The Blue Fox (7 page)

‘How predictable,’ replied the vixen, dryly:

‘Go on then, argue about electricity.’

By rights the electricity debate should have taken place in a grander setting than the stony crack in a glacier’s backside. The fact of the case was that Reverend Baldur had been invited to Reykjavik to talk about this interest of his at a public, advertised meeting. There he meant to oppose some Icelandic-Canadian émigré who was preaching Edison’s great tidings to his former countrymen.

If the avalanche had not taken him, the priest would have returned home to Dalbotn the morning after the fox hunt. He would have put the finishing touches on his speech and then reached the capital four days later, at noon on 15th January, and that evening he would have wiped both his nose and his arse with his opponent. By his calculations, the meeting must have taken place three days ago; quarrelling about the matter with the vixen was some compensation.

So, the priest expounded his religious theories for the beast, for against electricity he had theological arguments. These theories were highly modern, because Reverend Baldur believed in a material God, self-created, both visible and tangible – compare: ‘When it snows on man, it rains on God.’

Consequently he could not accept that electricity, which is created by the friction of the smallest atoms of the world, which form the kernel of God, should be transmitted via wires and cables, here, there and everywhere, even into factories where it would be used to drive machines which, for example, might spit out meat-balls, yes, or mustard.

What had she to say to that?

The vixen decided to meet the priest on his home ground:

‘But if electricity is the building material of the world, and light its revelation, compare the first book of Moses, and God himself is a being of light, though perhaps we can’t see this with the naked eye – like the pitch-black rock that surrounds us – well, couldn’t you say then that in reality it is one all-embracing world mission to bring God into people’s homes via electric power lines; even illuminate whole cities with him – n’est-ce pas?’

She looked enquiringly at the priest. He returned her look in silence; she tweaked the argument:

‘Surely the transmission of electric power ought to be desirable in the eyes of the Church, and its servants, if it is the Almighty Himself who shines in the lamps.’

He did not reply. Had she stumped him, then? No, the little fox had not noticed that while she was talking, Reverend Baldur had drawn the knife from its sheath and hidden it in his hand; the one facing the rock wall.

Then he said gently:

‘Do you really believe, Madam Vixen, that the radiance from these electric bulbs of yours can penetrate the human soul?’

Before she had a chance to answer, the man plunged his knife deep into the vixen’s breast.

He raised the vixen’s remains on the blade of his knife and stared into her dull eyes; the pupils were filmy like moorland tarns in the first freeze of winter, but all the priest saw was that she was dead at last.

The corpse lay limp in his hands and he discovered that the skin was strangely loose on the body; a sure sign of a witch’s familiar – since the night she had tried to drive him mad by dividing herself into four, he had suspected that that is exactly what she was: a witch’s familiar. His ruse of luring her into talk had been successful. The sender had been careless, he had put too much of himself into her, spoken unwittingly through her. Yes, the use of French at the end of her speech about the city of lights had given the beast away. The priest was in no doubt as to who had sent him Vixen Reynard’s-daughter.

The demon bore every sign of having been raised against him by that fool of a sheriff from Fjord, Valdimar Skuggason, his elder brother. This upstart had never forgiven Reverend Baldur for the fact that in her widowhood their mother Nal had chosen to live at the Botn parsonage, taking with her their patrimony, the hymnbook collection of ‘Old’ Skuggi Haraldsson from Saurar.

No, she wasn’t put off by the fact that her Baldur had never left these shores nor that he had received all his education from an Icelandic priest’s school.

Reverend Baldur Skuggason skinned the vixen, thinking of his brother Valdi with quiet vengeance all the while, cutting along the animal’s back, hacking a groove beside the spine, from ruff to tail: yes, he’d get his just deserts; he groped inside the body with his hands, down along the flanks, squeezing his fingers between flesh and hide, leaving the fat behind in the belly: he would bring a charge against him at the high court for attempted murder; he snapped the outer limbs from their sockets, cut a ring round the paws and forced the legs out of their socks, he jabbed his forefinger into the muzzle, tore the nose from the skull with his nail; he would go to the gallows, the damn mountebank – and so the man tugged and tore and toiled until he had ripped the animal from its blue pelt.

The priest stripped naked. He gouged the fat out of the skin bag and greased himself from top to toe. Then he dressed himself in the hide, which proved so roomy that its forelegs reached the ground. The vixen herself wasn’t much to look at where she lay on the stones, naked as a foetus in the womb. The man stuck his finger into her ribcage, plucked out her heart and laid it on his tongue:

It’s like ptarmigan, thought Reverend Baldur, pulling the skin over his head. He swallowed the slimy fox heart, and as if he’d been struck by lightning the thought flashed through him – OUT!

Reverend Baldur dug himself out of the avalanche. He used both jaws and claws, he no longer knew his name, he just scratched and gnawed, gnawed and scratched.

The blood throbbed in his temples.

‘Light, more light!’

But the closer the priest came to his goal, the less man there was in him, the more beast.

He stands shivering on the glacial moraine, gulping down the refreshing mountain air. The morning sun blesses and restores him.

Below his feet lies a long, quite narrow, green valley. There are fair slopes, grown with grass and willow scrub. A river runs down the middle; a char flashes under the surface, a phalarope floats above. Field mice scamper over the moor, a whimbrel whistles in the marshes, ptarmigan busy themselves building nests among the tussocks, a honey bee growls in the moss and plovers wait to be caught. Everything is greener and bluer, larger and fatter than he has ever seen before.

Then a fox barks from the stony ground at the mouth of the valley.

‘Argh, argh!’

Skugga-Baldur pricks his ears at the call.

There’s no mistaking the scent; it’s a vixen on heat. Lust burns in his eyes, he puts his best paw forward and sets off down the fair valley; he will be the first to reach her.

It is spring before the days of man.

My dear friend,

Forgive me for replying so late to your last letter, but various things have happened in this part of the world since New Year. They would not be thought particularly newsworthy in your world, but they are considered quite something here: a woman died, and a man was lost.

Yes, my Abba is dead. It happened on the fourth day of the New Year; she had a peaceful passing and was composed in her death. I have missed her a great deal, which is not to be wondered at, since I have had her by me all these years. She was not old, maybe thirty, which I gather is common with people of her sort. It was as if she aged more rapidly than I myself; she had turned grey and was becoming a little forgetful lately. Now, of course, you will ask yourself whether she received your feather. She did so, and it gave her much joy. She thought it quite something to possess the feather of a Danish cygnet, indeed she knew Herr Andersen’s stories well – and she put it in her book straightaway on Christmas night.

I thank you also for my part. You are well versed in the French poets, though you are of the opinion that they cannot write, n’est-ce pas? Mallarmé affects me like a flowering cherry tree reflected in an eye, a scented handkerchief, or a dragonfly settling on the shoulder of a swimmer in a smooth river. Well, well, there you can see in black and white what a great inspiration he is!

A man was lost, I wrote, and I shall not keep you any longer in suspense over that news. It is the Parson of Botn who has vanished, Reverend Baldur Skuggason, brother of Valdimar ‘Bollocks’ who danced with the lamp-post at The Leather Trousers. He was seized by the wild notion, foolish man, of rushing off on a fox hunt in the mountains, although it was the depths of winter and everyone knew that a great blizzard was in the offing. (An old cat scratched itself on New Year’s Eve, and that means fearsome gales; this is the sort of ‘meteorologia’ we practise here.) That is to say, he has not been seen since and it does not take a lively imagination to guess what has become of him.

People believe that this will result in a review of the living conditions of country priests. Reverend Baldur monopolised all foxhole work here in the parish to eke out his income, as the skins fetch a high price. Certainly things have come to a pretty pass if priests have begun to throw away their lives on foxhunting, from purest penury.

‘Good riddance’ is all I have to say concerning the disappearance of Reverend Baldur; I thought him a terrible stupidus.

Abba means: Hafdis.
Itza means: God.
Itza ha-am means: God wills.
Itza um means: God may not.
Itz-umba uba-hara means: God’s light,
the sun or soul.
Ufa-hara ho-fakk means: the moon.
Ut-da-da ho-fakk means: the stars.
Iff-itz means: light.
Fuffa huya means: angels.
Iffa ku-ku means: heaven.
Itza i-addiga means: God knows all.
Otzina-maeya means: Christmas.
Itza ro-ro means: Jesus.
Otzina-huya means: Easter.
Otzina-mortha means: Sunday.
Avv-avv means: talk.
Ko-ko means: sing.
Andha ha-am ko-ko means: let us sing.
Umm avv-avv means: doesn’t want to talk.
Umra means: don’t know.
Amh-amh means: beautiful, good.
Offo-ker means: ugly.
Futzu means: man.
Hall-hall means: girl.
Fuffa-ro means: child.
Furru means: person.
Mamba means: bird.
Morthana-huya means: day.
Ho-fakk means: night.
Sa-odo means: the sea.
Fadi-fad means: rain.
Huyera means: snow.
Mah-mah means: summer.
Mah-mah huyera means: winter.
Ka means: fire.
Faff-faff means: priest.
Kondura means: king.
Tampa means: clothes.
Umph Abba’s means: Hafdis’s box.
Fifi-pupu means: hymn.
Pupu means: darkness.
Ibo means: sleep.

Here you have ‘Abba’s Dictionary’; this is how she spoke when I found her. As you see, there are a number of biblical terms there, which supports my belief about who she was ... no, I won’t be silent about what I know with certainty of Hafdis’s origins. I have no secrets from you; you will keep them to yourself. I can always trust you, my good friend and master.

So it was that in late February we Dale folk were afflicted with one of the unluckiest men in Iceland; Solvi Helgason, vagabond and jack-of-all-trades. He slid on his skis from farm to farm, scrounging food in return for drawing people’s likenesses, mending woodwork or passing on gossip from other districts. This four-eyes knocked on my door too, and stayed here a week. I found out that he is clever with his paints and full of common sense. He did not bore me; but Solvi is damaged in mind and body, and this was the work of men.

Then one evening it so happened that he began to talk about Abba, calling her Laufey – it was I who gave her the name of Hafdis, saying she was Jon’s daughter, which means no more than ‘Icelander’s daughter’ – but I could tell from his speech that he was sincere. He said he had found her abandoned on the Kjolur mountain track; she was seven years old at the time, he thought. She spent three seasons on the road with him, until he traced her family and was able to return her to her father’s house. During the time that Abba was travelling with Solvi, he made her a coffin from precious driftwood that he had found by the Horn. When he mentioned this I knew he was telling the truth, because he could even describe two Latin inscriptions found in Abba’s coffin; indeed, it was he who had written them.

Many years later Solvi came back to the farm where Laufey lived. Everything was in a fearful state: the mother had killed herself with poison and the father had sold the girl to some foreign sailors, while he himself was on his way to study for the priesthood. This wretched man was Baldur Skuggason, then deacon of Hofdi parish; in exchange for his twelve-year-old daughter he had received a front-loading rifle and a bag of shot.

Now you see why I speak so coldly of him above. But, dear me, how full of grief and sorrow this letter of mine has become; indeed, please forgive my tediousness.

Apropos! If you happen to pass down Kronprinsessegade, would you be so kind as to look in on Auntie Perch and order two pounds of Breakfast Blend, item eight ounces of Darjeeling? I have an account and they send it to me. No, I don’t intend to drink it alone. I ‘inherited’ one of the priest’s servants. His name is Halfdan Atlason; he is simple-minded but hardworking, and ships enough tea to compete with the English House of Lords.