Under the Glacier Read Free Page B

thing.
    Undersigned: I don’t know what I should be called, really. Just an ordinary silly ass, I suppose. Nothing else. I didn’t do too badly in theology, though.
    Bishop: Perhaps not even wanting to be ordained?
    Undersigned: Haven’t thought much about it.
    Bishop: You ought to think about it. And then you ought to get yourself a wife. That’s how it went with me. It is also wholesome to have children. That’s when you first begin to understand the workings of Creation. I need someone to go on a little journey for me. If it turns out well, you will be given a good living by and by. But a wife you’ll have to sort out for yourself.
    I began to listen expectantly now, but the bishop began to talk about French literature. French literature is so enjoyable, he said. Don’t you think so?
    Undersigned: Yes, I suppose so. If one had the time for it.
    Bishop: Don’t you find it odd that the greatest French writers should have written books about Iceland that made them immortal? Victor Hugo wrote Han d’Islande , Pierre Loti wrote Pécheurs d’Islande , and Jules Verne crowned it with that tremendous masterpiece about Snæfellsjökull (Snæfells Glacier), Voyage au Centre de la Terre . That’s where Árni Saknússemm appears, the only alchemist and philosopher we’ve ever had in Iceland. No one can ever be the same after reading that book. Our people could never write a book like that—least of all about Snæfellsjökull.
    The undersigned wasn’t entirely in agreement with the bishop over the last book on the list, and declared that he himself was more impressed by that writer’s account of Phileas Fogg’s journey round the world than Otto Lidenbrock’s descent down the crater on Snæfellsjökull.
    It emerged, however, that what I thought about French literature was quite immaterial to the bishop.
    Bishop: What do you say to putting your best foot forward and going to Snæfellsjökull to conduct the most important investigation at that world-famous mountain since the days of Jules Verne? I pay civil service rates.
    Undersigned: Don’t ask me to perform any heroic deeds. Besides, I’ve heard that heroic deeds are never performed on civil service rates. I’m not cut out for derring-do. But if I could deliver a letter for your Grace out at Glacier or something of that sort, that shouldn’t be beyond my capacities.
    Bishop: I want to send you on a three-day journey or so on my behalf. I’ll be giving you a written brief for the mission. I’m going to ask you to call on the minister there, pastor Jón Prímus, for me, and tell him he is to put you up. There’s something that needs investigating out there in the west.
    Undersigned: What’s to be investigated, if I may ask?
    Bishop: We need to investigate Christianity at Glacier.
    Undersigned: And how am I expected to do that—an inexperienced ignoramus like me?
    Bishop: It would probably be best to begin by investigating old pastor Jón himself: for example, to establish whether the man’s crazy or not, or is perhaps more brilliant than all the rest of us. He spent six years at a university in Germany trying to study history and eventually ended up as a theologian here with us. He was always a little equivocal. Some say he’s lost his faith.
    Undersigned: Am I to start meddling in that?
    Bishop: What I want to know, because I happen to be the office boy at the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs, is first of all why doesn’t the man keep the church in good repair? And why doesn’t he hold divine service? Why doesn’t he baptise the children? Why doesn’t he bury the dead? Why hasn’t he drawn his stipend for ten or twenty years? Does that mean he’s perhaps a better believer than the rest of us? And what does the congregation say? On three successive visitations I have instructed the old fellow to put these matters right. The office has written him all of fifty letters. And never a word in reply, of course. But you can’t warn a man more than three