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to say that you’ve done quite a good job of this, in some
places very finely done indeed, absolutely extraordinary for
an uneducated person, I would call that a compliment,
wouldn’t you call that a compliment from me, Kolbeinn?,
he raised his voice, looked over at the skipper, who said
nothing, displayed no reaction; absolutely right, muttered
Gísli, you’re not here, what a wonderful talent to be able to
vanish like that, a rare talent, you should give me lessons. I
didn’t hear it, the compliment, I mean, said the boy
apologetically, I just saw that you’d marked up everything,
thought that it was no good. Is that so, did you think that?
Yes. But what was that smile of yours supposed to mean,
then? I was just thinking. Thinking about what, what was
so amusing? Well, said the boy, embarrassed, that it would
be fun to stuff the pages down your throat, at which
Kolbeinn laughed, or at least emitted a noise like an old,
grouchy dog that finds something amusing, entirely
unexpectedly: a nice piece of meat, an extinguished sex
drive.
And the boy reads these pages, had managed to rewrite
them in time, followed Gísli’s suggestions, corrections, for
the most part, reads them as the rain pounds the world,
pounds the house, pounds the horses and the wind tears up
the sea. He reads and tries to forget that right now the sea
is breaching the embankments, flooding the earth in heavy
torrents, and to top it off there’s this gale, as if to punish us
for having enjoyed the light, the gentleness of summer.