Read Under the Glacier for Free Online Page A

scrubbed the day before from top to bottom, scrubbed with powerful washing soda, undoubtedly, which produced a stench of putrefaction very like the reek of cows’ urine. This stink now mingled with another nasty smell, of rotting wood and musty earth from the turf wall behind the panelling. To this was added the smell of the bluebottles, curiously strong but in some way not nearly so offensive as the smell of many a vertebrate. I forgot to mention that I found it quite impossible to open the window last night before I went to bed. How these plump and powerful bluebottles had got in was a mystery to me. One thing was certain—they couldn’t get out again; but perhaps that wasn’t the intention, anyway. Was it conceivable that these flies had been fetched in here when the scrubbing was finished? And if so, for what purpose? Were they there as substitutes for art in the house? Or decoration? Were they there instead of goldfish or canaries? Perhaps both. Pictorial art is a delusion of the eye, whereas flies are living ornaments and much more lively than flowers, what’s more, because flowers are languid in their movements and keep silent. Even goldfish are silent, but the bluebottle is the poor man’s canary, endowed with a singing voice that awakens memories in the minds of visitors. The bluebottles remind the undersigned of the sunshine of childhood, but they also create moral problems that need to be resolved but that have not to my knowledge been fully resolved by moral philosophers and World Teachers. This is the dilemma I have now reached at Glacier. I ask:
    1. Is it morally right to kill flies, taking all things into consideration?
    2. Although it may in certain circumstances be excusable, for instance if flies are proved to be carrying disease into the house, is it still morally right for a guest to kill these creatures? Would that not be comparable to killing the host’s dog?

7
     
    Two Buildings
     
    Your emissary has gone outside, where other tasks require attention. The fog is lifting, and there are sunshine patches on the countryside here and there. For the first time I catch a glimpse of that white tureen-lid of the world, Snæfellsjökull, between wisps of fog and the shadow of the clouds. Yesterday evening when your emissary went outside to while away the time, fog had merged with dusk and only the white birds were visible. This morning in the middle of the almost overgrown path a dandelion glistens between the paving stones and a buttercup is preparing to burst open. This is between the parsonage and the church.
    And now it becomes clear that there was something in what the bishop had said when he warned his emissary that a monstrosity had been built in the west: at any rate, the church looks somewhat insignificant beside this edifice. For one thing, they hadn’t even managed to put this monster parallel to the church, but at an angle to it. Either the people who built it hadn’t noticed that a church was there, or else they had wanted to trample on the church’s toes: there is only just enough space for a person to squeeze between this building and the church.
    Suffice it to say meantime that the church is built of timber and had originally been clad with corrugated iron, but there’s only the odd sheet of it left on the walls here and there. I also note pro tem that the church seems only moderately suited to attracting a congregation. Windows boarded with boxwood, the main door securely nailed shut. The churchyard looks in sad condition, too; not a single cross at a proper angle to its foundation any longer; these memorials, some made of rusty iron, others of rotten wood, all look decidedly tipsy. Withered grass stands between the graves higher than I have ever seen elsewhere. On the other hand, the birdsong is in good heart, with the thrush’s trilling whistle from the church gable and the soughing bleat of seabirds from the nearby cliffs.
    We turn now from this poor House of Glory to the edifice