Independent People (56 page)

Unable to tear herself away from his torment, she remained sitting on the edge of the bed, listening to his sighs and lamentations. The medicine was finished, the bottle empty; when all was said and done, there was nothing left but God—

God that day had suddenly assumed a position of prime importance on the croft. Everyone seemed to understand Him, each
in his own way. So this was what He was like. As day advanced, the teacher rapidly overhauled the grandmother in divine service; his prayers were the unrhymed prayers of the heart and they soon gained the ascendancy over the grandmother’s stereotyped recitations. Again and again he sat up in bed and, staring blindly in front of him with wide, despairing eyes, wiped the sweat from his brow and sighed: “Oh my God, I’m lost. Oh my God, what have I done?” Or: If you intend to trample on me, O Lord, then trample me to pieces immediately.”

The young girl offered him water to drink, she still had some unreasoning idea that cold water had the power of curing body and soul. He sipped a little cold water, then lay down again with a groan. She hoped he would fall asleep. But suddenly he sat up again and cried: “What have I done?” This time she did not offer him more water, but, leaning up against him, whispered:

“You haven’t done anything.” And added, still more softly, right in his ear: I didn’t mind you doing it. If it was wrong, then it was I that was to blame. But it wasn’t wrong at all. And you didn’t hurt me a bit. And you can do it again whenever you like; I will never let Father know. God isn’t nearly as bad as you think.”

Laying her arms round his neck, she pressed her cheek against his face, the more determined to follow him to the ends of the earth the greater the depths of his unhappiness; and to forget herself. He did not release her hand when he lay down again; sweet is a hand that soothes. He went on gazing with half-shut eyes at the redeeming face above him; little by little he grew more peaceful.

H
E
had walked all night.

He had set off at midnight, and by daybreak was nearing the western verge of the high heath. This was on a frosty morning of Holy Week. Slowly it was growing brighter; slowly night was disappearing behind him with a thousand steps, a thousand thoughts in wild confusion, like sleeplessness from the depths of night to the break of day. Soon dawn would throw its cold, shadowy light over the heath’s frozen expanse, over the stony ridges that jutted above the snow, over the glittering ice of the hard-trodden bridle-path, and would gild them. And now once more his gaze travelled over the solvent world that he had bought so long
ago, as he greeted it in the dim, grey-blue light preceding sunrise two weeks before the first day of summer, two weeks after the spring equinox. The marshes were still bound in ice, no sign of thaw on the lake, the moors in the south white-coated; and soaring up from them rose the Bluefells in mystic guise that had nowhere any kinship with the substance of the earth; or with the spirit of the earth. And there stood the man’s little farmstead still under the rift in the mountain, with trodden snow all around and flood-water mark delineated by two filaments of ice in the gully above. From where he stood the outline of the roof could be made out quite plainly beneath its covering of snow. He set down his burden on the brow of the heath and, leaning against a cairn marking the road, gazed at his own land, the land that held his little nation; and that flower which inadvertently he had mentioned during the winter to—a total stranger. He stood there like an army that, having marched into other countries to wage desperate war, was returning now with victory in its soul; provisions from town; and—most remarkable of all—money in the co-operative society.

Incredible things happen in this world between important festivals. And upon the dale-farmer the effect of these events is always equally devastating, for this helpmate of God’s is so indifferently endowed with the power of divination that he forgets to allow for the fact that the land may turn completely over and deposit itself upside down on the surface of the sea without warning him and without asking his permission, at any time between Christmas and Easter. No one had been more faithful to his merchant than Bjartur of Summerhouses; few had ever been less disposed to envy the light that shines in a house with a tower on it. Had he not always been accustomed to say it makes no damned odds to me whether he happens to live in a tower that he’s supposed to have sucked out of the bones of the poor as long as he deals fairly by me, the old rapscallion? This was his creed, and neither logic, threats, nor promises could alter it one jot. And then? In spite of all Gudbjartur Jonsson’s faith, it had come to this: that the merchant no longer existed. Finished, gone up in smoke, the shop empty, the account-books lost, the Tower House sold for the benefit of creditors. In such a fashion, one fine day, were the foundations upon which the crofter had built his life swept aside; those almighty giants of commerce who stood with one foot in Iceland and the other on the Continent itself—one fine day saw them wiped away like so much spit. The credit that stood to Bjartur of
Summerhouses’ name was lost, and there was no one left to answer for it Such was the state of affairs that winter, when Bjartur came down to Fjord in search of work: Bruni had gone bankrupt with the fellow’s money in his pocket. After calamity among the sheep and havoc wrought by spectres, he stood penniless on the street-corner, like an idiot. Surely God and men could go no farther in fleecing this independent individual of his property; and what made it worse was that there was no one he could give a drubbing, no one to play the devil with, or at least no one who would take it very much to heart if he told them frankly what he thought of them.

Nevertheless he went along to the Sheriffs.
“Where
the devil is this marvellous justice of yours,” he snarled, “if you’re going to allow folk to amuse themselves by the same as robbing a man of his soul while he has other things to think about and is maybe doing his damnedest with a ghost? What the hell are the authorities for if they can’t get hold of my money and return it? You funked coming up at Christmas because there was a little drizzle, and it was your fault I lost my eldest boy; he took fright and wandered into the storm while you were busy warming your backside at home here. The Bailiff turned up, lousy as he is, so what about showing some sign of guts now, damn you, and getting hold of my money if it takes every law in your blasted old book?”

The Sheriff, however, stood up for Tulinius Jensen. “The business has failed, man, there’s not the remotest chance of anyone ever seeing a penny, at least for years and years to come yet. I have nothing at all to do with it. The King has appointed somebody to make an inquiry into the whole affair. It’s impossible to do anything when a business has gone bankrupt. You’ll just have to try to understand all the circumstances: Bruni has been losing money for years, and in the end the co-operative had filched all his customers away from him. There you have the whole story in a nutshell. Men like you had plenty of opportunities of clearing out in good time, so you’ve only yourselves to blame if you stuck it out till the whole affair had sunk to perdition instead of joining the cooperative society in time.”

“In time? The annoying thing,” said Bjartur, “is that one shouldn’t have had the sense to cut these bastards’ throats in time.”

“You have only yourselves to blame,” repeated the Sheriff.

“Yes. And the fact that we’re too good-natured to strangle all these thieving swine at birth.”

“Who’s a thieving swine?”

“Who? He and they whom you’re so keen on sticking up for. Not that I consider that you’re very much better, you mealy-mouthed gang of damned officials who hang on to their coat-tails through thick and thin, but daren’t stir a foot across the ridge there in a bit of a drizzle though somebody’s life is at stake.”

“Look here, Bjartur, won’t you take a seat so that we can discuss matters calmly and sensibly?”

“I’ll sit when it suits me.”

“May I offer you a pinch of snuff, then?”

“You may please yourself what you offer. I please myself what I accept.”

At the doctor’s:

“Tulinius Jensen has always had a reputation for the greatest honesty, Bjartur. I knew him well myself. And he never swindled anyone to my knowledge. It was he that was swindled, rather than he that swindled. His troubles started when the farmers started lending their ears to the ranting demagogy of the co-operative chiefs. No one can protect himself against that sort of thing, you know. It was the farmers that swindled Bruni.”

“Yes and I want my money for all that,” insisted Bjartur. “You were Bruni’s member of Parliament, and it was you that I always voted for ever since I first had the right to vote. And why the hell do you think I voted for you? Do you think it was because of your spectacles, blast you? If I don’t get my money back, the Devil himself can vote for you instead of me. And if you as a member of Parliament propose to stand there and tell me that it is legal for a man to be robbed of his property, then I am against the government. I am against the government.”

“Listen, Bjartur my friend, I’m an old man now, and it’s time I went into retirement as far as politics are concerned. But because we’ve always been good friends and staunch supporters of the same party, may I offer you a glass of real corn brandy?”

“You may offer me nothing but my own property.”

“These are difficult times, my dear Bjartur. All the countries abroad are labouring under a severe crisis. Our losses in Iceland are nothing compared with what they are losing in America.”

“It takes a long time to find some people out, but I see now that you’re another of the same damned type as the authorities, a hanger-on of thieves and robbers.”

“Oh, I think I’ve always tried to do my bit for the people, Bjartur,
both as a member of Parliament and in my capacity of medical officer. My bills, as you may remember, were never very hard on my own supporters. Year after year I’ve lost hundreds and hundreds on medicine that I’ve let people have. And no one’s conscience seems to trouble them though they forget to pay me. But I never complain.”

“If my memory isn’t at fault, Bruni paid you out of my account for the poison that you made me brew for my own wives. And they both passed on without further ceremony. I shouldn’t be surprised if you had killed them both.”

“Oh, come, come, Bjartur; that’s not a very nice thing to say to anyone. Maybe you’ll have better luck with these new fellows, these co-operative people who are so busy sweeping everything before them just now.”

The Rauthsmyri gang could never be worse than you Bruni people. I thought so once, but I don’t think so now.”

They talked to him as if he was a refractory child, and again he stood like an idiot on the street. There was no one left but the Rauthsmyrians now; all sanctuaries were closed except the gracious embrace of Ingolfur Arnarson Jonsson.

Hitherto this man had sought to express his convictions by nailing wings on Tulinius Jensen’s shoulder-blades and painting Ingolfur Arnarson black. For thirty years he had worn himself out for the Rauthsmyrians, first as a workman, then as the purchaser of a farm, and he had always eyed his freedom in the far-off change implicit in not wearing himself out eternally for the same robber. He had thought there was some difference in robbers. Then Bruni had gone and disappeared with his money, leaving him drifting about in ignorance and uncertainty. There was no difference in robbers after all; whether they lived on the coast or up in the country, they were all tarred with the same brush. But there was one point in the Rauthsmyrians’ favour: they had never fled to a distant part of the country with his credit in their pockets. The freedom and independence of mankind were not founded on Tulinius Jensen after all. And Ingolfur Arnarson could never be worse than Bruni. It was not to be denied, of course, that it would be a severe blow to the soul to have to resort at last to the cooperative society, after being disappointed in the freedom that was built on Tulinius Jensen. Or would he find, when all was said and done, that freedom was really founded on the Rauthsmyrians—the true freedom, the freedom that makes of the lone worker in his valley an independent man?

“Ah, the independent man. It’s high time you came and looked us up in the society here.”

“Oh, it wasn’t out of politeness,” said Bjartur apologetically.

“No, my friend, I know that. You wouldn’t take my advice, but persisted in sticking to Bruni to the bitter end, so now you’re having to pay the penalty, I suppose. But what of it; there’s no ill will on my side at least. How are you all keeping in Summerhouses?”

“How are we keeping? I don’t answer that sort of question. I can’t see that our welfare concerns anyone. I lost a lot of sheep, but that, of course, is only what the country has had to contend with ever since it was first settled. You Rauthsmyri people have also lost sheep, you lose sheep every spring. My sheep stand the winter better than yours.”

“Yes, but I was referring actually to those mysterious goings-on at your place the other day. You lost a boy—”

“Yes. My own boy.”

“Somebody was saying that Kolumkilli had been showing his claws again.”

“Kolumkilli? Oh, of course, hasn’t he something to do with the Persian religion?”

“All right, forget it. What can we do for you?”

“Nothing,” replied Bjartur. “I have been robbed. I want work. I’m not asking anyone to do anything for me. But I am prepared to work for others, for a wage.”

“Yes, Bjartur, old friend, everything that I told you last year has come to pass. But I can’t help it if you wouldn’t believe me. There are two parties in the country, those who seek to prey on the farmers and those who seek to promote their economic welfare and raise them to a position of honour and esteem. You believed in the former, and where do you stand now? We, who wish to govern the country for the people—we alone remain.”

“Yes, go on, Ingi boy, go on. But I believe in nothing, and in words least of all. And that’s why I ask for no gifts. I’m not complaining about anything either. Perhaps I ought to have stayed where I was with all that’s left of my sheep, and there are those who would argue that there was nothing I really lacked: it’s only a couple of years since I built fresh accommodation for my stock. And if you think it’s a house with a tower on that I’m after, I can tell you now that you’re wrong, Ingi lad, for I have never envied those who dwell in towerhouses. But,” he added, “when a man has a flower in his life—”