Read "The Fish can Sing" by Halldór Laxness online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
On the day I graduated from school as a university student my grandmother made hot chocolate for everyone up in the mid-loft. It was that thick, fatty, sweet, strong chocolate which is never brewed any more, with cinnamon-bark in it, and with cold pancakes with sugar to boot. It was a great moment to be allowed to drink chocolate in the company of these people who symbolized peace in the world, and I was fortunate to have lived among them. But once again, just like the time some years back when my grandfather had told me his plan to send me to school, I felt apathetic and just a little bit apprehensive. Once I had been apprehensive about losing the security which reached as far as the turnstile-gate at Brekkukot; now I was apprehensive about the new paths which would open up when I stopped treading the well-worn route up to school in the morning, in a half-circle round the Lake, and back home again in the afternoon. Where was I to go on all the mornings which I had yet to wake up to after this?
"And what are you now thinking of becoming, friend? " said the superintendent. Contrary to all custom he had allowed himself to play truant for half an hour from his supervisory labours in order to share this excellent chocolate.