The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [337]
“It must be, old woman, that you have no concerns of your own, since you consider mine so carefully.”
“I am concerned with preserving my sons until they are strong enough to do something about the place. That is what I am concerned with. The great ones will bring us down in the end, and that is a fact.”
“Nay, old woman. It is not a fact. Nothing that hasn’t yet taken place is a fact.”
“It is a fact that men love to fight, and pay for their pleasure with a few deaths or deadly injuries, and it is a fact that women can do little enough about it. If it comes to my sons to fight, then their hearts will fly to it as quickly as the hearts of any other men, though they are lazy enough about everything else.”
“No one cares to fight.” And at this, the old woman only smiled, and led Jon Andres back up the hill to the steading, where she offered him more refreshment, although he had eaten only a little while before. After dusk and moonrise, he mounted his horse and went on his way over the crusty snow, wondering about the talk of the district, and whether his plans lay as open to everyone as they did to him. He stayed at Ketils Stead for some time after this, and saw that Helga’s confinement had turned her inward somehow, so that she had little to say to him, and he seemed to himself a much misused and isolated man.
Now the spring came on, and the ice broke up in the fjords, and folk were pleased enough, after a hard and snowy winter, to have what bits to eat they had left in their storehouses and cupboards, and at Easter they gave thanks for what there was to give thanks for, and otherwise prayed for better times. The Icelanders, with Sigrid Bjornsdottir and Bolli Bjornsson, made ready to depart, but at the last minute, Snorri Torfason the shipmaster changed his mind, and put off the departure for another season, much angering some of his folk, especially Thorstein Olafsson. But indeed, though he was a small, lazy man, it was the case that once Snorri had fixed his mind on something, he would not, or could not change it, and he had fixed his mind on staying with Bjorn Bollason yet another year, for living, he surmised, was easier there than it would be back in Iceland, even if his wife Gudrun were still alive, which, after eight winters, he somewhat doubted. Bjorn Bollason was happy enough to have Snorri, and Thorstein, and Sigrid, and Thorunn, for his enthusiasm for them never waned, but Signy his wife could be heard to mutter under her breath from time to time, for the case was that she and Thorunn were not such good friends as they had been, but they were forced to live as sisters anyway.
Thorstein and some of the other Icelanders had gotten into the habit of going on the seal hunt every spring and fall, and they were not so bad at it, if a Greenlander with some experience was watching out for them. Even so, most of the Greenlanders thought that trading these Icelanders, even with their weapons, for such a hunter as Kollgrim Gunnarsson was a poor bargain, especially since, in the two years since the burning, no ship had arrived, and no bishop had walked among the folk gathered on the strand and blessed them with real wheaten wafers and true wine. Indeed, at every hunting gathering, the men could not forbear speaking of what had been lost with Kollgrim Gunnarsson. Wasn’t every man’s portion less now? And he had been such an inward fellow that he had never taught much to others, such an inward fellow that it had never occurred to anyone to seek his teaching. Some folk had never even heard him speak. But he was gone now, and folk said among themselves that his burning was unaccountable, and the circumstances of it grew cloudy in the memory. Gunnar went on every hunt now, and that was remarkable, too, that the father had so little knack for what the son did so well. But it was said that the father wrote things down, as a priest does, and folk considered that such a skill was like a deep hole into which other skills fell and were lost, whether the man who wrote wished or not. Jon