World Light by Halldór Laxness Read Free Book Online Page A

laughing for the rest of the period, spasms of giggling that seemingly could not be suppressed, and he sat through this humiliation, dripping with sweat and scarlet with shame, in a white fog. What were all the birchings of childhood compared to this? Finally he began to cry. This startled the other children, and some of them stopped laughing. The pastor came over to him and patted his cheek, and said it could happen to anyone to give a wrong answer about God’s Word; it did not matter at all, he himself often did not know how to answer questions about God’s Word.
    It was now late in the afternoon, and the children were allowed to go home. When they went outside, some of them came over to him to be nice to him, wanting to make up for having laughed at him; others came to question him further about the hundred and eleventh treatment of animals. He tied his handkerchief round his catechism, put on his cap without answering, and took to his heels homewards. They went on laughing and ran after him and jeered at him, because it is such fun to tease those who are peculiar and alone. The crowd overtook him on the gravel plain to the east of the parsonage. No, they could not leave him alone; they had to pester him, in fun or in earnest, because he was so funny and had misunderstood the Christian faith. He sat down on a stone and held on tightly to his catechism in the handkerchief.
    Then a voice said, “You should be ashamed of yourselves, children, for not leaving him alone. What harm has he done you? Go on home and leave him in peace.”
    Soon they had all drifted away, up the valley. He stood up and shuffled along behind them, alone. Then he noticed that there were two girls from the confirmation class walking in front of him. They were walking arm in arm and going very slowly, and he wished they would walk faster because on no account did he want to catch up with them. Finally they stopped, looked back, and waited for him. He saw only one of them. It was Guðrún from Grænhóll; it was she who had chased the other children away when they were pestering him. He came closer to them and did not dare to look up, but he could feel her looking at him.
    “It didn’t matter at all,” she said.
    “Eh?” he said.
    “I mean when you gave the wrong answer; lots of people make mistakes,” she said. “And it doesn’t matter at all.”
    She lived a little farther up the fjord, and she was nearly home. So there were people in the world after all who wanted to help others for no reason at all except the goodness of their hearts! He could not say anything; but it was as if his grief had melted away at the kindness in her eyes.
    “Where does your father live?” she asked.
    “I don’t know,” he answered.
    “And haven’t you got a mother, either?” she asked.
    “Yes,” he said.
    “Where is she?”
    He nearly started to cry all over again, because she was asking him about that. He still could not believe that anyone should actually care whether he, a foster child at Fótur-undir-Fótarfæti, had a mother and a father. But when she saw that he was going to cry again, she said hastily, “If you’d like to come home with me to Grænhóll, I’ll ask Mummy to make you some coffee.”
    He was extremely grateful to her, but was too shy to accept right away; and he was not supposed to linger on the way home.
    “I know it’s terrible to be an orphan,” she said, “but Lauga and I want you to be happy. Isn’t that true, Lauga? Don’t we want him to be happy?”
    “Yes,” said the other girl.
    “We’ll always take your side whenever the other children start teasing you. Won’t we, Lauga?”
    “Yes,” said Lauga.
    “Just you tell us if someone’s teasing you,” she said. “I’ll soon deal with those boys, whichever of them it is.”
    Soon afterwards they shook hands with him and said good-bye and turned off the path and walked up by the river; their farms were right at the roots of the mountain. She forgot to repeat