The Great Weaver From Kashmir Read Online Free Page A

they came to a hollow growing with buttercups, wood crane’s bill, green grass and many other types of vegetation, and there they sat down.
    Her tears were somewhat stilled; all the same she was still reluctant to look at him. She was weak and frightened and only seventeen. He watched as she wiped her nose and mouth and cleared her throat; she ran tear-moistened fingers through her hair; her face was swollen and red from weeping, and he noticed how, while all of this had been going on, her face had taken on the look of a full-grown woman. Finally he said:
    â€œDiljá. I don’t understand why you’re taking this so hard. I haven’t seen you cry in many years. Imagine how painful it is for me to see you crying, when I’ve always turned to you for happiness. You who fill everything around you with lighthearted sunshine laughter! When I see you crying, it reminds me of the winter of plague, the day that I walked behind you in your father’s funeral train. You were only fourteen then and you cried all the way to the churchyard, and I thought about how I was always going to be so good to you after that. I haven’t seen you cry since then.”
    Finally she looked up with tear-filled eyes. She recalled that raw, cold November day in 1918, when she was left with nothing else in the Lord’s entire wide world to love. The sob in her breast had been stifled.
    â€œDiljá, to see you saunter off like that made me angry. I’m sorryI shouted your name so harshly. Yet I couldn’t help but think: has Diljá become like all the others? Whom else could I then trust with my divine revelations? If you were to change then I wouldn’t know anyone any longer. All of the people that I know are slaves to licentiousness, and it gets on their nerves like a silly prank if someone says anything about his soul. My dear Diljá, tonight I want to talk to you about God and about me. I want to confess to you now, in this, the temple of my mountains, on my last night here. Be as you were!”
    â€œSteinn, I’m sorry!” she said in a suppliant voice. “I was so tired of waiting for you; I’d grown so cold,” she lied quickly, in order to excuse her capriciousness.
    He gave her his hand and they walked up to the road again, and from there followed it side by side westward through the lava field.

7.
    He reached into his case, took out a cigarette and stuck it quickly between his lips, then immediately took it back between his fingers and gesticulated as he started talking.
    â€œWhat I wish to confide in you, Diljá, is neither more nor less than the fact that I’ve been reborn.”
    Here he paused for a moment as if he wanted to cover the silver of his words with the gold of his silence. She waited for more and avoided looking up, because she feared that he would grow angry again over the lack of understanding that her face would surelyreveal. Then he continued, slowly and deliberately at first, but with ever-increasing passion the more he spoke.
    â€œI don’t know if you understand the word ‘rebirth.’ I don’t understand it very well myself. I’ve discovered that writers of dictionaries don’t understand it either. I don’t know if anyone has ever understood it. But we live and move in God, so it is quite to be expected that we understand nothing. We only know that various things happen to us, and we give those things various names. It’s only obsolete know-it-alls who have pretended to understand things.
    â€œAs far as I’m concerned, I don’t understand what has happened. I’m entirely the same as I was before, but God has spoken to my soul. That’s what has happened. It happened up on Öskjuhlíð on the fourth of May. I’ve kept quiet about it until now because it’s so peculiar.”
    When he reached this point his inspiration flared up and a hot draft swelled his voice. He tossed his unsmoked