Free Under the Glacier by Halldór Laxness Page B

the foundations and has rotted the floorboards. White fungus throve in the black mould-patches on the floor and ditto on the damp-stained wall panelling, which seems to have been painted blue originally.
    Altar rails (Latin gradus ). The altar rails tottered on four balusters. The kneeler is meant to provide comfort for communicants when they kneel, and at one time had been upholstered with red cloth, but it is now mouldered, torn, and mouse-eaten, with the horsehair padding showing through the cloth, and it could well be that living creatures inhabit it; but insects rather than mice.
    Embi: What can have happened to the missing balusters from the altar rails?
    Pastor Jón: The children made off with them when the church was unlocked.
    Embi: And you have done nothing about it?
    Pastor Jón: They think it sport to beat cows with a nicely turned decorated stick.
    Chalice and paten . Concerning these treasures the pastor replies to the effect that thieves took away everything of that sort a long time ago. But there’s a rather clumsy old brass candlestick on the altar. If you want it, says the pastor, I shall close one eye. I myself have stolen nothing here. But I accept responsibility for the removal of the church pews.
    Church pews .
    Embi: So you have had the pews removed, pastor Jón? Pastor Jón: We were compelled to do that during the firewood shortage in the spring of the great snows. It was two hundred kilometres to the nearest lump of coal. All means of transport were immobilised right until May.
    Embi: What did the parishioners say?
    Pastor Jón: Oh, well, it was the parishioners who carried the pews away by themselves in the great snows. With my permission, in fact.
    Embi: I thought people were well-to-do here?
    Pastor Jón: No one, least of all the well-to-do, thinks himself too good to wade home through the snow with his church’s furniture on his back. It’s only the well-to-do who can afford to accept anything as a gift. I myself had nothing to put under the kettle except my furniture, and the books, and in the last resort the doors of the parsonage. Yes, it’s a high office, this.
    Retable, etc . The east gable wall is in poor condition. The damp has attacked the altarpiece, which is an ancient triptych; there were once three pictures, the main one in the middle. The wing-panels are on hinges and should close over the centrepiece, and this had doubtless been done for many hundreds of years whenever there was no service in the church. Damp has now got at the wood from behind and has spread to the painting, so that the pictures look as if they had been smeared with tar.
    Embi: What were these pictures?
    Pastor Jón: They were great pictures, Bible pictures.
    Embi: Nothing special?
    Pastor Jón: Oh yes, yes, indeed they were. I seem to recall the Crucifixion was the centrepiece.
    Embi: What about the wing-panels?
    Pastor Jón: There were some saints. To tell you the truth I never had a proper look. These were old and good pictures.
    Embi: They’re in pretty poor condition now.
    Pastor Jón smiles: I am prepared to guarantee they have never been as good as now.
    Pulpit . Sometime or other a bundle of desiccated sticks painted in olden times had been placed on the floor against a wall; there are still some remnants of figures and lettering on them.
    Embi: What is that pile of sticks, if I may ask?
    Pastor Jón: That is the pulpit.
    Embi: In somewhat strange condition, is it not?
    Pastor Jón: Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Don’t all pulpits get like this? I don’t suppose it makes much difference. A well-to-do farmer nearby had run out of sticks like so many others in the spring of the great snows. He was feeling rather sorry for himself, poor devil. He said everyone had been given wood except he. So I said he could have the pulpit. He had finished dismantling it and had split the boards and tied them up with string, was going to fetch them the next day. But then the thaw arrived and the roads were becoming