Free Iceland's Bell by Halldór Laxness

to tell a story in exchange, since he was a poet and knew more than a thousand stories, but at this time of year no one was willing to part with even one bowl of skimmed milk, no matter what was being offered in return.
    “What would Gunnar of Hlíðarendi have said if he’d seen other such folk?” said the poet. “Or Egill Skallagrímsson?”*
    “There was a time when I worked as a silversmith for the gentry,” said a blind old man who was holding the hand of a blue-eyed boy. “Now I have to beg for a fin.”
    This comment was somewhat out of place, like most of the things that blind men say, and the entire thread of conversation, if there ever had been one, snapped. The beggars stared long and silently at the glacier-colored streamwater passing by.
    The corpse was of a young girl, and it had been placed neatly on the sandbank, but no one claimed responsibility for it. Someone said that she’d been insane in the life of the living. If one lifted the hair from her forehead one could see that she’d been branded.
    “Two ravens have been croaking for a long time east of the river,” said the blue-eyed boy who was leading the blind man.
    “The raven is the bird of all the gods,” said the poet. “It was the bird of Óðinn and the bird of Jesus Christ. It will also be the bird of the god Skandilán, who has yet to be born. Whomever the raven rends attains salvation.”
    “And the tern?” said the boy.
    “The Lord gave all the earth and all the sky to some birds,” said the poet. “Lie down flat on your back like me, young man, and study the flight of the birds for yourself, but do not speak.”
    The glacier stream continued to pass by.
    A distended-looking beggar, his liver most likely swollen, had been sitting there on the sandbank with his legs stretched out, looking down between his feet. Now he lifted up his sluggish eyes and said:
    “Why silver? Why not gold?”
    The blind man answered: “I’ve also worked gold.”
    “Why didn’t you say gold then?” asked the distended one.
    “I’m more fond of silver than gold,” said the blind one.
    “I’m more fond of gold,” said the distended one.
    “I’ve noticed that very few people are fond of gold for itself,” said the blind one. “I’m fond of silver for itself.”
    The distended man turned to the poet and asked:
    “When’s silver ever mentioned in poetry?”
    “If you were an unbetrothed maiden,” said the poet, “which would you prefer to marry, one man or thirty whales?”
    “Is this supposed to be a riddle, or what?” asked the thicker beggar.
    “My girl married thirty whales,” said the poet.
    “From evil company, parce nobis domine,”* said an old, ancient-mannered woman, and she turned her back on the men and wandered off.
    “She didn’t want me,” said the poet. “And at that time I was at my best. There was a famine then, like now. That same spring thirty whales were washed up on the beaches of a seventy-year-old widower in the countryside.”
    “Gold isn’t precious because it’s a better metal than silver,” said the blind man. “Gold is precious because it resembles the sun. Silver has the light of the moon.”
    Two important-looking men who crossed over from the east took charge of the blind man and his boy and they were ferried over. One man took charge of the popish old woman and even the distended man turned out to have a leprous brother in Kaldaðarnes. But no one would claim responsibility for the poet, nor for the corpse, nor for the woman come lately from Skagi. She wept for a while and beseeched the farmers in the name of Jesus, but it was useless; they boarded the ferry and the oarsman locked in the oars. Three remained behind, two living, one dead.
    The poet said: “You’re new to begging, good woman, if you think that God’s mercy still exists. God’s mercy is the first thing to die in an evil year. What can be done to reduce the tears in Iceland? Not only let beggars be borne across the rivers by