Independent People by Halldor Laxness

THE WEATHER changed after mid-Advent, thick snow falling quietly, gently, but persistently, day after day; otherwise nothing, not a footprint to be seen. Calm-weather snow is the most incommunicative of all things that fall from the skies; one looked blindly out at the drift of it, it was as if one was cut off from everything, as if one no longer existed. Good, as long as nothing happens, said Bjartur. Some people grumble about monotony,-such complaints are the marks of immaturity, sensible people don't like things happening. Of animals, of course, few have the same capacity for monotony as a torn has. While the snow accumulated in the window, veiling the pane like bluish wool-combings, the cat only closed his eyes in facetious dignity and suave malice. Finally it stopped snowing. The skies brightened, but the frost grew harder; and cold, gusty winds blew the snow into deep drifts. This winter, however, there was no lack of hay; one need fear no natural causes this winter. But what of the supernatural? Was that in evidence? Not at the moment. The sense of insecurity that had sent the farmer up-country in search of a cat seemed to be on the wane again. He stroked the beast from head to tip of tail, though once only and in great haste, and said: "See that the dog and the cat don't flare up at each other. " Yet when he came to think the matter over in cold reason, he could not understand how it could ever have occurred to him that a cat should have any power over the supernatural. All the same, he was no longer rising in the night to keep watch on the ewe-house.

But the intangible forces of existence were not yet worsted, in spite of tom-cats. They had only been waiting for a frost, of course, because they dislike leaving their footprints in the snow. It was early one morning and Bjartur was making his usual trip out to the ewe-house. He opened the door, and after lighting the candle, looked about him, to be faced by one of the most horrible scenes that he had ever had the misfortune to set eyes on: ten of his ewes lay dead or in their death-struggles, some on the floor, some in the mangers. They had been butchered in the most monstrous fashion; some of them had had their throats cut half-way across, others had had rusty nails driven into their skulls, and others still their heads battered in as if with a club. It was a scene of slaughter that baffled description, which was possibly one of the reasons why Gudbjartur Jonsson never had much to say about it whenever, in later days, the subject cropped up in discussion. He had never had such a shock in his life. He tore his hat off and scratched his head with both hands as hard as he could, then he laid hold of carcass after carcass, examined their injuries, and made an end of those that were still breathing. But he could contain himself no longer. Turning on his heel, he struck his clenched fists together and swore and spat in every direction. He challenged the devil Kolumkilli and his trollop Guthvor to come forth and fight. In language pagan and Christian alike he called upon them to take the field against him, both together, and chose the slope in front of the croft as his ground-what could the man do, what could he say? He demanded that the secret powers of existence show some sign of manhood and come out into the open. Surely they could no longer hide behind the skirts of existence if they wished to preserve a last shred of repute. "It's easy enough to murder and destroy when everybody's asleep," he cried, shaking his fists into the frozen face of nature and up at the sky. Finally he could find no words strong enough and squealed; the bitch squealed too. It was pure blasphemy; and availed nothing, the faint, blue gleam in the east dull and sluggish. Then he began to wonder whether by swearing at monsters he was not pursuing the wrong course of action, for there had occurred to him an old story of goblins that throve on the like-but what was the man to say? Hymns, thought he. Ought he perhaps to ask old Hallbera to drag herself out here and sing a hymn? Or fetch the minister and have him call upon Jesus in Hebrew? Not, of course, that he, Bjartur of Summerhouses, had any faith in religion; independent people have no need of religion, he was a match for any spectre. On the other hand, he had heard old stories which said that ghosts believed in theology and yielded to the power of Jesus' names pronounced in famous old tongues, though of course there was little hope that the Reverend Teodor, that baldheaded youngster, would be able to do much in the way of disciplining fiends whom the stalwart old priests of yore, with all their hard-mouthed exorcisms, had repeatedly consigned to hell without result.