dreams long, long after the storm was over. Often in later days the sudden thought of him would rob them of all their joy in the summer weather; when least expected he would break loose in their memory like a crime, even when in later years they had at last begun to live in comfort.

When the old woman felt constrained to sing this hymn it was a token that all the evil powers in and on the earth had broken loose of their bonds. Turning her senses away from the world, she sat rocking slowly backwards and forwards with her knotted hands crooked together over her withered bosom, her voice like the sound of a roughly hacked blade sawing through living flesh. Never is winter more powerful than on such days of spring. In wordless fear these anxious hearts beat free of debt in the face
of the grim powers that encircled the little independent farm. The mother unlaced her shoes and crept under the bedclothes again, on Easter morning.

F
IVE
days’ blizzard—it was simply incredible how far the sheep could decline in such a short space of time. And since they could not be persuaded to touch the mouldy hay from the out-fields, the only alternative was to feed them on the home-field hay, which hitherto had been reserved for the cow and the lambs. But how long would the manured hay last if it was to become the sole fodder for the entire stock? There were only two or three feet of the stack left. The ewes of course had to be considered first. But it was equally futile to deprive the cow of her manured hay and put her on the other; she refused to look at it, grumbled sullenly over her full manger, yielded less and ever less milk. She would have lost the use of her legs long before the time that pasture could be expected for her, perhaps as late as Midsummer Day, in a capricious future. It was conceivable, however, if only the weather improved and the ground cleared again, that he might manage to keep the ewes alive with the handful of home-field hay that he still had left. The struggle for sustenance lay therefore between the cow and the ewes, and with every additional day it became more and more evident that only the one or the other could survive. Such are the serious effects that the blizzards of spring may have on a little farm in a valley. No wonder that the soul is cheerless, that hope is small in the people’s hearts, that there is little comfort in lying awake at night. Even the most beautiful memories lose their lustre like a shining silver coin that collects verdigris because it has been lost. The four children watched their father getting up in the mornings, grim-faced and sleepless; saw their mother’s face swollen with the night’s silent weeping.

She still went down to the cow to stroke her and console her. “It won’t be long before it’s over now,” she would say. “Soon the sunshine will come again for both of us, and the snow will be melting away; then the sheep will be going down to the marshes and well both have plenty of nice hay again. The green grass will start growing and little Nonni will be coming with his mother to sit beside her Bukolla up by the mountain. And the birds—” The birds?—no. Words failed her at this point and she went on stroking
the cow in silence only, for though the birds might sing in the summertime, the cow was still moaning over the mouldy hay, and the hay lay untouched in the manger. Music, there is no comfort in music for one who stands face to face with death in the spring. She stroked her in terror. Finally the cow started bellowing.

Gradually this Easter storm died away like any other storm. The sun came out. The snow cleared away pretty quickly in the longer daylight. But the raw cold remained in the air, and the frosts were hard at night. Bjartur started driving his flock down to the marshes once more, but the young grass was either withered at the tips or dead altogether; the marshy hollows were black when they emerged from the frozen snow. Many of the ewes were so feeble by now that he had great difficulty in driving them; some of them could not be moved at all. When they were crossing the home brook it took them all their time to climb on to the bank on the other side, though it was hardly knee-high; they managed perhaps to heave the front part up, but the after-part stayed behind and there they would stand swaying, half in, half out. When Bjartur lifted them out, they would slump down on the bank, and once they were down, it was difficult to make them show any desire for further movement. He would take them by the horns and try to lift them on
to
their feet, and they would rise at most halfway and straddle along on their knees, a mode of progression that ever since the days of the first settlement has been known as stumping. When they had stumped along for a few minutes, they flopped over again. Down in the marshes they stuck fast in the ditches. If they sank over the hocks, they would make no further effort. The ravens had returned to the marshes, waiting their opportunity to rive a hole in their backs, tear the entrails out of them alive, peck their eyes out. One day three of them lay inert at the bottom of the home-field; though the dog was sent barking and snapping around them they made no movement, only blinked their eyes a little. Bjartur took out his clasp-knife. He parted the wool about their necks and cut their throats, buried them.