The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [322]
How was it, Sira Pall sometimes thought in the darkness of his chamber, when the seal oil lamp had gone out, that the Lord gathered these folk together in one spot for only a long enough moment so that they came to love and depend on one another, and then wrested them apart for eternity, some to perdition, some to Heaven, some to bide their time in purgatory? And how could it be that the soul should endure perpetual separation, when even the little separations between deaths were hardly bearable? And it was also the case that he knew the answer to these questions, that men must love the Lord above all else, that these other loves must burn away in the fire of love for the Lord, a fire that should burn so hot that not even ash survives it. But although he knew the answer to these questions, he did not know how to make the answer part of himself.
When he sat on a bench in the church, praying, he prayed and thought about Sira Jon. Concerning this brother of his, he strove to feel no sorrow, for the man had been shriven and blessed, and had spoken all such words as were needful to assure himself of his heavenly reward. As at the death of Sira Audun, Sira Pall Hallvardsson saw that it was himself that he had to labor against, against his own regret and loneliness more than against sorrow for the departed soul. It was always a sin to sorrow for the departed soul, for it showed no real knowledge of God’s grace. But even so, as he sat and prayed, or merely gazed upon the cloven face on the crucifix, his heart seemed a hole into which these comforting thoughts disappeared without a trace, a hole that breathed forth sorrow and despair, as vapors come out the earth in places like Iceland, for example. The real case of Sira Jon’s death was somewhat different from appearances, and if Sira Pall Hallvardsson could see this, could not the Lord Himself, more readily, and without struggling to understand this sign and that mark?
For it was the case that although Sira Jon never spoke without speaking the proper words, such words as he had learned at his uncle’s knee, and in school, such words as he had repeated over and over for the sixty-four winters of his life, the words were inflected in such a way as to cast doubt over everything he said. “Our Father, who art in Heaven.” How many times had Jon said that? And how many times had a lifting of his voice thrown suspicion over one word or the other, slipping into Sira Pall’s own thoughts the suspicion that some of us have no father, or that there is no father, or that such fathers as there are do not dwell in Heaven. How many times had the two priests’ eyes flickered toward one another as such words were being spoken, and what had been communicated then, if not a sense of conspiracy, but a conspiracy that Sira Pall was not party to, and hardly recognized. He readily saw that he was a dull fellow in comparison to Sira Jon, hardly capable of dividing the Peter’s pence from the tithes by throwing them into different chests, as he used to do in Hvalsey Fjord days. And he had been a dull fellow all along, never knowing what to do in the days of Sira Jon’s madness, running after him when he was wild, hardly doing more than gaping with the servingfolk. After that, when his brother merely refused to eat, or wash or dress, he had been even more at a loss, sometimes thinking it best to force him, sometimes thinking it best to let him be, sometimes seeking the answers to these questions in the man’s own words and actions, sometimes overlooking those words and actions completely. Oh, he was a dull fellow, indeed, and he sat on a bench in the cathedral, and looked away from His face, and cursed his own dullness. He was a dull fellow who stood with his hands outstretched before him, and what he wished to fall into them he had no idea of.
Here was another of his sins, that he longed to care for Sira Jon, still; that he would have called back the other man