The Great Weaver From Kashmir by Halldór Laxness

with this Carrington while everyone can see that I am sitting alone at my table!”
    And what do you imagine he answered? “I am forced to inform you, dear woman, that the time is past when sons are to be daughters to their mothers!” Imagine it – he said “dear woman”! And when my maid, Miss Bradford, found out that I’d been crying all day because of this rude reply, she couldn’t keep from bringing it up with him that evening. And what do you imagine he answered the poor girl? “I don’t want you to speak to me!” – that’s what she got.
    Nevertheless, I convinced Steinn to come south with me in September; first we stayed several days in Rome, and then here, but his mind had turned away from his mother. He was cold toward me and silent, but I found out that he kept up a steady correspondence with this Carrington fellow. One morning here at the Hotel Britannique he tells me, completely out of the blue: “I’m going to England tonight.”
    My tears and prayers were of no avail. He left that night without giving me an address or any idea at all of what he was planning. Since then I’ve gotten two postcards from him, but he didn’t writehis address on either of them. His father, who had been staying in Palermo since last summer but has recently gone to Genoa, hasn’t had a single word from him.
    Imagine, Diljá dear, how lonely I am, left behind in this lunatic town like in a lion’s den, consumption and memories of an aimless life my company. No one loves me but Death, who prowls around me day and night like an abominable adulterer.

21.
    I would have found it plausible if you had asked me why I married a man like Grímúlfur, as young as I was. Many people have asked me the same thing, few have understood it, most have reproached me; everyone knows that we are no more alike than two creatures from different planets.
    But in fact there is nothing more comprehensible than that I should have taken this destiny-laden step in the heedlessness of my youth. I was raised in complete affluence, yes, in far greater freehanded indulgence than you could ever suspect, and had never been acquainted with anything but luxury from my earliest childhood. And precisely when everyone thought that our power was at its peak my father went bankrupt, and died shortly afterward. We siblings were left orphans, and wound up with our father’s friends, except for the two oldest, who went abroad and made their own livings. I was sixteen years old at the time and ended up with MadamValgerður, your foster mother. And about a year later I became her daughter-in-law, tacitly and calmly. I would gladly have become the daughter-in-law of any other woman in the country, had it not now pleased chance to hang me around the neck of her son. And I was ready to throw my arms round the neck of any man whatsoever; I was wild about men.
    This was a few years after Grímúlfur and your father, Þorsteinn, started in on their business enterprise; business boomed, and out of it grew Ylfingur. Grímúlfur was more like Örnólfur in those days than now. Of course he was never so charming nor as beautifully built as his younger brother, nor as talented, but a lot of girls desired him, because he was a renowned financier and had everything it took to become fabulously wealthy. One winter he asked me to a dance; I’ll tell you about it in as few words as possible, because the story of our coming together is in fact so unremarkable. I was in fairly poor condition: I looked horrible, and I knew it. Even if I was fully mature by my eighteenth year and had long been used to being looked upon as a grown-up girl, on that particular night the gentlemen wouldn’t give me a second glance. I suppose that even then I was already considered Grímúlfur’s betrothed. Long before the dance was over I went to him and asked him to take me home. My throat was tight from