The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [38]
And Olaf did not reply, for indeed he did not know. Finally he said, “Sira, I was but a child myself at that time, and Ivar Bardarson did not send for me.”
“What did you do then, my Olaf, for fourteen years, at Gunnars Stead?”
“Sira, I tended the cows and helped around the farmstead,” said Olaf.
Now the bishop turned away and walked across the room, and then returned, and he said, “Asgeir Gunnarsson was a man who did as he pleased,” but he said it in a low, angry voice, not as Asgeir had said it of himself, with a shout and a grin. Olaf muttered that Asgeir had made him his foster son after the death of his mother, but the bishop made no reply to this, and Olaf wasn’t sure he had heard.
The bishop now turned away again, and stood with his back to Olaf, regarding the chair that sat in one corner of his chamber, and Olaf saw that this was a magnificent chair, with a triangular seat and figures carved into the back and arms, but his eyes could not make out the figures, they had grown so unused to the dim light of indoors. “There is such a great need of priests to do the work of God,” said the bishop, “as there has never been since the days of the Apostles.” He spun around, and Olaf stepped back. “For the earth is ravaged and decimated by the Great Death, so that the see of Nidaros itself—well, once, my Olaf, there were three hundred priests there, lifting their prayers to Heaven and adding figures in the books.” He smiled briefly. “Know you how many there are these days? How many there were before myself and Sira Jon and Sira Pall Hallvardsson and Sira Petur were ripped away?” Olaf shook his head. “Three dozen or fewer. Indeed, up every fjord in Norway whole parishes have been lost, save only a child found in the woods sometimes. Other times whole tracts of land have been swept clean by death.” He looked Olaf up and down, and went on. “Now is the time for men such as Petur, who are willing but untrained, to come forward and devote themselves to God’s work, or men such as Pall Hallvardsson, foreigners and orphans, to leave those they love, lands and people, and go to where they are needed. We ourself expected to live out our years in Stavanger, close to the district of our birth, but now we are across the northern sea, at Gardar.” Olaf nodded.
The bishop returned to his seat and smiled at Olaf. He opened his eyes wide and they protruded suddenly, causing Olaf to step back another half step. “Even so,” said the bishop, “the wonderful mercy of our Lord is such that it provides materials for men to work with in these black days, among the farthest waves of the western ocean.” He looked down again at the page in his book and read from it what was written there, perhaps by Ivar Bardarson himself. “Olaf Finnbogason,” he said, “came to us late as a student, but he reads very well and is learning to write in a large but careful hand.” Now the bishop really smiled. Not at Olaf, but to himself, as a man smiles who is making a barrel, when he fits the last stave into place. “Who better than you, my Olaf,” he went on, “to bring along the little boys while you yourself study for your long-awaited ordination?”
“Indeed, Sira, I have done no reading in many years. It seems to me that my eyes have grown used to distances. Also, my hands are roughened from much farm work.” He spoke in his usual muttering growl, and the bishop seemed not to hear him, or, perhaps, to understand him. After a brief time, Olaf said, more loudly, “Sira, as a boy, God gave me the gift of a prodigious memory, so that when a passage was read aloud to me, I could repeat it word for word, but I could make little of the writing, nor did I understand what I was saying if the passage was in Latin.”
Now the bishop looked at him, and said, “The priest is the mouthpiece of God, and the Lord speaks through him, although he himself does not understand what the Lord is saying. The Word is a wine that does not spill even when the cup is broken.” His eyelids dropped over his eyes and he looked more kindly at Olaf, saying in a softer voice, “You may