The Fish Can Sing (58 page)

“Good day to you, and please have a seat,
stu-dent
Hansen,” he said in Danish; he could not be bothered displaying his erudition in more important languages on this occasion. He himself did not sit down.

“This was the very last thing I expected,” he said when I was seated. “If I may ask, whom were you trying to rescue?”

“No one,” I said. “The little one came to me.”

“Do you think I am an idiot, or something, may I ask? Did you think that I didn’t know that Georg Hansson wouldn’t turn up?”

I mumbled something to the effect that Gar
ar Hólm must have had a very pressing engagement since he had not come.

“Pressing engagement?” merchant Gú
múnsen repeated. “Whom are you trying to make a fool of, if I may ask,
stu-dent
Hansen? What’s the meaning of this pretending?”

“And you, Mr Gú
múnsen, who know Gar
ar Hólm so well,” I said, “did you believe for a moment that he would ever perform on a stage this evening against his will?”

“Of course not,” said merchant Gú
múnsen. “On the other hand, I told him that I would keep a look out for him all round Faxaflói; and if he tried to get on board a ship, I would have him arrested for fraud.”

“You yourself must know best why you brought him back to Iceland,” I said.

“Why we brought him back home?” said merchant Gú
múnsen, and came over and stood right up against my chair. “I’ll tell
you that quite plainly, herr
stu-dent
, since you have seen fit to get mixed up in this business. We brought him back home because it was impossible to carry on with this any longer. We were tired of it. He had deserted the old Danish woman who had been keeping him for the last ten years; and the pocket-money he was sent every month by mail from that eccentric old man Jón of Skagi, who looks after the urinal in the harbour, obviously wasn’t enough to provide him with a livelihood. And then to add insult to injury, my daughter got it into her head that she was engaged to him. In other words, he had to be exposed. And that’s why we sent for him, my dear young man.”

“Allow me to deny that I ever tried to get myself mixed up in this business,” I said. “I certainly gave him a little help during the days he was here, but that was at the request of the Store. Nothing was further from my mind than having anything to do with this concert. I wasn’t invited. I didn’t even buy myself a ticket for it. I stayed at home. But someone came for me. I was begged, implored – in your name. For God’s sake. I was dragged down town; I was pushed on to the stage. I realize now that I have been made a fool of, and have shamed my people and angered you. There is no atoning for folly and stupidity; and I know it is pointless to ask forgiveness when one has no excuses. The best thing now is to hold one’s tongue and be off.”

And with that I started to get to my feet.

But it was Gú
múnsen’s nature that when he did not succeed in making a sale and his customer started to look stubborn, the good-natured Dane in him came to the surface, witty and gay, of which there is not nearly enough in Iceland. Even at this highly serious moment he lived up to his usual habit. He stroked me on the cheek with the back of his hand, as if he were caressing a child, and burst out laughing.

“Poeta cum agricola pugnavit,”
he said, and was suddenly a whole lesson further ahead in the Latin primer than when I had heard him quoting from it last. “May I offer you a cigar?”

I told him I was no good at smoking, which was true.

“Indeed, dear
stu-den?”
he said. “And not even a drink, either? But there’s no hurry. We need to have a little talk. Now you know
where I stand, as it were, my friend, and where we all stand. You’re the son of old Björn of Brekkukot, or is it his grandson? He’s a good chap, old Björn, even though all these open boats are just about finished and the small-time fishermen done for. And even though the little one says that you smell of soot and fulmar’s feathers, as you’d expect, coming from the most miserable hovel in all Iceland, I am nevertheless going to write down a few words for you here on this paper, just something for the road.”

He sat down and scribbled something on a sheet of paper, folded it, stuck it into an envelope, and handed it to me.

“There you are,” he said. “Now I must go and see to my guests, the King’s Minister and the others. Goodbye.”

My grandmother was sitting up late beside the fireplace with her knitting, while her wonderful pot-bread was baking. I could not bring myself to tell her all the things that had happened that evening, and contented myself with talking about the weather.

“Oh, yes, summer storms,” she said, “they pass quickly.”

Then I took out Gú
múnsen’s letter and told her what was in it: namely, that Gú
múnsen’s Store undertook to pay for my training as a singer abroad for five years.

“Well, well, that’s quite something,” said my grandmother, but did not stop knitting. “He is an excellent man, of course. Indulge my laziness, Grímur dear, and take that creel there and fetch me a few peats from the stack.”

When I came back in with the peats she covered the embers with them carefully. Then she started knitting again. After a good while she said: