follow her and we passed out of sight of the farm buildings where the herd of lunatics was trampling the fallow winter turf of the gable, raising the cadaver aloft in silhouette against the grey sky. Once sheltered from view, she sat me down and took a seat facing me across a flat piece of ground. Having gathered some pebbles in her hand, she began to arrange them into a planetary model, laying the largest stone in the middle and calling it Earth, then placing next to it the moon and sun and five planets in a straight line away from them. After this, she began to move the heavenly bodies round the Earth according to their familiar orbits until the sun and moon stood face to face.
‘Here there will be an eclipse of the moon.’
Using a slender heather stalk she drew rays extending from the sun to Earth, then showed how the Earth in this position must cast its shadow on the moon. Next she counted several times on her fingers, muttering the names of the months and diverse numbers. She was calculating when the next lunar eclipse would take place and told me the date.
‘You’ll see; wherever you are in the country you’ll discover it’s true – weather permitting.’
Now Sigrídur moved the pebbles once again, saying meanwhile in her bright girlish voice:
‘On the other hand it’s impossible to predict solar eclipses accurately, though we can assume one will take place after a certain period, more or less. I’ve been waiting a long time for this one.’
By this stage I was not so much listening to the words that fell from her lips as staring at the lips themselves, at their ever-changing shape. I moved closer to examine them better. Sigrídur stopped talking and, taking a piece of blue glass from her apron pocket, raised it to her eye and looked at the sun. The chirping of small birds was stilled, the baying of the dogs was silenced, the people on the turf roof ceased shaking the corpse, a hush descended on the countryside and I felt suddenly cold. High above the Earth the disc of the moon completed its shape on the orb of the sun and in the same instant something was completed inside me. Neither Sigrídur nor I looked up when the gable gave way with a loud crack beneath the weight of the corpse-bearers. Our courtship was one uninterrupted conversation about the origin of the stars, the nature of land and sea, the behaviour of beasts great and small, and although it was not conducted in Hebrew or in the angelic tongue as it was with Adam and Eve, it was nevertheless our hymn to Creation. We sat together into the early hours, investigating the delightful puzzles of light and shadow, such as what happens to the shadow of your hand when the shadow of mine falls upon it? Have they become one? Or has yours disappeared temporarily? And if so, where to? We could talk like this for days, but no more. She fell silent when my enemies, no longer content with abusing me, began their persecution of our son, Reverend Pálmi Gudmundur. The boy was stripped of his habit and his calling. He is now forced to wander from farm to farm like a beggar, his wife constantly with child, like his father – alas. It grieves me just as much as it does Sigrídur to know how little my resistance achieved.
DIACODUS:
this stone has many useful properties. If it is placed in water, a host of spirits appear in it, apparelled like men, and one may ask it to foretell the future. The stone has been found in Iceland. Exemplum: when we lived at Uppsandar my wife Sigrídur happened to be walking beside the sea at the place where the mountainous shore is known as Fellshraun. On a certain flat rock over which the waves broke, she spied something round floating in a pool. When she picked it up, she thought it looked like a stone with magic properties. There was a pink dot high up in the middle and it was girded about with crimson, while the part under water looked green. She took it over to another smaller pool and dropped it in. All at once she saw
‘Here there will be an eclipse of the moon.’
Using a slender heather stalk she drew rays extending from the sun to Earth, then showed how the Earth in this position must cast its shadow on the moon. Next she counted several times on her fingers, muttering the names of the months and diverse numbers. She was calculating when the next lunar eclipse would take place and told me the date.
‘You’ll see; wherever you are in the country you’ll discover it’s true – weather permitting.’
Now Sigrídur moved the pebbles once again, saying meanwhile in her bright girlish voice:
‘On the other hand it’s impossible to predict solar eclipses accurately, though we can assume one will take place after a certain period, more or less. I’ve been waiting a long time for this one.’
By this stage I was not so much listening to the words that fell from her lips as staring at the lips themselves, at their ever-changing shape. I moved closer to examine them better. Sigrídur stopped talking and, taking a piece of blue glass from her apron pocket, raised it to her eye and looked at the sun. The chirping of small birds was stilled, the baying of the dogs was silenced, the people on the turf roof ceased shaking the corpse, a hush descended on the countryside and I felt suddenly cold. High above the Earth the disc of the moon completed its shape on the orb of the sun and in the same instant something was completed inside me. Neither Sigrídur nor I looked up when the gable gave way with a loud crack beneath the weight of the corpse-bearers. Our courtship was one uninterrupted conversation about the origin of the stars, the nature of land and sea, the behaviour of beasts great and small, and although it was not conducted in Hebrew or in the angelic tongue as it was with Adam and Eve, it was nevertheless our hymn to Creation. We sat together into the early hours, investigating the delightful puzzles of light and shadow, such as what happens to the shadow of your hand when the shadow of mine falls upon it? Have they become one? Or has yours disappeared temporarily? And if so, where to? We could talk like this for days, but no more. She fell silent when my enemies, no longer content with abusing me, began their persecution of our son, Reverend Pálmi Gudmundur. The boy was stripped of his habit and his calling. He is now forced to wander from farm to farm like a beggar, his wife constantly with child, like his father – alas. It grieves me just as much as it does Sigrídur to know how little my resistance achieved.
DIACODUS:
this stone has many useful properties. If it is placed in water, a host of spirits appear in it, apparelled like men, and one may ask it to foretell the future. The stone has been found in Iceland. Exemplum: when we lived at Uppsandar my wife Sigrídur happened to be walking beside the sea at the place where the mountainous shore is known as Fellshraun. On a certain flat rock over which the waves broke, she spied something round floating in a pool. When she picked it up, she thought it looked like a stone with magic properties. There was a pink dot high up in the middle and it was girded about with crimson, while the part under water looked green. She took it over to another smaller pool and dropped it in. All at once she saw
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