The Fish Can Sing (40 page)

“Is one then to believe the majority unquestioningly, instead of listening to the wisest?” they asked.

“I’m not saying that a raven isn’t a bird,” replied the superintendent. “And it’s often comforting to hear him croaking in winter when the other birds are far away; and it may well be that he is right to start laying eggs nine days before summer. But the tern is in a certain sense a hundred times more a bird than the raven, even so.”

Then one of the visitors from the south said, “Well, I always
thought that the largest population group in the world was the one that knew nothing at all, either about Pharoah’s rebirth or anything else. I was taught that it was only knaves or fools who had ready answers for every question.”

“That’s a very different matter,” said the superintendent. “And yet I think it’s true to say that there is an answer to most questions if they are framed correctly. On the other hand I think that few answers can be found to questions asked by fools, and even fewer to those put by knaves.”

“Well,” said the man from Njar
vík, “then I’m going to put to you two questions which an ordinary fellow without a prison record, and no more of a fool than people in general, might ask: does man belong more to heaven than to earth? And what do you say about the Barbers’ Bill?”

“Tcha!” said the superintendent. “The eagle would not like to dig itself into the ground. The eagle lives in the hall of the winds, as the poem says. Is it then so easy to fly, perhaps? Well, that all depends; the little mouse doesn’t think so, nor even Pussy herself. It’s not so easy to give an answer that covers everybody equally. On the other hand I would like to mention to you one person who answers all questions for himself but never bothers about those answers which are valid for eagle and mouse alike, and that is Björn of Brekkukot here, with whom we are staying tonight. But as for the Barbers’ Bill, I would say this: have a shave wherever you like, whenever you like, and in whatever way you like, just so long as you don’t get in other people’s way.”

“Allow me to thank our superintendent,” said E. Draummann. “There are few men here in the south who will stand up for people from the north. Indeed, I never asserted that this boy who laid hands on my wife today is Pharoah reborn; obviously, no one could make such an assertion unless he had read it in the Akashic Records. What matters is that the boy has healing hands, and that my wife is feeling better. Perhaps he is the god Vishnu.”

“Put your hand on me, Álfgrímur.”

It was the same story every day after this: as soon as I came home from school, I went into the cubicle in the quiet of the afternoon, laid my hand on this woman, and sent a current through her. The woman invariably reacted with the proper trembling. As I have said already, the improvement in health that the woman obtained from this current was both spiritual and supernatural, according to her own judgement and that of her husband and of the doctors and other healers who were closest to this couple. But those scientists who carefully count the bones in dogs but cast doubt on the soul on the ground that its ownership cannot be assigned to people either by notarial certificate or by urine test, would perhaps have had different opinions about that. Whatever the facts of the matter, I just want to mention here, while I remember, that one fine day in the spring this excellent couple went away from Brekkukot, the woman completely recovered and unsupported, her husband an acknowledged pioneer in the spiritual field in this future capital of the nation, a clairvoyant, intellectual, soothsayer, psychologist, disciple of the Masters and I don’t remember what else which was then coming into vogue, and had started writing spiritual reflections in the newspapers – besides the fact that he was wearing a brand new suit, and a pair of socks into the bargain.

The first time I laid my hand on this woman I felt deep down inside me almost like a man who is being attacked in his own house. When it was repeated next day I was perhaps even more astonished at the woman – and even further from understanding myself. Afterwards I was assailed by the question: which of us was the fool, I or the woman? And I no longer felt it did not matter.

This was just before the town council elections, and there was a public meeting in the Temperance Hall. The Barbers’ Bill was on the agenda as usual. I was not in the habit of involving myself in politics, but somehow or other I found I had drifted in and started listening to what people were saying.

The Barbers’ Bill had been a very delicate subject in Reykjavík for a long time. The question was whether barbers’ shops should be allowed at all, and if so, to what restrictions they should be subjected. Was the community to tolerate barbers opening their shops at six or seven in the morning and giving people shaves right up until midnight? Or should one find some suitable opening hour round about nine o’clock, and then legislate for some reasonable closing hour in the evening?

The debate had been going on for a long time when I reached the meeting, but there was still a long list of speakers to come. A builder was making a speech, a dignified-looking gentleman with a huge moustache and some difficulty in articulation, like so many intelligent people. He said that in his opinion shaving in the mornings was a bad habit, and he did not think it right to encourage the man in the street to take it up. He reckoned that shaving was the kind of titivation that men should permit themselves when they were going to gatherings or functions or when young men were going to meet other young people to enjoy themselves in a dignified and proper manner, but most especially when upright young men who were officially engaged went to meet their betrotheds, say, once a week. He said that such titivation was not proper when a man was at his everyday work. His view was that since shaving in public was unfortunately permitted at all, it should be limited to evening shaving, for instance between seven and eight o’clock, and then exclusively for men who were going to public or approved functions held by leave of the authorities; in which case it would not be unreasonable to require these men to show proof that they had no opportunity of shaving at home.

Next a bearded man, a former farmer from the east, came striding up to the lectern; he had bought himself a certificate of citizenship and become a grocer up in Laugavegur, and now played
an influential part in local affairs. This speaker maintained that it was a sign of the indolence and slothfulness of modern times for people to drop into a barber’s shop in the middle of the day and hang around there waiting their turn, thus wasting their time in the most deplorable way, often indulging in pointless gossip and irresponsible slander about their fellow-citizens along with carping criticisms of the municipality, just so that they could throw their money away on those rascally so-called barbers. He said that Gunnar of Hlí
arendi had never allowed himself to be shaved, any more than the other saga-heroes, apart from those who had been born with the infirmity of never being able to grow a beard, like Njáll Thorgeirsson of Bergthórshvoll. He said that those who wished to be in the fashion in these matters ought to be content to shave once a month, and to do it, what’s more, quietly and unobtrusively, each in his own home, without calling in perfect strangers from town – for shaving was a private matter that each and every person ought to keep to himself; at the very most, perhaps, one might get one’s wife to help if one’s hands were a bit unsteady, rather than waste time and money on establishments that had no business to be there in the first place.

The next speaker on the rostrum was a black-haired man with sunken gums who chewed tobacco incessantly and spat all round the platform. He was a highly articulate man but inclined to be rather excitable. He said he no longer wanted to live in this town if he was not to be free to go at any time of the day or night to craftsmen and offer to pay them for any task that he required of them. He said that one might just as well forbid doctors to keep their surgeries open at night, as barbers.

He said it was a downright lie that Gunnar of Hlí
arendi had ever grown a beard, and he challenged the previous speaker to prove his claim with an affidavit. No sane or healthy man had ever grown a beard. There was no conceivable work at which a beard did not get in the way. The only people who grew beards were men with tender skins, and the only cure for that ailment was to seize them by the beard and drag them back and forwards through the whole town. There were few people who were so indispensable to a community as those who shaved men’s beards.
In olden times the function of doctor and barber was one and the same profession. These people not only shaved men’s beards off but also lanced boils and excised tumours because they had such good knives. All respectable men shaved every day, he said; it was a good custom to go to the barber’s and talk to one’s fellow-citizens about the common good and the needs of the nation while one was waiting one’s turn; so it was money well spent that went to barbers, whether by day or by night.

The next person to speak was a lean man with a face the colour of yellowing parchment, wearing a frock-coat, lorgnettes, and an enormously high collar. He submitted that although medical treatment and shaving had gone together in former times, and it could be argued to a certain extent that shaving was actually a cure for a beard, it could hardly by its very nature be called moral, Christian, or in accordance with socialism to let someone else wait upon one in this way: that was tantamount to making another man your slave, or at least your servant. Such degrading service ill became any of the parties concerned, both the one who accepted it and the one who offered it; service of this kind had no place except within the family.

It was quite true: people ought to go about clean-shaven; but it was equally true to say that people ought to shave themselves. There was only one possible excuse for going to someone else to have one’s hair and beard seen to, and that was if one suffered from ringworm or beard-rash, in which case one ought to see a doctor. This speaker said he wanted to emphasize that the views he was putting forward that evening about immoral and antisocial behaviour were in complete accordance with the Communist Manifesto which Marx and Engels had brought out in 1848 and with other doctrines from London, and finally with the revisionary theories of Bernstein.

After him there appeared another speaker, in his own way no less erudite, who put forward quite opposite views on the matter. This was a red-haired, half-bald man with a dishevelled moustache and a soiled collar and rather few teeth; he had a comfortable paunch and took snuff, and the points of his waistcoat stood out like pig’s ears. As everyone knew, he said, he had been
studiosus
perpetuus
in Copenhagen for thirty-five years, and he had never before heard such opinions expressed. He said he had no intention of arguing with people on the basis of communism and other London doctrines, nor the revisionary theories of Bernstein, nor even on the basis of Christianity, whether or not shaving was a curing of beards; but he would permit himself to contend that if this were so, then it was a singularly unsupernatural cure, consisting simply of applying soap to people’s faces in order to facilitate the removal of the beard, which was a considerably more agreeable treatment than trying to cure headaches by smearing people’s faces with warm cow-dung, as had been customary in Iceland for a very long time, even though the esteemed previous speaker, bank-manager, socialist, and theologian had so far not criticized this practice.