The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [231]
“Sira Jon, you know that this was whalemeat, and men were glad of it.”
“Fish they call it, for the sake of the fast, but it tastes like no fish that ever swam, and it is red flesh, as red as the flesh of an old bull. Do you not long for a cabbage? It seems to me that if I could have a bit of cabbage, I would be right again. A bit of cabbage and a loaf of bread to break my thirty-year fast. Is it thirty years?”
“Thirty-one, by my reckoning. You seem pensive today. We do not often speak of such things.”
“Perhaps I am about to die. It often seems to me that when I get into an easy state of mind, that this is a sign that I am about to die. But each time I am disappointed. It is a sin to serve watered milk and seaweed for the sacrament.”
“The Lord sees what we are reduced to.”
“It is true that you have always been confident about what the Lord sees. Did you know that I spent the happiest day of my life in Greenland? I thought you would be surprised to hear it, but I often meditate upon it. Not upon what they told me, for that was a ruse and a trick that they concocted to further their own schemes, but upon how it came into me, the knowledge of what they were saying.”
“Will you tell me the tale of this day?”
“I need not tell you the tale, as you yourself were there and colluded with them.”
“Then tell me what I do not know of these things.”
“Perhaps I will.” He glanced at the tray again, and pulled it toward him. It contained a small bowl of sourmilk and a small bowl of broth that was especially foul from being burnt by the cook. He motioned Pall Hallvardsson to give him a taste of the broth and then of the sourmilk, and the broth was not so foul that he did not eat it up. As careful as Sira Pall Hallvardsson tried to be, some of the broth spilled into the other priest’s beard, but the sourmilk clung to the spoon better. When he had eaten the small amount served to him he turned away and did not ask for more. He said, “You know that the bishop was a great traveler in his youth, always upon the roads, thinking nothing of a night under the sky, so assured was he of the Lord’s care. It so happened that when I came to him from my mother’s house in Stavanger district, and I was some fourteen winters in age, after I had been with him for a month or two, he sent me over the mountains to the next fjord carrying a message. The way was through thick woods and I lost myself for a while, so that I did not arrive at the steading I was seeking until well past dusk, but I had no ill adventures. Even so, when it came time to return to my uncle the next morning, I was so seized by fear that I would not leave without an escort. My horse could have smelt the way home of himself, but it was not of getting lost that I was afraid. I was simply afraid, and the next time I was given a commission that involved being sent away, I fell down in a swoon. My uncle was much displeased with me, and with his sister for being so soft with me. He chastised me, and told me that I would be of little use to him if I couldn’t even carry a message, and he had me beaten every time I swooned at a new commission, but he could not induce me to leave him, and I stayed beside him from that day forward, and soon enough he left off, for isn’t it the case that the child must always endure, if he is stubborn enough?
“And so it happened that from that time on, until we came to Greenland and after, I had never been apart from my uncle, farther than the distance from one end of a farm field to another. When he delegated you and Petur to go about from church to church, it was partly because he knew that I simply could not do it. But then that low fellow, Olaf Finnbogason, was recalled from where they had been hiding him in Vatna Hverfi district, and he told his lying tale of being betrothed to that whore, and without blinking an eye, my uncle sent us off to find out the rights of it. He saw, indeed, with his penetrating sight, that I was terrified,