Read Online Walking Into the Night by Olaf Olafsson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Olaf Olafsson
Tags: Fiction
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died in winter.
A few years after we married, when your uncle got into financial difficulties and his wife approached you for help, you asked whether we could assist them, so I summoned him to my office the following day.
I kept him waiting outside my office for over half an hour. The time passed slowly but I tried to enjoy it. When he finally came in I pretended to be ignorant of his affairs, forcing him to spell out how he’d got into his present predicament before he could reveal his errand and ask me for a loan. I said I’d have to think about it and told him to return the following day. Then I lent him a quarter of what he had asked for because that way I knew I’d have him in my power.
He was dependent on my help for years and I always kept him waiting before admitting him to my office. My secretary would bring him a cup of coffee. I myself couldn’t work, knowing he was there on the other side of the wall. I might open a book but would put it down after flipping through a few pages, and get up and stand by the window, staring at the harbor, where workers were loading cargo, or out to sea, where a boat was leaving port, or at Mount Esja, white on a cold autumn morning. I would stand motionless, concentrating on the image I kept in mind of my father, sitting in that cluttered parlor with your relatives, old and dejected, so strangely small and dim that I had to concentrate to catch sight of him in my memory.
I tried to convince myself that I was avenging him. But maybe I was just attempting to establish who had the upper hand.
My secretary knocked at the door. She had begun to feel very uncomfortable. “One moment,” I called. “I’m just finishing up here . . .”
I don’t know whether I ever really managed to convince myself. But one thing is sure: I never felt the anticipated pleasure when I finally opened the door and greeted him.
20
Kristjan slept badly. The spring night was awake outside his window and he could hear his parents tossing and turning in the room next door. He knew his father wasn’t asleep. He had seen Elisabet only twice since he came home; though no one had said in so many words that they were not meant to see each other until the wedding, he knew that this was the intention.
He got out of bed. The pale night sapped all color from the earth, even more thoroughly than the dusk, dulling everything. The blue was drained from the sky and the white church on the far side of the lake was invisible in the bleached pallor. He had to strain his eyes to pick it out. Two more days.
Two more days, and the fetters were already beginning to tighten. The filaments spun from the deceptive freedom of the open countryside and the smiles of people he did not trust. In the mornings he read aloud from the papers to his parents. They sat opposite him in silence, saying nothing when he forgot himself and stopped reading to stare into space, waiting patiently, staring into space with him.
This coming Saturday, at two o’clock, Elisabet Thorstensen and Kristjan
Benediktsson are to be married in Reykjavik Cathedral. Elisabet is the only daughter
of Henrik Thorstensen, of Eyrarbakki, and his late wife Margret Thorstensen. Kristjan is the son of Benedikt Arnason, fisherman, from Patreksfjordur, and his wife
Helga Eymundardottir. The bride is a pianist; the bridegroom is a graduate of
Copenhagen Commercial College.
When he was a boy he would sometimes climb the mountain behind the village by himself. The wind would chase him, smoothing the grass before his feet, and birds would glide above his head. As he climbed, the tussocky slope grew stonier with every step until halfway up he came to a patch of green strewn with white and yellow flowers. He knelt, pulled one of them up by the root, and poked it into the front of his sweater. Then he scrambled up onto a large rock under a crag and turned to face the village below and the horizon at the rim of the ocean.
“I’ll show you!”
The village shrank
A few years after we married, when your uncle got into financial difficulties and his wife approached you for help, you asked whether we could assist them, so I summoned him to my office the following day.
I kept him waiting outside my office for over half an hour. The time passed slowly but I tried to enjoy it. When he finally came in I pretended to be ignorant of his affairs, forcing him to spell out how he’d got into his present predicament before he could reveal his errand and ask me for a loan. I said I’d have to think about it and told him to return the following day. Then I lent him a quarter of what he had asked for because that way I knew I’d have him in my power.
He was dependent on my help for years and I always kept him waiting before admitting him to my office. My secretary would bring him a cup of coffee. I myself couldn’t work, knowing he was there on the other side of the wall. I might open a book but would put it down after flipping through a few pages, and get up and stand by the window, staring at the harbor, where workers were loading cargo, or out to sea, where a boat was leaving port, or at Mount Esja, white on a cold autumn morning. I would stand motionless, concentrating on the image I kept in mind of my father, sitting in that cluttered parlor with your relatives, old and dejected, so strangely small and dim that I had to concentrate to catch sight of him in my memory.
I tried to convince myself that I was avenging him. But maybe I was just attempting to establish who had the upper hand.
My secretary knocked at the door. She had begun to feel very uncomfortable. “One moment,” I called. “I’m just finishing up here . . .”
I don’t know whether I ever really managed to convince myself. But one thing is sure: I never felt the anticipated pleasure when I finally opened the door and greeted him.
20
Kristjan slept badly. The spring night was awake outside his window and he could hear his parents tossing and turning in the room next door. He knew his father wasn’t asleep. He had seen Elisabet only twice since he came home; though no one had said in so many words that they were not meant to see each other until the wedding, he knew that this was the intention.
He got out of bed. The pale night sapped all color from the earth, even more thoroughly than the dusk, dulling everything. The blue was drained from the sky and the white church on the far side of the lake was invisible in the bleached pallor. He had to strain his eyes to pick it out. Two more days.
Two more days, and the fetters were already beginning to tighten. The filaments spun from the deceptive freedom of the open countryside and the smiles of people he did not trust. In the mornings he read aloud from the papers to his parents. They sat opposite him in silence, saying nothing when he forgot himself and stopped reading to stare into space, waiting patiently, staring into space with him.
This coming Saturday, at two o’clock, Elisabet Thorstensen and Kristjan
Benediktsson are to be married in Reykjavik Cathedral. Elisabet is the only daughter
of Henrik Thorstensen, of Eyrarbakki, and his late wife Margret Thorstensen. Kristjan is the son of Benedikt Arnason, fisherman, from Patreksfjordur, and his wife
Helga Eymundardottir. The bride is a pianist; the bridegroom is a graduate of
Copenhagen Commercial College.
When he was a boy he would sometimes climb the mountain behind the village by himself. The wind would chase him, smoothing the grass before his feet, and birds would glide above his head. As he climbed, the tussocky slope grew stonier with every step until halfway up he came to a patch of green strewn with white and yellow flowers. He knelt, pulled one of them up by the root, and poked it into the front of his sweater. Then he scrambled up onto a large rock under a crag and turned to face the village below and the horizon at the rim of the ocean.
“I’ll show you!”
The village shrank
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