Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was by Sjón

Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was by Sjón

Author:Sjón
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Gay, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9780374712877
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00


xviii

The Angel of Death has entered among us with the great epidemic and cast a pall of the deepest despair over many of our homes.

Men and women of all ages and stations have been snatched away. Death makes no distinction, and one often feels that it strikes where it least should. It is beyond comprehension that parents should be carried off from their children, or that the elderly, with one foot in the grave, should be deprived of their sole support. If only people could be brought to a better understanding of their duties toward others beside themselves, then death’s choice, which appears to us so harsh and unjust, would not be so impossible to understand. If only loving-kindness were a more potent force among us, a new provider and a new friend would come forward for all those who are bereft. And if only the devastating wave of grief could induce people to make more effort to bear goodwill to all men and show greater love and charity than before, it would not have broken over us in vain.

The great upsurge in loving-kindness that has been experienced around the world as a result of the late hostilities has barely touched us here. Will it not then occur to all those who believe in Divine Providence to wonder whether this terrible scourge has been released upon our nation expressly to awaken among us the same sentiment? Could any exhortation to give more thought to eternity be more memorable than that which our community has lately received?

Most of those who have crossed over to the other side were in their prime and had service yet to perform for the public good, however different they were in outward appearance. Most had friends and relatives who now bear a heavy burden of grief; parents bowed with age weep for their dashed hopes; those left alone in the world for their mainstay; children for their loving parents.

But happy in their grief are all those who, through their faith, are certain of a life hereafter. They know that this is but a brief parting, and that those who are gone have merely attained a higher plane of existence and have not vanished forever into dark graves.

* * *

Below these words of consolation in Morgunbladid are printed the names of the eighty-two townsmen and -women who had died by the time the paper went to press on the eve of November 17.

The boy glances around the classroom, which is used as a rest area for the volunteers. His fellow workers are exhausted from the day’s labors; no one is paying him any attention.

He folds the newspaper and tucks it inside his clothes, thinking it looks like something the old lady would enjoy.

Above the text there is a cross, bordered in black.

* * *

As the cinemas are still closed, he heads for home.

But first he is going to pay a visit to the National Library on Arnarhóll.

The basement is the refuge of Sívert Thordal, D.Phil., a stooping, downy-haired manuscript scholar.



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