Under the Glacier by Halldór Laxness Read Free Book Online

inquire if you are troubled with rheumatism?
    Tumi Jónsen: The dear light of heaven! That’s just like him. He is a noble soul. Are you in orders, may I ask?
    Embi: No, just an errand-boy.
    Tumi Jónsen: It is nice to be modest, my boy. Please take a seat. But the womenfolk aren’t at home, I fear; they went into town to buy some soap. They say that spring is here. Time to start scrubbing. I hope they will be back soon to make the coffee.
    The parish clerk opened his trunk and brought out a bottle of port and one beaker; he filled the glass and drained it and said: I’m drinking first, because I am the older. But had you been in orders, I would have let you drink first.
    He wiped the inside of the glass with his thumb, filled it again, and handed it to me in silence. Then he put the bottle and beaker back in the trunk and closed it.
    Embi: So you are the parish clerk?
    Tumi Jónsen: You can put a name to anything, my boy.
    Embi: Yes, well, I hardly know how to raise the subject. I’m only twenty-five years old. I haven’t the faintest idea about the cure of souls. I cannot imagine how I’ve blundered into this.
    Tumi Jónsen: Perhaps I could fill your glass again?
    Embi: No thanks, I’m sweating enough already. I am wondering why the pastor isn’t at home. Gone abroad, perhaps?
    Tumi Jónsen: No, I hardly imagine our pastor Jón’s gone there. I imagine he was fetched over to Nes late yesterday to shoe a herd of horses. It must have taken them all night.
    Embi: I thought he mended primus stoves?
    Tumi Jónsen: He can do everything, that man. But primus stoves have for the most part gone into disuse since the electricity came.
    Embi: Are there no electric primus stoves?
    Tumi Jónsen: Not that I have heard of.
    Embi: What are primus stoves, exactly? What’s a primus like?
    Tumi Jónsen: A primus, let me put it this way, has a head on it that is heated by burning meths. The oil is pumped from the container into the red-hot head, you light a match, and then a gas is formed that starts burning. A blue flame. Yes, that’s the way of it. These contraptions replaced the old oil stoves in their day.
    Embi: And a lot of people here have primus stoves in disrepair, would you say?
    Tumi Jónsen: That is perhaps putting it too strongly. They’re a lot of bother; and besides, the electricity is here. But I wouldn’t swear to it that pastor Jón hasn’t got a primus himself. Nowadays he does mostly electrical repairs—for other people, that’s to say, because he doesn’t use the electricity himself.
    Embi: Are there any grounds for thinking that he sometimes overlooks his pastoral duties, like for example burying the dead and suchlike?
    Tumi Jónsen: Some people claim he’s none too quick at burying.
    Embi: But everyone’s satisfied?
    Tumi Jónsen: True enough, it can be a little inconvenient for those who don’t need burying. It matters less for the others. On the other hand he’s the only person hereabouts who can shoe a horse properly. I don’t think there’s a single horse in these parts that pastor Jón hasn’t stuck a shoe on.
    Embi: So it doesn’t matter if burying gets forgotten?
    Tumi Jónsen: Some people find it a little odd, perhaps. But so far as I know, everyone gets to the right place in the end.
    Embi: And his doctrine’s all right?
    Tumi Jónsen: Well, now, there’s no fear of our pastor Jón saying more than he should.
    Embi: What does he lay most emphasis on in his doctrine?
    Tumi Jónsen: We’ve never been aware that pastor Jón had any particular doctrine, and we like it that way.
    Embi: What does he preach, then?
    Tumi Jónsen: Large questions often get little answers, my boy. Pastor Jón did not preach much in the past and preaches even less now—fortunately, many people would say. But it’s not that we here are against doctrines, least of all if there’s no need to follow them. Doctrines are for entertainment, I’ve always felt. In a parish not far from here there’s a pastor who has