The Blue Fox by Sjon Page B

that if you climbed our mountain thirteen times, you still wouldn’t have reached the top. Halfway up the slopes of the great mountain is the parish of Darjeeling. And when the birds in Darjeeling break into their dawn chorus, life quickens on the paths that link the teagardens to the villages: it’s the tea-pickers going to their work; they may be poorly dressed, yet some have silver rings in their noses.’
    ‘I-is it thrushes singing?’ asks the eejit.
    ‘No, it’s the song sparrow, and under its clear song you can hear the tapping of a woodpecker.’
    ‘N-no birds I know?’
    ‘I expect there are wagtails,’ answers Fridrik.
    Halfdan nods and sips his tea. Meanwhile Fridrik twists up his moustache on the left-hand side and continues his tale:
    ‘At the garden gate they each take their basket and the day’s work begins. From then until suppertime the harvesters will pick the topmost leaves from every plant, and their fingertips will be the tea’s first staging post on the long journey that may end, for example, in the teapot here at Brekka.’
    So this morning hour passes.

It is daylight when Fridrik and the eejit Halfdan come out of the farmhouse with the coffin between them. They carry it easily; the dead woman was not large and the coffin is no work of art, knocked together from scraps of timber found around the farm – but it’ll do and seems sound enough. The mare Rosa waits out in the yard, sated with hay. The men place the coffin on a sledge, lash it down good and hard, and fasten it either side of the saddle with long spars, which lie along the horse’s flanks and are tied firmly to the sledge.
    After this is done, Fridrik takes an envelope from his jacket. He shows it to Halfdan and says:
    ‘You’re to give Reverend Baldur this letter as soon as the funeral is over. If he asks for it before, tell him I forgot to give it to you. Then you’re to remember it when he has finished the ceremony.’
    He pushes the envelope deep into the eejit’s pocket, patting the pocket firmly:
    ‘When the funeral’s over ...’
    And they say goodbye, the man who owned Abba and her sweetheart – former sweetheart.
     
***
     
Brekka in the Dale, 8 January 1883
     
    Dear Archdeacon Baldur Skuggason,
     
    I enclose the sum of thirty-four crowns. It is payment for the funeral of the woman Hafdis Jonsdottir, and is to cover wages for yourself and six pallbearers, carriage of the coffin from the farm to the church, lying in state, three knells and payment for coffee, sugar and bread for yourself and the pallbearers, as well as any mourners who may attend.
    I do not insist on any singing over the woman, nor any address or recital of ancestry. You are to be guided by your own taste and inclinations, or those of any congregation.
    I have seen to the coffin and shroud myself, being familiar with the task from my student days in Copenhagen, as your brother Valdimar can attest.
    I hope this now completes our business with regard to Hafdis Jonsdottir’s funeral service.
     
    Your obedient servant,
Fridrik B. Fridjonsson
     
    P.S. Last night I dreamt of a blue vixen. She ran along the screes, heading up the valley. She was as fat as butter, with a pelt of prodigious thickness.
     
    F. B. F.
     
***
     
    Now the foolish funeral procession lacks for nothing. It sets out from the yard, that is to say, it slides headlong down the slopes, until man, horse and corpse recover their equilibrium on the riverbank. One could skate along it up the valley, all the way to the church doors at Botn.
    Herb-Fridrik goes into the house. He hopes that Halfdan, eejit that he is, won’t break open the coffin and peep inside on the way.

On Saturday 18 April 1868 a great cargo ship ran aground at Onglabrjotsnef on the Reykjanes peninsula, a black-tarred triple-master with three decks. The third mast had been chopped down, by which means the crew had saved themselves, and the ship was left unmanned, or so it was thought. The splendour of everything