65° - 01.07.1968, Blaðsíða 32

The Devil Wakes Early
by
R. 0. TIDE
It is not easy to decide whether to marry a man
who killed his wife, especially when you’ve fallen
in love with him.
He had told her about it last night, but after the
initial shock, it hadn’t seemed to matter. Even now
she couldn’t reconcile that action with the man
in whose arms she had lain. On this sunny morn-
ing her only thought was that someone loved her,
and if she chose, the rest of her life would not
have to be lived alone. She went about her house-
work, savouring the feeling of physical well-being,
not noticing the old car drive up to the church.
Upstairs, cleaning the rooms of her boarders,
she could have glanced through a window and
seen the purposeful figure inspecting the half-
built rectory, but she did not. She, Elm, would
never have called Geir impotent, but as he had
said of his marriage, so many things stemmed
from and had their effect on that special relation-
ship between man and woman. At least it was
their private matter. No one knew he had been
in prison, even his foster parents whom he had
left long ago to emigrate to Canada. If they had,
she knew she would regard him with horror in-
stead of .. . What made a man violent enough to
kill? She shook the thought away. Time would
show the answers, and it was sweet to be wanted
. .. like last night.
The doorbell’s ringing finally penetrated. It
must be the new pastor. She’d forgotten he was
arriving today.
A chubby man with pale restless eyes and a
damp handshake.
‘I’m Rev. Johnson, all the way from Europe
to be your new parson. Beautiful place. Magni-
ficent scenery. 200 souls, I hear, actually a smaller
parish than I had expected, but . .. The bishop
told me you would be kind enough to accommodate
me at your boardinghouse (he stressed the world
lightly) until the rectory is finished. His eyes
flicked over the somewhat shabby furnishings and
returned to her.
She murmured something and invited him in.
Yes, he would have coffee. Didn’t she think his
30
Icelandic was good? He’d learned it from his
mother, though he had lived everywhere in the
world but Iceland. Brought up speaking the
language, one might say, never knowing that
one day he would finally come to the fatherland
and use it in God’s work. He had noticed the
church badly needed repair and had already
told the men painting the rectory to touch up
the church at once as he was planning to hold a
service there tomorrow. He inspected his room
— it would do nicely. He put down his suitcase
and opened both windows wide. More fresh air
was what we all needed in our lives. Did she have
many boarders? All men? Well, one might call
her a sort of ministering angel, if she would ex-
cuse the pun. Still, it couldn’t be easy for an
attractive woman to run a lodginghouse in a
coastal village. He regarded his shoes, his hands
clasped gravely. To be frank, he had heard before
coming about certain rather free ways among the
Icelanders, but he was certain that as children of
nature they were well beloved, for was God not
Nature? Now, after he had washed, he was going
to call on his parishoners, get to know them. It
was necessary to let them know he was their
friend, their equal.
Elm watched him go with a vague resentment
stirring in her, and something else, but she quelled
this unkind thought. Let the man prove himself
first. Yet she opened the windows in the living-
room before going out, and at the store, she
bought expensive beef instead of horsemeat and
almost wished she hadn’t invited old Egill to
dinner that evening. And Geir, how would he take
this little man with the pale eyes?
Coming home, she lingered at the church
where several men were painting. Several young-
sters emerged from choir practice, followed by
Ingi, the music teacher. The cildren kept looking
back over their shoulders into the church, and
Ingi did not even notice her. His delicately hand-
some face was grey, as though he were still suffer-
ing from the tuberculosis he had had before
coming. A strange shy man, but the children loved
65 DEGREES