Free World Light by Halldór Laxness Page A

sensible thing to do in a case like this is to heed the old saying that ‘pauper’s talk means nothing.’ ”
    “Her dress unfastened at the top! I’ve never heard such filthy talk in a poem about an innocent woman in all my born days,” said the elder brother. “All I can say is that it’s a mercy her clothes weren’t unfastened lower down as well, whoever she was!”
    “If you’re going to carry on talking like that over this God-given food, I’m going down to the kitchen to call my mother,” said Magnína.
    “Well, as far as I’m concerned, and I’m the oldest and most experienced man in the family, I say that if there’s going to be any more of this open obscenity here in this house, then it’s going to be me who’s in charge of the birch from now on. I don’t care what anyone else says.”
    The younger brother, Júst, who had taken no part in this conversation so far, now had this to say:
    “Let me tell you a little story which I know you will think very peculiar, even though it’s absolutely true. I got it from a reliable man from the west who was my shipmate last winter, and he was told it by an old woman who remembered very clearly when it happened. There was once a parish pauper at Saeból, in Aðalvík, and would you believe it—he, too, began to use obscene and blasphemous talk openly in the house that gave him board and lodging. He started composing doggerel of a kind that even if I knew it by heart it would never even occur to me to let it soil my mouth. And what ploy do you imagine the people of Saeból thought up to get rid of him? They sold our little friend for bait to a foreign fishing-smack, to tell you the honest truth. And the fishermen tied our little friend alive to the mast and hacked tiny little bits off him as required. No, there was certainly no question of killing people on that boat! But it’s said that for six days his screams carried all the way to land while they were fishing on the offshore bank there; on the seventh day, however, no more was heard, and it’s said that they had caught enough fish and put out to sea. It was thought in the west that the last thing they cut from him was his heart. Yes, that’s how they dealt with their parish paupers in the western fjords if they didn’t behave themselves properly!”
    The patient lay screaming the whole afternoon, and Magnína felt obliged to sit beside him and give him cold water to drink after her brothers had gone out; his sufferings so affected her that she could not give full vent to the loathing and disgust at his obscene doggerel that shocked and bruised all her finer sensibilities.
    “I can’t see anything for it but to write a description of your illness and send it to the doctor,” she said that evening.
    “Couldn’t that be a bit dangerous?” he asked between groans.
    “Dangerous?” she said. “To get oneself cured? What a ridiculous idea!”
    “I mean, if the cure should be too quick,” he said.
    “Too quick?”
    “Yes, and cause a relapse. It’s bound to take a long, long time for someone in my wretched state of health to get fully cured.”
    But a few days later she was sitting in the loft, and the boy was crying out with pain again. He groaned loud and long, but she was getting used to it now and could not be bothered doing anything about it. Finally he said, “Yes, I think I’ll just have to ask you to write out a description of the illness, as you were suggesting.”
    But Magnína was not quite so enthusiastic about writing anything now. It was not until several days later that she brought herself to it and came up with pen and paper. She sat down at the window and stared vacantly out into the blue, tilted her head sideways in resignation, and heaved a deep sigh. She appeared to be in real distress over it, and he almost felt a little sorry for her.
    “I simply don’t know what to write,” she said.
    “Just write that I’m ill,” he said.
    “It’s not so easy to write that sort