Under the Glacier Read Online Free PDF Page B

mortar. But what’s cardamom until it’s been under the pestle, say I! Do have some more cakes.
    Embi: Excuse me, but is the pastor’s wife not at home herself?
    Miss Hnallþóra: I don’t know. I rather think she isn’t here. Did the bishop need to have a word with her?
    Embi: No, not really. I was just asking.
    Miss Hnallþóra: Quite so. One could try asking down at Neðratraðkot (Netherlane Croft). It’s thought to be haunted sometimes in springtime, or so they say.
    Embi: But you’re the housekeeper, are you not?
    Miss Hnallþóra: I’m simply here. I go with the parsonage.
    Embi: Were you already here when pastor Jón came here?
    Miss Hnallþóra: Yes, I’m from up the mountain.
    Embi: From up the mountain?
    The lady heaved a sigh, closed her eyes, and inhaled a needless sort of “yes” all the way down into the lungs—yessing on the in-breath, as it’s called.
    Embi: From up the mountain? Is that some particular family?
    Miss Hnallþóra: I don’t come from any particular family. That’s for other folk.
    Embi: Nothing particular in the way of news around here?
    Miss Hnallþóra: There’s nothing much happens around here. Nothing ever happens to anyone. No one has ever seen anything.
    Embi: Nothing ever happened to you either? Never seen anything?
    Miss Hnallþóra: Nothing to speak of.
    Embi: Perhaps something you cannot speak of? Have you never owned a horse, for instance?
    Miss Hnallþóra: No, praise be to God. Others have owned horses, I’m happy to say, but not me.
    Embi: Who owns the calf?
    Miss Hnallþóra: The calf! That thing on its last legs? I’ve no idea why I was given it. There’s nothing here to feed to a calf except coffee once in a while, and old cakes I mash up in it. On the other hand I won’t conceal the fact from anyone that once upon a time a little something happened to me. I saw a little something. But never except just that once.
    Embi: This is turning out better than seemed likely.
    Miss Hnallþóra: Of course, I wouldn’t tell a soul about it.
    Embi: That’s not so good!
    Miss Hnallþóra: I’ll just go and make some more coffee.
    Embi: Thanks, but there’s really no need. I’m not accustomed to drinking more than a half a cup or so. And I’m sure that coffeepot holds at least a litre and a half.
    But there was no stopping her going out again with the coffeepot to replenish it, even though the level couldn’t have been lowered by much. While the lady was out, the bishop’s emissary could scarcely take his eyes off the three war-cakes bulging with spices and measuring a total of sixty centimetres in diameter. I was sweating a little on the forehead.
    In the hope that with a little patience some information might be got out of the lady, I accepted a third cup contrary to my custom. It worked. The visitor’s coffee-swilling began to have a loosening effect on this fettered woman. Her reactions became more human, and she submitted to that softening of the soul and surrender to God and man that comes from telling a story. She returned to that one thing that had ever happened to her in her lifetime, that one and only time she had ever seen something. It was very nearly fifty years ago, but, she says, I remember it as if it had happened yesterday. May I not cut the bishop a wedge of layer cake?
    Embi: There’s really no need, but, well, yes, thank you.
    Miss Hnallþóra: Would you not like a piece from each one? It wasn’t the intention to have to throw it to the dogs.
    The visitor besought her only to cut from the one, preferably the one with the sugar icing, because that one wasn’t as moist as the others and wasn’t oozing quite so much juice and tinned fruit. So she cut me a wedge that would have been a suitable portion for seven people, and laid it on my plate.
    Miss Hnallþóra: I was just a chit of a girl at the time. I was sent on some errand out to Bervík. Instead of going the direct coastal way along the seashore, I followed the sheep-paths higher up,