The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [243]
In her heart, Helga, too, thought often of Jon Andres Erlendsson, for the sight of him was uniquely pleasing to her, and she could not square this with what she had heard of his evil nature. She remembered how folk speak of the way that the Devil comes smiling among folk, but such a smile as Jon Andres’ smile was not what she had pictured all her life as the Devil’s smile. Now on the night before her departure, she went to Gunnar and she said, “I am much afraid of our neighbor.”
“It is unlikely that he will harm you, now that he has given up his riotous companions. It may be that you will not see him from season to season, if you keep to your own steading and attend to your tasks. The farms are not so close that you must look into one another’s byres,” replied Gunnar. Behind him, Birgitta rustled about in her bedcloset.
“I had not thought that he would come to Gunnars Stead and harm us. But I am afraid of his nearness. I am sure that I will walk upon that part of our steading that lies by his with trembling.”
Now Gunnar chuckled shortly. “Indeed, my Helga, he is but a man. There is no tale that he has to do with witchcraft. If you are willing to go into the air of that unlucky steading, then you may certainly endure whatever emanations float from Ketils Stead. My fear is that Kollgrim will look and look for enmity from that quarter, and find it soon enough. There is your danger, and you may tell me from your friendship with your brother whether you think my fear is well founded.”
Now the memory of Kollgrim’s grip upon her hand rose in Helga’s mind, and she was on the point of relating the incident, when Kollgrim himself pushed open the door of the steading and came into the room. He entered with much self-importance, his shoulders square and his back straight, and he addressed Gunnar about the new servant, Thorolf Bessason, in a calm and manly fashion, without any of the resentful manner that had tinged his demeanor toward Gunnar for as long as Helga had known him. When he went out again, Helga was silent. It is often said that strangers see more in a man than his family does, and many Greenlanders once went off to other lands and made much of themselves, and so Helga thought of Thorkel and the portent of Hakon’s sheep, and returned to her chamber without encouraging Gunnar’s doubts.
Later, when Gunnar climbed into the bedcloset, Birgitta said, “Their fates are their own, as Gunnhild’s, Astrid’s, and Maria’s were. It seemed to me once that I saw early deaths for them, but they are grown and strong, and have survived what others have not survived. Perhaps what I saw was as false a promise as the vision of the Virgin and Child I had. At any rate, I have no uneasiness about them, although I thought that I would.” And Gunnar was comforted by this news. The morning dawned clear and calm, and Kollgrim, Helga, Thorolf, and his daughter Elisabet set out in the large Lavrans Stead boat with twelve ewes and their lambs.
There was a man in Brattahlid district, who claimed the lineage of Erik the Red, through Erik’s son Thorstein and a concubine named Thorunn. This man did not have his own farmstead until after the hunger, but lived as a servant to Ragnleif Isleifsson, and he was known as a bombastic sort of fellow. He had no wife, and his name was Larus Thorvaldsson. After the hunger, Larus, who was not a bad husbandman for all his unpleasant manner, claimed a small farmstead and also offered himself in marriage to a widow named Ashild who had one child and some livestock. One day during