Burial Rites(70)

Later, I stood naked, my hips pressed against the edge of his table. Natan’s books lay in front of me, the papers were wrinkled, showed eddies of our love.

‘Look at all this illness, Natan. Books and books of disease and horror.’

‘Agnes.’

He said my name softly, letting the ‘s’ carry over his tongue, as though tasting it.

‘Natan. If there is so much illness in the world . . . if there is so much that can go wrong with a person, how is it that any of us remain alive?’

Sigga must have known about us. Those first nights at Illugastadir we waited until she fell asleep. I’d hear Natan’s careful tread on the floorboards of the badstofa, and feel the gentle tug of blankets. I tried so hard to be quiet. We knotted ourselves together as though we should never become undone, but the first bar of morning light that came through the window severed our trysts as though it were a knife.

He always returned to his own bed before Sigga awoke.




AGNES SEEMED TO BE LOST in thought. It wasn’t until Tóti gently put a hand on her shoulder that she gave a start and noticed he had come back into the room.

‘I’m sorry to startle you,’ he said.

‘Oh no,’ Agnes replied, a little breathlessly. ‘I was only counting stitches.’

‘Shall we continue?’ he asked.

‘What was I saying?’

‘You were telling me about your first day at Illugastadir.’

‘Oh, yes. Natan was glad to see me, and made sure I was settled, and he told me stories about the folk and farms about the place. Nothing very remarkable occurred in those first few weeks. I worked every day with Sigga from dawn to dusk, and we’d spend each night together telling stories, or laughing at one thing or another. All in all, my time at Illugastadir for the first few months was a happy one. Sigga told me that it was unusual for Natan to spend as much time at home as he had been doing, and I thought it was my company that kept him with us. He spent most days out in his workshop, preferring to tinker and mend tools than actually tend the farm. He would rather hire men to come and see to the grass, or horses, than do it himself. Not that he was lazy. He showed me how he let blood, and told me about all the diseases that could befall a person. I think he was glad to have someone interested in his work; Sigga was pretty, and good at laundry, and she had a deft hand with a gutting knife and cleaned the fish we caught, but she did not care for what Natan called the things of the intellect. I was allowed to read as much as I wanted, and to discover something of the study of science. Do you know, Reverend, that it is necessary for someone with spots on their legs and bleeding gums to eat cabbages?’

Tóti smiled. ‘No, I didn’t.’

‘I thought he was making fun at first, but I saw with my own eyes how something as simple as a tea made from leaves, or a poultice from lard and sulphur, or gum squeezed out of roots, or even a cabbage, could heal a person.

‘I thought it was sheer good fortune, moving to Illugastadir. Natan made me new shoes from sealskin, and gave me a shawl, and there were as many duck eggs as you could fit in your stomach. When he did leave the farm, he always returned with gifts for Sigga and me. That was why I had thought Sigga his daughter when I first saw her. Natan kept her well dressed, and when I arrived, he gave me gifts too. Lace, and silk, and a little handkerchief he said had come all the way from France. It seemed a luxurious existence, despite the isolation, despite the close, cramped quarters. We did not often have visitors. But I had Natan, and Sigga wasn’t too insufferable.’ Agnes lowered her voice. ‘Have you seen her, Reverend? Has she been granted her appeal?’

Tóti shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t know yet.’

Agnes was thoughtful. ‘She has probably changed. She’s probably as pious as they come now. But at Illugastadir she had a saucy little manner when it suited her. She was forever speculating about folks, and Natan would ask her who she thought should marry whom, and what their children would look like and so forth. It was harmless sport for him; he found her simplicity amusing. I didn’t even mind it when Sigga kept calling herself the housekeeper, or ordered me to do the tasks she ought to have been doing herself – emptying the chamber pot, mucking out the cowshed, drying the fish Natan caught. She was, like Natan said, only a child, with a child’s way of thinking.

‘Fridrik Sigurdsson visited Illugastadir soon after I arrived. I’d never met him before, but Sigga had told me about him, and she’d said that he and Natan were acquaintances of sorts. She was always as pink as a skinned lamb when she spoke of him. But Fridrik unsettled me. There was something off-balance in Fridrik. And Natan, too. They both got into moods and the feel of a room would fall from high spirits to a glowering in an instant. It was contagious, too. With them you’d feel every small injustice done against you like a thorn in your side. Fridrik, I thought, was a daring sort of boy, desperate to prove himself a man. He was easily offended. I suppose he thought the world against him, and raged at it. I did not like that in him, the way he looked for a reason to anger. He liked to fight. Liked to keep his knuckles bruised.

‘Natan was different. He did not think he had to prove himself to anyone. But superstitious signs troubled him. And, what I admired in him, his way of seeing the world, and yearning for knowledge, and his easy way with those he liked, had a darker underbelly. It was a matter of enjoying the bright skies all the more, so as to endure the sloughs when they came.’