The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [250]
“Is it in such a way that folk condemn me, when they speak of Ofeig?” said Thorkel Gellison. Now Gunnar left on skis for Lavrans Stead, and Thorkel went to find Hrolf, and he sent with Hrolf some extra provisions to be given to Ofeig, for Hrolf was not a prosperous man, nor was he especially stout or skilled at fighting.
At Lavrans Stead, Gunnar set about trying to persuade Birgitta to go with himself and Johanna to the Yule feast. When she said that she was too weak, he promised that they would pull her on a sledge. When she said that she was more comfortable at home, he said that such comfort would be her death. When she said that her presence or absence were of no concern to anyone, he said that Jona and all of her helpers had wished to have Birgitta among them. When she said that her robes were old and ill kept, and not very festive, he said that such was the case with all the Greenlanders these days, and perhaps he would set about weaving her a piece of wadmal himself. The skill had not left him. From these replies, Birgitta saw that Gunnar was determined for her to accompany him to the feast, and she made up her mind that she must go, elsewise he would not leave her alone.
After this, she crept about, looking into chests and pulling out gowns and carrying them into the light. Once she said to him, “It is easier to be an old woman in the darkness of one’s bedcloset than in the light of many stares. Folk will look at me and say that Kollgrim is my grandson and that you are my son. How did I become so little and bent? I dare not look into the rainbarrel. When I have braided my hair, you must say if it is neat or not, for old people must look trim and thorough, or folk will say that they can no longer care for themselves.”
Once she had found a decent robe to wear, and had decorated it with a bit of colored tablet weaving about the hem and the sleeves, then she began asking Gunnar what Jona and the others had been preparing for the feast, what stews and pickles, for example? And after he told her what he had seen, which was not much, she went into the storehouse and found some birds that Kollgrim had snared for her, and some seal fat, and some thyme and bilberries and other herbs that grew about Hvalsey Fjord, and she seethed the birds until the meat fell from the bones, then rendered the seal fat and mixed it with the fat from the birds, and then lay down the meat and the fat and the herbs in layers in a vat, and masked all with more fat, and decorated the top with a design of white cheese, cut finely and laid into the cold dark fat so as to look like a bird in flight. The dish was very pretty, and Birgitta was pleased with it, so pleased that she went out into the storehouse for a morning and sat among the stores, counting out what would get them through the winter. In the days after that, there were things to clean and arrange so that she stayed out of the bedcloset most of the day every day.
Now Yule and the time for the feast were come around, and Gunnar and Birgitta made ready to go to Hestur Stead. Birgitta was still too weak to go under her own power, and so Gunnar and two servants were to pull her on a sledge, and they considered that this would be light enough work, for the snow was crusty and slick. Birgitta thought that she might be able to skate across the fjord herself, for that is little work and much pleasure. A horse-drawn sledge would meet them at the landing and carry Birgitta to Hestur Stead. And so it was that all the arrangements were made, and the clothing set out and the dishes Birgitta had made and also her gift for Jona, which was a length of striped wadmal, green and white, which Thorolf’s second daughter, Thurid, had woven during the autumn. But it happened that early the day before they were to leave, Birgitta crept into her bedcloset and hid there for the rest of the day, until Gunnar joined her after his evening meat. He saw that she was much cast down, more so than he had seen her even in the early autumn, and he said,