The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [36]
Of all those living in the house, Olaf was the most like Asgeir had been. He got up early each morning and took his meal of dried reindeer meat and sourmilk into the fields and began to work at whatever there was to be done. In the spring, it was he and Hrafn who carried the cows into the homefield. It was he who hitched up the horses to the cart and carried manure out. It was Olaf who dragged the birch sapling over the manure to break it up and mix it with the soil, then Olaf who repaired the fences to keep the cows from eating the new shoots of grass. At sheep shearing time, he found Hrafn in the hills with the sheep, helped him with the shearing, then dragged home the bundles of wool for Maria and Gudrun to wash and comb. He also helped with the milking and the making of cheeses and butter. At the end of summer, he scythed the grass and Maria and Gudrun raked it, then he bundled the hay and piled it in front of the cowbyre.
One day a man called Audun came from Gardar to Gunnars Stead with a message that the bishop wished to see Olaf, and wished him to return to Gardar at once with the messenger. Olaf sent the messenger into the farmstead for some refreshment, then lingered over his work until it was almost dark and too late to begin the journey.
This Audun was a fellow from the south, and throughout the evening he complained jokingly about having to spend the night in such a poor place, sleeping on the floor with only a single reindeer hide to wrap himself up in, his head under the table and his feet nearly out the door. Gardar, he said, was quite magnificent now that the bishop was in residence. “Indeed,” he said, “many of the boys do no farm work at all anymore, but spend their days making parchment from the hides of calves and learning to copy manuscripts, and making bearberry ink. There are boys who spend their time singing, three boys, and it seems to me their voices sound angelically sweet. Sira Jon is the master of this, and when he sings a bit, to show these boys what they must do, all the copyists and parchment makers stop what they are doing, for the sake of hearing it. The bishop himself watches over the copyists, and Sira Pall Hallvardsson goes in and out, and Sira Petur, too, although these priests are most often away at Brattahlid, or Isafjord.” As Audun was rattling on, Olaf put his few things in a bundle, his ashwood spoon, his books, the cup Asgeir had given him, and his newest stockings, breeches, and shoes. When the time came in the morning for the two men to go around the hill to Undir Hofdi church, Olaf said to Gunnar, “It seems to me that I would rather have my feet out the door than have my head full of singing.” And he said to Margret, “I do not see how the sheep will come down from the hills or the cows will be walled into the cowbyre if I am not here to do it.”
“And that,” said Margret, watching him go off, “is the end of Olaf.”
Olaf had not been to Gardar now for fourteen years, and the bishop’s farm had indeed changed. Nothing that was not immediately needed was kept in the house, for all of these rooms that had once held vats and basins and hides and rolls of cloth now held priests and boys. Olaf was shown to one of them, where he found a pallet woven of reeds on the dirt floor covered with two reindeer hides, one to sleep on and one to sleep underneath. There were also two small shelves, one holding an oil lamp and another for books. On this one Olaf placed his cup, his spoon and his three small volumes, which he had not looked into in six years. He did not look into them now, for the bindings and pages were stiff as if stuck together. If the bishop asked for them, he would certainly see that they were ready to fall apart.
Olaf had seen the bishop once, from a distance, at the judgment of Asgeir Gunnarsson. Otherwise he had kept away from Gardar and from all visitors to Gunnars Stead who might carry tales of him back to the bishop. Now that he was here, though, it was obvious that everyone was perfectly familiar