Paradise Reclaimed by Halldór Laxness Page A

By the way, could I ask you for something to drink?”
    “Girls!” the farmer shouted into the house. “Give this man here a drink of whey. And a bit of cod’s head.”
    Soon the sun shone from a clear sky. By the afternoon one could see mirages. The sea rose trembling into the sky. The Vestmannaeyjar had floated up to heaven.
    Steinar of Hlíðar had almost forgotten that it was Sunday, until a crowd of churchgoers rode past him. Someone said he had a fine saddle there.
    “Indeed I have,” said Steinar. “And a riding-crop, what’s more. But the bridle I have mislaid.”
    They offered him a pony, but he preferred to walk. The farmers said that this was unlike folk from Steinahlíðar.
    “That’s quite right, good people,” said Steinar. “This is just a little fellow passing through—so little, in fact, that he cannot become any smaller by not being on horseback.”
    Steinar reached the church on foot much later than the others; when he arrived at this unfamiliar place of worship, everyone had already gone inside for the service. Outside, there was that peculiar sense of human withdrawal that pervades a parish-of-ease every Sunday between noon and three in the afternoon. A few ponies stood drowsing in the corral; but the dogs sprawled around at the lich-gate or the church-porch and howled at the Vestmannaeyjar because they had floated up to heaven. There was not a human being within sight. The glad sound of singing could be heard from inside the church. Steinar was pleased when he realised that he had arrived in time for the second benediction.
    But as he followed the path up from the farmhouse to the church he caught sight of three old tethering-blocks standing in a field; they were no longer in use, because either the farm had been shifted or else the church had. When he looked more closely at the boulders, however, he saw that some large and untidy bundle had been tethered to the middle block. He went over to see what it could be, and found that it was a man.
    “Well I never,” said Steinar.
    This man had been gagged and bound and the rope made fast to the iron staple in the boulder. Steinar went up to him and contemplated the state he was in.
    “Can I be right? It’s surely not the Mormon, is it?” he said.
    The prisoner was hatless and his mop of hair stuck out in all directions. In daylight his colour was reddish-brown, like a tanned hide, and the gag made his face look distorted. Steinar of Hlíðar at once set about removing the gag, which turned out to be a round stone picked from the mud. The man spat a few times when he had got rid of it; there was some dirt in his mouth, and his gum was bleeding slightly. The two men greeted one another.
    “You have had a bit of a roughing up,” said Steinar of Hlíðar, and went on untying the rope.
    “Oh, I’ve known worse,” said the Mormon, and reached into his pocket for his spectacle case. “I’m lucky they did not break my glasses.”
    “What a way to treat a stranger,” said Steinar of Hlíðar. “And these are supposed to be Christians!”
    “Am I muddy at all?” asked the Mormon.
    Steinar coiled the rope up carefully like the tidy man he was, and laid it on the tethering-block. Then he brushed the Mormon down a little.
    “There is little I can say,” said Steinar. “Criticizing others will not make me any bigger.”
    “When have Christians behaved in any other way?” said the Mormon. “They began to fall into the Great Apostasy right from the days of the Primitive Church.”
    “Excuse me, but where is your hat?” said Steinar.
    “It’s safely hidden away,” said the Mormon. “But it’s very odd that they should never try to take my topboots away, considering how good they are.”
    “You must be a fearless sort of man,” said Steinar. “It’s just as well, if you have to put up with injustice.”
    “Big dogs are the worst,” said the Mormon. “I’ve always been a bit scared of dogs. I was bitten by a bitch when I was