The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [85]
And now, Sira Jon, who had been pleased enough to receive Olaf and entertain his supplications, was seized with such anger that he desired to run after the other man and give him his death blow. He remembered nothing of Olaf’s words or demeanor, but only his disrespectful attire and sullen manner of speaking. This was not the first such fit to overtake the priest. As gently as possible, he closed the door of his chamber and threw himself full length before the carved ivory crucifix on the eastern wall, although Satan himself prevented his eyes from lifting to the lovely somber face of the Christ, just as he prevented Jon’s soul from rising out of the fire and shame of his anger. This anger appeared to him as a pool at the bottom of an abyss, and each day of his life in Greenland was spent in threading his way around this flaming tarn on a narrow and rock-strewn ledge. Many days Satan threw him in, propelling him with slight and unexpected provocations, and these days did not get fewer, nor did the fire burn less fiercely. Worse, these angers went unconfessed and unabsolved, as Jon could not bring himself to portray their full intensity to the bishop for some reasons nor to Pall Hallvardsson, for other reasons.
Now he lay on the floor in a state of rigid supplication for a long while, never lifting his eyes to the crucifix but knowing it, even as he knew the knock of Anna Jonsdottir, who was calling him to the bishop. He had, in the past few days, ceased fighting Satan, and now only hoped to contain him within this chamber and within his corpus.
The bishop sat beside his bedcloset in a chair that had been carved for him by his brother in Norway when they were both young men, and it had gone with him everywhere. Now it had come to Greenland, and he sat heavily against the back rail instead of upright, disdaining support, as he had always done. At the front of one of the arms was carved the face of a pig, for St. Anthony, and at the front of the other, a lion, for St. Jerome. The bishop’s eyes were half open, and Anna Jonsdottir was speaking to him as she put morsels of steamed fish into his mouth. “These are good bits, indeed,” she said. “Just as your excellency likes them, with a bit of thyme and butter.” His jaws worked intermittently, but nothing dropped out, and when his mouth was full, he swallowed. “Not the least bone,” she said, and it was true, she was especially careful about removing even the smallest bones. When this delayed her feeding, he groaned, as if the wait were unbearable. Sometimes she put a cup of milk to his lips, and he sipped it. At last his arm flew up, signaling that he had had enough. Anna snatched the trencher away, so that it wouldn’t be knocked across the room, as had happened, and she helped the bishop up, for he had slid far down. He opened his eyes wider. “There you are,” she said, “that bit of fish has strengthened you,” though privately she thought that folk did better with seal blubber and reindeer meat. The front of his gown was covered with a white napkin, and this she took away. Now it would be time for the coming of Sira Jon, and she cocked her ear for the other man’s step. Bishop Alf, too, appeared to be listening, although it was well known to the servingwomen in the residence that he could hardly hear anything anymore. Anna herself had once dropped some utensils and a heavy iron pot, through stumbling over an unevenness in the paving of the floor, and the bishop, sitting in his chair, hadn’t flinched at all. Now Anna turned from the bishop and began arranging the furs and rugs in his bedcloset. Her nose twisted from the smell.
Sira Jon came in, his face white but his manner bustling, and Anna curtsied and moved back toward the wall. Jon began talking at once, saying how well his grace looked