From the Mouth of the Whale Read online

  And there she lay, in the patch of heather beside the path leading to our hut, a plaything of the wind and weather: my wife, Sigrídur Thórólfsdóttir, now nothing but a heap of black rags. Throwing down my belongings, I ran to her, fell on my knees and flung my arms around her, crying: ‘Sigga, Sigga!’ Only to recoil at once, for a chill emanated from her body like the draught from a passageway. I raced in the direction of the landing place, waving and calling for help, but the lad who had ferried me to the island was out of earshot by now, bending to his oars off the north bank, and either did not or feigned not to see me. Running back, I took Sigga in my arms again, pressing her against me, but under the shawls she was nothing but bones. I struck my brow with my clenched fist: my God, oh my God! The damned swine had betrayed her; no one had helped her with the autumn chores or bothered to bring her supplies before Christmas or cared to see how the old woman on Gullbjörn’s Island was coping. I consigned them all to hell. Her shawl was pulled down over her nose and nothing could be seen of her face but the pursed lips and stubborn chin. I drew the cloth gently back over her brow; the bluish-yellow flesh was icy cold yet seemed unblemished, apart from a sprig of flowering thyme that sat fast in her right cheek. But where were her eyes? Had the ravens been at her? I fumbled at her eyelids; thank God, there was substance under them; I had been misled by their black appearance. I wept. It began to rain, then stopped. I wept on: for now I had killed my Sigga too. Evening fell and the rain started again. I carried her into the hut, laid her body on the bed in the living room, knelt down beside her and begged her to forgive me for all the wrongs I had done her, both great and small: for the trials she had been forced to endure on account of my obsessive curiosity and delving; the collecting mania that had filled all our chests with unidentifiable berries, fool’s gold and deadly poisonous plants, and books in languages that neither of us could read, while a cold wind blew among the empty cooking pots; the endless gabbling of elves and trolls; the evening I spoke harshly to her in front of the children; the hare-brained schemes and worthless conceits my mind constantly spewed forth that were to cost us so dear; the prospect of fame that dragged us from place to place, constantly on the move, from one side of the country to the other, only to end up in a bottomless well of debt to the very people who were supposed to make me rich, with the result that our home had to be broken up yet again. I begged her forgiveness for the deplorable sufferings I had caused her through my meddling in affairs too deep for a poor poet, by which I had provoked the enmity of powerful men with whom I could not contend, failing to realise that they were jackals, not lions, that they would not be satisfied until they had severed my head from my body. The silence that followed was overwhelming, unbroken this time by the quick retort with which Sigrídur had in recent years responded to any discourse of mine, regardless of topic:

  ‘That’s the sort of nonsense that got us here in the first place!’

  Whenever I heard those words all the wind would leave my sails; they seemed to strike at the very root of my impotence. It was only too true that my nonsense had driven us here and there, hither and thither, back and forth. We had been forced to dwell in so many ‘here’s against our will on our constant flight from my enemies, from the predatory silver-plated claws that clutched after me and my loved ones. Me and all I held dear. There were spies at every turn, ready to betray a poor vagabond in the hope that his powerful foes would throw them a morsel. Ah, Judas’s pleasure was short-lived and his remorse scalded and stung, but these scoundrels had no conscience; they bragged of getting the outlaw Jónas the Learned arrested for their own amusement and a reward of thirty brass farthings. My children’s despair is still etched in my memory as they watched their father being thrown in the mud, beaten and belaboured with fists and clubs, before being flung, helplessly, head first into the black hole of prison. I can still hear the poor little darlings’ sad wails as they embraced one another outside the prison wall, laying their tender ears to the stone in the hope of hearing their father say that everything would be all right. On the other side of the wall I writhed in my chains, throwing up my hands and calling out just that: ‘All will be well, dear children, with God’s help all will be well, when the Lord hears your prayers and my pleas, all will be well.’ Yet things did not improve, they only got worse. I ran my fingers gently over Sigga’s brow, down her nose and cheek, avoiding the sprig of thyme. The last time I heard her refer to ‘us’, she meant only herself and her old man, me, the two sad wretches on Gullbjörn’s Island. But once it meant ‘the two of us and our four children’, then ‘us two and our three children’, and later ‘us two and our two children’, until finally it was only ‘us two and Little Gudmundur’, for only the eldest, Pálmi Gudmundur, survived into adulthood, benefiting no doubt from being named after the good Bishop Gudmundur Arason. His brothers and sisters all fell to the scythe, slender shoots, withered before their time. One never becomes used to it. The ewe runs faster than the lamb, the swan takes to the air sooner than the cygnet, the char darts through the water quicker than the minnow, and little children tire before their parents. Father and mother look on helplessly as their babies die. ‘That’s the sort of nonsense that got us here!’ The speaker of that bitter truth had departed this life, the word ‘us’ now referred to me alone, and in that dark hour I would gladly have given my own life to have heard it once more from her living lips. A tear gleamed in the corner of her left eye. For a moment I was ecstatic with joy – Sigga was not dead, she had merely swooned from hunger; I would nurse her, cook medicinal herbs for her, rub the warmth back into her stiff hands, help her walk over the rough ground until she recovered her strength – but my world grew dark again when I realised it was only a tear that had fallen from my own eye on to hers. Sigrídur lay on her side with her legs drawn up under her, as if taking a nap, for thus had her body stiffened. I climbed into bed behind her, laying my arm over her body, resting my cheek against the back of her neck; her shawl smelt of moss campion and crowberry. I whispered:

  ‘So you have gone now to the kingdom beyond the clouds, beyond sun and moon and sky, to the land where all grief is comforted with eternal radiant mercy at the footstool of Christ. Where your children will greet you, running to their mother with outstretched arms …’

  I could say no more, my throat tightened on the last word. If our dead children had been allowed to live they would have been grown-up by now, with many children of their own. They would have given old Grandpa Jónas and Grandma Sigga shelter in their homes; for he who has once dwelt in his mother’s body and his father’s heart is bound to provide them with a roof over their heads in their old age. But it was not to be, it will never be. I was seized by a bitter rage. Clenching my fists, I prayed:

  ‘Dear God, take that black-hearted knave Night-wolf Pétursson and give back to me little Hákon, who was always as gentle as a girl; merciful Father, take Ari Magnússon of Ögur and return to me quick-handed Berglind, who inherited her father’s gift for carving; heavenly Creator, take that foul-tongued slanderer, Reverend Gudmundur Einarsson, and give me back the little lad Klemens, with one moss-green eye and one blue; dear Lord, take the whole legion of good-for-nothings who every day outlive their victims, sprawling in their high seats and thrones, gorging themselves on meat, dripping with grease, from the livestock that grew fat on the green grass in meadows tended with diligence by innocent, God-fearing souls; congratulating themselves on having stripped this man of his livelihood and that woman of her breadwinner – when they can speak between ill-gotten mouthfuls; enjoying to a great old age the fruits of the wicked deeds they committed during their days on Earth with the blessing of bishops, and convinced that the despicable acts that they refer to as “a good day’s work in the Lord’s vineyard” will have paid for their place in Heaven; dear God, snatch them away and do with them what you will, but give back to me Sigrídur Thórólfsdóttir, a pious woman, a loving wife and a caring mother who never asked for anything for herself but prayed for mercy and good fortune
for friends and strangers alike.’

  These terrible curses poured in torrents from my mouth. They were so dire that when I came to my senses I hoped that the good Lord in His mercy and deep understanding of human frailty would pretend that His great all-hearing ears had been closed in that dark hour. As yet He has not brandished His rod of punishment over my head – indeed, what more could He do to me? I held Sigga’s withered hands, feeling every sinew and knuckle, tracing the bones with my fingertips, and the sunken flesh between them, for she had starved a long time before she died. In spite of my attempts to dissuade her she had insisted on staying behind on the island. But how could a lone female survive a whole winter on this cursed rock? Not even the resourceful Sigrídur Thórólfsdóttir could do that. And who knows what will become of me? She had clasped her hands in her hour of death and I found with my forefinger that she was holding something between them. I rose up on my elbow; the corner of a piece of brown cloth peeped from her fist. The cloth turned out to be wrapped round a gift from our friend Peter the Pilot, the confessor and helmsman on the whaler Nuestra Señora del Carmen. It was a holy relic: four little wood shavings, no larger than nail clippings, reddish in hue.

  AIR SHIP: a strange event occurred in the western quarter: a rope with an anchor on the end fell from the sky and caught in the church pavement. The whole congregation could see and touch it when they came out of the service. After a while a man came down the rope and tried to free the anchor, but when people touched him he became as weak as a fish out of water and the mark of death was straight away seen upon him. The minister forbade anyone to touch the man again and ordered them to free the anchor. Then everything was hauled up, man, rope and anchor, and never seen again.

  They came gliding over the sea like cathedrals under their white sails: church ships, launched from a southern shore, their three masts bearing fluttering Christian flags and banners, their prows decorated with artfully painted figureheads, glaring with admonishment at any sea monster that dared to venture near, and crosses carved on both bows, while from the stern rose a statue of the Virgin Mary with arms outstretched in a maternal embrace that encompassed both vessel and crew. On their sterns they bore the names of the most holy and beneficent churches in their homeland: Nuestra Señora de la Paz, Nuestra Señora de la Estrella and Nuestra Señora de la Inmaculada Concepción – and when the wind stood from the sea one could hear the ship’s bell singing:

  ‘Peace, star, immaculate … Peace, star …’

  Sigrídur and I had only been living at Litla-Vík for two months when we saw them coming in from the sea. It was early summer of the year 1613. She was tending to the ewes, I sat in the smithy, supposedly carving a picture story on a bull’s horn, a commission I had already been paid for and which was now overdue, but in fact struggling my way through a collection of Aesop’s Fables in German. Pálmi Gudmundur sat in the smithy doorway, playing at piling up some bones that I had painted in different colours for him. Then Sigga came running in, grabbed up the boy in her arms and called to me to come and see something rather remarkable. We stood on top of the farm mound, shielding our eyes with our hands. The sight was remarkable indeed; there was no ‘rather’ about it. I raised my brows and looked at Sigga enquiringly; she was smiling dreamily. I was greatly relieved, for she had been reluctant to move here from Ólafseyjar – although she had not exactly been happy there, particularly after the locals cheated me of my fee for laying the ghost of Geirmundur Hell-skin, claiming falsely that I had promised to find his buried treasure too – but I had managed to persuade her that we would be better off in the place where my fame was greatest, that is, my birth district of Strandir, bounded to the west by the Snjáfjöll coast. Yes, the marvellous spectacle floating out there on the summery sea boded well for our sojourn here. But when it became clear that these wondrous craft were heading out of sight, east round the headland and into the neighbouring fjord, we agreed that early next morning we would follow them. We set out on horseback, riding beasts given to us by my benefactors; I carrying our little boy in front of me. Our eagerness to see the ships was so great that it seemed to infect the horses, which bounded along with such lightness of foot that before we knew it we had reached Reykjafjord. But no sooner had we arrived than we began to have misgivings. There were fires burning all over the place and when we neared the farm, it became apparent that all the loose furnishings had been piled up and set alight. The buildings stood empty, evidently abandoned in haste, for pots and other household utensils lay broken in the kitchen and various other small objects were strewn around the living room and passageways. Everything indicated that the fair vessels were sailing under false pretences, that they had brought destruction and slavery to the inhabitants. Sigrídur sat rigid in her saddle, gripped by dread, Pálmi Gudmundur hid his face in my chest and I had to fight back my tears, not from fear but because it seemed such a miserable end to our expedition. We decided to turn back. Then Pálmi Gudmundur burst out laughing. He pointed up the hillside, giggling: