The Fish Can Sing Read Online Free Page A

fragrant.”
    Yes, such blessed haddock,” said the thief.
    “Or the growth in the meadows!” said my grandfather.
    “Yes, you can certainly say that,” said the thief. “What growth!”
    My grandmother served them. They went on discussing the season on sea and land while they swilled their coffee. When they had finished the coffee the thief stood up and said thank you and shook hands. He picked his cap up off the floor and made ready to take his leave. My grandfather accompanied him back out to the paving, and the thief went on wringing his cap between his hands.
    “Are you perhaps going to say anything to me before I go, Björn?” said the thief.
    “No,” said my grandfather. “You have done something which God cannot forgive.”
    The thief heaved a sigh and said in a low voice, “Ah, well, Björn, you have my warmest thanks for the coffee; goodbye, and may God be with you now and for ever.”
    “Goodbye,” said my grandfather.
    But when the visitor was on his way out through the turnstile-gate with his cap, my grandfather called out to him and said, “Oh, why don’t you just take that sack with you and whatever’s in it, poor chap. One sack of peats doesn’t matter a damn to me.”
    The thief turned back at the gate and came and shook my grandfather’s hand in gratitude again, but could not say a word. He turned his head away while he put on his cap. Then he shouldered the sack of peats once more and edged himself with it through the turnstile the way he had arrived in that fine weather.

3
SPECIAL FISH
    I have now described how my grandfather was a man of orthodox beliefs without its ever occurring to him to ask God to model Himself upon men, in accordance with that strange passage in the Lord’s Prayer which says: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.” My grandfather said plainly to the fellow from Steinbær: “God cannot forgive you, but to me, Björn of Brekkukot, it doesn’t matter a damn.” So I cannot help suspecting that my grandfather had a special scale of standards for most of the things that happen in the life of a fisherman.
    To corroborate this, I shall now mention briefly the question of fish as we saw the matter at Brekkukot – or rather, the moral law relating to fish. It could be said that my grandfather’s ideas about the fishing industry had only a limited relevance in the rapidly evolving society that during my boyhood was developing beyond the turnstile back-gate of Brekkukot; on the other hand,we had not yet reached the stage of becoming palpably aware of that society which was beginning to ferment all around us. At any rate I can assert that I was brought up with an assessment of money very different from normal banking values.
    I think that our own standard had its origins in my grandfather’s conviction that the money which people consider theirs by right was unlawfully accumulated, or counterfeit, if it exceeded the average income of a working man; and therefore that all great wealth was inconsistent with common sense. I can remember him saying often that he would never accept more money than he had earned.
    But what does a man earn, people will ask? How much does a man deserve to get? How much should a fisherman accept? The devil alone can tell. Nowadays anyone who rejects the bank’s valuation would have to solve complicated moral puzzles on his own several times a day. But these problems never seemed to baffle my grandfather nor cause him any anxiety; difficulties which in most people’s eyes would have led to endless complications were disposed of by my grandfather almost without thinking, with the easy assurance of a sleepwalker who strolls along a ledge halfway down a hundred-foot precipice – yes, I am tempted to say with the same disregard for the laws of nature as a ghost passing through locked doors.
    I was not very old when I got an inkling that some of the fishermen felt aggrieved at my grandfather because he sometimes