Free The Fish Can Sing by Halldór Laxness

“that I have wished your Excellency and the Danish kingdom a good New Year, but particularly my friend King Kristian the Ninth who is a foreign official of the Danish State, just as I am, I should like to ask you to convey to His Majesty my hope that he take notice of the prophecy I expounded to you last year and the year before that and the year before that, here in this very vestibule, and I know that His Majesty will not be offended if I repeat it onceagain, namely, that ever since the English and the Faroese and Gúmúnsen were permitted to use drag-nets and trawls right up to people’s back doors, I am tempted to say right up into their vegetable gardens in the bays here, in Breiafjörur Bay as well as Faxaflói, Iceland has been threatened with depopulation all the way from Rosmhvalanes to Látrabjarg. I request that this evil state of affairs should cease.”
    “Quite so,” said the Danish King’s Minister, and closed the door to the drawing-room with its famous picture. He took two cigars out of his pocket and thrust them into Hogensen’s pocket.
    “The matter demands closer consideration and investigation by the proper authorities,” he said. “I shall try to keep it in mind. We are grateful to you, my good Hogensen. You are really the only navy we have. But as you will understand, I cannot promise anything about this at present. These are critical times, to say the least of it. If the navy is weak, the army is even weaker. All our hopes here in Iceland depend on young men who can make us famous as we were in the olden days – oh, er, give the boy a little chocolate please, my good girl. For the rest, my dear Hogensen, as you can see, I am not dressed yet. But as I say, if there is anything else I can do for you, I shall of course be only too willing to try.”
    “As His Majesty the King of Denmark knows,” said Captain Hogensen, standing there on a Persian carpet in the King’s Minister’s vestibule – and every time he mentioned the King he would click his heels together and bring his fist up to his cap in a salute – “As His Majesty knows, it was the will of destiny that I should become the King of Denmark’s man in my prime, and that is more than can be said about most of my countrymen. And although I have now been reduced in my old age to spinning horsehair, as was done in olden times to punish rogues in Bláturn and on Brimarholm, I do not consider myself any the less a man for that, and I have no regrets for the services I did the King and his warriors when they sailed the Breiafjörur in their warships. But it is worth considering whether it would not redound even more to the honour of the Danish kingdom if His Majesty were to send his servant a trifling hank of horsehair from Denmarkto supplement the rump-pluckings which I manage with the most painful difficulty to extract from these practically horseless crofters out here in Iceland.”
    The King’s Minister stifled a yawn and replied, “I shall most certainly and sincerely keep this request in mind, my dear Hogensen. But as a matter of fact Iceland is, perhaps, as you yourself say, ahem, hardly the proper party in this matter. On the other hand I think it not unlikely that the proper authorities in this matter could be induced to consider, reflect, and examine whether or not to, ahem, to examine, reflect, and consider what could be done in such a case in these difficult times. And now we must try to get a move on, my dear Hogensen, for we are expecting visitors and to tell you the truth I am not awake yet.”
    “Yes, well, then it only remains to me to ask the Minister whether His Excellency himself could not see his way to manage a wisp of horsehair for me in the spring when the royal ministerial horses have their tails docked? I know full well that my good King Kristian the Ninth, who was once a German cottager in Holstein burdened with debts and a brood of children, understands what it is to be a foreign official in the Danish