The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [224]
However their feelings stood when they left the priest’s house, it is the truth that the quick walk through the snow in the frigid dark developed their appetites wonderfully, such appetites as men have who haven’t been satisfied in two winters, or in the summer between them. They came to the steading as men come to a feast, or bears to their first kill of the spring. The farm buildings lay before them in the moonlight, as neatly turfed as in the days of Asgeir Gunnarsson or his father, for Vigdis liked things to be in good repair. The storehouse lay near the steading, and the cowbyre behind, with the sheep pens open to the south. Another cluster of buildings, which included a smithy and a bath house, lay off the path from the church, some ways in front of the steading, and here the band of men stopped and listened for the barking of the dogs. None came, for the dogs were in the chambers off the cowbyre with the cowmen, and the wind blew from them into the faces of the intruders. All was silent. Einar and Mar went to the storehouse and forced open the door.
The mixed odor of meat and whey rolled forth through the door like a blast of heat, inflaming Einar so that he stumbled into the storehouse and began reaching in the dark with his hands and grabbing anything he touched. There were sausages and joints of dried or smoked meat, rounds and loops of cheese hanging from thongs, lumps of butter stacked against the wall. Einar groaned so at the wealth of provisions that Mar and another man pushed him out of the way in the dark, and then stepped on him in their impatience to get inside. The doorway was low and narrow, as with all storehouses, and the men crowded around it, inhaling the rich odors.
It is the case that when folk come long distances for a feast, the wife and her servingwomen must feed them all as quickly as is seemly, for the longer they wait, the more quarrelsome they become, and the more they stare at the bowls and trenchers passed to their neighbors and the more they feel slighted at the size of their own portions. Now it happened that Einar’s fall blocked the doorway of the storehouse, and in the darkness, men could not see how to lift him out of the way, or how to get around him, but they could hear Mar and the other man pulling things off the hooks and shelves, and indeed, they could hear the working of jaws and low grunts of pleasure, for it is with a man as with a dog—hungry ears are sharp ones. The men in the doorway began to shout at one another, and shove each other aside, and fear that other men were getting more to eat and to carry away than they themselves were. Now Ofeig said, “Nay, enough of this. There is more to be had in the steading.” And he ran through the snow to the door of the steading, and with one heavy blow of his shoulder, he knocked it down.
At this, a dog began to bark, and soon some others, and men began to run from the storehouse to the steading. Inside the steading, Vigdis sat up in her bedcloset and held forth her seal oil lamp, and was heard to say, “Now I see that Satan and his minions have come upon me at last.” Two elderly servingmen came in from another chamber in the steading with raised staves, and a blow from one of these glanced off Ofeig’s shoulder, angering him so that he turned and brought his great fist down on the fellow’s neck. The man collapsed on the floor. Perhaps the band of men had intended to do no injury, only to take some food and leave, but after this blow, the doing of injury seemed a simple and natural thing, a thing that could not be avoided in the course of events. Other servants came running from the cowbyre, all old men, and they, too, carried staves, and shouted about the devil’s work, and the dogs came with them, barking and howling at the top of their lungs, so that there was great confusion.
One man, named Thorvald, a friend of Bengt,