Read Online Iceland's Bell by Halldór Laxness - Free Book Online

God to let me be beheaded instead of burned,” said the man.
    “Why don’t you make your vows to the devil, man?” said Jón Hreggviðsson.
    “He swindled me,” said the man in whimpers. “After Pokur swindles a man, a man starts praying to God.”
    “It sounds to me like you’re a pretty paltry fellow,” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “Stop whining and try to show me one of your magic signs.”
    “No,” whined the man.
    “You could always teach me to conjure up the devil,” said Jón Hreggviðsson.
    “I never had much luck with that myself,” said the man. “Pokur insisted that I had, and because of that got me convicted in court, but it’s a lie. On the other hand I got hold of a Blusterer and fiddled around with it on account of a girl. I also had the Corpse’s Breeches.”
    “What?” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “A Blusterer? On account of a girl?”
    “Yes,” said the man. “But something went wrong.”
    “Do you have one of these Blusterers here?” asked Jón Hreggviðsson. “Better late than never. Who knows, maybe we can conjure up a few hussies of our own. What was once an urge is now a necessity.”
    But the authorities had already confiscated the man’s Blusterer.
    “Can’t we make a Blusterer ourselves?” asked Jón Hreggviðsson. “Can’t we scratch that damned sign with the ax-point onto the chopping block and get a beautiful, chubby woman in here tonight, right now—or preferably three?”
    It was no easy matter to create such a sign, because in order to do so the two men required much greater access to the animal kingdom and the forces of nature than conditions in the dungeon permitted. The sign of the Blusterer is inscribed with raven’s gall on the rust-brown inner side of a bitch’s skin, and afterward blood is sprinkled over the sign—blood from a black tomcat whose neck has been cut under a full moon by an unspoiled maiden.
    “Where’d you find an unspoiled maiden to cut a black tomcat’s neck?” asked Jón Hreggviðsson.
    “My sister did it,” said the man. “It took us three years to get the raven’s gall. But on the first night that I tried it, when I climbed onto the roof over the priest’s daughter’s bedroom and held up the Blusterer and rattled off the spell, it was all over for me, since the cow was dead.”
    “What about the girl?” asked Jón Hreggviðsson.
    “There was a man sleeping with her,” said Jón Þeófílusson, in tears.
    Jón Hreggviðsson shook his head.
    “By the way, didn’t you say something about the Corpse’s Breeches? I can’t really see how you could’ve gotten into such a scrape if you had the Corpse’s Breeches, because I’ve heard that there’s always money in those things if one looks closely.”
    “I’d gotten hold of the sign of the Corpse’s Breeches, and had even stolen money from the widow to put in them. But I never actually owned the Breeches themselves. I paid a man to let me cut off his skin after he died, but he’s still going strong even though he’s almost ninety. Anyway it was too late because the cow was dead and the foal had fallen into the waterhole. And a short time later Pokur appeared to the departed Sigurður on his deathbed and testified against me.”
    It was silent in the hole, except for the sound of the sorcerer sobbing in the darkness. After a few moments Jón Hreggviðsson said quietly:
    “You’ll definitely be burned.”
    The sorcerer kept on sobbing.

5
    An old woman wants to make a journey.
    During the mornings as the seamen shove off from land she loiters on the beach, accosting one man after another, claiming that she needs to go south. On this day they all refuse her passage, but she is there again the next. She is wearing new shoes, and her blue nose pokes out from a brown shawl wound around her head. She is accoutered like a female pilgrim, carrying a walking stick and a pouch made of curried hide, her skirt tucked up and tied.
    “It scarcely bodes much ill luck to allow one