The following morning, Ketil’s wife began to smarten herself up. Was she going out? Yes, she had to go to the shop. ‘Now, do you need anything this morning? Are you coming along?’ she said.
Ketil answered, ‘Shall I now? There’s always more than enough to do, but if it’s any use to you, I’ll come along.’
‘Well, it will be useful, because it looks like we’ll have indoor weather for some time, so we ought to get some wool home to get to work on. You don’t get much for knitting up a sweater, but it’s still better than sitting with your arms folded.’
‘Yes, yes, you’re right there.’ Ketil put on his shoes, and off they went.
Ketil said, ‘It’s a perfect nuisance the way every penny we earn goes as quick as it comes. I want to get this whale meat bill settled, but the way it’s going, nothing seems to do any good.’
‘Don’t talk about that. I can’t even bear to think about it. I wish for once I could have my way with these trollops our lads have married. Then they wouldn’t be going around in their silks and satins and sticking their noses in the air.’
They came to the only shop in the village.
‘Good day.’ The shopkeeper, an elderly bachelor, sat on a soapbox, with a cravat round his neck, singing an old Faroese ballad.
What did they want?
The old woman wanted an ounce of tea.
‘You don’t want a slice of cheese as well, I suppose?’ asked the shopkeeper.
No, she didn’t want any.
‘That’s all right. I only asked because the cheese is lying on the tea chest, and I had to move it anyway.’
Ketil wanted some nails for his boat.
Certainly, he could have some, the shopkeeper told him, scratching himself under his cravat. ‘But just now I was so clumsy as to drop the packet of nails into the treacle barrel.’ He looked above him. ‘Maybe I could use these fire tongs hanging here, to pick them out again. He climbed up to the beam, and got the tongs, but slipped down, and ended with both arms in an open drawer full of flour. A sort of fine snowdrift filled the whole room.
‘Have you hurt yourself?’ asked the old folk.
‘Hurt myself? Oh no, not at all. Now you can have your nails.’
The next thing they asked for was raw wool for knitting.
‘Plenty of wool,’ said the shopkeeper. He pulled a ladder down from the loft and climbed up through the trap door. ‘It’s only from people like you that I make a living. The youngsters won’t deal with me. Every time a man gets married, that’s the last I see of him in this shop – he’s too high-and-mighty to trade with me. It’s these wives of theirs, who’ve been in Tórshavn and picked up daft notions. If they really were as fine as they pretend …’
‘I think we can agree with you there,’ said Ketil. They got the sack of wool out through the door, Ketil took it up around his neck, and they left.
On the way home, they met one of their daughters-in-law.
‘Good Lord,’ she tittered, ‘you’re not reckoning on an early death, if you’re hoping to knit up that great heap of wool you’re carrying.’
‘Perhaps a few other people ought to think the same,’ snapped Ketil’s wife.
‘Yes, and what do you mean by that? Is it me you’re getting at?’ asked the daughter-in-law.
‘If the cap fits, wear it,’ answered Ketil’s wife.
‘The cap, what cap? Am I doing nothing, just because I don’t knit sweaters? You old people reckon everyone’s idle except yourselves.’
Ketil began to walk on again. ‘Now then, no need to start an argument about it. Let’s get home.’
But the old woman did not mean to give up. She enjoyed harping on this string. She set her things down and put her hands on her hips. ‘We old folk think – oh, I don’t know what to say about it, we don’t know what to think. A vagabond like you, you dare to talk! What have you done, since you came to this village?’
‘I’ve looked after my house.’
‘You’ve looked after it, ha-ha! Yes, I must say, you’ve looked after it very well. So that, for instance, you’re going to find yourself turned out of your house neck and crop before so very long. No, dolling yourself up, you can do that, and lie whining in childbed every year, you can do that too. But as for getting something to put into the mouths of the poor things you’ve brought into the world – you’re too fine a lady to do that.’
‘Impudent old cow! What can you blame me for?’ said the daughter-in-law, stepping right up to her. ‘I’ve not had more children than you’ve had yourself. And it’s not my job to provide food for them, it’s the man of the house that does that. I’ve not wasted what he’s laid in, I can tell you that. But no, you’re hot under the collar because I don’t choose to live in a shack like you, and spend all my time in coarse work. If I’d done the same as you, not looked after my house, not kept myself looking decent, not brought up my children properly, I could easily have knitted sweaters and carried cow muck out to the fields as well. But I don’t intend to do that. I didn’t get married to live like one of the animals!’
Ketil’s wife started to cry. ‘Yes, yes, I’ve heard enough now. You say I’ve not looked after my house. I’d like to know who’s done it better. Can anyone come in and seize any of our property for debt? Tell me that.’
‘Yes, that’s the thing you always come back with. But it’s no wonder you’re well off, if all you think of is a few scraps of food to put in your mouths, and you save every brass farthing to pay the rates with. We could do that too if we liked, but we don’t want to. We want to live like human beings.’
‘Rates, do you say? You’ve got the face to mention rates? It’s us you’ve got to thank for not being turned out for being behind with your rates, let me tell you.’
‘Turned out? We pay our taxes by banker’s order, in instalments, through the Savings Bank. As for rates, we shan’t pay those again. They’ve had a transfer order on the shipowner, and they won’t get any more.’
‘They certainly have had more – we paid for you.’
‘We didn’t ask you to pay anything. If you’re so daft as to let the rating officer have money because he’s too incompetent to collect it before the owner goes bankrupt, then do as you please!’
Ketil’s wife fell abruptly silent, and went on her way.
‘There she goes, the silly old goose, all hot and bothered, thinking everyone in the world’s out of step except herself,’ shouted the daughter-in-law after her, before going off.
When Ketil’s wife got home, she found her husband setting up the spinning-wheel. She wept and dried her eyes on a corner of her shawl.
‘I told you to leave her,’ said Ketil, smiling down into his beard.
‘So help me, if she puts her foot over my threshold again, she’ll get a bucket of water thrown over her – that I’ve promised her this very day. But Ketil, you must go back to that rating officer straight away. He’s cheated us, he has – if that hussy wasn’t lying.’
Ketil stared. ‘What did you say? Did the rating officer lie to us?’
‘Yes, that daughter-in-law of ours said that they’d paid their rates, they’d got something from the owner, I don’t know what it’s called, one of these new things that’s come out lately.’
The old man sprang up from the bench like a cork out of a bottle, and went over to his son’s house. Perhaps the Lord was going to permit the thirty kroner to be recovered!
The son laughed when he heard the story. ‘That rascal of a rating officer! Has he been getting his claws into you? Just come over with me and I’ll see you get every penny back from him.’
When they reached the rating officer’s, they found the place in complete uproar. Everyone was running about shouting and clamouring. The rating officer’s wife bade them come into the office to wait.
‘There’s such a fuss here today,’ she said in a friendly way. ‘He’s had a letter returned that he has to sign. This office work makes him so wild he’s not fit to be approached.’ Her voice sank to a whisper. ‘I’ll tell you – the teacher used to write his letters for him, but today he refused to do it, and now my man’s in a terrible mood, just for that reason. The trouble is, we’ve not paid the teacher his salary for the last seven months, and he’s trying to get his own back this way. That’s the way it is – first they get a big salary, and then they turn saucy afterwards. My man’s always signed the letters himself, so I think it’s mean of the teacher not to write them.’ She sighed heavily, and left.
Then the rating officer came in, in his shirt-sleeves. His sweaty hair hung down in rats’ tails, and his eyes were as red as a wizard’s. A cat was sitting on the floor. It got a rap on the back of its neck. ‘You know you oughtn’t to be here in the office,’ he told it.
‘There was a little matter we wanted to clear up,’ said Ketil.
‘Yes, I suppose so, but you must wait a bit, till I’ve got this letter signed. I can’t be in two places at once.’ Then he took his ink-pot and pen, leaned over the desk, and took his bearings. The veins stood out on his forehead and his eyeballs started from their sockets. He frowned, gripped his lower lip between his teeth, and stabbed the pen in so much that the ink stood like a thick fog on the paper. When he had finished writing, he sat down for a minute to recover, and then asked them their business.
‘Well, it’s this,’ said the son. ‘You’ve conned my father into giving you money for rates which I’ve already paid …’
‘Oh well, that’s easily put right – the money’s lying right here. This is the point – I can’t get on with this new system where you give me a letter from the owner. We old folk, we stick to coin of the realm as payment between one man and another. I’ve no experience of this new way – I haven’t got any confidence in it.’
‘You must get some. I want you to give my father his money back this minute.’
The rating officer went and fetched the thirty kroner. ‘You must bear with me if I’m not at home with these newfangled ways,’ he said.
‘No,’ said the eldest son. ‘As long as you keep this job, you’ll get no indulgence from me. Why did you take it on? Why are you old folk always pushing yourselves forward, when the truth is that times have changed so much in this country, that you’re just left gaping?’ Then father and son left with the thirty kroner.
When Ketil got back to his house, he took hold of his wife’s arm and burst into song over his success. ‘I’ve got the money back again, old girl,’ he told her. ‘That was a lucky row you stirred up!’
The indoor weather lasted for weeks, and they worked all the time on their spinning and knitting.
Kálvur railed at his parents and cried, because he had to spin. ‘It’s a proper shame!’ he said. ‘How many of the other young men do you suppose stay at home spinning?’
‘All of them,’ Ketil assured him.
‘Not a single one! And yesterday, when I was in the shop, they shouted spinster! after me, and laughed.’
‘Well, we can’t help that,’ said the old folk. ‘We can’t keep you here just as an ornament. If you don’t want to work, you’ll have to join up with those who live by propping up boathouses or draping themselves over the shopkeeper’s counter.’
But no, he didn’t want to be driven out; he would rather spin.
One day, he came home from Klávus’s full of excitement – now he was going to get married, he said. ‘They’ve asked me whether I’ll go to their house to live, because they’re not able to run the house by themselves any longer.’
‘You, get married?’ said Ketil’s wife, astonished. ‘Then the fat would be in the fire.’
‘Why?’ asked Kálvur.
‘Who would provide the food for the love nest?’
‘I shall go fishing next spring,’ said Kálvur. ‘Klávus promised to ask a skipper to take me along.’
‘Yes, you could do that as well as anyone else,’ said Ketil.
But this notion displeased his wife. ‘God preserve us from a fellow like you!’ she said.
Then the eldest son entered and asked what they were talking about.
‘It’s this,’ said Ketil’s wife. ‘The folk at Klávus’s have been enticing Kálvur into marrying their daughter. But what I say is this – how can he think of providing for such a household? He wants to go on a fishing boat, but what could he do there without bringing shame on himself?’
‘Kálvur, let me tell you,’ replied the eldest son, ‘is better fitted to be a deckhand than either I or many another man.’
‘That’s strange,’ said the old woman. ‘What’s the use of intelligence, then, if Kálvur, who lacks it, is as good as these others?’
‘That I can’t tell you. But for a deckhand, it’s an advantage to have as little intelligence as possible. The man who thinks least is best off. It’s preposterous, but true.’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘Young people nowadays are never satisfied; they always want more and more. They want everything that folk have overseas.’
‘How?’ asked the eldest son.
‘Perhaps I don’t express myself very well. But you all demand so much from life – you’re never satisfied. In the old days, a poor man was content if he had something to eat and a roof over his head. Nowadays, everything has to be so high-and-mighty. Everything you set your minds on, you have to have, whether you can afford it or not … And everyone’s up to their eyebrows in debt … A fat lot of use it is having schools, books and I don’t know what! In the old days we used to be a lot more reasonable.’
The eldest son laughed. ‘Yes, but debt doesn’t arise because we ask too much of life, but because our earnings are so low. Everything has to be as good as it is overseas, you say. Why shouldn’t we want to have it just as good as other folk? Have foreigners any special right to demand more from life than we do?’
‘No, it would be good to have a comfortable life; but when we can’t afford it, what then?’
‘That’s because we’re so backward …’
‘Maybe so, but what can be done about that? If you’re poor, you’re poor. God disposes the riches of this world, and you can’t thrust Him out of His place. Didn’t you ever learn that at school?’
‘I never learned that, no,’ said the eldest son in a passionate tone. ‘But we did learn to think of ourselves as men. We learned that life is more than dry bread, and we have learned to ask for more. It was useless for you to ask for more. Besides, you didn’t dare to. Every time you had the impulse to raise your heads a little, you thought God would be angry and that Satan would be rubbing his hands over your covetousness.’
‘I don’t know how folks come to make these demands, when there’s no supply.’
‘There’s no supply? What the hell are you talking about? The whole ocean is a pot that’s chock-full of fish, and all you need is a ladle to fetch it out with. The only trouble is, it’s such a damn long time before you can get your fingers on the handle.’
Up to now, Ketil had remained silent, carrying on with his spinning; but now he joined in. ‘So those young men who hang around the lane ends are waiting for the ladle, are they?’ he said.
‘Yes, that’s what they’re waiting for, and they’re ready to seize the handle, the moment the ladle comes.’
‘Who’s going to come along with this ladle and put it into your hands, may I venture to ask?’ said Ketil.
‘That they don’t know, but they do know, every day more surely, that it will come. And they long for it, with such a yearning, that one day it must come, if the sky has to split to give birth to it.’
‘Why don’t you all grow potatoes while you’re waiting? Then at least you’d have enough to eat.’
‘Why weren’t you a schoolteacher? Then you’d have had more to eat, and still been able to spin.’
‘I don’t know, but I had no special bent for book-learning. And in my young days, it was not thought very manly to be a teacher. That job was more for the feeble fellows, who wouldn’t be able to stand the life of other men.’
‘I can say just the same. I had no special bent for the land, and in my younger days, those who grew potatoes were reckoned effeminate. Then, the fishing line was reckoned to be everything. But now a change has come, and I and many others have done so badly by the fishing line, that if you live long enough, you may yet see our sons begin to grow potatoes again!’
‘I don’t know how it all is. Perhaps we’re so foolish that we can’t discuss these things properly.’
‘I don’t know whether you’re foolish or wise, but you are old. So much has happened since you were young, that you hardly know where you stand – and then you go around prophesying hunger and ruination. Stop it; nothing’s out of order – it’s just a swing of the tide. Your tide has ebbed; now ours is flowing.’
The eldest son now left them. The old folk sat there frowning, and continued their work on the wool.
‘Was he drunk, or why was he like that?’ asked the old woman.
‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ said Ketil impatiently. ‘I can’t make head or tail of things any more.’ He hung the wool he had spun on the axle of the spinning wheel, and went out for a stroll in the fields.
During the night there was a storm, and piece after piece of the turf on the roof of Ketil’s house was ripped off. The old man went around the village, waking up folk to come and help.
The middlemost son was annoyed at being awakened. ‘Are you running around after your roof again? Put corrugated iron on your roof, and then we’ll get a bit of peace at night! Fancy having a damn roof that you have to ask folk to sit and hold on to, every time there’s a real use for it!’
The old men were the first on the spot, well clad, and armed with lines and hooks. They were serious and thoughtful. The younger ones hung around in the background, empty-handed. They did not care for this struggling with the storm, when they had their feet firmly on the ground.
Both the turf and its supporting birch bark had already been ripped off the gable, and some way in along the main roof. Some of the old men sat up there clinging on to the remainder. Every time a squall came sweeping down upon them, they flattened themselves against the roof and clung hard to the laths. Their knees became white, their jackets and beards flapping away in the wind, but they held on and saved the roof. Others carried up turf, spiked it together, and laid weighted lines over the top. Then everyone went home. ‘But for all that, a turf roof ’s the best roof,’ was the first thing they said when they had got warm again and recovered their powers of speech.
Kálvur was not up there saving the roof. ‘I might get blown away,’ he thought, ‘and then it would be bad, because folk would laugh at me.’ He longed for the morning, when he would slip out and gather up the bits of birch bark that had been blown away. Birch bark was better to burn than anything else. It curled up, hissed, and smelled ever so good – and the smoke made you simply yearn for a woman.
Klávus was also out walking about that night, though he shook and quaked. ‘Jesus have mercy on the poor man,’ he cried out. ‘He has to go in search of a morsel of food, by night as well as by day, and in bad weather as well as good.’ He thought that at any time it might please Heaven to rip the roof off a storehouse on such a night as this. And if a pair of dried cod, or a side of dried lamb, or such like should happen to fall outside, then he could just as properly take it home as if the birds of the air had brought it to him. But Klávus was not the man he had been. A squall swept him off his feet and flung him headlong into the stream. He swore terribly when he got to his feet, and trembled so much that his teeth chattered. ‘You’re just a forgotten old wretch,’ he told himself. ‘You ought never to rise to your feet again. You’re no use to anyone – and, as sinful dust, you should be trodden beneath the foot of man.’
But he rose to his feet again and clung to his stick. Once again he let a squall take him, and he was flung against the laths of a storehouse, but they remained unbreached. No, there was nothing more to be done; Klávus went home again empty-handed. ‘This is the last time I shall go out in this way,’ he said. And he went into one of the little kiln-houses where the villagers dried their half-ripe barley over peat fires at harvest time. Here he fell on his knees and prayed. ‘Lord, restore Thy mercy towards me, and grant me my food more easily than hitherto. Let not my enemies rejoice to see me and my family languish before Thy face. Amen.’ Then he went home.
The next morning, folk saw Klávus leave the village in his Sunday best. That evening he returned, carrying a sack over his back. People stopped him to admire him. ‘Bless me, you’re a brisk old fellow, to carry a load like that on your back,’ they would say. Where had he been?
He had been to bid people farewell. ‘I am finished with life now,’ he said. ‘I wanted to call on people once more, before I commit myself into the hands of the Lord. But you know how folk are on an occasion like this; they overwhelmed me with gifts, and I don’t know – I hadn’t the heart to throw them back in their faces!’
Folk laughed. ‘That old rogue Klávus! He always manages to get by in one way or another!’
Before long, the wool which Ketil and his wife had brought home was all knitted up. They counted the sweaters back into the sack.
‘What do you think we’ll get for these?’ Ketil asked.
‘I don’t know, but we’ll get something. But we must get in a bit more wool. The nights are so long, we can’t just sit down with our arms folded.’
Ketil agreed. ‘But the weather is good enough for outdoor work now, so I’d better not spend the daytime spinning.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘There’s always something to do, but the point is, it’ll soon be Martinmas now, and we haven’t got enough in hand to pay the whale-meat bill. If only I could find something to do that I could get a little money for!’
‘That’s far from easy to find in a village like ours. But another thing is, whether you shouldn’t sell off a bit of the meat. If Kálvur leaves us now, we two old folk won’t want to eat so much of it.’
No, Ketil would not do that. ‘I’ll soon be a worn-out old man. I don’t expect to be able to get any more, so I can’t bring myself to carry food out of my storehouse and hand it over to strangers. If I were young, it would be a different matter altogether.’
‘Do what you think’s right, but it’s just this. I can’t see any way out. We’re not going to get out of this trouble. And it’s always been my great fear, getting into debt.’
Ketil became angry at this, and told her to hold her tongue. ‘I can’t bear to listen to you any longer. Until the District Sheriff has been here to demand payment, there’s no call to give up hope. It may yet be that I’ll be able to pay the bill when it comes.’ It was late in the evening, but he went and fetched his shoes.
‘Are you going out as late as this?’
He made no answer.
‘Are you putting on your shoes?’ she asked again.
He did not answer a word. So she stopped speaking as well, but she dragged a stool in front of the door, and sat down to knit with her back firmly planted against it.
The anger fell from him, he hung up his shoes again, and his face resumed its customary mildness. Then he squeezed himself down beside her on the stool. She smiled up at him and asked him why he didn’t go out.
‘You’re a sly one, you are,’ he laughed, and the two of them sat down in silence.
This was how it had been, the time when Ketil was a young man and had taken to going out drinking with the boys. When he came back a bit merry, and she did not want him to go out again, she used to sit in front of the door. Then he would storm around indoors, until he was weary of it, but it always ended by their both going to bed in the best of good humour. But she had ceased doing anything like this a very long time ago now. So the memories flooded back to him now that she sat that way once again. He turned all sentimental, and patted her affectionately.
The next day they went out with the sweaters and fetched home another sack of wool.