The Fish Can Sing (7 page)

Without a word my grandfather took the book out of the clock. This was at the time when our Skjalda was about to calve for the first or second time. Next morning, when the Baptist had kissed everybody goodbye and had gone outside with the rest of his Bibles in his sack for the Norwegians, and had reached the turnstile-gate – who should be standing on the path outside the gate but my grandfather Björn of Brekkukot, waiting for him with a cow in tow?

“Well! I’m glad I found you in time to kiss you goodbye,” said the Baptist.

“God give you good day, my boy,” said my grandfather. “And since you have left behind a genuine Bible, by your own account, I am now going to give you a genuine cow; for one gift deserves another.”

“Yes, you have always been full of fun, my dear Björn,” said the Baptist, and was through the gate and trying to kiss my grandfather as he went past; but he could not reach him.

“We do not kiss until we are even,” said my grandfather.

The cash equivalent of the Holy Scriptures gazed lazily at the moors to the south and swished her tail in the morning calm.

“My ship is leaving,” said the Baptist.

“Here is Skjalda’s halter,” said my grandfather.

Then they kissed, and while they were doing so, my grandfather slipped the rope into the Baptist’s hand, and came back in through the turnstile. But when the Baptist had led the cow a stone’s-throw away or so he dropped the halter and took to his heels in the direction of the town.

Then my grandfather pulled the London Bible out of his trouser pocket and said to me, “You are fast on your feet, my boy; run after Thór
ur the Baptist and give him back his book.”

The Baptist was old and short-winded, and it did not take me long to catch up with him. I gave him his book, and he thrust it into his sack without a word, and carried on towards the ship.

I have written about everything at Brekkukot, both indoors and out, which can be given a name; but I have scarcely said a word yet about my grandmother, who was certainly not some useless ornament about the place. On the other hand, if she were likened to the heart of the house, one could say exactly the same about her as one does about healthy hearts in general, that whoever is lucky enough to have such a heart is quite unaware of having a heart at all.

But since people have been invited into the living-room at Brekkukot time and time again in this story already, I think the time has come to mention the housewife and hostess, however briefly. I say “however briefly” because I never really knew the woman; for instance, I was almost grown up before it ever occurred to me, quite accidentally one day, that she might perhaps have a life story like other people. What I have to tell about her here is really how little I knew about her.

All the same, it was probably she who brought me up, so far as I have been brought up at all; at least, I believe that she had a greater part than several other people in making me the way I am. But it was not until after I was fully grown that I noticed her sufficiently to feel that I really saw her. Suddenly one day I simply felt that she was probably closer to me than anyone else in the world, even though I knew less about her than anyone else and despite the fact that she had been in her grave for some time by then. It is anything but easy trying to speak of a person one knows so little about but who is nevertheless so close to one.

She was an extremely thin and fragile-looking woman; nevertheless when I first came to know her she had already reached an age which is beyond the reach of most people, however fabled they are for strength and stamina; and she lived for at least
another quarter of a century after that. I cannot remember her otherwise than bowed and toothless, with a bit of a cough and red-rimmed eyes from having to stand before the open fire in the kitchen-smoke of Brekkukot, and before that in other cottages whose names I did not know. There might sometimes have been a little soot in the wrinkles of her face, and her head would dither slightly when she looked at you with those mild eyes of hers. Her hands were long and bony.

My grandmother had a cousin who was probably fifteen years younger, although she aged more quickly and lasted less well, and this was Kristín of Hríngjarabær up on the hill at the north end of the churchyard; she had been housekeeper to the old bell-ringer, now dead. Once, as so often before, my grandmother and I went to pay a visit to Kristín’s house. Our path lay through the churchyard. It was at the time of year when the flies were in their element. The two old women talked together in that curiously distant tone which is like the sound of the bell-buoy off Engey, or of a fiddle up north in Langanes; a fine sound for lulling you to sleep. When we had finished drinking coffee and I felt I could not fall asleep any more that day, and was waiting for my grandmother to say her goodbyes so that I would get the shiny new
ten-aurar
piece which Kristín always gave me as a parting gift for being such a good boy, I leaned against the sill of the window that looked over the churchyard and across Skerjafjör
ur all the way south to Keilir, and began to amuse myself by killing flies. A little later we said goodbye and I got my beautiful
ten-aurar
piece from Kristín.

But when we had reached the middle of the churchyard on our way back home, my grandmother said to me, “There is one thing you must never do, little one, for it is wicked.”

“What’s that, grandmother?” I asked.

“Never kill flies in other people’s houses,” said my grandmother.

“Is Aunt Kristín so fond of her flies?” I asked.

“No,” said my grandmother. “But it is she who lives at Hríngjarabær.”

How relieved I was that my grandmother had not admonished
me in front of Aunt Kristín, who only gave me ten
aurar
because I was such a good boy.

Since I have now almost inadvertently brought these two women together into the story, I must not delay any longer in telling a little about what I thought most remarkable in their relationship: in both their living-rooms there hung a picture which was quite unlike all the other pictures on their walls. The other pictures were there by chance; at our house, for instance, there was a picture of two angels flying upright with a garland of flowers between them, and one of a girl advertising Sunlight soap, another one of the late psalm-composer Hallgrímur Pétursson (one of the most dismal-looking men I have ever seen in a picture), and finally a few pictures of Icelandic-American families who had been given shelter at Brekkukot while they were waiting for a ship to take them to America; these people had achieved “good times” in America, as the saying went, which consisted of clearing away boulders and uprooting tree-stumps or digging ditches, and then posing in collar and tie in a photographer’s studio. The same sort of haphazardness applied to the pictures in Kristín’s house at Hríngjarabær. But the picture which I am now going to describe was special; it was a photograph in profile of a young man looking upwards. He seemed to be seeing in a reverie some far-off wondrous sight; and in particular, the clothes he was wearing lent the picture an air which was quite alien to our life here; a stiff white collar, a gleaming shirt-front, and a tail-coat with glistening silk lapels, and over and above that, a rose in the buttonhole.

Even more remarkable, however, was the discovery I soon made that this was the son of Kristín of Hríngjarabær, and consequently related to us at Brekkukot – Georg Hansson, who “nowadays”, as the old woman said, was called Gar
ar Hólm.

One fine day or other when I was contemplating this picture of Gar
ar Hólm, I could not resist asking my grandmother, “Does Gar
ar Hólm have a home anywhere? Or is he perhaps just an angel?”

“Little Georg?” she said. “No, I suppose he no longer has a home anywhere, poor creature.”

“Why didn’t he stay put at home with his mother, our Aunt Kristín at Hríngjarabær?” I asked.

“He took to travelling,” she said.

“How did he do that?” I asked.

“It is ill-fortune that causes people to travel,” said my grandmother.

“What ill-fortune?” I asked.

“We won’t talk any more about that, little one,” she said. “He was a nice little boy, Kristín’s little Georg, when he was playing here in the churchyard. Very like you. But he took to travelling.”

I was silent for a long time, pondering in my mind this ill-fortune which was graver than any ill-fortune known to people in Brekkukot; and finally I asked, “Why do people go on these travels, grandmother?”

She replied, “Some people just give up and leave their farms; or their homes are taken from them; some people lose their reason; a few can see nothing but America; or else the poor wretches have done something wrong and are sent away over mountains and deserts, rivers and sands, to be put into prison.”

“Have you never done any travelling, grandmother?” I asked after a long pause.

Peering down at her knitting to see if she had dropped a stitch she said, “Oh yes, I have travelled. I travelled once all the way from Ölfús in the east to the south here. We went across Hellishei
i.”