The Great Weaver From Kashmir by Halldór Laxness Page B

grasps her hand, trembles athis glance, her heartbeat is irregular, and all of the pillars of her past tumble down like a house of cards. And then she knows that nothing can hinder her any further, and she seizes the first opportunity to cheat on her husband and drown herself in the embrace of the man who gives her everything, and she is lost. In sin alone is the fulfillment of all her hopes.
    â€œWho gives her everything” – how misguided it is to say such a thing! Because her lover gives her nothing but one gift: he takes everything from her. From her husband she makes demands without giving; to her lover she gives without making demands. She is ungrateful to her husband because he gave her a different kind of car than the one she had dreamt of. She makes little show though he brings her costly gifts every month. But she is ready to kiss the earth if her lover cuts a lock of his hair for her. Love: it is not a bounteous home filled with merriment and dinner parties, or big families and blue-eyed children. And there are no calm winter evenings, full of tendresse sans passion, 18 when husband and wife sit at home and discuss the day’s events or the newest books or whatever has appeared most recently in the daily papers, or make their plans for the future, go over the details for their next trip abroad or what dishes they should serve at the next party. No, this is not love, dear Diljá. All of this is vanity.
    Love, dear Diljá, is a great sacred thing, behind all the farce we women make, the core of the unspeakable, the mystery of the most blessed misfortune, the marvel that hushes all other voices, la meta profetata fuori del mondo . 19
    The desire to destroy all honor and happiness, body and soul, all at one moment, that’s what it is to be in love. To sit on the stepsbefore her lover’s door and not to get in, to ramble throughout the city in darkness like a drunken harlot in her despair, that’s what it is to be in love. To bathe her lover’s hands in her tears and look with a shudder into his eyes, as into the depths of her own destiny, that’s what it is to be in love. When a woman is no longer anything but a wretched sacrificial lamb under the cumbersome hands of the tormenter, naked, with no will, powerless, dead to herself, quaking, weeping, dizzy, burning, then she loves; and the dogs wait at the door ready to tear her to pieces when she slinks out into the silence of the night.

22.
    My husband gave me everything: gold, green forests – everything but what I longed for and was born to enjoy. He was not a man who could take anything from me. He was a businessman, not a lover. He was distracted when he came home at night, and was gone in the mornings. His caresses were businesslike, his embraces mild and prudent as if he were reckoning his accounts. He never broke the seal placed over my heart.
    Seasons passed, and what do you think happened? I became pregnant! I had never actually thought that a person could become pregnant. I scarcely believed it when my maid told me. It started with nausea and dizziness, and one day I vomited and passed out. “Madam is surely pregnant,” said the girl. “What damned nonsense is in you?” said I. “Shame on you!”
    And when my husband came home that night he had hardly sat down to eat before he took out his pocketbook and started to jot down some numbers. I observed him in secret and realized that I despised the man. For a week I didn’t allow him to come to bed with me at night. I had determined to drag it out as long as possible before telling him that I was with child. But I was so helpless and grief-stricken, because there was no way of escape, and finally I felt that there was nothing else to do but try to love him. And one evening I sat down at his knees and whispered this impudent news to him: I was with child.
    â€œIs that so, my dear?” he asked.
    Could you imagine a more revolting reply?
    But at