Free Paradise Reclaimed by Halldór Laxness Page A

horse has now become a royal pony and is called Pussy.”
    “Yes, but you could tell us just a tiny little bit sometimes, Daddy, even though it’s only a fairy-tale. We are so longing to know what you’re making in there.”
    “Perhaps with God’s help I shall manage to concoct some little trifle before spring—and then I shall open up the workshed for you,” he said.
    And that is just what happened. In spring, when the land was freeing itself from its bonds of ice, Steinar called his children into the workshed one day and showed them his completed handiwork. It was a casket, most beautifully finished. It was quite unvarnished, and therefore retained the natural colour of the wood, but the surface was highly polished as if it had been kneaded between the hands; and this had been done with such artistic skill that the wood seemed to have surrendered and allowed itself to be moulded like wax. It was taller and longer than most other caskets, but did not seem to be larger; all its proportions were somehow unique; there was no other casket quite like it. And it was as agreeable to the eye as it was pleasing to the touch.
    It was divided into several compartments of different sizes. Under the largest compartments, which were detachable, was the bottom; but there was more to that than met the eye, because under it there lay three, some say four, secret compartments which no one could open except by an ingenious special device which will be dealt with shortly. But first the locking mechanism of the casket must be described; it is said to have been the most complicated and cunning arrangement that had ever been known in Iceland, and many delicate operations were required to open it. On the lid there was a large group of numbered studs which had to be adjusted according to an intricate formula before the casket could be unlocked; to do this, one had to start with the seventh stud and end with the sixth, and with that the lid would open. Steinar had no alternative but to set the formula to verse in order to commit it to memory. It was a long poem, composed in a verse-form which only Icelandic farmers know, and for anyone who did not know the poem off by heart it was an impertinence even to attempt to get the casket open.
    Steinar recited the poem to his children and opened the casket according to its instructions; and the children gaped as if thunderstruck by this miracle.
    POEM TO OPEN A CASKET
    First you shove the seventh out,

Eleven can soon be moved away;

Flip the fourth one round about,

For the ninth to come in play.
     
    Now you press the second spur,

And see the eighth come swinging round;

Then the third can start to stir,

And thirteen moves up with a bound.
    The fifth is now at last set free,

And fourteen slides down with a click,

Give the twelfth a twist with glee,

And turn the sixth one with a flick.
     
    You who seek life’s happiness,

Set ten and fifteen on their own;

And you will glimpse just how intense

Is God’s glory. But leave it alone.
     
    With fourteen clues I’ve favoured you,

To find the gold that’s hidden well;

But still there’s yet another clue,

And that one I shall never tell.
     
    Steinar’s daughter asked what was to be put into all these compartments.
    “The large compartments are for silver,” said Steinar.
    “What about the trays that are divided into four?” asked the boy.
    “They are for gold and precious stones,” said Steinar.
    “Then I don’t understand what is to go into the secret compartments,” said the girl.
    “Then I shall tell you, light of my life,” said her father, and laughed his falsetto titter. “That is the place for what is costlier than gold and precious stones.”
    “What could that be, Daddy?” asked the girl. “I never thought that such a thing existed.”
    “It is the secrets which no one else will ever know until the end of the world,” said Steinar, and closed the casket.
    “Is all that gold ours, then?” said the little viking.