The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [70]
“But such anger is not my deepest sin, rather this sin is something I know Greenlanders see in me, and are right to despise.” And now his voice rose: “For I am humiliated to be here, at Gardar, when I should be at Nidaros or even Paris. I have been trained for that, not this. Oh, brother, what means it that just before sleep, or just waking, I often see myself in such a cathedral as at Rheims, as if from on high, a tiny insect carrying a taper from light to light, and simultaneously I see the huge vault of the ceiling, the interlaced fans receding and disappearing into the gloom, and there seems in such a place no room for pride, and the great space of the cathedral is filled with the glory of God, and I am as a fly in this space, happily attending my functions, and thinking only the simplest of thoughts. This picture comes to me unbidden. Though I push this picture away, it comes to me, driving out whatever better thoughts are there, and the result is that the stony gloom of Gardar and its turf smell seem paltry to me, a shame to God and His Son, this crude altar and these ragged tapestries! Thus pride and humiliation partake of each other, and the thing that I long for seems at times pure and at times defiled by my longing.”
“In the fertile soil of the Greenland fjords, there is an eighth mortal sin that sprouts, and that is the sin of yearning. A man’s only resource is to turn his yearning more and more toward God and death.”
“Oh, I am but a young man, just twenty-nine winters old. Is that not too young to be yearning for death? Most men care for women or riches or good food, but through long habit I care not for these. May I have no pleasures of the simplest sort? no glimpses of orchards in bloom nor of the carved faces of the saints? nor the feel of leather and parchment volumes weighing in my hands? nor the sound of sacred music in my ears, but only the everlasting noise of sheep and of the wind whistling around the buildings, and with this the complaints of the Greenlanders, who think that God and His Son live far away in Rome, and cannot see them?”
“And yet, the Great Death has never come here, although it has visited and revisited all those places of which you speak. God must see in them some virtue that you do not.”
“Yes, and I see in these speeches that I strive to repent without repenting, and that I seek to love something that I don’t love.” And that was the end of their conversation on this subject, and Jon neither asked for nor received absolution. Later, after the evening meal, when they spoke again of the Hvalsey church, Jon repeated that the revenues must be forthcoming, and had changed his views on the matter in no way. When Pall Hallvardsson spoke of these things to his parishioners, they declared that they would reckon up the value of their work, and withhold exactly that much from the tithe, and in this resolve they were determined and nothing Pall Hallvardsson said could move them.
News of these doings came to the Gunnars Stead folk with Lavrans and his servant when they came to Vatna Hverfi, for Birgitta was carrying a child again and Lavrans visited frequently, bringing dishes and remedies that the women neighboring Lavrans Stead thought might be successful in bringing about a healthy birth. But this time it appeared that few remedies were necessary, for Birgitta filled out nicely, like a cow let loose in the homefield, said Lavrans, and her cheeks were pink and fat as well as her belly, and her hair also seemed to thicken and shine. Now the women Birgitta met at church predicted the birth of a girl, for, they said, this was the way with some, to fight the boys and flourish with the girls, or to fight the girls and flourish with the boys. Others denied this, and remarked that many babies had died in the year of the vomiting ill, both girls and boys, and some born dead hardly looking like babies at all. The fact was that folk would see what they wished