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13
Consequently, we don’t stand together; everyone lives for
himself. And therewith, we nearly always fish using their
hooks, not our own. Skúli owns a share in a schooner, his
father-in-law is a wealthy farmer in a bountiful area south
of the mountains, Skúli can afford to provoke us with his
pen, having little to lose, which is different than us, who
depend entirely on merchants and their goodwill. It not like
it isn’t fun to read such things: it’s titillating, exciting, a bit
like when children go off somewhere to say bad words. It’s
good when someone gives others what for; it makes them
tremble a bit.
Dogs have to have the chance to bark now and then, says
Friðrik; then there’s less chance they’ll bite. It’s evening,
terribly windy, pelting rain, out of the question to open the
windows, the cigar smoke hangs thickly in Friðrik’s master
bedroom, so big it’s nearly a parlour. There are six of them:
Friðrik, Reverend Þorvaldur, Dr. Sigurður, Jón, the factor of
Léo’s Shop and Trading Company, the magistrate Lárus,
and Högni, the head bookkeeper in Tryggvi’s Shop and
Trading Company and director of the Savings Bank, which
opened three years ago; it’s open for business an hour a day,
five days a week. Lárus had started talking about one of
Skúli’s articles; he’s becoming more and more aggressive,
said the magistrate, before listing various other articles, and
Friðrik simply let them talk, allowed them to worry, he’s
grown dangerous, said Sigurður, who always sits so bloody
straight, yes, says Jón, excitedly, sucking on his cigar, Skúli’s
what you call in Danish a
skadefugl
— a curmudgeon— and