Free Iceland's Bell by Halldór Laxness Page A

oar, but let them glide over the seas on wings.”
    The old woman said nothing. She set off up the riverbank, carrying her walking stick and her pouch, thinking that there must be someplace where the bellowing streamwater would be only a little rippling brook, where a child might step over without wetting its feet.
    The poet and the corpse were left behind.

6
    The old woman’s destination, Skálholt, the episcopal seat and site of the learned school, offers with its throng of turf-covered dwellings an inhospitable welcome to unfamiliar travelers. It was so long into the spring that the mires had dried up. Folk there paid no heed to strangers and did not return the greetings of petty visitors, but passed by without asking the news, like shadows or speechless wraiths in dreams. All the same, it was invigorating to breathe in the vapor that emanated from the place, a blend of smoke from cooking-fires, the odor of fish, and the stenches of manure and refuse. The turf huts numbered, without doubt, in the hundreds, some lopsided and battered, their roofs nearly bare, others burly-looking, with smoking chimneys and grass-grown roofs, practically new. The cathedral towered up and over these scraps of earth and turf, a tarred wooden building with a belfry and tall wedge-shaped windows.
    She guessed her way to the bishop’s residence. This was a large, garreted house, also built with turf except for one lime-washed wooden wall facing the church. In this wall was a row of four-paned windows midway up from a comely paved footpath. One could see into the residence from the footpath. Glinting within were tankards and pots made of silver, tin, and copper, elegantly painted chests, and magnificently carved woodwork, but no one was to be seen inside. Double doors closed off the entry—the outer door was weatherworn and ajar, but the inner door was made of select wood and carved with dragons, and had a copper ring at the lock. The windows above the entry were within her arm’s reach, with only two panes in each and brightly colored curtains that came together in the middle of the windows at the top and were drawn out to the sides at the bottom.
    Now when the traveler had finally reached her destination and stood on the footpath before the bishop’s residence in Skálholt, with nothing left to do but knock upon the door, something like irresolution came over her; she sat down on the path before the bishop’s windows, her knotty feet stretched forward off the flagstones, her chin sunk down to her chest. She was tired. She sat there unmoving for some time before a woman walked up and asked what she wanted. The old woman lifted her head slowly and extended her hand in a gesture of greeting.
    “Vagabonds are not welcome here,” said the other.
    The old woman dragged herself up and asked after the bishop’s wife.
    “Beggars must report to the steward,” said the churchwoman, a vigorous widow, authoritative and contented, in the prime of her life.
    “The bishop’s wife knows me,” said the old woman.
    “How could the bishop’s wife know you?” said the churchwoman. “The bishop’s wife does not associate with beggars.”
    “God is with me,” said the woman. “And that’s why I can speak to the bishop’s wife in Skálholt.”
    “All vagabonds say that,” said the churchwoman. “But I am certain that God is with the rich, not with the poor. And the bishop’s wife knows that if she spoke to wretches then she would have time for nothing else, and the parish of Skálholt would fall to ruin.”
    “All the same, she came to my hovel last year and spoke to me,” said the old woman. “And since you think that I’m poor, good madam, whoever you are and whatever you’re called, then let me show you something here.”
    She reached into her blouse and drew forth her silver coin, which was wrapped tightly in a kerchief, and showed it to the churchwoman.
    “The bishop’s wife is not at home,” said the churchwoman. “She rode