Tímarit Máls og menningar - 01.02.2004, Page 18

Halldór Killian Laxness
individual able to match her. The riot is planned for the coming
night at a fixed hour. Arnold pretends to be eager to join them;
gives a handshake to everybody.
This is a night of violent blizzard and hard frost. Salka Valka
goes to sleep in her usual place and all the others pretend to do the
same. At the appointed hour the seven men arise and in a line they
approach Salka Valka’s berth, the strongest ahead of them.
The girl awakes at the first touch, tries instinctively to defend
herself, but they overpower her. Then Arnold, who until now has
kept aside, knocks two of her assailers in the head. In a moment he
is in a desperate fight with the six other men.
Salka Valka retires from the fighting crowd and stands aside,
arms akimbo, watching the fight with a stern expression. The
shanty trembles, a beam breaks and through a rift in the wall pier-
ces the snow. Two of the men lie on the floor like dead bodies. The
rest take to flight.
After the battle Salka Valka goes to Arnold and calmly shakes his
hand. Excited and out of control after the fight, he yields to his feel-
ings which he hitherto has been too proud to express and, kneeling
in front of her, kisses her hand. For a moment she is quivering with
passion. Then suddenly her stepfather’s devoted courtship to her
mother comes to her mind. Horrified by this memory, Salka Valka
pushes Arnold violently away from her. For the following moments
they stand suddenly in front of each other as two enemies, resem-
bling two wild beasts on the point of tearing each other to pieces.
Then he assails her in a kind of bestial rapture. For a moment they
fight brutally and violently. There is something voluptuous about
this fight - during the fight he presses brutal kisses on her lips. She
runs out of his arms into the blizzard. He runs senselessly affer her.
Wild with terror she runs to the shore, where she finds a small
boat, jumps into it, rows out, and dissappears in the furious brea-
kers. Night. Blizzard. The sea in fury. (Here the story culminates.)
The morning after the blizzard.
A small freight steamer, covered with ice, in open sea. The captain.
The ship’s owner Angantyr, the young fish merchant. He is on a
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TMM 2004 • 1