The Fish Can Sing (19 page)

“Should I not just buy all this whole damned caboodle from you just as it stands, my dear Björn?” said Gú
múnsen the merchant.

“Eh?” said Björn of Brekkukot. “What’s that?”

“All the romance here, just as it stands,” said the merchant.

“Romance?” said my grandfather. “What sort of a beast might that be?”

“Here are two
aurar
for you, Gu
mundur,” said Gar
ar Hólm with a grimace. “Out you go now.”

“I want to buy this cottage,” said Gú
múnsen in all seriousness. “They will soon be building palaces in Iceland. What do you say, Björn? I shall let you have a first-class basement up in Laugavegur. And gold in your hand like dirt, to last you the rest of your life.”

“Tut tut!” said my grandfather as he sat there on his hands. “Really! We have been having poor weather this spring, lads.”

“What do you say?” said the merchant.

Then my grandfather turned to me and said, “Will you tell the man that I and all of us at Brekkukot here are beginning to grow a little deaf.”

“He is going to give you gold, grandfather,” I said.

“Will you tell them that if they were thinking of talking to me about fish, then I shall sell little Gú
múnsen half a dozen pairs of hung lumpfish on account.”

Gú
múnsen the merchant now raised his voice. “I want to buy this plot of land off you, my dear Björn,” he said to my grandfather. “I want to build a fine mansion-house here. I’ll pay whatever you ask.”

“I’ll give you a pair of smoked lumpfish, little Gú
múnsen, so that you can have something to chew on while you’re walking home,” said my grandfather.

“Remember what I have said, Björn,” said Gú
múnsen. “My offer stands. Any day at all, I shall pay out whatever amount you decide.”

“It is not very pleasant to be so deaf that one can no longer argue with people because one cannot hear what they are saying – not to mention when one cannot even understand the little one does happen to hear.”

And now suddenly there was a tight, sour look on Gú
múnsen’s face. The plum had lost its sweetness. He fished his gold watch out of his pocket and saw that he unfortunately could not stay any longer, he had urgent business to attend to:
“Allons, enfants de la patrie,”
he said. “Goodbye everyone.”

“That wasn’t much of a visit,” said my grandfather. “You haven’t had anything to eat – and there must be some fish in the pot, and some chicory-brew at least. But there’s nothing to be done when people are itching to move. You will be better treated next time. And now I shall see you to the door.”

They closed the door as they went out.

The famous man who had sung for the whole world and Mohammed ben Ali stayed behind in the living-room. All the tomfoolery dropped from his manner the moment the door closed behind his companion. Now he was lost in thought. And when I compared him with his portrait on the wall, I saw to my surprise that in the portrait his reverie was bright and angelic, whereas in the flesh, as he sat there in the little living-room at Brekkukot, his brooding look had become dark and touched with pain, as if the gold carriage which had been driving across the heavens was now out of sight. He kept crossing and recrossing his legs, one over the other. He was wearing a suit of blue material with a red pinstripe – and was brushing a scrap of moss off one of his trouser-legs with his fingers; or was it a wisp of hay?

Then he looked at me.

“What is your name, dear friend?” he said.

“Álfgrímur,” I replied.

“Ach, what am I thinking of?” he said. “Of course, you’re called Álfgrímur. By the way, what do you think of the world, Álfgrímur?”

“I don’t think anything,” I said. “I just live here in Brekkukot.”

At these simple words, which I had thought the most straightforward words in the world, it was as if the visitor suddenly woke up. He discovered me. He gazed at me for a long time – me who had been wishing I did not exist even though I was, as you might say, squatting there in the corner.

“Remarkable,” he said. “Most remarkable.”

He stood up and stared out of the window in our low-ceilinged living-room; it had four panes of coarse glass, slightly blue in colour, with air-bubbles and other flaws in it, rather like the glass in old bottles. The world singer looked out on the world through our window; and I am sure I heard him murmur to himself, “So the room with that window exists after all.”

At that moment our clock struck two, I think, or perhaps three, with that clear, sharp tone that silver bells always have.

“And that clock still strikes,” he said.

He turned to the clock and stood in front of it for a long time and listened to its old familiar ticking which one could always
hear so clearly when there was silence in the room. He looked at the hands moving and studied the ornamentation on the face and read the name “James Cowan” to himself over and over again with the kind of reverence one owes to the names of those who rule the course of history. Finally he began to stroke the clock with his fingers, like a blind man feeling a living creature to find out its nature; and as far as I could see, the tears were streaming down the cheeks of this famous man.