The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [300]
Also toward dusk, Kollgrim Gunnarsson went away from Gardar in another direction, around the bottom of the fjord and up the side of the big mountain, called Bishops Fell, that stands above Gardar to the east. He was intending to lay some snares for ptarmigan, and gather them up the next morning, and take them, with some other meat, to Gunnars Stead, for he rather feared for Elisabet Thorolfsdottir. It happened, however, that as Kollgrim climbed the mountain, he was overtaken with a great fatigue, and the desire to lie down and sleep possessed him, and so he did so, and he dreamed the following dream:
A man was sitting beside a small booth that had been pitched in a great icefield, and he had with him some weapons—two or three fine spears and a bow with some bird arrows. He also had an ax, but this ax was in poor shape, with the handle broken and the blade almost rusted away. The man sat very still, and looked off into the whiteness, and he did not wear a hood against snow blindness. Now it happened in Kollgrim’s dream that a group of seals came out of the water, and began moving toward the man with that great swishing and flapping noise that seals make, and that reverberates across the ice. The man sat up straight and brought his weapons near to his hands, for he intended to kill some seals for winter meat. The seals came closer and closer, in a great group, many at the front and many more behind, and the man thought how easy it would be to kill any number he cared to have, and he was very pleased with himself. The seals drew closer. As they neared him, and he saw their faces, the man saw that the seals had the smiles of men, and that they were not seals, but the souls of drowned men, and the man knew that it was great ill luck to kill any such seals, and so he put his weapons away from him, and vowed to do no harm. But still the seals came on, and drew closer to him, and did not swerve to avoid him, so he stood up and waved his arms at them, and now the dream changed, and the man was underneath the seals, and they were eating the flesh off his bones, though his arms and legs still flailed about, showing that the life was still in him. And after this dream, Kollgrim awakened, and looked about, and saw that it was completely dark, except for the light of the stars in the arctic sky, and he thought to set his snares, as he had planned, for as a rule, he thought little of dreams. But after such a dream, the taking of game seemed distasteful to him, and so he turned down the mountain, and sought the chamber of Steinunn Hrafnsdottir, and she was much gratified to receive him.
Always it was a pleasure to Steinunn simply to sit in the presence of Kollgrim Gunnarsson, for silence seemed to be his natural state, and this silence flowed over her like a balm, especially after the sting of desire had been eased. But on this evening, there was another quality to the silence, the quality of something withheld rather than of everything given, and Steinunn found herself fidgeting after him—touching his arm more than she meant to, or putting her hand in his hair, as if to draw his attention toward her, when she had never had to make this gesture before, and she was much cast down by this, for she saw that in the space of the day, what she had sought to keep for herself through sin and deceit had been lost anyway, and she went off from him, and sat by herself on the edge of the bedcloset, and he did not follow her, but sat abstracted and deep in thought. Now she put off her shoes and pulled on her bed socks, and climbed into the bedcloset, and lay there without speaking for a long while, and it happened that the small seal oil lamp that had been illuminating the chamber went out, and the chamber grew dark.
Sometime after this, Steinunn heard Kollgrim stand up from his stool, and begin to remove his shirt and reindeer hide boots. Then she heard his footsteps approach across the stones and the rushes of the floor, and then she sensed his presence, and felt his