Read Online Under the Glacier by Halldór Laxness - Free Book Online Page A

away, but was now about to become acquainted with it for a while. The mountain reminds one of an upturned earthenware bowl, the glazing a little bluish at times, but sometimes like gold-rimmed transparent Chinese porcelain, especially if the sun is low in the west over the sea, because then the rays play on the glacier from two directions. From here the glacier looks somewhat coarse-grained like a print that isn’t good enough; the ice is rain-sullied in many places in the lower regions, and has developed streaks like a smudged print. Probably half the snowdrifts on the glacier have yet to melt before one can say that summer has arrived. Some magnetism that I cannot yet explain draws one’s eyes towards the summit. There is a hollow on the summit, and two brilliantly white glacial crests rear upwards, bathed in an icy mesmerising light. Between these crests lies the crater into which, on the advice of the alchemist Árni Saknússemm, the party of three plunged—Professor Lidenbrock from Hamburg and his kinsman Axel, and the Icelander Hans Bjelke talking out of some dictionary or other that appears to have existed in France in the middle of the nineteenth century and could have been Swedish; and these fellows found the centre of the earth, as has been mentioned.
    Pastor Jón Prímus has finished shoeing. He straightens up, rubs his palms together to clean them, comes over to me and greets me: a tall, slim, sinewy man, begrimed with iron filings, rust, smithy soot, and lubricating oil. Through all this ingrained dirt twinkles a pair of lively eyes, blue as springwater in sunshine.
    Pastor Jón Prímus: What a way to treat visitors at Glacier— making them scratch a horse! It’s a shame I haven’t managed to get a decent horse-scratcher from Reykjavík, though I’ve tried for long enough. They’ve got nothing but plain cow-scratchers.
    The undersigned reached into his pocket and brought out the bishop’s written brief. Pastor Jón Prímus put on a pair of seamstress spectacles and read it. The letter was quite short.
    Pastor Jón Prímus: I was hoping the bishop would be coming himself. He’s a terribly agreeable chap. I always find it so enjoyable to blether with the old fellow. We don’t agree about anything. But everything depends on agreeing to disagree. I hope his rheumatism is better. But I don’t rightly know what I’m to make of you. What is your status, if I may ask?
    Embi: I tutor in arithmetic and Danish.
    Pastor Jón Prímus: I want you make the acquaintance of an eminent out-parishioner from a distant county who has come here in search of two stray horses, one red, the other grey. He has found the grey one and got news of the red one. He is my good friend Helgi of Torfhvalastaðir in Langavatnsdalur, the district officer for his area. He owns the biggest horses in the country. Do come and greet the bishop’s emissary, Helgi.
    Helgi of Torfhvalastaðir is a ruddy, red-haired man with a large honest face and a powerful gleam in his glasses; he came toward me with a sunny smile straight from outer space and said in a thin silky voice through the smile: I have always had a weakness for buying big horses. What a pleasure it would be now if one could debate with learned men and not have to go and look for horses!
    Pastor Jón: There will be plenty of time to debate with bishops, my dear Helgi, when you have found the red one.
    Helgi of Torfhvalastaðir in Langavatnsdalur (hereinafter called the Langvetningur in the text): It so happens that I have promised both the nags for a glacier trip tomorrow morning.
    Pastor Jón: I shall shoe the red one for you as well when you bring him in. But that’s all you’re getting from me. The other matter we were discussing we shan’t mention again, my friend; we shall agree to disagree on that, and be just as good friends in spite of it.
    Langvetningur: Well, I don’t need to rely on you any more, my dear pastor Jón. Now I can ask the bishop himself, who happens to be