Iceland's Bell by Halldór Laxness Page B

she might commit adultery.”
    The magistrate stopped in his tracks and stared at his daughter. The effects of the brennivín had worn off him in the presence of this unfamiliar young woman. He looked her over: she was much too thin, with the eyes of a seven-year-old child and glimmering locks. He started to say something, but stopped.
    “Why don’t you answer me?” she said.
    “There exist young girls who cause everything around them to become unstable—air, earth, and water,” he said, and he tried to smile.
    “That’s because they have the fire, papa,” she said immediately. “The fire alone.”
    “Quiet,” said her father. “No more nonsense!”
    “I won’t keep quiet until you answer me, father,” she said.
    They walked together silently for a few steps and he cleared his throat.
    “A naive act of adultery, my child,” he said, in a staid, bureaucratic tone of voice, “is a matter which people must take up first and foremost with their consciences. On the other hand, such an act is often the precursor and cause of other crimes. But magistrate’s daughters do not commit such crimes.”
    “But if they did, then the magistrates, their fathers, would work quickly to exculpate them.”
    “Justice exculpates no one.”
    “Then you wouldn’t exculpate me, father?”
    “I do not understand what you are getting at, child. I am not in the business of exculpation.”
    “Would you demand that I perjure myself, like Bishop Brynjólfur* did of his daughter?”
    “Bishop Brynjólfur’s mistake was that he did not estimate his daughter any higher than a common girl. Such things do not occur amongst people of our standing—”
    “—even though they occur,” added the girl.
    “Yes, my child,” he said. “Even though they occur. Your lineage is the finest in the country. You and your sister are the only individuals in Iceland who have a better lineage than I.”
    “Bishop Brynjólfur misunderstood justice then,” said the girl. “He thought it applied to everyone.”
    “Beware of the poet’s tongue that you inherit from your mother’s side of the family,” said the magistrate.
    “Father,” she said. “I can’t walk alone—let me lean against you.”
    They headed toward the regent’s booth, he broad-shouldered and ruddy in his flowing cloak, his small white aristocrat’s hands sticking out from the sleeves, she short-stepped and slender, in her riding frock with its soft hood, holding on to his arm and stooping forward; at their sides rose the precipitous cliff walls.
    “The copse you see there,” he said, “is named Bláskógar or Bláskógaheiði. The mountain just beyond the copse is called Hrafnabjörg and is said to have a beautiful shadow. Then come other peaks. Farthest away you see a low heap, like a shadowy image. That is Skjaldbreiður, which is actually the highest of all the peaks—much higher than Botnssúlur, towering there to the west of Ármannsfell. The reason for its—”
    “Oh, father,” said the girl.
    “What is wrong, good child?”
    “These cliffs frighten me.”
    “Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you that the place where we are standing is called Almannagjá.”
    “Why is there such an awful silence?”
    “Silence? Do you not hear me speaking to you, child?”
    “No.”
    “I was saying, child, that when a man regards the mountain Botnssúlur, it appears to be frightfully high only because it is close by. But if he then looks toward Skjaldbreiður—”
    “Father, haven’t you received any letters?”
    “Letters? I have received hundreds of letters.”
    “And none with greetings for me?”
    “Hm, yes, you are absolutely right. The assessor Arnæus sent his regards to your mother and to you two sisters.”
    “But nothing for me?”
    “He asked me to make enquiries concerning whether a page from any of Helgafell cloister’s old books, which had been torn apart and thrown away, might not have been saved by some chance.”
    “And he said nothing