Trafika Europe 14 - Italian Piazza

The Saga of Redhead

“Wel l , your son wi l l not al low it, then,” the priests told her. This seemed to satisfy Gudrun, so she agreed to accompany the priests. From Hvalsnes they set off, and hardly had their boat reached the mouth of the fjord when they saw a coal-black streak that resembled a shoal of fish pushing toward them. Then it drew alongside them, and they saw it was the redheaded whale. Gudrun leaned over the gunwale to greet the whale, and both priests thought that it responded to this greeting with a nod of its massive head. Soon the old woman was reel ing off a mixture of farm gossip and fami ly disasters, and the whale moved opposite, as though attending to her every word. “We are leading him straight up the fjord,” said the Hvalsnes priest to the other. “He is a mere lamb on account of this woman.” The whale fol lowed them past the rocky finger of Thyri lsnes and into the shal lows of Botnsvogur. Al l the whi le Gudrun kept up with her talk. She was now talking about the price of saltfish as wel l as those of her ancestors who’d had their eyes pecked out by birds of prey. She said: “I hope you are keeping wel l , my Thorgeir, despite al l.” The Kjalarnes priest whispered to his companion, “In my parish, we turn loose such madwomen as this

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