The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [136]
“Did he greet you angrily, as Lavrans does me?”
“Every time he saw me, his countenance fell, for all folk considered me a do-nothing, and it is true that it seemed for a time as if a sleeping curse was upon me, especially after my father’s brother was killed on the ice far to the north.”
“Did he go among the skraelings?”
“Hauk Gunnarsson went often among the skraelings, and was not averse to their ways. He wore the skins of birds for his underclothing, and my old nurse was greatly scandalized at such a thing. But folk didn’t speak of the skraelings then as they do now, for the skraelings hadn’t shown their true devilish natures, and hadn’t killed Christians as they have now. Nor were they about in such numbers as they are now. Hauk Gunnarsson ate his meat raw sometimes, at the end of winter, as skraelings do, and foxes and bears, and he said it wasn’t a sin to do so, but a necessity in the far north, where the world is white from year’s end to year’s end.”
“Lavrans is a do-nothing, and yet everyone serves him, day and night.”
“After a long day, folk rest at night. After a long summer, folk play games and sit about in the winter. After a long life folk sit about the fire and stay warm, for the chill of death is upon them, and even the thickest bearskin can’t keep off the shivering.”
“But folk say that Lavrans was never prosperous or hardworking, and that is why Lavrans Stead is so mean. And Gunnhild sometimes speaks of Gunnars Stead at night in bed, and she says that the fields and the lakes there were like the meadows of Paradise.”
“It is true that Gunnars Stead is a fine farm, and any man would long from time to time for such a place. But when I see Lavrans beside the fire, I am fond of him, for this reason, that one time, after the death of Asgeir Gunnarsson, I went to the Thing at Gardar, and I had few friends, if any, and my booth was small and made of a piece of wadmal, not of white reindeer skins, as it is now. Although my father was Asgeir Gunnarsson and I lived at the great farm of Gunnars Stead, men pushed past me without seeing me, or they looked me up and down and recollected what was said about me and laughed into their beards. And so it happened that I wandered away from the Thing field, and I saw a young girl standing on the hillside, right on the hillside out there, where the Gardar stream runs down, before it divides and flows into the homefield.”
“Was that girl my mother?”
“Indeed it was she, and she had just passed her fourteenth birthday. And now it happened that as I was looking at her, she turned her head and looked at me, and from that long way, I could see the blue color of her eyes, and I climbed the hill toward her, gazing at her eyes the whole way. She was not like any other girl I had known, for my sister was tall and much inside herself, and her hair was always braided perfectly, as if her head had been carved from stone, but Birgitta was slight and not a little disheveled. However, she looked at things as if her soul went out to them and fixed upon them. And so I went and sat down on the hillside next to her, and we talked and became friends, and it seemed to me that this young girl and only she would have the strength to save me and make me a man.
“The next day was the last day of the Thing, and all morning men were striking their booths and taking to their boats and leaving, and I knew that I should go to Lavrans, but I had no friends to take with me, and I was afraid. I also knew that Lavrans lived far away, in Hvalsey Fjord at the mouth of the fjord, and that the Hvalsey Fjorders were usually the first to leave. But I walked about in fear and did not approach him, and before long almost everyone was gone, and it was time for me to go, too, for I had come in a boat with a man from Vatna Hverfi who was eager to leave. Finally I saw that Lavrans’ booth was still up, but that his servants were beginning to take it down, so in a panic I ran to where he was packing