For she is our good Mamma, our Mamma,
our Mamma.
God bless our Mamma and our little brother's
Mamma.
But the boy still kept on crying. And Torfi Torfason ate his meal like a man who is trying to eat something in a hurry at a concert.
The day after, Torfi Torfason started off. A Canadian winter day, blue, vast, and calm, with ravens hovering over the snow-covered woods. He threaded his way along the trails northward to the lake, carrying his pack on his back. This was through unsettled country, nowhere a soul, nowhere the smoke from a cabin mile after mile, only those ravens, flying above the white woods and alighting on the branches as on a clay statue of Pallas. 'Nevermore.' And Torfi Torfason thinks of his ewes and his cows and his horses and all that he has lost.
Then all of a sudden a wretched bitch waddled out from the woods into his path. It was a vagrant bitch, as thin as a skeleton, and so big in the belly that she walked with difficulty. Her dugs dragged along the snow, for she was in pup. They came from opposite directions, two lonely creatures, who are paddling their own canoes in America, and meet one cold winter day out in the snow. At first she pricked up her ears and stared at the man with brown mistrustful eyes. Then she crouched down in the snow and began to tremble, and he understood that she was telling him she wasn't feeling well, that she had lost her master, that she had often been beaten, beaten, beaten, and never in her life had enough to eat, and that nobody had ever been kind to her, never; nobody knew, she was sure, how all this would end for her. She was very poor, she said.
Well, it takes all kinds to make a world, said Torfi Torfason. And he took off his pack and sat down in the snow with his legs stretched out in front of him. In the mouth of the pack there was something that little Tota had scraped together for her papa on the trip. And then the bitch began to wag her tail back and forth in the snow and gaze with lustful eyes at the mouth of the pack.
Well, well, poor doggie, so you have lost your master and have had nothing to eat since God knows when, and I've just chased out my wife, yes, yes, and she went away yesterday. Yes, yes, she's going to try to shift for herself as a washerwoman down in Winnipeg this winter, yes, yes, that's how it is now. Yes, yes, we packed up and left a fairly decent living there at home and came here into this damnable log-cabin existence, yes, yes. … Well, try that in your chops, you miserable cur, you can gobble that up, I tell you. Oh, this is nothing but damned scraps and hardly fit to offer a dog, not even a stray dog, oh, no. Well, I can't bring myself to chase you away, poor wretch—we're all stray dogs in the eyes of the Lord in any case, that's what we all are….
Time passed on and Torfi Torfason fished in the lake and lived in a hut on some outlying island with his boss, a red-bearded man, who made money out of his fishing fleet as well as by selling other fishermen tobacco, liquor, and twine. The fisherman vehemently disliked the dog and said every day that that damned bitch ought to be killed. He had built this cabin on the island himself. It was divided into two parts, a hall and a room. They slept in the room, and in the hall they kept fishing tackle, food, and other supplies, but the bitch slept on the step outside the cabin door. The fisherman was not a generous man and gave Torfi the smaller share of the food. He absolutely forbade giving the dog the tiniest morsel and said that bitch ought to be killed. To this Torfi made no answer, but always stole a bite for the dog when the fisherman had gone to bed. Now the time came when the bitch was to pup. The bitch pupped. And when she had finished pupping, he gave her a fine chunk of meat, which he stole from the fisherman, for he knew that bitter is the hunger of the woman in child-bed, and let her lie on an old sack in the hall, directly against the will of the fisherman. Then he lay down to sleep.
But he had not lain long when he is aroused by someone walking about and he cannot figure out why. But it turns out to be the fisherman, who gets up out of bed, walks out into the hall. lights the lamp, takes the bitch by the scruff of the neck, and throws her out in the snow. Then he closes the outer door, puts out the light, and lies down on his bunk. Now it is quiet for a while, until the bitch begins to howl outside and the pups to whine piteously in the hall. Then Torfi Torfason gets up, gropes his way out through the hall, lets the bitch in, and she crawls at once over her pups. After that he lies down to sleep. But he has not lain long when he is aroused by somebody walking about and he can not figure out why. But it turns out to be the fisherman, who gets up out of bed, walks out into the hall, lights the lamp, takes the bitch by the scruff of her neck for the second time and throws her out into the snow. Then he lies down to sleep again. Again the bitch begins to howl outside and the pups to whine, and Torfi Torfason gets up out of bed, lets the bitch in to the pups again, and again lies down. After a little while the fisherman gets up again, lights the lantern, and fares forth. But even soft iron can be whetted sharp, and now Torfi Torfason springs out of bed a third time and out into the hall after the fisherman.
Either you leave the dog alone or both of us will go, I and the dog, says Torfi Torfason, and it was only a matter of seconds till he laid hands on his master. A hard scuffle began and the cabin shook with it, and everything fell over and broke that was in the way. They gave each other many and heavy blows, but the fisherman was the more warlike, until Torfi tackled low, grasped him round the waist, and did not let up in the attack until he had the fisherman doubled up with his chin against his knees. Then he opened the door of the cabin and threw him out somewhere into the wide world.
Outside, the weather was calm, the stars were shining, it was extremely cold, and there was snow over everything. Torfi was all black and blue and bleeding, hot and panting after the struggle. So this was what had to happen to Torfi Torfason, renowned as a man of peace, who had never harmed a living creature—to throw a man out of his own house, hurl him out on the frozen ground in the middle of the night, and all for one she-dog. Perhaps I have even killed him, Torfi thought, but that's the end of that—that's how it had to be. To think that I ever moved to New Iceland!