Heaven and Hell by Jón Kalman Stefánsson

the top of the mountain ages ago. The boy has the arctic wind mostly at his back and the night surrounds him, it is within the snowfall, within the white snowflakes. The boy has never before come so high, never made it so close to the sky and at the same time never been as far from it. He inches forward, abandoned by all but God, and there is no God. It’s so cold. His head is frozen and his brain has changed into an expansive tundra, hoarfrosted and frozen earth as far as the eye can see, completely lifeless on the surface, but underneath are hidden weak embers, memories, faces, sentences, nothing is sweet to me, without thee. These embers could conceivably melt the hoarfrost, call to birds, waken the fragrance of blossoms. But up here on the plateau nothing is fragrant, there are just the frost and the night, he walks on, time passes, morning comes. And the morning passes as well. He no longer sustains a thought, his feet keep going like a machine, which is very good, yet he must be careful because everything ends, even plateaus, and in some places they end abruptly, simply cease to exist, and the dizzying fall begins.
    It is actually amazing that he did not walk off the edge and plunge to his death. As indifferent as he was, giddy from the frost, fatigue, numbed by sorrow. But perhaps he senses a slight change in the air, some can feel it when the ground ends and the sky begins. He hesitates, walks cautiously, feels his way, a long time passes, then finally he finds a passable way down. Certainly not the best, scrapes his skin on rocks, falls, hurts himself, but he is alive and it is seldom possible to ask for more. He has come down into the valley, Tungudalur. Where we go in the summers when the sun is warm in the sky, the grass is green and things such as flowers exist, we even go in large groups with picnic lunches, smiles, and happiness, call it an excursion to the forest since there is a decent stretch of trees in Tungudalur, an accumulation of gnarled birches. The stoutest branches easily hold birds but not people, the boy leans momentarily against a tree, he has put the plateau behind him, overtaken day and night, sleep and death. He walks down the valley and heads toward us, toward the Village, and it is the first day of April.
    Words vary.
    Some are bright, others dark; April , for instance, is a bright word. The days grow longer, their brightness comes like a spear-thrust into the darkness. One morning we wake and the plover has arrived, the sun has come closer, the grass appears from beneath the snow and turns green, the fishing boats are launched after having slept throughthe long winter and dreamt of the sea. The word April is composed of light, birdsong, and eager anticipation. April is the most hopeful of months.
    But, God help us, how incredibly long it still seems to the greenness as the boy plods down Tungudalur, his packed lunch long gone and with the expansive tundra in his head, stiff extremities and a terribly heavy burden on his back, a book that killed his best, no, his one friend. It was such a short time since they had walked together out of the Village, side by side, the boy whimpers a bit as he walks, although he scarcely has the energy to do so, it is afternoon and the snow has stopped falling from the sky. The boy walks along the beach wherever possible, otherwise on the tussocky moorland that lies between the mountains and the beach, several dozen meters wide at best. He stops at a little river and regards the iron pipe that Friðrik, the Factor at Tryggvi’s Shop, the Village’s largest shop, had installed in it; a long pipe and a large trestle, half buried in the ground, under one of its ends, the water runs pure and clear there and never freezes. Friðrik’s men row daily across the Lagoon to fetch water for the shop and the boats when they’re ready to go. Of course the Village does not lack wells, but the water in them is not particularly good, blended with seawater and sometimes