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already mentioned. Timber structures of this kind are called bungalows, from whatever language that might be and whatever it might mean. Usually this word applies to a single-storey country cottage that wealthy white men in the colonies built for themselves to ape the native style of architecture, except that it’s made of choicest wood and equipped with all modern luxuries.
    Half in a dream, your emissary went over to this model of avant-garde architecture in a homefield where the entire husbandry consisted of one ailing calf.
    No road led to this building from any direction, not even a path. Windows carefully shuttered, with nowhere a chink for a Peeping Tom. On the south and west sides were broad covered verandas, presumably to provide shade from the sun. Everything closed and locked.

8
     
    Interrogation of the Parish Clerk
     
    Your emissary happened to glance into the living room and saw that many goodly cakes were on the scene again, this time intended for breakfast, as well as the three war-cakes from the evening before. I presumed that the mighty coffeepot would soon be making its appearance, so I sneaked out again backwards, taking care not to touch that noisily creaking door.
    On the map of the district the parish clerk’s farm, Brún, is indicated at the roots of the mountain about two or three kilometres away. It would be advisable to have a talk with the clerk before pastor Jón returns from his travels.
    A farmer gave me a lift in his jeep and took me some of the way. The man asked if your emissary was on a holiday outing, and I said yes. But isn’t it very boring, tramping the highway on foot like this, the man asked. I said no. Once one starts telling lies it’s difficult to start telling the truth again. Had I said I had been sent by the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs or by the bishop, I would have been thought rather a dangerous creature. Country people cannot understand why the emissaries of Christendom don’t drive about in cars; indeed, it’s unlikely that Saint Paul would have been flogged in Thessalonica if he had had a jeep in working order.
    The farm is a sort of longhouse on the same coral-principle as the parsonage. It doesn’t look as if it has been cared for much this century, except that a concrete porch with steep cement steps has been built onto the old timber house, and this remarkable structure protrudes from the middle of the sidewall. Perhaps someone once had the idea of entering the house at some other point than through the front door, wherever that might have been originally. It must have been quite a job to build such an excrescence onto a wooden house clad with corrugated iron. The gravel used for the concrete was too coarse, and there was too much sand in proportion to the cement, with probably quite a lot of clay or even soil in the sand, because the concrete is all cracked and there is grass growing in the fissures, as well as some sorrel and the little white flowering chickweed called alpine mouse-ear. Soon this porch will be reduced to a pile of rubble on the paving, and then there will be a hole left in this turn-of-the-century house.
    The farmer left his work and invited me inside after I had explained who I was.
    Embi: Are you Tumi Jónsen, clerk of the congregation?
    Farmer: So they say. I’m only passing on what I’ve been told.
    Embi: Are you Danish?
    Farmer: No such luck, I fear. I am directly descended from those famous Jónsens who wrote the History of Iceland.
    Tumi Jónsen is well over sixty, perhaps seventy or eighty, his features marked by toil and kindliness. His bald pate is the colour of parchment, but the eyebrows are fair, the eyes blue and a little rheumy. He asks the news from the south, and then if the roads aren’t more passable now. Then: Is everything going well with our bishop, the blessed creature?
    Embi: Yes, thank you, although he has a touch of rheumatism. I am to give you his greetings, and his thanks for the letter. He asked me to