Heaven and Hell by Jón Kalman Stefánsson Page A

bites immediately, and then all of the others hurry to bite as well, because none wish to stand apart, it’s excellent to hang around here, says the first out of the side of his mouth, and the others agree. Hours pass, then movement, then everything starts moving, they’re all pulled away, some great power pulls them up, upward and upward in the direction of the sky, which soon breaks and opens onto another world full of peculiar fish.
    They have set all the lines and the wait begins.
    The long wait for the fish to bite. Two hours of doing nothing. Two hours in an open coffin out on the Polar Sea. In frost, rising wind. Now it’s only Gvendur and Einar who have work to do. They do not let go of the oars, do not get a break from them until they reach land and the freedom of the sea is behind them, unless the wind is favorable for the sail, then they rest while the boat sails, Pétur steers and the sixereen turns into an elegant ship. Oh yes, those are good moments, even beautiful, a coffin becomes a ship that cleaves the waves, the men doze and their minds fill with dreams.
    Gvendur and Einar row against the current to hold the boat steady near the buoy. The dark color of night sinks slowly before the daylight, very slowly, it is still half-dark above their heads, a star here and there in breaks in the heavy, low-lying clouds that gradually fill the sky. Pétur stoops for the whey keg, removes the cork, takes a long drink, hands it to Árni, and they all drink in the same way, fill their mouths with whey and are refreshed. The temperature drops. This will be a cold wait but so what? They have waited over lines in colder weather than this, and have waited in more wind, so much so that it took four men to keep the boat in place. They have waited in so much darkness that Pétur needed to hold fast to the rope tied to the buoy so as not to let it slip from the boat and be lost, held fast to the rope but feared to his bones that the Devil was lurking in the night, holding onto the other end. Yet it would never cross his mind to let go, because the worst thing in this world is without doubt letting one’s lines slip away, losing them, having to leave them behind, having to flee to shore in consternation before the fury can seize the boat, before the waves grew larger and broke over it, precisely as heavy as death. But the world is varied, there are storms and there are calms, and it was gloriously calm when they last rowed out, half a month ago. The world slept, the sea was a mirror that rose and fell. They had seen every crack and crevice in the mountains many kilometers from the boat and the sky arched over them like the roof of a church, the roof that protects us. The six men had been silent, humble, and thankful for their existence. But it isn’t natural for a person to feel thankful or humble for long: some had started thinking about tobacco and forgotten eternal life. Bárður and the boy had leaned back a bit and looked at the sparkling sky that makes us humble and powerful at once and seems sometimes to speak to us. What it says carefully cleanses old wounds.
    But there are no stars now, not on this voyage. Not any longer. They have all disappeared behind the clouds that thicken overhead, bringing bad weather. Day is approaching, the wind grows stronger and colder, born of ice that fills the world behind the horizon, we shall not row in that direction, Hell is the cold. They throw on their waterproofs, because even though their sweaters are well fulled the arctic wind slips easily through them, and it certainly doesn’t help that they’re drenched in sweat. They all grab their waterproofs, all except for Bárður, he grabs nothing, his hand stiffens in the empty air and he curses loudly. What? asks the boy. Damned waterproof, I forgot it, and Bárður curses more, he curses having focused unnecessarily on memorizing lines from Paradise Lost , so focused that he forgot his waterproof. Andrea has surely already