The Fish Can Sing (20 page)

The man who owned the pouches, as Runólfur Jónsson called him, or the commandant with the municipality, as Captain Hogensen called him, that is to say, the town’s superintendent, as I thought he was – he was the one member of our fellowship who chiefly graced our company by his absence. I had lived with him ever since I was born; but that summer I discovered him at last by a complete and utter accident: there was a man there. It was like catching sight of a cairn that stands on a knoll to the south of the house; it has always been there, and that is why one never notices it. A generation passes, and then it suddenly comes to light that the cairn one saw so long ago must have been the noon-cairn.

I woke up with a start in the middle of the night at the beginning of the hay-harvest; not really in terror, that would be saying too much, but certainly more than a little startled to hear the voice of the superintendent, and particularly on discovering that he was talking about something other than eagles and mice. I am sure that if he had been confiding to my grandmother that a little mouse had had a litter under the threshold of his establishment that day, or even if he had been bellowing this information into Captain Hogensen’s leather eardrums, nothing would have happened. I woke up because this phantom person
was whispering confidentially with one of his friends; and because the subject of their conversation was the world and time, as well as mankind and the purpose of human achievements on earth; and the discussion was accompanied by the chink of that metal which many people regard more highly than silver and copper, and only a very few value lower than dirt.

I understood instinctively that secrets were being discussed here, and so took care not to open my eyes, so as not to become involved. I lay even more still than a sleeping person ever can. My grandmother and Kristín sometimes used to talk together in private, as I have said already; and both of them, but particularly the late Kristín, had impressed on me that it was a sacrilege to eavesdrop on a private conversation, and that if a decent person was unlucky enough to be a witness to such confidences, they then became his or her secrets too.

Naturally, I had no idea what had already passed between these two friends by the time I woke up in the middle of their conversation, still less what passed between them after the host had accompanied his visitor to the door and all was silent again. Nor did I ever see the visitor – nothing was further from my mind than to sit up in bed behind Captain Hogensen to have a look. Curiosity can be called a virtue or a vice, depending on what kind of elementary ethics one reads; in our house at Brekkukot, curiosity was considered on a par with thievishness. But now, when all the parties to these confidences are gone elsewhere and that world is no more, and I am the only one left, the spirits rise up from the well of oblivion. People and pictures from a vanished world are reincarnated and assume a significance which was hidden at the time.

That is what happened over this segment of a discussion that woke me up from my sleep here many years ago, this nocturnal meeting which I witnessed against my will. It does not occur to me for a moment that the words which were spoken then are exactly the same or in the same order as here; but I am absolutely sure that the very same line of argument which comes out in the conversation as it has been recreated in my mind determined the decisions that were taken that night.

“Yes, you are quite right, my friend: we are certainly related. And even though I may not understand as clearly as geneticists or chemists what a relationship is, I know something that matters far more: we are much more related than other people, as you are the best known of all Icelanders and I am the least known.”

“My dear kinsman,” came the whispered reply. “You know that I am not worthy of tying your shoelaces. I know it is downright laughable when I say ‘kinsman’, even though I call you that. ‘Maestro’ is the only word that befits you. If you lived in India, you would be made to live in a gilded palace on top of a mountain. Men and women from distant lands would come and walk up the mountain to you on their knees. And these people would lay their foreheads in the dust before you.”

“It’s funny,” said the superintendent. “I have always felt that the man who makes a pilgrimage on his knees all the way up the mountain, and the man who lives in the gilded palace on the mountain-top, are one and the same person.”

“Do you never feel that you are throwing this one life of yours away, kinsman?”

“It is said that a cat has nine lives – until it is hanged.”

“I mean, do you never think it improper that a gifted man like you should be living your life in degradation, as the lowest of the low?”

“High and low, my friend,” said the superintendent, and tittered slightly, but almost inaudibly. “I don’t know what that is.”

“I’m referring to a man’s position in the world; the amount of influence he wields; the importance of your work. Pardon me.”

“That’s quite right,” said the superintendent. “In the Sagas a distinction is made between people and events. There are heroes and little men. There are great events and small trifles. Or rather, little men and small trifles aren’t admitted to the Sagas at all, preferably. On the other hand, life has taught me to make no distinction between a hero and a little man, between great events and small trifles. From my point of view, men and events are all more or less the same size.”

“But if you were in some other position, kinsman; or even in no position; I mean, if you were so placed that you could see the
thing as it really is –
in re vera
, as we used to say in Class I?” asked the visitor.

“I’m afraid I’m not very good at Latin,” said the superintendent. “On the other hand I sometimes think about arithmetic; and in particular about one number – the number One. But I will admit that it is also the most incomprehensible number in the world. Beyond this particular dimension I know only one thing which is supernatural, even though it may well be the reality that affects mortal men most deeply; and that is Time. And when one comes to think about this strange place I was telling you about, the world that is only One, and its connection with the only supernatural thing we know, Time, then everything ceases to be higher or lower than anything else, larger or smaller.”

“Yes, but are you content?” asked the visitor bluntly and perhaps a little impatiently.

“If I can do something for a person who comes to me, then I am content,” said the superintendent. “I am not saying that I am always utterly content. I am always unhappy, for instance, when a thief is being hanged. But I was also very pleased when I heard that the Prince of Montenegro got married the other day. I know perfectly well that I am nothing to anyone. But the middle finger is no longer than the pinkie if one measures both against infinity; or if one clenches one’s fist. People on horseback often come to me and dismount at my door; they are perhaps setting off on a long journey, perhaps ten days or more. What I can do for them is to hold the stirrup for them while they mount. I reckon that the source of well-being lies in not troubling oneself about where other people are going; I feel well to the extent that I consider it a matter of course to help each and every person to get to wherever he wants to go.”

“By the way, kinsman, to come back to the assistance which I mentioned to you: how do you know that you are not helping me to become a criminal? Would you want to help me to do that?”

The superintendent replied, “I would rather not help you to do other people an injury, my friend; or to do yourself any other injury than the one you feel to be your paradise. The mouse lives in a hole. It is extremely difficult to live in a hole; at least, birds
would think it a bad paradise. On the other hand, the eagle feels at home in the mountain peaks and calls itself king in the hall of the winds. Ah, what absolute nonsense, my friend! And our poor little moorland birds, they come flying here to Iceland every spring and go back again every autumn on those useless little wings over that fearful ocean. But you must not think that they do this accidentally or at random. No, they have their philosophy, even though one can cite authorities to prove that it is a piece of folly. I never cite authorities. Many people think it right to shoot birds because they are so stupid. I would not do that. I reckon one should help all creatures to live as they want to live. Even if a mouse came to me and said that it was going to fly over the ocean, and an eagle said it was thinking of digging itself a hole in the ground, I would say, ‘Go ahead’. One should at least allow everyone to live as he himself wants to live, as long as he does not prevent others from living as they want to live. I know it is possible to prove that it would be best if we were all worms in the same vegetable garden; but the eagle simply does not believe the truth, neither does the mouse. I am as much on the side of the eagle that adheres to a patently false doctrine, as of the mouse which is so humble in its way of thinking that it makes itself a hole in the ground. I am a friend of the migrant birds even though, to put it mildly, they adhere to dubious philosophies – perhaps even wrong ones. And even though it is stupid and dangerous and indeed downright criminal to fly across the ocean on those useless little wings, the golden plover has a lovely song in spring, and Jónas Hallgrímsson has written a poem about it.”

“And it never occurs to you, kinsman, that it is a humiliation for you to work at such a disgusting job?” asked the visitor.

“Well, that’s just the way of it,” said the superintendent, and thought for a while. “I shall tell you a story now. As you know, the only insult that can really rile an Icelander is to be called a Dane. When I was a farmer up at Skagi, I came here to Reykjavík on a visit once. I went to two places; these places have this in common, that country people have to visit them for the good of their health. One of them was the place where I am now the
Superintendent, or as old Jón Hogensen sleeping over there would say – the commandant. I had been to many indifferent places before; but in this one there was even less cleanliness than in most of those I had visited. Unfortunately, it was Icelanders who were in charge at this place. But I also had to pay a call of nature at Mikael Lund’s chemist shop, and he is, begging your pardon, a Dane. To put it briefly, I had never before visited any place where one felt one could see one’s own reflection not just on the ceiling and walls, but on the floor as well. And every single object smelled not just of disinfectant but of soap and perfume as well. That very day, I got a vocation.”

“A vocation?” asked the visitor. “From whom?”

“From God,” said the superintendent.

“Which god?” asked the visitor. “I thought you didn’t believe in any god.”

“Now you just be careful what you say, my friend,” said the superintendent. “Who knows, I may believe in more gods than you do. At least I got a vocation. I got a vocation from a good god to make that establishment down there by the harbour as nice and clean and fragrant in its own way as the one in the chemist shop owned by Mikael Lund the Dane. I sold up all my possessions in order to pursue this vocation. I know you will understand, when you start to think about it, that I cannot find it disgusting work to pursue a vocation from a good god. The only disgusting work there is, is badly done work. The world is One, and mankind is One, and therefore work too is only One; there can be a difference in workmanship, but not in work.”

“Since you have now half-promised to give me some assistance, kinsman,” said the visitor, “would it alter anything if I could give you in return some assistance which I doubt if anyone else could give you quite so easily? I am well in with most of the more important people in this town, and on familiar terms with the leading men in the land. It would be the easiest thing in the world for me, any time at all, to get you a job with many times the remuneration you have in your present one; a position which would enable you to perform a much nobler service for your fellow-citizens than you do at present, a man of your abilities.”

The superintendent replied, “I know perfectly well that my position is not considered high. But it will never be low for as long as man himself is conceived and born.”

Like the man who discovered that it must have been the noon-cairn he had seen so many years previously, it was not until many years later that I, Álfgrímur, realized that here, one night in my youth, I had overheard an absolute friend of mankind speaking in the language of the Fathers of the Church and the Saints – but actually with directly opposite connotations from them, for they spoke with absolute disgust about mankind’s creation:
homo inter faeces et urinam conceptus est
.

I did not know whether the visitor had given up all hope that his efforts to persuade the superintendent would bear fruit, because he said no more. The latter carried on from the point where they had left off, and wound up that part of the conversation which took place in the mid-loft, and after that they both went out:

“No, my friend,” he said. “I have no desire for any other job than the one I have already. Even though I were the Governor himself, I would not think I could serve other people, and least of all myself, better than now. I hold the stirrup for people while they mount. I know that what I can do for you is only a trifle; and that is because the world is only One, and it is in Time; and Time is supernatural and the invincible overlord of everything. On the other hand, I am prepared to take a little extra upon myself in order to assist you. I have two pouches. In one of them there is snuff, in the other there is gold. I have often thought how grateful I would be to Providence if I were given the occasion to give up taking snuff. And now I have found that welcome opportunity; and you shall have the whole of my monthly pay. On the other hand, I do not dare to give you more than twenty or thirty of the gold coins I got for my land; because someone else might come to me when I least expected it, and I might perhaps find it my duty to hold his stirrup for him too while he is trying to mount.”