The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [295]
Now Sira Pall Hallvardsson resumed the service where he had left off, as if Larus had not spoken, but almost at once, the loud chattering of the Greenlanders interrupted his prayers, so that he had to raise his voice to make himself heard, and now the Greenlanders subsided, and Sira Pall Hallvardsson made his way through the service to the sermon, and then folk sat up and looked at him, for they were curious to see if he would address Larus, and how he would do so. And this is what he said: “It happened one day that the Lord Jesus Christ did go into a town in the east by the name of Bethany, and He spent the night there with some very poor folk, so that when He arose in the morning, He saw that they had but a single loaf of bread among them, although there were seven of them, and so He said that He hungered not, and He bid them farewell, but indeed, He was a man like all men, and He hungered greatly for His morning meat. There was a fig tree by the side of the road, and though it was covered with leaves and blossoms, even so, no man could find a single fig upon it, and with the wrath that comes to all men when they have hungered and been denied, the Lord Jesus Christ, in His manly nature, said to the tree, ‘Ye be cursed henceforward, and neither will ye send forth leaves, nor blossoms, nor fruit ever again,’ and at once the tree withered and died, even before the very eyes of the folk standing about.
“Now these folk marveled among themselves at the tree, and were greatly surprised, but our Lord Jesus Christ thought little of their amazement, and this is what He said to them, and He was greatly wrathful, ‘In sooth, I say to you that if ye have faith and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but this also: if you say to the mountain that looms above you, blocking the sunlight, Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea that swirls at the foot of the homefield, this too shall be done. For this is the truth that I say to you, and you must listen with your ears and your heart, whatsoever you shall ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive it, for I am listening to you, and I am the Lord God who is powerful over all.’ ” And now Sira Pall stepped back to the altar, and continued with the service, and gave communion to all who stepped forward to receive it, but even so, men considered that Larus had not been well answered, and they were much cast down. It was the case, after all, that Sira Pall had not dared to gaze up to the mountain and order it into the sea, had he?
Now the winter came on, and the weather was bad from the beginning, warm and rainy, or dry and windy, so that sand came into the byres even after they were closed up with stones, and the turves about the steadings grew sodden with wet, and then crumbled away in the wind, but little snow or still weather came into any district, and it remained this way through Yule. It also happened that not so long after these happenings at Gardar, a child was born to Helga Gunnarsdottir at Ketils Stead, and this child was a girl, who was named Gunnhild, but Helga did not recover from this confinement as quickly as she might have, and was still in her bedcloset at Yule, greatly weakened. It also happened that the child Egil Kollgrimsson suffered a great mischance, for as he was sleeping by the side of his mother in her bedcloset, while Kollgrim was away hunting, Elisabet Thorolfsdottir rolled upon him in her sleep, and smothered him, and he was found lifeless in the morning, and Helga was much cast down by this news, as well.
This was the second winter that the Icelanders stayed at Solar Fell, Thorgrim and Steinunn as well as Snorri and Thorunn and her husband, and