Salka Valka by Halldor Laxness

19

One evening, Salka Valka slunk into the kitchen at Oddsflöt, where Cadet Guà°mundur Jónsson's son-in-law, Hákon, lived. In the spring, this Hákon sometimes shot foxes; once he cleared out two fox dens on the same day, and was paid fifty krónur for each. Afterward, he calculated his daily wage for his entire life, both before that day and since, based on this sum, and came up with average annual earnings of thirty-six thousand five hundred krónur, with an extra hundred krónur in leap years. Whenever the Faroese were fishing here, he helped them fetch ice, and once went abroad on a Faroese ship and stayed in the Faroe Islands for the winter. He was engaged as a teacher by the governor of the islands. One day while he was teaching, there was a great ruckus in the town, and when he looked out the classroom window, he saw a great plume of water on the sea, rising straight up into the air. A rifle stood in one corner of the classroom; Hákon immediately grabbed the rifle, opened the window, and fired at the plume of water. A little later a huge whale drifted ashore; dead. There was a great commotion in the town. A delegation of people was sent to Hákon to ask what he wanted done with the whale he had so artfully shot. Hákon said they could cut up the whale and divide it amongst themselves, with the exception of the kidneys, which he reserved for himself as a reward for his heroism. Then he sold the whale's kidneys for five thousand krónur and deposited the money in a bank in the Faroe Islands. Now he and his wife had eight children, and he was the happiest of men, chatty and hospitable, and living in a house made of turf. His children were notoriously naughty rascals and the eldest boys had reputations as pranksters, having learned early on to trust in their own inventiveness in life's struggle, despite their father's fabled money.