The Heart of Man

by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Philip Roughton

Genres: Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction; Small Town & Rural

Synopsis

After coming through the blizzard that almost cost them everything, Jens and the boy are far from home, in a fishing community at the edge of the world. Taken in by the village doctor, the boy once again has the sense of being brought back from the grave. But this is a strange place, with otherworldly inhabitants, including flame-haired Álfhei?ur, who makes him wonder whether it is possible to love two women at once; he had believed his heart was lost to Ragnhei?ur, the daughter of the wealthy merchant in the village to which he must now inexorably return. Set in the awe-inspiring wilderness of the extreme north, The Heart of Man is a profound exploration of life, love and desire, written with a sublime simplicity. In this conclusion to an audacious trilogy, Stefánsson brings a poet's eye and a philosopher's insight to a tale worthy of the sagasmiths of old.

Release date: February 5, 2015

Publisher: MacLehose Press

Print pages: 258

Sample

THESE ARE THE STORIES THAT WE OUGHT TO TELL

Death is neither light nor darkness; it’s just anything but life. At times we keep vigil over folk who are dying and watch their lives fade away; each life is a universe and it’s painful to see one disappear, see all become nothing in a single instant. Of course, lives are different; for some, they’re humdrum, for others grand adventures, yet each consciousness is a world that stretches from ground to sky, and how can something so big vanish so easily, become nothing, not even foam left behind, not even an echo? But it’s been a long time since someone joined our group. We’re bloodless shadows, less than shadows, and it’s bad to be dead yet not be allowed to die, such a thing does no-one any good. In our day, some of us resorted to various means to try to escape – cast ourselves in front of oncoming cars, stuck our heads into the jaws of vicious dogs – but our screams were silent, the dogs’ teeth cut through us like air; how is it possible to be less than nothing yet remember everything, to be dead yet sense life more intensely than ever before? Now you’re sure to find us in the evenings, crouched in the cemetery, behind the church that’s stood here for centuries, though not always the same building. Our church, where Reverend Þorvaldur tried, to little effect, unfortunately, to find forgiveness and overcome his weaknesses; a person’s strength is measured only by his weaknesses, by how he faces them. The timber church panelled with corrugated metal is long gone and in its place is another one of stone, the stuff of mountains, which is appropriate; in such places the church should be modelled on mountains or the sky. The only times we find a trace of peace are here in the cemetery. Here we believe we can discern the muttering of the dead down in the earth, a distant hint of cheerful conversations. Thus can despair deceive. Yet these tranquil moments have multiplied slowly; they even seem to have lengthened, shifted ever so slightly from split seconds to seconds. We don’t feel well, precisely, but these words keep us warm, they’re our hope, and where there are words, there is life. Welcome them, and we exist. Welcome them, and there’s hope. These are the stories that we ought to tell. Don’t leave us.

AN OLD ARABIC MEDICAL TEXT SAYS THAT THE HUMAN HEART IS DIVIDED INTO TWO CHAMBERS, ONE CALLED HAPPINESS, THE OTHER DESPAIR. WHAT ARE WE TO BELIEVE?

Where do dreams end, where does reality begin? Dreams come from within, they trickle in from the world that we all have inside us, possibly distorted, but what isn’t distorted, what isn’t dented? I love you today, hate you tomorrow – he who never changes is lying to the world.

The boy lies for a long time with his eyes closed. Uncertain whether it’s day or night, whether he’s awake or asleep. He and Jens landed on something hard. First they lost Hjalti, the farmhand who came with them from Nes; the three of them dragged the coffin containing Ásta over mountains and heaths. Then the boy and Jens landed on something hard. How much time has passed? And where is he? He opens his eyes hesitantly; it isn’t always certain what awaits you after sleep, worlds change overnight, lives are extinguished, the space between the stars increases and the darkness deepens; he opens his eyes hesitantly, nervously, and is lying in a moonlit room, is lying in deathly white moonlight, and Hjalti’s face is uncomfortably pale as he sits on a chair and looks hard at the boy; Ásta is standing by the bed, emanating cold. You always escape, Hjalti says slowly. Yes, there are always people ready to pull him to his feet, says Jens, who is sitting up in a bed next to him, the moonlight having sewn a death-mask on him. But no-one can help you now, Ásta says. No, says Jens; nor is he worth it. What does he have to offer, anyway; what right does he have to live? Hjalti says. The boy opens his mouth to reply, say something, but feels a weight on his chest, so heavy that it’s hardly possible to speak, and then they begin fading slowly, they’re slowly erased, and the moonlight transforms into endless snow and the room into a cold heath that fills the world. The sky is a thick layer of ice covering everything.

Is it safe for me to open my eyes? Maybe he hadn’t slept, maybe it just takes such a long time to die. He hears neither the wind nor the hissing of the blowing snow, and doesn’t feel the cold. I must have fallen asleep in the snow; this is the sleep that turns into a soft, comforting death. Nor can I fight it anymore, thinks the boy, and no-one can help me now, Ásta is right about that, and why fight when all the best is finished? But I’m to be educated; Gísli, the headmaster himself, is supposed to teach me; isn’t it a betrayal to die, mustn’t I fight? And isn’t he lying in a bed? He feels as if he is, in a soft bed, it’s bizarre. Maybe he’s just lying in his room in Geirþrúður’s house and dreamt it all, the journey with Jens through storms and snow; is it even possible to dream so much snow, so much wind, so many lives and deaths; are dreams big enough for all of it? He can’t open his eyes, simple as that; his eyelids are heavy stone slabs. Tries to feel what’s around him, sends his hands off on a surveying expedition, but they prove to be as useless as his eyes, he can’t even feel them, maybe they’re dead, the frost has gnawed off his hands and they’re lying there like old scraps of wood in the snow. Where are you, Jens? he thinks, or mutters, before sinking back into sleep, if this is indeed sleep, if it isn’t death, sinks into rest, sinks into a nightmare.

Have you decided whether you’ll live or die? she asks, this woman or girl. She has red hair, the dead are red-headed. I don’t know, he says, I’m not sure I know the difference, nor am I sure it’s so significant. I’ll kiss you, she says, you’ll feel the difference, you’re definitely dead if you don’t feel a kiss. She comes right up and bends over him, her hair so red that it can hardly be true, and her lips are warm, they’re soft. Where is life but in a kiss?

Half-light surrounds the boy when he wakes, twilight, in fact. He’s lying in a soft bed, beneath a warm blanket that smells like fresh spring air, and there are his hands, waiting trustily and patiently for him, the frost didn’t gnaw them off, he can lift them and move his fingers, albeit stiffly, they’re like befuddled old men but are in their places. Outstanding, he mutters. He can discern the outline of two windows behind the curtains and hears a deep breathing close by, gathers the courage and strength to lift himself up on his elbows and look around. He’s in a fairly spacious room and there is another bed, a man is lying there breathing and it’s Jens. So they’re alive. How do you find out whether you’re alive, not dead? It isn’t always obvious. He thinks about it, then lifts the index finger of his right hand, bites the finger hard and feels the pain. Accordingly, his index finger should be alive; that’s something anyway. On the other hand, it takes a considerable effort to get up, it makes him dizzy, he should just keep lying there, it was a mistake when man raised himself up onto his hind legs; that’s when this tug-of-war between Heaven and Hell first began. The floor is cold and the boy hobbles over to Jens’ bed, stands over him, watches him breathe, then sits down on the edge of the bed, relieved. Good that this difficult, silent man should be alive, then his sister Halla won’t be tied down by strangers, she won’t be kicked.

He hears movement and a short woman enters, her expression slightly sharp, as if she expects nothing good in this world. You’re awake, then, she says. Can this be the woman from his dream, who kissed him, so sharp and at least twenty years older? What am I? he says. How should I know? I mean, where? In the doctor’s house in Sléttueyri, where else should you be?

This isn’t the voice from his dream, this woman isn’t a dream, she’s more like a length of rope, tough and steadfast. At Sléttueyri, he says slowly, as if to taste this name that had been their goal for two days, two nights, the tranquillity and rest behind the storm. So he’d made it. He and Jens had made it. But Hjalti? She puts her hands on her hips, not much space between her eyes, has an air of impatience, maybe she knows that human life is short, the sky changes colour and you’re dead. So we made it, the boy says, as if to himself. It would seem so, the woman says.

But how did we get here, and . . . into bed? Jens and I, I mean. I don’t remember anything.

You don’t remember anything. Yet you’ve certainly talked enough.

Did I speak?

You started as soon as you came into the warmth, half was unintelligible, and on top of that you wanted to go back out into the storm, buck-naked; you had to be restrained. Yes, buck-naked, your clothes had to be removed, of course, frozen solid as they were, and life rubbed back into the two of you.

She’s gone over to the window, opened the curtains with one quick tug, and daylight streams in. Where’s Hjalti? the boy says after his eyes have adjusted to the light. Hjalti, she repeats in the doorway, on her way out; I have no idea. Your jabbering sent ten men out into the night and they barely escaped an avalanche. Wait, the boy nearly shouts as she turns away. As if I have time for that, she says, and walks out.

Leaves the door ajar behind her, her rapid footsteps recede, short, quick steps, and soon afterward he hears the sound of voices. Jens breathes so slowly that it could be called peaceful, as if this big man is finally content with life; sleep can deceive us like that. How long have they slept, and was it night when they crashed into the house? Again the boy gets up carefully from the bed, his legs carry him, but they’re in poor shape, have aged considerably, the right one by a few decades probably. It’s fairly bright outside, maybe nearing midday; so he’s slept for at least twelve hours, no surprise that he’s muddleheaded. Cloudy, no sign of coming snowfall, a strong wind and cold, no doubt, the wind swirls up snow here and there as if it’s bored, but doesn’t block the view in any direction, and there’s the sea, leaden, tremendously heavy, tossing and turning between the mountains, he looks to the right, where the ocean extends into the distance, calmer in its endlessness. The mountains are white, too distant to be threatening, entirely white except for the cliff-belts, which are pitch-black, like the door to Hell. He runs a fingertip over his lips, languidly, as if in search of a kiss. Was it a dream, the kiss, the voice, the red hair, the warmth?

It’s cold to stand by the window, frost and snow breathe through the thin glass. He spies a few snow-covered houses, cold shells containing life. Leans forward and discerns the outline of the church; is Ásta inside it, waiting to be put into the ground? And where is Hjalti? The boy peers out as if hoping to see Hjalti dash from one snow-covered house to another, maybe in search of Bóthildur. Life is about finding another person to live with and then surviving that discovery, says a famous book, and that’s fine, as far as it goes, because it must always be harder to survive alone than with others. We’re born alone, die alone, and it’s heartrending to live alone as well. The boy tries to think of Ragnheiður, the daughter of Friðrik, the factor of Tryggvi’s Shop and Trading Company. She was going for a ride in the sunshine; but then someone comes up the stairs, stepping heavily. He starts back to bed, to get under the shelter of the covers, but stops, decides to return to the window but stops again, and is thus right between the two, or rather, nowhere, when a middle-aged man enters, the floor creaks beneath his heavy body; his build is robust, he’s rather tall, nearly bald, but with big, bushy sideburns, wearing a wool jacket and vest, his nose is noticeably red, his steely blue eyes lie deep in his face, making his nose seem even bigger. You’re awake, so it was true, the man says; his voice is deep but slightly worn, or hoarse, and he heaves a sigh. Good that you were able to rest, says a woman who appears beside the man, shorter by more than a head and younger, a difference of perhaps twenty years, thin, with thick blonde hair and an expression so bright that the boy starts thinking once more about sunshine, about summer, about the blue nights of the month of June, will they ever return? The woman who’s more like rope leans against the doorjamb, crosses her arms over her large bosom; well then, her expression seems to say, there you have it, so what now?

For several moments the boy stands defenceless in the middle of the room, wearing someone else’s clothing of homespun wool, far too roomy; life seems to take great pains to belittle him. The man tucks his thumbs into his trousers, says, Well then, and the woman, the bright one, says, You should get some rest, and he goes to the bed and lies down on it. Help me with the soup, she says, without taking her eyes off the boy, and the other woman unfolds her arms and is gone; she is footsteps receding. You should really lie down, the woman says to the boy, sitting down at the bedside and ageing as she draws closer, faint wrinkles, furrows in her face made by the claws of time. Ólafur wants to have a look at you, and afterward we’d really like to hear of your travels, and of poor Ásta; folk here have hardly spoken of or thought about anything else since your arrival here in the village, with a bang, it’s safe to say, you and this big man, and she glances at Jens. Have a look at me? asks the boy, without really knowing which way he should lie on the bed.

Forgive me, you don’t know us, the woman says, this is Ólafur, the doctor in these parts and my husband; she waves one hand, a bit like a wing, towards the man, who bows quickly and smiles, as his eyes penetrate the boy. I’m Steinunn, she says, standing up to make room for her husband, who sits down heavily at the bedside, sighing slightly, as if he feels uncomfortable being upright, in this eternal, wearisome tug-of-war, and starts poking at the boy, asking concise, pointed questions; yes, I can move my legs, no, no numbness in my arms, yes, soreness in my neck, and fatigue, yes, and weakness. Well, Steinunn says, and her husband stands up to allow her to sit down again. He’s so young, he says, and therefore can endure almost anything. Rest, decent food, water, avoid the cold, and he’ll be good as new in about a week, ten days. You’re so young, Steinunn says, or agrees. Nice to be young, Ólafur says; constantly changing. You’re one thing today, something totally different tomorrow. We should all be young and never grow old, never let time catch up with us. You don’t want change, his wife says, shaking her blonde head slightly, you detest it.

Is Jens alright? the boy says softly, suddenly feeling faint.

Jens, so his name is Jens, the big one, Ólafur says, well, oh, he’s worse off than you, no denying it, he’s suffered frostbite.

Worse off? the boy says hesitantly, so he’s not out of danger? Out of danger, when is a person out of danger? Ólafur says, I did what I could, but he will likely end up walking with a limp. Maybe worse.

They all fall silent. As if they’re contemplating the final words, “and maybe worse” – what they mean; how bad is worse, how far is death from life?

The boy hesitates, then asks, So you didn’t find Hjalti? Finally daring to ask because people are alive as long as we don’t ask; they’re safe in the silence, and then we start talking and someone is dead. Hjalti, says Ólafur, glancing at his wife, and then out the window; you said a lot about this Hjalti, that’s why we sent the lads out into the storm. Ten of them. Álfheiður rounded them up in no time. Night and a storm, and an avalanche, that’s how it was, he says, looking back at the boy and repeating, That’s how it was, let me tell you! As if he didn’t know that, his wife says softly, looking at the boy; she has beautiful eyes, they’re like old, warm stars, it was the same night and same storm that drove them here. Ólafur goes to the wall and pulls over a wooden chair, sits down, nods, of course, quite right, drove them, literally threw them, against the house, startling me so much that I spilled the winter’s last glass of sherry; there went that drop, there went that taste. He drums on his knees with relatively short fingers and starts whistling a meandering tune. Ólafur and I, Steinunn says, as if in explanation, were up late writing letters when you arrived . . . boisterously, interrupts Ólafur, yes, boisterously, she agrees, boom, Ólafur says, giving his thigh a quick slap and startling the boy. But judging by what you said, Steinunn says, you weren’t travelling alone, so we sent men up the mountain. Out into that mad storm, Ólafur says, and they found Ásta from Nes, a sled, remnants of a coffin, but nothing more.

The boy closes his eyes, overcome by a sudden faintness, and the image of Hjalti outside the farm at Nes comes to him, fills his consciousness; the man rolls an ever-expanding snowball ahead of him, holding the youngest boy like a sack beneath his arm, the other children skipping by his side. Could this big but slightly sorrowful man have died of exposure? He’ll manage, Jens had said, and Jens knows these things. He has to know them. Maybe Hjalti simply returned to the children, to the place where he belongs, in the bay behind the world. The children need him, the world can’t be so ghastly as to take that big man from them. You should eat now, Steinunn says. Her voice is as soothing as a warm embrace; there are some people who should simply sit next to you and speak, ease fatigue and pain with their voices. He opens his eyes. The woman, the short one, the length of rope, has returned, carrying a steaming tray; her name must be Álfheiður, and it is she who’d gathered the men to search for Hjalti. And Ásta, except that she was dead, and it’s pointless to search for the dead, you don’t search for what no longer exists. He hears a faint sound of child’s laughter from downstairs, life goes on laughing despite death, it’s so unbearable, tasteless, it’s so important, our mainstay. Steinunn has him sit up, props a pillow in the small of his back, Álfheiður places the tray on his lap, steaming soup, bends over the boy to adjust the tray, a heavy, slightly sweet smell from her collar. The boy looks down at his dish for several long moments. Eat, dear, Steinunn says. Hjalti, he then says to the soup, is a farmhand of Bjarni and Ásta, was, or is, he says, confused about the tense, should he speak in the past or the present, will Hjalti die if the boy speaks about him in the past tense? I don’t remember any Hjalti, Steinunn says, but I always forget names, and people as well. And besides, some people are just hard to remember for long. Some people are better wrought than others, Ólafur says.

Álfheiður: I knew a man by that name, but he drowned many years ago.

Ólafur: The sea, damn it all, that’s tough; did he have a family?

Álfheiður: Four children and a wife.

Indeed, Ólafur says, sighing softly, it just isn’t right.

Álfheiður: So justice does exist in this world, was what his wife said when she learned of the drowning.

Ólafur: What?

The boy, resolutely, to his soup: Hjalti didn’t drown, he was . . . he’s Bjarni and Ásta’s farmhand . . . or was . . . I mean, she’s dead, of course.

The soup is thick, hot and hearty, he eats without realising it, as if in a daze.

Álfheiður takes the tray; again that warm, cloying smell. Shall I bring him coffee as well?

Ólafur: Bring a damned great lot of coffee, Þórdís dear. The boy glances up; it’s so strange when people change name from one moment to the next. Þórdís mutters something almost in-audible, but the boy shuts his eyes and envisions Hjalti clearly, so unbearably clearly, sees his eyes, etched with disappointment, maybe sorrow, hears the last thing that Hjalti said before the sled ran off with the coffin and the three of them lost each other: Damn it, does a man come into this life just to die? And then he says it, opens his eyes and says, Can they be sent again to search for Hjalti?

Ólafur: What, again, for the third time?

Third time? the boy asks. They were able to search better yesterday, the doctor says; that makes twice, the weather wasn’t quite as bad, it wasn’t blowing hard enough to knock you down, but they found nothing. We presumed that there were more of you involved in transporting the body; it takes more than two to bring a coffin over a mountain.

The boy: We’d come to the ravine.

Steinunn looks at her husband; standing straight to have a proper look around is possible now, she says, and the doctor lumbers to his feet, goes out and shouts in a booming voice, Álfheiður! Gather some of the lads and tell them to go and search for this Hjalti! Tell them to follow the ravine! They’ll have me to answer to if they so much as grumble! They won’t be happy, the poor lads, he says when he returns. It’s impossible to be happy all one’s life, Steinunn says; no, Ólafur says, it would be damned depressing in the long run. Do you feel up to telling us the story of your journey? she asks the boy. Yes, Ólafur says, it wouldn’t be bad to have a story, and here comes the coffee, he adds when Þórdís returns with coffee for the three of them, and the boy realises that he can hardly avoid telling the story, that it’s more or less expected of him. There should be a woman in one of the houses here, he says slowly, by the name of Bóthildur? Bóthildur, no, the couple doesn’t know anyone by that name, why do you ask? She was apparently here three years ago. We’ve been here for twenty years, Ólafur says, and have never met anyone by that name, why do you ask? No reason in particular, the boy mutters, feeling his stomach knot up. He looks at the postman, watches the cover rise and fall with his breathing. Those who breathe are alive, whatever that might mean. And then he starts telling his story. The reserve postman Guðmundur had taken ill; that’s how it began.

Jens awakes in the evening.

The boy had dozed, tired after telling the story of their journey, it can take some effort to recall past events, we find then that life is never a continuous thread except occasionally by coincidence, which is as savage as it is beautiful. Some of the incidents pass through us and are gone without leaving anything behind, but there are others that we constantly relive, because what is past dwells in us, colours our days, transforms our dreams. The past is so interwoven with our present that it’s not always possible to distinguish between them, words you speak today will return to find you five years on, come to you like a bouquet of flowers, like a consolation, like a bloody knife. And what you hear tomorrow transforms an old, cherished kiss into a memory of a snake bite.

He’d told the story, relived the events, but didn’t tell all of it, didn’t betray Jens, told neither of the postman’s defeat in the dory nor of what he’d said about Halla and their father, the boy didn’t stray so close to Jens’ heart, but he told of the little girl, she who coughs so badly in Vetrarströnd that the thread of her life nearly tears apart. He told of the priest in Vík, poor old Kjartan, Ólafur muttered, not to mention Anna, Steinunn said, it’s bad to lose one’s sight, worse to lose one’s lust for life, Ólafur said. Are you certain, Steinunn had then said, that the darkness around Anna isn’t caused by lack of love rather than impaired vision? Don’t be ridiculous, people don’t lose their sight from lovelessness, it simply isn’t possible, blindness is biological, it’s scientific. What do we know about it? Steinunn said, what do we know about people? Perhaps not terribly much when it comes right down to it, Ólafur admitted, and the boy told about the snow, about the storm, the heath, about a farmer and a teenage boy on a heath, that he’d lost Jens, but then it was as if Ásta had appeared to him and led him to the postman, through the dark storm, maybe it was just my imagination, said the boy when he noticed the looks the couple gave him, when will she be buried? Tomorrow or the day after, Steinunn said, depending on Reverend Gísli’s health, and how long it takes to dig a grave, it’s tough going digging frozen ground. How far down do they dig? the boy said apprehensively, with some vague idea that the deeper she lay, the greater the likelihood that she would find peace. It’s one-and-a-half to two metres down to bedrock, Ólafur said, the dead lie shallowly here, but hopefully we can cover her better in the summer. Hopefully? A lot is forgotten in summer, young man, in the birdsong, the flies and all the fish. It’s hard to remember the dead when the sun is shining, and it may be unnecessary, as well.

Þórdís had come in at the end of the story, with a new hot-water bag for Jens. But who are you? Ólafur said, after Þórdís replaced the hot-water bag, and both women looked automatically at the boy, who said nothing; what was he supposed to say, anyway? How does one explain one’s existence, who am I, are we what we do, or what we dream? You have, said Steinunn when nothing was forthcoming from the boy, given us a great deal of cause for speculation. You were wearing well-made, expensive snow boots, Norwegian, I suppose, and warm clothing, cited poetry, we couldn’t make out everything you said, almost none of it, really, but I thought I recognised Shakespeare and he’s not what you’d call common, yet your hands suggest you’ve done your share of labour. People are either hard-working or they’re not, said Þórdís, lifting her chin slightly. I’m staying with Geirþrúður, the boy said, as if that explained things. Geirþrúður, repeated Ólafur, do you mean Geirþrúður, Guðjón’s wife? The boy nodded. Well now, Steinunn said. Is she keeping you for breeding purposes? Þórdís asked. No, said the boy, before adding curtly, almost before he realised it, and anyway, I prefer sensitive women like you. I would smack you, Þórdís said, if you weren’t lying in bed.

*

After they left, the boy nodded off, his fatigue from the journey like a heavy drone within him, a deep-rooted pain that reared its head as he relived it in his narrative. Nodded off, slept, and it’s evening by the time he stirs. Jens is standing at the window, looking out, his rough-hewn face deathly pale. For some time the boy doesn’t dare say anything, because words can reveal who is dead, who is alive, one word and Jens dissolves and is a dead body in the next bed. But we’ve got to know the difference between life and death, and this is why the boy says, We’re in Sléttueyri. Jens doesn’t move, as if he hasn’t heard, what words do we need to use for the dead to be able to hear us, so that God can hear? I know that, Jens says. In the doctor’s house, the boy adds, that is to say, when he’s able; as soon as he heard Jens’ voice the grief welled up in his throat, unexpectedly, as if with a will of its own, welled up and moistened his vocal cords. I know that, Jens replies, continuing to look out into the world, which is full of moonlight, this big man doesn’t need to fight back tears, he just is. Voices can be heard outside, male voices. Probably the men who went to search for Hjalti, and for the third time, says the boy after listening for a moment, trying to distinguish the words. I know, Jens says. We crashed into . . .