From the Mouth of the Whale Read Online Free PDF Page A

Heaven like the scent of a lily blossom, encountering on her way Our Lord Jesus Christ who, for love of his mother, stepped down from his throne, descending halfway from the sublime to the corporeal sphere, bringing with him a choir of angels to make the occasion more festive. He has not come near the mortal world since, but on that occasion he embraced the soul of the Holy Virgin and escorted her to the glories of Heaven … And the old couple, my grandparents, had long been in the custom of visiting the lamb in honour of these events … In truth, they seized every opportunity to visit it, though always after I had gone to bed, but I had never been surprised by their charity towards this motherless creature, taking it for granted that they were as kind to other orphans as they were to me … After supper, Grandmother took me to my room and told me to put on my finest clothes … I obeyed, and she did the same … Then she made the sign of the cross over me and recited every five-year-old’s favourite prayer about Mary:
     
Mary went to church,
met a holy cross,
wore a key on her belt,
to unlock Heaven …
Almighty God and Peter
were singing there from books:
We shall go in summer
to visit our holy relics …
Please God, make the sun shine
on that fair hill,
where Mary milked her cow …
     
    Then she took me by the hand and off we went to see the Peter Lamb … But when we went round the back of the farm buildings to meet Grandfather, I was met by an extraordinary sight … All the farmhands were gathered there, both men and women, as neatly combed and finely turned out as Grandmother and me … They were waiting for us … Grandfather Hákon led forward an old man with a nodding head and bent shoulders, clad in a cloak with the hood drawn down over his nose and holding a tall staff in his hand … He set off towards the mountain with us following in his wake … Grandfather Hákon went first with the menfolk hard on his heels, carrying torches which instead of being lit were painted a fiery red at one end:
    ‘So they won’t be seen all over the district …’ said one of the farmhands.
    The women brought up the rear with us children … The man with the staff toiled up over the hayfields and no one but me fretted at his slow pace … I was wild with excitement to see the lamb … My grandmother kept a firm hold of my hand and I responded by dragging her along with all my might, leaning almost horizontally with the effort like a badly trained dog on a leash, but she would not be hurried … I thought the lamb must be one of the most remarkable creations on earth, given all this effort to make the visit so ceremonious and yet so secret … Ceremonious, for the people sang under the torches; secret, because the torches could not be lit and the singing was muted so as not to be heard beyond the procession … It was the seventh day of August and the summer nights were still light, though the shadow of the mountain had begun to turn blue in the evening and a stronger scent rose from the dewy grass of the farm mound in the morning … But the grassy farm knoll was not the only such mound in the world … When I saw where the procession was heading, I abruptly slackened my hold on my grandmother’s hand and pressed close to her skirts instead … Before us was a hummock known as the Mary Mound, near which we children had been strictly warned not to play our noisy games … We were told that it was the abode of the hidden people, who protected their home with magic spells … These warnings were invariably accompanied by tales of rash youths who in their eagerness to show off had advanced boldly into battle against the mound dwellers … All these youths lost their wits and ended their days tethered in stalls, lowing with the cattle … Some of the older children had heard human lowing of this kind on their travels to distant lands, such as the next farm but one in the valley, or even further afield, the farm beyond that, and