Under the Glacier by Halldór Laxness Read Free Book Online Page A

preached a lot. People have started to take what he said seriously. It has not turned out well. People tend to do the opposite of what they are taught.
    Embi: Many unbaptised children in the parish?
    Tumi Jónsen: I haven’t counted them.
    Embi: But don’t you find it tiresome, all the same?
    Tumi Jónsen: Some people find it a little odd, perhaps; but the children thrive.
    Embi: I want to put a question to you now as parish clerk: have you any plans in hand concerning God’s House in the parish?
    Tumi Jónsen: The church? Oh, dear, so you went and had a look at that too, my boy!
    Embi: The church is nailed up.
    Tumi Jónsen: Well now, what a shame, the church nailed up! Yes, you are right, the hinges really do need mending. And panes needed for the windows, what’s more. That is not so good. A lot of good visitors come here in the summer to have a look around. And then it is bad if the church is nailed up.
    Embi: What does the congregation itself think? Don’t they think it bad that the church cannot be opened?
    Tumi Jónsen: Oh, I wouldn’t say that.
    Embi: At Christmas, for example?
    Tumi Jónsen: There are so many entertainments nowadays.
    Embi: Perhaps there isn’t even a service at Christmas?
    Tumi Jónsen: No special services at Christmas, no, one can’t really say that.
    Embi: I wonder who broke the windowpanes in the church?
    Tumi Jónsen: Oh, just some practical jokers, I expect; unprincipled youths from other districts. They could also have gone in a storm, the wretched panes. It can be pretty gusty here at Glacier, my boy.

9
     
    Women Bring Soap
     
    A jeep came roaring onto the paving outside the window: a cracked silencer, or no exhaust pipe. The women climbed out with the soap. The older woman had that drained, tolerant look that was for a long time the net profit that older country people earned from life’s struggle; the other was in good shape, at least twenty-five to thirty years younger, wearing a floral print dress. The parish clerk introduced the women from the window.
    Tumi Jónsen: There is my dear wife, if I may speak so ill of any human being. The other is our stepdaughter, Jósefína. She brings us the spring from the south with her scrubbing brush. It is she who does all the cleaning for everybody.
    Stepmother and stepdaughter came in by the kitchen door, and the business of introduction continued.
    Tumi Jónsen: The visitor whom you for your part see here, my dear girls, well, he is not actually the bishop of Iceland, but the same as. To be the same as—that to my mind is the same as being more than the bishop. Such a man is at once what the bishop is and in addition what he himself is: a nice young man.
    The housewife offered the visitor a limp, rather clammy hand, without change of expression; after all these years she had doubtless long since given up heeding the things her husband went on about. The floral stepdaughter, for her part, had a meaty palm with a firm thumb muscle, and gave her name as she greeted him, as they do in the south: Mrs. Fína Jónsen, widow, from Hafnarfjörður. The coffee will be ready at once. And plenty of Prince Polo biscuits.
    Tumi Jónsen: Yes, there’s a lot in the papers about extravagance nowadays. Prince Polo biscuits are what we have indulged in here since prosperity came to the land. Perhaps those who write in the papers don’t have Prince Polo biscuits.
    The undersigned declined the offer of coffee and Prince Polo biscuits even though the latter might be the Icelander’s present-day mark of prosperity. But it isn’t the custom in the country to take it seriously if people decline coffee and cakes; and Mrs. Fína Jónsen went out to put the kettle on. She didn’t close the door behind her, but carried on chatting while she busied herself.
    Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Well then, I’ve heard the Angler’s back on the rivers now. There’s gold on the go! Let’s hope the sea trout’s running. Yes, what a man! But we’ll carry on scrubbing our