The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [329]
“Then let us talk of my brother, Gunnar, for I am eager to know about him, but little eager to see how he glances at me after so many winters. Is his hair white? Does he creep about, afflicted with the joint ill? Does he see and hear? Does he remember what happens from day to day?”
“He stands straight and suffers only from grief for my mother. He sits with his lamp over his parchment every day, and makes his marks, but hardly goes outside the steading. He is well enough. May I take you into the steading? My sister Johanna is there, too. She takes after you in the face, I see that now.”
“Nay, I would rather sit upon the hillside, and perhaps look at the folk as they come out of the steading. You must go about your business, and pay me no attention, for now that the moment has come, I can hardly bear it. Later, perhaps, we will sit at the loom and talk to one another.”
Not long after this, Gunnar came out of the steading to wash himself in the cistern, and his white hair stood up on end and he was wearing a peculiar particolored shirt, and he looked to Margret just as he had looked as a four-year-old child, with the same half discontented and half sleepy morning look on his face that he had worn then. He coughed and sniffed, and the sounds rose clearly on the breeze. Now he rubbed his eyes, and looked at the weather, and he saw her, and his gaze paused, and moved on, then moved back to her, and now it seemed to her that his blue eyes would never turn away from hers.
He had forgotten how tall she was, how gracefully she unfolded herself, and with what swaying strides she stepped forward. Her braids, he saw, were as thick as ever, and hung to her hips. Her gaze caught him, frightened him a little, as it always had, so unsmiling. She had aged so little, although she was twelve years older than his Birgitta, that she came toward him like a ghost from his youth. When she got closer, though, he saw the wrinkles in her face and the age of her hands—wrists and knuckles thickened with work. At this sight he remembered that he had done her many ill turns, and it seemed to him that she was due for revenge. He had no courtesy. He put his hands to his hair, and felt that it was standing on end, and he looked down at his shirt. He had put it on days before. When he looked up and met her gaze, she said, “My brother, have you made this shirt yourself?”
“It was about the steading, in an old chest.” And these were the first words that they spoke to one another after thirty-four winters.
At Solar Fell, folk were as sanguine as they could be, and the entertainments and festivities of the betrothal went on for many days. Indeed, Thorstein had so many tales and rhymes and notions of things to do in his happiness that he seemed single-handedly to drive off the gloom that had lingered about the place for nearly a year. Thorgrim had taken Thorstein’s place at Nes, and Steinunn still lay in her silent repose, much more wasted and nearer death than she had been, and folk spoke openly of their hope that she would die before the wedding was to take place. Her own sister Thorunn took the lead in this talk, for it was to her that care for the madwoman had fallen, and she had little taste for it, as it was laborious and had less than no effect on Steinunn’s condition. It were better that she should die and receive her reward, whatever that might be, than linger as a burden to all, and a reminder of the frailty of women. This was what Thorunn said, that the Lord made sure that sin was too much for folk, and if the Lord made sure of that, then it was not for folk to go against His will. Whenever Sira Eindridi was about, he shrived and blessed the silent woman, and folk made the remark that perhaps this would be the last such time for him. And it was the case that she did die in the summer of this year, and the wedding was set for the early autumn, after the seal hunt, when there would be plenty of meat for the feast. This was also the case, that Sigrid set her heart upon having the