VII
For the second time in his life Hjor-Leif lost his spirits completely. After closer reflection he found his lonely situation so meaningless and unjust, so devoid of all reconciling elements such as, for example, a prospect of adventures or opportunity for exploits—in brief, so utterly irrational, that he involuntarily began to show his teeth at existence by drowning himself in perpetual melancholy, only now and then interrupted by isolated attacks of ill-temper.
The days encountered him heavily and sulkily. It seemed as if all their endeavours were directed to show him in earnest how empty and tedious and intolerable they could be, if they seriously set about it. The bright, cloudless summer days sneered at him when they met him with ice-cold scornful light from sunrise to sunset. Grey and rainy days, on the other hand, showed him without disguise their dull side. Hjor-Leif could not come to an agreement with himself which of the two kinds of days was really the more intolerable. They were all alike impossible. The one point he was clear about with regard to the days was that he had without doubt still the worst remaining. He cursed them with oaths which were powerful both in length and strength, and derived from an inexhaustible supply. But they were no help—not even momentarily. In the battle with the days he suffered one defeat after another; they were far stronger than he. They were invincible. And they possessed, although he daily experienced that, in spite of all, they did pass, a peculiarity of appearing endless, which deprived him of all hope.
Hjor-Leif tried in every way to put a little meaning into them.
He set his freemen to build a winter dwelling, a house nineteen fathoms long. It was to contain them all, together with their wives. He had only taken young, newly married people with him from Norway, with the single exception of his old headman. Hjor-Leif did what he could to take a little interest in the work. But it was only self-deception. The days did not for a moment let go their wild-beast clutch on his neck.
He set the serfs to build a house eighteen fathoms long, and bullied them till they quailed and shivered and fell into helpless embarrassment merely at the sight of him. Yes, he instilled a wholesome terror into the Irish serfs. They slunk about, and hardly knew whether to walk upright or on all fours. And they had no eyes—at any rate, there seemed no more any sight in their eyes. Regarding them, he felt sure that he had made them harmless for ever. But it brought him no comfort either to treat them like dogs or to realize their harmlessness. That did not bring a spark of his spirits back. There was nothing to rouse them in that quarter.
One of the items in Hjor-Leif’s despairing and hopeless struggle with the days was going along the shore and choosing driftwood for his buildings. When he found a stout, solid plank, he marked it with a stroke of his ax; then he bade the serfs find the planks so marked and bring them home.
Sometimes in these wanderings, Hjor-Leif found himself standing and hewing wildly and meaninglessly at a plank, as though his life depended on cutting it into a plaything for the winds. Whenever he awoke from such an attack of frenzy he looked round him with a shamefaced expression, and began eagerly, with a strong sense of humiliation, to efface the traces of it, watched by the evil eye of a hostile day.
Hjor-Leif had one hope, and only one. His longing, strongly reinforced by his despair, had treated with the rocky pride of his soul, and the result was a reasonable agreement.
Therefore he went everywhere and searched for Ingolf’s high-seat pillars. Not in order to do away with them by means of fire, but to get an excuse for seeking Ingolf at once, and so obtaining an honourable and acceptable victory over all that pained and plagued him. Hjor-Leif wanted to see what the day would look like when by finding the pillars he was able to escape from his wretchedness with a bound.
This hope sustained him. But day after day passed without his finding the pillars. Not even the sea and tides were friendly disposed towards him. He talked in a loud voice with the sea, and reminded it of all the honourable bouts they had had with each other. But either the sea did not hear or would not recognize him. It had perhaps become hostile towards him, like everything else in heaven and earth. Hjor-Leif had been as far eastward along the coast as the impassible glacier streams would let him go. Now he turned westward. He took food with him, and remained away four days and nights. During his expedition he came to know a new part of the country which he liked, and where he could well imagine himself settling.
Below the green mountains, which first in a steep ascent and then with a more gradual incline rose towards the white glacier which with its two domes reminded one of a female giant’s breasts, the low land stretched with fertile meadows and picturesque bush-covered valleys and luxuriant pastures towards the shining sea. In the south-west green precipitous isles rose from the sea. Hjor-Leif gave the mountains names after these islands, which simultaneously limited and enriched the view, and called them Island-mountains. The western dome of the glacier he named the Island-mountains’ Glacier; the eastern he had already, after a more eastern district, baptized Myrdals-Glacier. Hjor-Leif did not turn round, for he saw the land open into a wide bay towards the west. He examined the shore outside the Island-mountains and Myrdal very closely. It was a great disappointment to him that the pillars had not drifted on shore here.
Hjor-Leif returned home from this excursion still more taciturn and depressed than he had started. Wearing unrest received him with open arms every morning and did not release him from its evil embrace till sleep at night had pity on him.
He set some of his men to get in hay, others he made go out fishing, the rest he kept occupied with the houses. It was an insignificant alleviation of his trouble to see his men busily occupied. For himself he had no patience for anything. On the walks which he now and then took along the coast to assure himself if the pillars had not drifted on shore in his immediate neighbourhood, he was no more accompanied by even the smallest hope.
During these walks Helga was always in his mind. But not openly and consciously—he scarcely had patience enough to think of her in that way. No, secretly and hidden away she lived in his mind. Through memories and reminiscences she was near to him, without his being obliged to face the fact that they were divided from each other by a long distance and a sea of days, and that this separation was due to a stupid and certainly quite groundless foreboding. He carried these memories about very tenderly and cautiously, without any intention of letting them slip quite out of the fog of unconsciousness. As a man dying of thirst sips dew, he cheated himself into a reminiscent happiness. It was a dangerous proceeding. For if he woke from the dream, his agony flung him on the ground in a passion of tears, unworthy of a man, and which, moreover, brought no relief.
Hjor-Leif became at last weary of the sea and shore. He turned his mind against them and made enemies again—evil emptiness and helpless melancholy—Nature’s immovable answer to all discontent. So Hjor-Leif became hostile to all things round him. The echo of his own mind met him everywhere and tortured him as only self-inflicted pain can torture.
He extended his lonely wanderings to the wide-stretching pastures, overgrown with spreading coppice-wood, which reached from his point right up to the blue mountains. But also in this region he soon became homeless. His inner want of peace drove all peace around him away.
When winter came, Hjor-Leif sat like a bear in his lair, alone with the fire and his half-share of the nineteen-fathom-long house. It was uncomfortable near him. Therefore his men kept together in their end of the house, even though no fire burned there. They were newly married, and felt neither cold nor dull.
The serfs slunk in now and then, by twos, with fuel for the fire. They shivered, and came hurriedly away from their task, even though Hjor-Leif sat with his head in his hands and did not look at them at all.
Hjor-Leif was poor now. He was so poor that he caught himself longing for the break in the evening’s brooding silence, which the serf’s coming caused. So poor, that in order not to betray his poverty he showed himself perverse and ungracious towards his old headman, when the latter once overcame his embarrassment and, out of devotion and sympathy, sat with him one evening. Either he was silent with the old man in his own comfortlessness, or he pained him with scornful words and malicious laughter. The old man could not understand how Hjor-Leif had lost all his good temper and indomitable spirits, unless the evil spirits of this strange land had deprived him of them. He could not endure this land where Hjor-Leif, his favourite, had neither living nor dead foes to fight with. There were plenty of wizards and goblins here, as he had himself experienced. There was an unearthly life in the rocks and heights. But these were creatures without value for a man eager for battle. One could not attack them weapon in hand. The sacred iron could only protect one against them, and keep them out of the house.
Hjor-Leif’s old headman fought bravely with his fear and discomfort for an obviously bewitched man. But there came an end, and he also gave up Hjor-Leif and let him sit alone by the fire.
For days and nights together the storm and hail beat on the house with howlings and threatening hootings. The winter days were often only an indistinct glimmer. And in the uncanny winter night all evil spirits were loose.
Hjor-Leif sat through the long evenings in his bitterness alone by the fire. And even the fire, his only friend in the wintry emptiness, now showed fits of enmity, and spat out evil smoke which struck his breast like a tearing cough.
Hjor-Leif sat most often with his face in his hands. By doing so he, as it were, shut himself into himself, and cheated in a measure the evil powers in him and round him. But there was a danger in thus sitting hugging his pain. Solitude used the opportunity to whisper words of madness in his ear. And often Hjor-Leif was near forgetting himself, and beginning to listen to its alluring, unbridled talk.
But then sleep came, and saved him, and gave him some hours’ forgetfulness. A forgetfulness which, however short it was, armed him for the morrow’s encounter with a hostile, desolate, and lonely day.