World Light by Halldór Laxness Page A

same lonely orphan as before, in the same place on earth, out by the farthest seas. There was peace around him for a time while he was getting better; no one threatened to beat him. When he looked at the sunbeam on the ceiling above him, he was sometimes seized by an unnatural optimism: “Blessed sun!” he thought to himself, and felt that life was worth living, and was thankful to God for having created the sun to shine upon mankind. The days were rapidly getting longer. He sat up in bed and gazed enraptured at the sun-beams of life. Once again the old harmonies began to stir in his soul, the sounds he knew from his boyhood, the harp of the universe. He stared into the blue for a long time, he was for a time quite oblivious to his surroundings, his soul took part in this divine concert in enthralled gratitude, beyond words; for a moment he felt that he was living the very love of God, everything was perfect and good. He did not come to until Magnína had called his name three times.
    “Are you having an attack?” she asked.
    “No,” he replied.
    He lay down and pulled the tattered cover up over his eyes. A few days went by, and the revelation of the deity continued to echo in his soul when he was alone with the sunbeam on the ceiling. He was given pure fresh milk, sometimes even buttered flatbread. No one said “Go there!” or “Do that!” in bad weather, each countermanding the other’s orders, or “There won’t be a bone left unbroken in your body if you shirk!” He was hoping and praying that he would not recover too quickly.
    But not all the days were days of sunshine, far from it. There were also sunless days, no divine music, no rapture, no consoling memory, no redeeming hope, only a colorless everyday perception, a dreary consciousness of self which dreaded most of all the prospect of eternal life, a dumb yearning like a leaden ache for something which could save him from the terrible immortality of the soul that stretched before him.
    He had long since finished reading the few books in the house, and there was no longer anything new in them—except for
The
Felsenburg Stories,
which he had not dared to mention for many years for fear of being thrashed. This book was kept deep in Magnína’s clothes chest, and he could count the number of times he had been allowed to look at its outer covers, never inside it. It was a secret book; he had heard Kamarilla scolding her daughter for keeping the light burning, reading it at night.
    “I do so want to read a book,” he said.
    “There aren’t any books here,” Magnína said. “Not that kind of books. Not for reading.”
    “What about
The Felsenburg Stories?
” he asked, in the hope that she would not thrash someone who was ill in bed and past the age of confirmation, besides.
    At that she became solemn and put her head to one side and pressed her lips together and looked severely down at her darning.
    “
The Felsenburg Stories,
” she said. “Let me just tell you that that’s not light reading. It’s a Christian book.”
    “That doesn’t matter,” he said.
    “It doesn’t matter? Of course it matters. It’s a book about human life in the world. It could lead you into sin at your age.”
    “I’ve been confirmed,” he said.
    “Yes, any idiot can be confirmed,” she retorted. “But do you think it brings a great understanding of Jesus in human life? I don’t know what sins I might have committed if I had read such a book before I began to understand. When you’re older, perhaps.”
    But even so she came with
The Felsenburg Stories
the following day, in midafternoon, when no one else was in the loft. The expectation in his eyes was like an ocean. She almost smiled for a moment at the sight of those huge, yearning eyes; then she sat down on the edge of his bed and opened the book. No, he was not allowed to handle the book. It was obvious from its thickness that it was an extremely Christian book, and yet there was about it a quality that