Sjon - From the Mouth of the Whale

SOUL FLY: large and long in appearance, almost in the shape of a man, with red thighs and two legs which hang low in flight, like the redshank when it drives an interloper from the nesting grounds. It has a distinctive singing voice.

I lie in the grass by the pond, quite spent … The island has fallen silent, the tide is coming in … I think: how wonderful Sigrídur would have found it to see and hear this … But fortunately she is on land with Reverend Pálmi, otherwise she would be dead again … And I think: how newsworthy this would seem to my esteemed rector, the famous, divinely blessed philosopher and defender of bodily as well as spiritual knowledge, the kind-hearted Ole Worm, who took pity on his downtrodden, ill-used little brother in the study of natural phenomena, Jónas Pálmason of Iceland … How I wish I could send him this musical island in gratitude for having sheltered me awhile under his academic gown; make one of the English herring boats out here on the bay tow the island south to Copenhagen … But it cannot be done … I will have to draw it instead … I will try to send him a drawing … I am exhausted … My grizzled head lolls to one side, my arms lie flung out, my legs splayed … As floppy, I suppose, as a rag doll thrown aside by a child after a vigorous game … The child has run off somewhere, the doll sprawls in a corner … So it is when the forces of nature enjoy a fleeting game with one, which ends in an instantaneous victory for the mighty, leaving behind the poor toy with all the unrealised games playing out before its mind’s eye; not that anything would ever have come of them … But today it is neither the gnawing doubt that anything will ever return to its place nor the painful certainty that the mountain will never lack for snow … It was neither an earthquake nor an avalanche … Like the game that lingers on in the doll, the music continued inside me … I am inspired, puffed up with the stories, the poems that the boisterous east wind has taught me … I feel as if I know all there is to know! The compartments of my body have been filled with all the knowledge a solitary man can possess, alone and unaided by books, schoolmasters, picture stories, wise old dames … I myself am like a compendium, which inside one thick leather cover contains all the wisdom of the world on many closely written folios, lavishly illuminated and bound up with horsehair string to prevent it from spewing out pages … Whatever I am asked, about great matters or small, I will know the answer … I can describe with equal certainty the hoarse mating call of the goosander, the cruel nature of the red-combed whale, the last days of the Greenland colony, polygamy among the Negroes, the explosive force of gunpowder, a certain cure for the squitters, the mildness of the wild pansy … Nothing, nothing at all, is strange to me any more … I am omniscient … A fit of yawning assails me … I let my mouth gape wide, stroking my face with flat palms … Breathe in and out with great sucking sounds, quite unafraid that any spirit of the air will sneak inside me … I clap my hands together: let them come! There is no room any more in this wisdom-stuffed Jónas … I feel as if at least three spirits are trying to force their way into my mouth at once, seeking an entrance to my body down my windpipe … I let them rage … Feel them crashing into my uvula again and again, but they will have to go away disappointed … My gorge is stuffed like a Danish sausage, full perhaps of lore about the natural history of bean plants and garlic, and nothing that has the merest hint of the selfish character of fallen devils can get past that stuffing; no, only the self-sacrificing breath of life can pass down there, clear, blue and pure, which keeps the heart cool and nourishes the brain … I sit up … Rock uncontrollably forwards and from side to side … Lie down again … The world may have entered my carcass but that is not to say that it has arranged itself there according to any rational order … Indeed, how could it? There was too much going on when the symphony rose to its height and the tempo of the notes merged with my own tempo … For the most part I received it with open arms but there were times when I turned my back or knelt … Five times the storm of notes knocked me out cold … I squealed and wailed, bellowed and moaned … Yes, it entered me in every conceivable manner … Fire, air, earth, water … From these elements everything is made, including me … Whatever was thrust inside me is made of the same substance as myself … It may be hot, dry, cold or damp … And so I can find the proper place for everything, as if I were a tall building of twelve floors, very spacious and furnished with cabinets containing many shelves and chests with many drawers … In the two compartments of my heart I organise everything that is warm, light and spring-like … Tales of the endearing nature of infants, the deeds of virtuous girls, the unlooked-for helpfulness of wild beasts; healing herbs that must be picked in the morning dew; fair golden jewels made in honour of the heavenly family and other holy beings or else to encase the bones and skin of saints, and of course the pelican … Some things I launch into my blood, home to all that is hot and damp: many things connected to the world of woman, her work, her womb and her love for her children and husband, though some of her fair things find a place in my kidneys, according to the alchemical order, and some even lower, in the lap, and there I am guided by the rules of astrology … And so it goes on, as if I were a curator in the great building that houses my collection … Yes, it is large but dilapidated; the copper shingles on the tower that have not been blown off have turned green, the internal timbers are rotten and the cellar needs mucking out … I walk from room to room, a large bunch of keys at my belt …. In my mind I go up and down the passageways, open the door to the kidneys, close the door to the bladder, take things out of coffers, hang them from the ceiling, lay them on the examination table … And so, slowly but surely, I move everything inside me from place to place until it ends up on the right shelf … One item goes into the brain, another into the liver, others into the limbs … And when I have placed in the spleen all that is cold and melancholy in the world, governed by the bitter black gall that it cooks in its cauldrons or its natural equivalent in the brew of tribulations — there is far too much of me in there, alas: a container of poison from plants, venomous shells and stones; an etching of the man who murdered his wife by shoving her head in a pan of boiling barley porridge; various sad poems about the dark times we live in, including several by the one who is holding the reins here, such as: ‘a coal-black sun of sins now climbs / the skies to light the ways / the defender of such heinous crimes / ’tis obligatory to praise’; the swim bladder of a pike; the blunt blade of the axe used by the eighty-year-old executioner Jón Jónsson to chop the head off Björn ‘ladies’ man’ Thorláksson, taking three dozen blows to sunder the joints of his neck; as well as gloomy clouds and all that sort of black gall rubbish — when all this has been placed in the spleen, an equilibrium is finally reached … Now at last I can stand up … I scramble to my feet … I stand upright … If an eagle-sighted man standing on the mainland placed a good spy-glass to his eye and scanned the island from end to end, he would get a tremendous shock … On the bank of the pond at the western end of the island what should he see but a sixty-five-year-old gaffer in a threadbare canvas coat, grey-haired as a head of cotton grass in autumn … No, if the onlooker’s miraculous sight was sufficiently powerful and penetrated deep, he would see not the figure of a man but the building that I feel myself to be … Built from the trunks of trees that drank water and sprouted from the earth; walled about with bricks of clay hardened in the fire, dried in the air: