Read Online Heaven and Hell by Jón Kalman Stefánsson - Free Book Online

palms together fast and hard, the wind and the freezing cold increase and the clouds darken. The land has disappeared, the horizon is filling with swirling snow, it will reach them in just over an hour if time does not stop passing, it barely crawls along, so slow that it almost stands still. Árni and Pétur squirm, they are cold even in their waterproofs. Pétur starts humming, low and incoherently, relaxes his vocal cords, and when they are warm and flexible enough he starts reciting and the others perk up their ears. At first it’s verses about horses, verses about fishing voyages, about heroism and derring-do on the sea. But heroism and horses don’t do much against the cold, he changes course, starts reciting ambiguous verses that quickly turn obscene. Pétur knows a great many such verses, they number in the dozens, perhaps the hundreds. He has moved to another thwart and sits foremost in the boat, clad in his waterproof and large, thick woolen mittens, a woolen cap under his sou’wester, his cap reaches down to his eyelids, only his eyes, nose, part of his cheeks, and mouth are visible, his beard hides the rest, it hides his expression and is likely the reason why he appears indomitable as he rocks back and forth and chews his tobacco. The verses gush out of him. As if to exorcise the arctic cold itself. The verses become steadily more raw, more violent, and Pétur is transformed. He is no longer a silent, serious skipper, the workhorse, something ancient and dark awakens in him, this is no longer poetry that wells up from within him, poetry is for laggards and schoolmen, this is a primitive force, a language with deep roots in a dim subconscious, sprung from a harsh life and ever-present death. Pétur grows burning hot and he rocks rhythmically on the thwart, slaps his hands now and then on his thigh when the rhyming words become so heavy that it is difficult for the human body to handle them, because the human body is delicate, it cannot bear the impact of large rocks, cannot bear avalanches, the stinging cold, cannot endure loneliness, cannot endure rhyming words heavy with antiquity, saturated with lust, and this is why Pétur slaps his thigh, to bring the words forth, and the five men start in surprise, everyone bound by this primitive power streaming from their skipper. Einar’s eyes are stretched wide with black happiness, Gvendur breathes through his mouth, Árni does not take his eyes off Pétur, Bárður’s eyes are half closed, he does not listen to the words but rather to their sound, the sound in the voice, and thinks, the Devil himself, where does this old bugger get such power!? The boy swings between rapture and antipathy, he stares at a fifty-year-old man shoveling out obscene verses, what is Pétur but an old man and what are these verses but ribaldry? But in the next breath Pétur changes again, into something ancient, and the sound of the words rips into the boy. He curses himself, curses Pétur, he sits there in the midst of five men in a yawl on the Polar Sea, with frost all around, swinging between rapture and antipathy. Pétur has taken off his sou’wester, he has been sweating, has set aside one of his mittens, his large hand seems to be clenched around some of the words, he stares at nothing, focused, and tries not to think of Andrea, stay longer, she sometimes asks in the salting house, up on the saltfish stack that is getting higher, it will soon be so high that he will no longer be able to stand to do the deed, go slowly, she says, that’s good, and she moves her legs further apart, both to enjoy him, to feel him better, but also so he doesn’t hurt her, but the heat in her words and the legs that spread further apart become too much, everything bursts inside Pétur, he shudders and clenches his teeth but Andrea looks away instinctively, as if to hide the disappointment, even the sadness, that shows on her face, and then there is silence in the salting house and Andrea avoids