From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjon Read Free Book Online Page B

his mind also gripped his body. The limb between his legs swelled, reared up and jutted forwards, like the strong arm of an army commander ordering his troops into battle: ‘Onwards to victory!’ And without further ado Adam obeyed the command of his powerfully raised limb. He cast himself over the creature, thrusting his limb between its legs, deep into the sandy soil, pumping on top of it until a great, thick stream of sperm spurted from his body with the force of a tidal wave crashing against a cliff forty fathoms high. The climax shattered the rainbow on the inside of his eyelids, each colour shooting out into the void like a meteor, sometimes violet, sometimes blue as water, sometimes yellow as the sun, and the seed flowed into every cleft in the Earth’s crust, every crack in the rocks, every groove and fissure in the crystals, every hole in the soil. Thus Adam fertilised the underworld by lying with his own shadow. From this act sprang the race that dwells in the dark worlds underground. Was it thrice three hundred thousand that quickened to life on that single occasion? Is that the reason why wherever mankind settles, he is preceded by a vast horde of invisible beings in mounds and hillocks, crags and mountains? But the Creator saw that this would not do: what an abhorrent thought that man should be filled with lust for his own shadow, let alone that from him should spring such a legion of offspring every time he lay with the earth. Before long, there would be no room for the mass of earth-dwellers in the darkness and they would burst forth with the same force as the sperm from their father’s loins. So the first thing the Maker of Man did was to deprive Adam of his shadow until he had found a solution to the problem. And while Adam rushed around the realm of the Earth, seeking an object for his lechery – bellowing with lust, leading a chorus of howling dogs that followed his every step – the Maker of the World invented woman, taking care to form her belly in such a way that it could hold no more than three human embryos at a time. Yes, and their species would shrink by an inch with every generation until man was not much taller than the ignorant son of Adam who sits here on the shore with his misshapen shadow, putting down these thoughts in words.
     

     
    Sun, I thank you for obeying the Almighty Creator’s call and lengthening your course across the sky in summer. Were it not for this, we who live up here on this unlovely splat of lava in the far north of the globe would go stark, staring mad – every last one of us. For so it has been arranged for us that for one quarter of the year the sky is always light, for another quarter it is always dark, and for the other two it is passable. Such are our seasons. In the perpetual light of high summer one has leisure to contemplate the terrible black chill that is the season we call winter, and all the evil that it brings. After such thoughts one sits and turns one’s face to the sky, closing one’s eyes and letting the blueness fill one with the illusion that it will always be so, or at most that the sky will flush like the cheek of a bashful boy but never grow dark again. For there is need of light when one’s memories are dark, as I know to my cost. All day I have been prey to ugly, dismal thoughts. Yet I have so much to rejoice over: the warm sunny weather, the broad vista, the gentle cries of the birds and the pups calling from the seal colony, sounding for all the world like human babes. And my wife, Sigrídur Thórólfsdóttir, is with me. The poor dear woman who thought she was embarking on the dance of life with a reasonably affluent and industrious man when she married me. Thirty-five years later she knows better. They brought her to me this spring, saying that she was restless with longing to see me, the poor soul. Yes, Sigga is a sad wretch, a match for that sad wretch Jónas. I thought her coming would lighten my life, that less time would be