Independent People (54 page)

Grandmother dragged herself along to his bed next day and said: “Your health doesn’t seem to be up to much, my man,” for
in all her long experience she had never heard of a man lying in bed with his hands under his head, staring up at the roof all day, unless he was very ill indeed. For a moment he stared panic-stricken at that old face, which held no hope but endured everything. “Maybe the poor man hasn’t any tobacco,” she said. But he didn’t want any tobacco, he shook his head and waved her away with his hand. “Sit yourself down again, old woman,” he whispered.

On the very first day after the dispatch of the letter he began asking: “Can’t you see anyone coming up from town? If you see anyone coming up from town, run and meet them and ask if they haven’t anything from old Finsen for my cough.”

And as the days dragged by, he asked more and more often, sometimes five or six times a day, like a little child. Asta Sollilja took part in his expectation and went out on the drift many times a day, shading her eyes with her hands and scanning the flats to see if she could descry anyone on his way from town. Again and again she sent her brothers to stop people, but no one had anything with them for the teacher.

And finally there came the day that she had dreaded ever since she had been aware of his dejection. She had brought him his coffee, and now he asked her to sit down on the bed beside him. He drank. Then he gave her the empty cup. She sat with the cup in her lap, uncertain whether to go or stay, for this was the first time that he had asked her to sit down beside him and she did not dare go unless he told her to, he was her teacher. Then he said: “If there’s nothing for me from Finsen tomorrow, I shall have to go myself.”

Had it been someone else she would have had the right to look up, and she would have looked at him with large, questioning eyes, and something would have fallen in her face. Now she did not even look up, she had not the right. Instead of lifting her eyelids she dropped her lashes, gazing down at the cup in her lap in shamefaced silence. And the man looked at her all, at how the youthful lines and the freshness of her body lay concealed beneath the torn, colourless clothing; and her form spoke to his senses all the more eloquently for its covering of rags, in much the same way as the slender plant that God has created behind many glaciers, then left forgotten, owes its charm to a hundred thousand stones, an endless wilderness. And finally he touched her, as a man is bound to touch a little flower growing by itself behind many glaciers among a hundred thousand stones. His hand passed gently
over her shoulders and her back, and finally the palm rested on her buttocks; but for a fraction of a second only. And when he had taken his hand away, then, and not before, did she look up. Her eyes questioned timidly and helplessly, like those of a child who has been smacked and given a piece of candy, all in the same moment. But she said nothing. She shook her head abruptly, closed her eyes fast, and opened them. He laid his damp palm on the back of her hand and tried to see into her eyes—strange how her left eye can look at one without the pupil touching the lower lid; one looks into her eyes until one no longer understands one’s own soul. Something moved in her throat, as if she was trying to swallow. She rose hurriedly, in an effort to escape the palm that rested on the back of her hand.

Just as if she mightn’t have known from the very beginning that there was nothing here for him. This low-roofed croft in the snow—oh, why had he had to come, he too? Why had he needed to stay here and call on her care every day, like a child on its mother, so that her last thought at night had always been what she could do for him next morning—and then go away? What was she to think of when he had gone?

W
HEN
little Nonni came rushing jubilantly up the stairs with the teacher’s medicine in a bottle, Asta Sollilja could hardly control her delight, as may well be imagined. She looked at him with glad participation and clapped her hands together quite involuntarily. But only once. For when she looked at him, it was after all not delight that showed in his face, but a savage, staring greed as he tore the bottle from the boy’s hand, scanned the label intently, and sprang out of bed with a greater burst of energy than she had ever seen him use before. Then he stuck the bottle under his pillow and asked whether supper wouldn’t be ready soon. Asta Sollilja put more wood under the pan.

At length she asked him shyly whether they had sent him the right medicine, for she felt that thereon depended their whole future. If perhaps he had got the wrong medicine, then—it would be the same as no medicine at all. But he replied that they wouldn’t bother with books that evening, we’ll go early to bed. We will go early to bed so that the teacher’s medicine will do him good, said Asta Sollilja.

So they retired much earlier than usual, except that the old woman sat up knitting in the glimmer of the candle, with an occasional insignificant mumble, until her time had come. At last she also put out her light and lay down. By that time Asta Sollilja was asleep and dreaming. Her dreams had regained the qualities that make of sleep a welcome friend; and now once more, in the peerless splendour of the glossy painting, she saw the elegant wooded landscape of the old calendar, which so long ago had been trodden to pieces under the sheep’s hoofs; unnaturally green, yes, it was still the landscape of her best dreams. And in her nostrils was the heavy scent of wild thyme, such as was wafted from the mountain sometimes in summer, especially early on Sunday mornings, when the night’s dew was disappearing fast before the sun that shines on the day of rest. Lazily she drifted over this landscape, like a bird sailing on motionless pinions past the mountain’s embattled crags; in this dream there was nothing that anyone need fear, no one laboured under any affliction, she was happy. And what was more, there was not even anyone chasing her; so healthy are the dreams that may occasionally be dreamed in youth. Then it seemed in her ears as she glided along that the earth had begun whispering beneath her feet, or beneath her wings, as if the mountain with its belts of crags were preparing to whisper one irresistible poem beneath her wings; and she woke up. She did not know how long she had been asleep, but the dream had been lovely and at first her heart-beats were free from fear, though she opened her eyes on pitch-darkness. And there really was a whisper from somewhere, it had not been merely a dream. Yes, it was poetry. And it was here in the room. It was he. He was reciting poetry. Why was he lying awake in the middle of the night reciting poetry? She raised her head and gave a little cough, in question, and he whispered a whole verse more.

“It’s only me,” he said.

“Couldn’t you get to sleep?” she asked.

But he replied:

“What’s that you’re reciting?” she asked.

“It’s only an old poem.”

“Oughtn’t we to get up, then?” she inquired, thinking that perhaps he wanted them to begin their lessons.

“The time is nigh,” he answered, and went on with the poem, whispering, and she felt that he was whispering it over to her, as if he were addressing it to her in particular, and it seemed such an odd sort of poem, she had never heard anything like it before; and he was whispering it as if it had something to do with her, as if it concerned her directly and intimately. She blushed furiously in the darkness and had not the remotest idea what to do or say, especially as it was after midnight; for poetry was meant to be read aloud in the daytime, but understood in silence during the night. But how was a young girl to understand poetry that is whispered for her ears only, in the middle of the night? Could she take it impersonally, like the poetry of day?

No, surely he was only saying it to himself. Surely he realized that she was much too young to understand such strange verses; that though she often gave him coffee, and sometimes pancakes, it was because she was only a little girl, and there was therefore no point in addressing such stuff directly to her; and though she might feel at times perhaps that she was really a big girl now, she had never let anyone know about it; and besides she would never have thought it possible that anyone could have spoken of a calf in connection with love, even a golden calf. No, it couldn’t really be a serious poem, and obviously it couldn’t be her he was referring to. What ought she to say?

No, heaven be praised that such odd poetry could not possibly refer to her. It would have been nonsense to suggest that she was dewy-eyed, and sillier still to describe her as the fairest of maidens. It must have been written a hundred years ago by some other poet, for some other girl. She had never been in the company of other girls; she was like a lonely plant growing in the midst of a wilderness of stones; but she had always, always been quite certain that the other girls of the world surpassed her by far. And anyway she wasn’t really a girl yet, she was only a child—or had it got about somehow that she was grown up, even though she had been so careful to keep it secret? Heavens, what would Father say if he knew?—she who wasn’t even confirmed yet. With every verse her heart grew more and more uneasy; soon she would be able to stand no more of it.

Why was he laying on all this the emphasis that one lays only on words whispered in confidence, which no one else may hear? Didn’t he know that there were limits to what a little girl, who no one knew was grown up, could listen to in the middle of the night without losing control over herself, and falling in a faint, and possibly dying? He who could have anything he wished of her, who knew the world’s poetry and story from personal experience—wasn’t he going to have mercy on her in her helplessness? With her wits in complete turmoil she leaped out of bed, fumbled for the matches, and lit the lamp. Then she saw that she had forgotten even her slip, so terrified had she been, so distraught. Wildly she pulled it over her head and smoothed it down over ber hips; and there was a light in the room, and, heavens above, if he should have seen!

Finally she brushed her hair away from her face with a jerk of her head and looked at him, panic-stricken.

Yes, he was better. He was feeling so well that, far from being asleep, he had actually got out of bed in the middle of the night. Now he was sitting on the edge-board with a red face and glowing eyes; and the lines that had marked his face so deeply in the past seemed suddenly to have been smoothed away, so that he looked no more than a lad in his teens. The joy that shone in his face was almost childlike; he sat there with the medicine on his knees, smiling contentedly at the girl and at the light she had lit. The light woke the boys too, and they sat up to inspect this new happiness.

Was he then—quite well? Yes, he was quite well. And more than well. He was happy. He was all-happy. And added: “And good as well; all-good. And why?” He flourished his medicine in the face of the universe. “Because tonight there is no suffering for anyone. I have crossed it all out. In future there will be no more hardship, no more illness. Tonight it is I who rule. No more sorrows for the trembling heart, no half-naked children in dark huts on a spit where the brook runs out into the sand, no more worms in the peacefully ruminating sheep of the valleys, no more cruel loads on the backs of the independent man’s noble pack-horses; rather rustling groves over the Equator’s sandy deserts and heartfelt birthday wishes between hunter, hart, and panther on the banks of the Mississippi. All that the heart desires I give you; come unto me, ye children, and choose your countries. This is wishing-time for all of you.”

For a good while the children, still half-asleep, were unable to draw any distinction between this new happiness of his and the poetry that he had taught them. But their brains cleared as he went on talking. The boys got out of bed and came forward to participate in the redemption of the universe. He took them to him and, setting them down on the bed beside him, laid his arms over their shoulders and hugged them to his breast with incredible quotations from the poets.

Wishing-time had arrived so much like a bolt from the blue that at first the children hardly knew what to make of it. It is by
no means the first time that people have stood tongue-tied in the presence of wishing-time; it is, moreover, very rare for people to understand wishing-time when it comes, though it may be the only moment that they have always longed for; and even, perhaps, expected. Even little Nonni, he who had always believed in wishes, he who was their child—even he hesitated when the hour arrived. And Asta Sollilja thought it was all poetry, only in a new form. Strange as it may seem, it was little Gvendur, the materialist, who was first to pick up his bearings, first to grasp the fact that the sacred moment had arrived. His was the reasoning, in common with that of Hrollaugur of Keldur, that takes things strictly in the order in which they come, without inquiring into their origin or their nature. He was the first to wish a wish.

“My wish,” he said, “is that Father’s sheep should have a good winter. And that he should earn a lot of money before Easter. And buy more sheep next autumn.”

“My friend.” replied the teacher, and kissed him, “your wish shall be fulfilled. The peacefully ruminating, twin-bearing ewes shall return to the fold with the finest lambs in the district. The stock at home and the assets in Fjord shall increase in equal proportions. A mirror-smooth, macadamized road shall be led here all the way from the world’s civilization, and along it shall trundle large silver coins like carriages in endless procession. And here on the hillock there shall rise, like a palace in a fairy tale, a two-storeyed house of stone, illuminated with the most powerful electric light that modern science can provide.”