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

underneath a layer of mottled sand from the seashore … Grandfather wielded the brush on the sand with the same dexterity, working faster the deeper down he got … Meanwhile, in a reassuring and unexpectedly boyish voice, the hairy-nosed, poached-eyed man with the staff began to read aloud from the little volume that lay open in his hand, without once looking at it:
    ‘
Transitus Mariae
… On the day when the glorious Queen of Heaven and Earth, the Holy Mary, passed away, all the Lord’s apostles were present … And wise authorities tell us that wherever each of the apostles had been standing previously, he was raised from there by angelic power and set down on the spot where the Holy Mary died … For God’s angel was sent by the Lord to raise up each of the apostles and carry him many days’ journey through the air in the winking of an eye to bring him to this place …’
    I had abandoned any attempt to understand what the grown-ups were up to … But of one thing I was sure: if you had to go through all this fuss just to set eyes on the Peter Lamb, then I was bored to death by the whole affair and determined to refuse any further invitations to visit, should they be forthcoming … I loosened my clasped hands, feeling the blood rushing to my fingers, and stretched and flexed them in the air … Grandmother gripped my skinny arm hard with a low cry … I lost my temper with her since I had done nothing to deserve such rough treatment and was about to strike off the hand that crushed my arm so mercilessly … But at that moment other people in the crowd began to emit similarly muffled cries … Yes, it must be starting: the evil spirits were entering the people and without warning each would turn on his neighbour, bellowing and beating, crushing and tearing off fingers, noses and ears … With a wail, I sprang to my feet … Experience had taught me that the best course was to run to my grandfather Hákon, but if the world was turning topsy-turvy, he must surely become the most fearsome ogre of all, so I made up my mind to run off alone into the blue …
    ‘Wise men say that God had previously revealed to his apostles that they would all, on the day that the glorious Holy Mother passed away, gather in the valley known as
Vallis Josaphat
…’ intoned the old man.
    I could not move an inch … We were in the thick of the crowd, my grandmother and I … When the homilist fell silent I heard Grandfather Hákon say:
    ‘Come forth in jubilation, O Holy Mary, Mother of God, nursemaid of our Lord Jesus Christ!’
    This did not sound like very monstrous talk to me so I plucked up the courage to look in his direction … The brush twirled as before in his hand, but where there had been sand there now peeped forth the finely shaped tip of a nose made of painted wood, then ruddy cheeks, and with the next swirl of the brush appeared the celestial blue eyes, turned heavenwards, of God’s Holy Mother … The third swirl swept all the sand from her countenance and the fourth dislodged it, causing it to trickle like water to her feet, revealing her robed body … My grandmother began to weep … For, as I understood later, it was a long time since she had last set eyes on the Holy Virgin, the lady who had given her strength through all the years of childbirth, childrearing and housekeeping … Her confidante in every trifling feminine concern that comes of being made not in the image of the Creator but in the image of an image, made from the substance of the male who was himself moulded from the earthly clay which became visible when the word fell from the lips of the Maker … Upon which He took the substance in His palm and made from it ever smaller worlds until He made woman and all that she contains within … The Holy Virgin knew women’s insides better than any other, being herself a daughter of Eve; the most perfect of her line, but a mortal woman nonetheless … Until the apostles saw her rise from her grave like a