The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [77]
After his departure, the morning went very slowly. With great effort, Margret listened to Birgitta and to Svava, although their talk did little but annoy her. She went to the storehouse and puttered among her herbs and the other provisions she found there. She spun a little wool and sat for a time at the loom. She followed the baby about, and walked around the periphery of the homefield, but there was little to do, and what there was she was not familiar with, as she had spent nearly every summer day in the hills since well before the death of Asgeir. In addition, there was some danger in falling too often under the gaze of Birgitta Lavransdottir, for Margret’s waist was growing rounder, and straining the seams of her everyday dress (concerning this, she was somewhat afraid to let the seams out, for the dress was so well worn that new sewing would immediately declare itself). In addition to this, every moment brought her the thought of Skuli in the hills, wandering about their favorite places, wishing for her as she wished for him.
Now Margret went to her cages of birds, and began to speak to the birds while giving them water and sweeping out. She had six birds in three cages—two pairs of larks and one pair of wheatears. As she looked at them, she thought, as she sometimes did when Skuli was not around and never did when he was around, of how miserably she had given herself to temptation, and how little she had resisted at every point, but gladly had gone into his arms the first time, and more gladly each time since. She thought what a sinner she had become in the eyes of the Lord, and how gaily she had embraced her sin, so that the last year had fled by so quickly that time seemed really not to have passed at all, and she seemed to herself exactly the same guiltless soul that she had been. At once she hungered for the year not to have passed, for herself to be again the truly guiltless person she had been, but not, she realized, so that she might resist temptation, only so that she might have again each moment of the last year. After this, she took each bird on her finger and spoke to it, then, when she was finished with this, she fetched her cloak, put it on, and went out into the hills. Skuli was there, waiting for her, and she expected Gunnar and Olaf, as well, but they were not to be seen. Now their meetings grew as bold as before.
Soon, Ketil the Unlucky, who had grown into a clever man, but of sour and mocking temperament, made up another verse,
The landless stranger in colored clothing has only
The bushy hillside where he can plow the blond whore.
The Greenlanders are getting careless
When they trade their horses and their wives
For so little.
Soon after this verse was made, Hrafn and Olaf began shearing the sheep in the summer pastures. Katla went with Olaf to visit her husband and help with the washing of the wool. When Olaf returned, he took Gunnar aside and had speech with him on this matter, and recited the verse to Gunnar. He also declared that Hrafn had threatened to find himself another place unless this matter were seen to, for it was a great shame to all the folk of the steading to have such verses going about, and the master and the husband powerless to do anything.
Now Gunnar thought silently for a few minutes. Then he said to Olaf, “My Olaf, I am well known to be a lazy man, and what a lazy man likes best is for each morning and evening and nighttime to pass as each before it has, and to turn his lazy hand always to the work that he has turned it to before, to watch, with his lazy gaze, the same cows, the same sheep, the same horses, and the same folk going from place to place about the farm, from sunlight into shade and back out again, as they always have. A lazy man must always shrink from a new task, especially from work that he has no practice in, such as killing and burying a friend.