The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [178]
It was true that the Isafjorders were unlike any folk that Margret had known before. Eyvind and his daughters were small and dark, and the eldest daughter, although only eighteen winters old, was already stooped from the joint ill. Eyvind himself bragged of having had the joint ill very badly in his shoulder, so that his arm had been frozen for a time in the socket, but then spring had come and he had gone out and done the spring work with especial vigor, and his arm had freed itself. When Margret remarked that his shoulder looked peculiar as if the arm had come out of the socket, Eyvind laughed and said that indeed it had, and that had been the purpose of his vigor. And now he raised his arm above his head and lowered it again. “Now, old woman,” he said, “it may be that a man can have pain or he can have death, and surely in Isafjord a man with one arm is facing death. But the priests tell us that we must not choose death, if we have any hope of Heaven, and so I chose that my shoulder should swim freely in my flesh as payment for life, and so it does, and so I live, and when it swims too far, we nudge it back where it came from!” Now Eyvind laughed and his daughters laughed with him, and indeed, they laughed at many things, pinched and small and gray as they were. Food about the place was spare and always had been, although Eyvind had as much land to his steading as Asgeir had had in his best days.
The daughters were named Finna, Anna, Brenna, and Freydis. Their mother and brother had died in the recent stomach ill. After a messenger had come from Brattahlid to all the farmsteads of Isafjord to see how folk were faring, some of those who had been hale fell ill, and these two and three of the servingfolk had died. The four daughters were pleased to speak every day of the qualities of Heaven and to picture for each other the sort of life the souls of their mother and brother were leading. Each day they would sit over their small meals and begin:
“What do you think our mother is eating?” said Finna.
“Milk and honey is what the priest says,” said Anna.
“But surely other things, too,” said Finna.
“Oh, yes,” said Brenna. “Bread and grapes and calves’ meat, I would say.”
“And what,” said Finna, “will she make at her weaving today?”
“The thread will be mostly gold, I think,” said Anna. “But with some silver twisted in.”
“It seems to me that the angels would like a nice two-by-two twill.” Everyone laughed merrily.
“Do you think,” said Brenna, “that the shuttle flies back and forth of its own accord?”
“Perhaps,” said Freydis, “she is finished as soon as she begins, or as soon as she thinks of the pattern.”
“Maybe there is other thread, thread the colors of the rainbow,” said Anna.
Some days they would talk all morning about exactly how warm Heaven might be. It could not be warm enough so that souls went naked, or could it? If souls went naked, then why all the weaving, and if there was no weaving then how did souls occupy themselves? And in addition to this, Hell was said to be hot and cold, so it must be that Heaven was warm and cool, and then they would talk about whether it was as warm as a hillside with the sun shining right upon it, or as cool as a cool sunny day in the summer, with a breeze blowing or without a breeze blowing, with lots of ice in the fjord or without very much ice in the fjord. And so their talk went on and on, as lively as could be, and it seemed to Margret sometimes that she could see the mother Hjordis in the fields of Heaven, or the streets of Heaven. Some folk said that Heaven was a holy city, as Jerusalem was, and so the daughters would imagine what a city was, and what Jerusalem was, and what a heavenly city Jerusalem might be. The folk at Eyvind’s steading chattered all the time, and Margret thought of something that Ingrid had