From the Mouth of the Whale Page 7

  and put an end to this curse.

  At this, the apparition’s lower jaw snapped against the upper with such force that its front teeth cracked to the root. Not that it could have answered me anyway as its tongue was too rotten to do more than growl and spit. And now it could not even do that, though its throat still rattled and the groans found their way out through its nose as it flinched under the verses, which became ever harder for it to bear the more skilfully and aptly they were composed. While I chanted, Láfi made sure that the ghost remained within earshot, for of course it fled from the message like a dog from curses, and was uncomfortably quick on its feet due to the length of its stride, as mentioned before. The corpse fled, not pausing in its flight except to stoop for stones or dirt or sheep droppings still warm from the rectum, which it flung at my head as I tore in pursuit, chanting as loudly as my lack of breath would allow, while Láfi ran alongside, trying to head it off or guide it towards rough terrain that would slow it down. Eventually, we managed to drive it into a marsh, where it sank up to its navel in a bog. I was now able to summon up before its mouldering eyes a picture of the horde of demons that fell to Earth when Lucifer was cast down from Heaven. Their multitude is like glowing motes in a sunbeam (they are swarming evil in search of something to stick to) or as many as the raindrops that fall in a downpour that lasts for nine days without stopping. Then I consoled it by explaining that it did not belong to that group. I described for it how the heavens rise and fall in relation to the moon, three in a row above and three in a row below. In these heavens dwell the ethereal spirits, endowed with various natures, some fine, some foul, though it is always perilous for people to swallow them and therefore not to be attempted except by well-equipped experts like Láfi and me. Under this onslaught the animate corpse struggled like a wolf in a trap, scrabbling in the spongy moss and trying in vain to heave itself out of the bog. I continued, turning now to its own case, telling it that revenants were the bodies of the dead who in life had been guilty of swearing at others; that on the corpses of such cursing wretches the doors stood wide open for the Devil himself to crawl inside. Which he did willingly, appointing himself the driver of the body and riding the deceased like a cruel jockey driving on his horse, except that in this case the vengeful heart formed the saddle in which the accursed rider sat as he drove his spurs into the rotten lungs. Once I had exposed the Prince of Darkness who was abusing the corpse of the parson’s son, it was as if all the wind left its sails. Its body slumped, its arms fell to its sides and it hung forwards, trapped by the bog, like a drunken rider fallen asleep in the saddle, its matted hair swinging in the evening breeze. In this position it began to stiffen up, like the corpse it should by rights have been. A deathly silence fell on the countryside, the breeze caressed my cheek and I believed the Devil’s corpse-ride was at an end. And so it was for a long moment. Then the corpse’s mouth fell open and from where I was standing I noticed that a small butterwort growing on a nearby tussock imitated its movement; its flower-head opened with a quiet pop, releasing a midge that it had snapped up the instant the world fell silent. The fly had not been lying in the plant’s digestive juices too long to prevent it from launching into flight, and with an ugly thunderous drone it flew straight into the dead man’s mouth. Instantly all rigidity left the corpse as the Devil re-entered it in the form of this midge. The corpse tore itself out of the bog with a terrible howl and took flight, heading for the mountain with us close on its heels. But its strength was so depleted by its enforced sojourn under my fiend-scaring verses that Láfi caught up with it before it could squeeze all the way into a fissure in the rocks. Clutching its shanks, Láfi hauled with all his might against the ghost which was halfway down the cleft, hanging on grimly to a root or whatever it could grab. The wretched fiend was evidently trying to reach the place where it was happiest; in other words, Hell. At this I began my hectoring anew, commanding it to release the soul of the parson’s son for judgement by God in Heaven, for only then would it be free to travel down the fifteen levels that separate the world of men from the inferno of Hell. At that it ceased all its struggling and our work was done. We dragged the corpse out of the hole and wiped the filth from its face, for although it was all battered and maggoty as described before, it now had the peaceful air of one who is well and truly dead. We carried the boy between us home to the parsonage, where the parson and his wife thanked us with kisses and cries of gratitude for laying the fiend that had forcibly taken up its abode in their son’s body. Láfi and I received our appointed wages, which were not much to speak of once we had divided them up between us but more than enough when one considers the fame we acquired by this deed. We did not dine at the farm, having had our fill of the stinking corpse, but took the food we were given and hurried up the mountain with our tent. It was the longest day of the year, my last night with Láfi, and the prospects were good for poetry. The following day I would head south to Sigga and Pálmi Gudmundur, our firstborn. I was full of grand plans, mindful of the fame that the destruction of a malevolent ghost was bound to bring me, the anticipated renown that would elevate me to the giddy heights of esteem, from which vantage point I would be able to survey the world as my playground. Just as I was thinking this thought, I was startled by a gruff voice saying:

  ‘Make the most of your fame!’

  It is my poor old lady, Sigrídur. Instead of answering, I merely pat the tussock at my side and so the two of us sit, watching the sun complete its circuit of the Earth. It climbs aslant up the cloud-foamy sea of sky, sailing in a fine arc to the horizon where it perches for an instant like a dandelion seed which just touches a wet stone before the wind lifts it away.

  Kidney Stone

  Dazzling light: when the day is such a brilliant blue-white that the firmament is no longer a frame for the burning sun, rather the sun has become the kindling for a brilliant silver curtain that rises at the horizon and is drawn across the entire visible world, while the mountain ranges to the north, west and south shimmer as if in a mirage, sometimes in shadow, sometimes in sunlight, but never still; and the sea is a sheet of billowing velvet, stretching from the shores of the island to the hem of the sky, while the island itself, glittering in its midst, is a yellow-gold button on a downy cushion, waiting to be dented by the head of the heavenly child; and the whole vision is run through with tinkling bright silk thread, nimbly tacked between earth and sea and sky and fiery sun with the great needle that can pierce every element. But tracing the blazing needlework means little to the human eye, for although one line springs from another, like vein branching from vein on a birch leaf or the back of one’s hand or a precious stone, this magnificent play of light is so small when set against eternity that to perceive the whole picture the spectator would have to step back into the next world, to stand beside the throne of the One who in the beginning opened His mouth and uttered the words: ‘Let there be light!’

  And there was dazzling light.

  Jónas the Learned sits on a rock by the shore, gazing at this world which has silently merged into a single point of light. He has not taken his eyes off it since he sat down and the vision first began to take form, and now his pupils are like grains of sand, the protective film of tears has dried up; he urgently needs to blink but cannot lest the vision disappear before he can fix its details in his memory, which is essential if he is to interpret it. But in the end there is no avoiding it, either he must draw down the lids over his eyes or else he will go blind. He blinks. But instead of dissolving, the vision gains an addition: far to the north-west, in the angle of a cove where land meets sea in a glimmering mirage, a tiny black spot appears and begins slowly to move out into the bay. Careful not to lose sight of the sailing dot, Jónas shifts on his hard stone seat and takes a deep breath: this could be a long wait. He opens his eyes wide and keeps them like that until an infernal cramp seizes every muscle in his head, from the corners of his mouth to his crown, and his face is distorted into a ludicrous mask of suffering, but by then the dot
has grown to the size of the smallest fingernail on an infant’s hand and the spectator dares to close his lids again for an instant. Next time Jónas looks at the dot it has changed shape and is no longer a dot but a diamond, a black diamond sliding over the silky smooth sea: it is the prow of a boat and that boat is making for the island.

  There is a man standing in the bow – the watcher on shore squints in the hope of recognising him (could they be bringing him supplies?), but the light falls on the man’s back – as yet he is only the silhouette of a man – and he raises his right hand in a grand gesture, as if waving to Jónas Pálmason the Learned. Jónas is about to wave back but lets his hand fall in his lap when he sees that the greeting was assuredly not intended for him. For as soon as the man’s arm comes to a stop above his head there is such a whooshing of feathers that the wind blows from all directions at once as every last bird in the north obeys the man’s command, swiftly swooping in from land and sea. Whether they have been endowed with large wings or small, speckled coats or black stockings, whether they are short of beak or long of shank, with heather in their crop or sand eels in their gullet, the birds answer the summons and circle like a whirlwind over the man, calling, squawking, chirping, until each finds its place in the sky above his head. When the down finally ceases to snow from their wings, Jónas sees that the flock has formed a living fan over the boat, in which a pair of each species (cock and hen, drake and duck, gander and goose) has lined up according to size, from the wren, fluttering at shoulder height around the man in the bow, to the puffin which flaps frantically somewhat higher, to the piping whimbrel hovering above the mallard but below the cruel eagle, right up to the swans, cob and pen, beating wings so white that they rival the silvery firmament.

  After studying this vision for a while, Jónas blinked, at which the man lowered his arm and pointed to the surface of the sea. In an instant the sea became as clear as a cool autumn evening and the boat appeared to be hanging in thin air rather than floating on water, for the ocean had grown so translucent that its bed could be seen far and wide, even to the horizon. Jónas saw now that the island was like a tapering peak; he sat not on a rock on the beach but on the edge of a precipice. Then the glassy sea began to boil, the deeps churned and now the fish came swimming with rapid flaps of their tails, from south and east, from the shallows by the shore and the trenches beyond. There were redfish and whiting, shark and plaice, sea scorpion and halibut, thorny skate and cod, herring and seal, and all the other fish Jónas the Learned knew and others he did not. Observing the same rule as the birds in the sky, they arranged themselves according to size, from the keel of the boat to the bottom of the sea, sticklebacks at the top, sperm whales at the bottom, and so many species in between that when each pair was in place the shoal spread out in the clear brine like a scallop shell, a glittering reflection of the flying fan above. There was no respite for Jónas’s eyes as he cast his gaze hither and thither between sky and sea, memorising the appearance of the birds and fishes, their similarities in colour and shape, redwing and redfish …

  All the while this spectacle lasted, the boat slid ever closer to the island – moving of its own accord though there was no wind in that still, cloudless, dazzling world – and had Jónas paid any attention to the figure standing in the bow he would have seen that he was a man in his forties, clad in a coat of grey-brown or grey-speckled homespun, with a homespun hat of the same colour on his head, while under the brim could be glimpsed eyes that seemed to glow like glass orbs. The man swung his arm again, drawing the naturalist’s attention from the creatures of the heights and depths: this time he pointed to land. Then it appeared to Jónas as if in a revelation that from the shores of the sea to the peaks of the glacier a specimen of every kind of plant nourished by Icelandic soil tore itself willingly from mould and gravel – everything from the forget-me-not to the rowan tree – and the flowers of earth rose into the sky, light as mist from a mountain tarn. High in the sky, the grasses and herbs classed themselves according to their growth, twining together to form a vast garland that danced over the barren wastes, giving off a perfume so sweet that Jónas nearly swooned. But he had to stay awake for the spectacle was not over: now the land animals entered the stage on a mossy stone, the fox and the field mouse; the little mice perching serenely between the foxes’ ears.

  The man in the boat repeated his last movement, drawing back his outstretched arm and swinging it to shore. The ground opened. The mountains soughed off their screes so that one could see deep into their bowels, where countless metals, crystals and precious stones lay on different ledges, sparkling and glittering, many ancient, others newborn, reddened by the glow of subterranean fires and bathed in the waters of underground rivers.

  ‘Yes, yes … Oh yes!’

  Jónas Pálmason the Learned rocked on his boulder. Yes, there it was on the topmost seat, the highest ledge of all – that dearly bought metal that he had always suspected lay concealed in the unkind flesh of his motherland, the very blood of the earth: gold!

  ‘Did I not say so? They …’

  He got no further. There was a blare of trumpets.

  ‘Hoo-hoo-hoo!’

  It is the swans, thrumming their vocal cords. The other creatures fall silent, the sea trout gently flicking its tail, the raven softly flapping its wings. The feathery trumpets sound a second time. Jónas looks up and realises that the boat is nearing land. He rises to go and meet the boatman, buttoning up his jacket, running a hand through his hair. But then he becomes aware that the fanfare was not intended to welcome the boat. Far out on the rim of the sea to the north appears a school of whales which swim rapidly south across the bay.

  ‘Hoo-hoo …’

  The clarion call is to welcome these newcomers to the game. In a synchronised water dance they dive beneath the boat and shoot their heads out of the sea beyond: twelve narwhals from Greenland. They raise their twisted horns, seven ells long, to the sky, clash them together and cross them like the lances of a guard of honour, the whole dance conducted to the sound of high-pitched singing and a great splashing of fins. With this the vision is complete, an intricate, carefully thought-out coat of arms:

  Bird in air,

  mammal on moor,

  fish in sea,

  plant on shore.

  Stone in ground,

  man in the middle,

  monsters of the sound,

  submissive – no more?

  The dazzling light played on the retinas of Jónas Pálmason the Learned, who had seen nothing so fair in all his sixty-three years on Earth. Ever since he reached manhood he had secretly longed for the good Lord to reveal to him the order of things, to allow him to examine how the world mechanism is put together. Once, when he and Sigrídur lived at Uppsandar, he thought he perceived in the sky the outlines of a colossal foot that rested on the globe of the Earth. The sole was contiguous with the surface of the sea and the heel rested on the lowland beneath the glacier, while the shape of the ankle could just be made out where the sun stood at its noontide zenith. It must have been an angel.

  Jónas fell to his knees, tears welling up in his eyes, his tongue dry and cleaving to the roof of his mouth. He lay down on his side, knees drawn up under his chin; he had gooseflesh, a headache and cramps in his muscles and guts. He broke out in a cold sweat. His senses had been strained beyond what a human can bear.

  ‘Oh, do not let me lose my mind! I must hold on to my wits so that I can fix this revelation in a poem …’

  He heard a crunch in the sand. A booted foot was planted beside his head. Jónas looked up: the man was standing over him. His boat was resting in a bed of seaweed. Nothing else of the vision remained. Man and boat, that was all. Sky and sea had recovered their true form. From Jónas’s point of view, the man was framed by clouds which darkened the lower one looked. A gull mewed. It was going to rain.

  The stranger held out his hand to Jónas. It was an elegant, spatulate hand, the middle finger of which sported a silver ring engraved with a
n inscription. Jónas accepted the proffered hand and the man raised him to his feet. Still without releasing Jónas’s hand, he studied him curiously and said:

  ‘Good day to you, Jón Gudmundsson the Learned.’

  Jónas did not return his look. He was so pre-occupied with trying to read the inscription on the ring that he apparently failed to notice that the man had addressed him by the wrong name. He returned the greeting absent-mindedly:

  ‘Yes, good day yourself …’

  Before Jónas could make out a single word of the inscription, the man let go of his hand and, turning away from Jónas, said with authority:

  ‘I’ve come to fetch you. You’re to prepare yourself for a journey.’

  Jónas stopped brushing the sand off his clothes. Had he heard right? Was he free? The man continued:

  ‘You’re to bring with you your drawing lead and wood-carving knife, which will come in useful where you’ll be spending the winter.’

  ‘And where is that?’

  ‘You’re going to Copenhagen …’

  Jónas’s heart took a leap and he bounced on the spot, then raced off towards the hut, calling:

  ‘Sigrídur, we’re leaving! We’re free!’

  But Sigrídur Thórólfsdóttir was not there. Jónas scanned his surroundings. He bounded up the slope above the hut, which gave a view of the whole island. Sigrídur was nowhere to be seen. He called her name, again and again. The man was bending over his boat on the beach, paying Jónas no heed. Jónas ran to him and clutched at his coat, squawking repeatedly:

  ‘Where is she, what have you done with her?’

  The man did not answer. Nor did he look up from his task. Moving without haste he placed one oar in a cleft amidships where it stood firm like a mast. This seemed such a curious arrangement to Jónas that it rendered him momentarily silent, giving the man a chance to speak: