She did not come.
For no reason he grew uneasy and walked quickly away from the houses towards the wood. But for the shadow on the bridge he would have done nothing, merely waited for Aud to come home when it suited her; merely gone in to his own silent parents and agreed with whatever they said and found himself a book. But because he had barely escaped a fatal accident that afternoon he now felt unreasonable anxiety for Aud.
Here there was an open piece of level ground running down to the river, but on the other side the water was hidden behind thick birches and fir trees. The wood stretched far inland.
Aud must have gone into the wood, as so often before. They went there alone or together, and were familiar with the terrain. Nothing could happen to you in there. Why don’t you leave Aud alone? he told himself.
No. I must tell her while it’s still quivering in me.
He whistled the signal. No answer.
He walked along the bank among the first rustling birches and out to the water’s edge to see if anyone was sitting on the river bank. No Aud.
He walked on, his eyes blank.
He stood in front of a tree and thought: Perhaps I’m not looking for Aud at all. Not today. I’m simply following my own path, this dry, empty path of mine. I don’t know why. I’m following it and I’m thirsty. I don’t know why.
The snapping snake in that split second—was that what it wanted to say to me in parting: that this was nothing more than a dry empty path, and that—snap!—now it’s over?
He pulled himself together and whistled once more.
Nothing.
The floor of the wood was not level like a floor, there were hummocks and holes and thick brushwood. Torvil walked into the wood, over the soft surface of the ground. His footsteps could not be heard. It was almost twilight now. Where was Aud?
He had not whistled for a while. He was about to do so again, but stopped abruptly.
He was standing in front of a large stone that must have fallen here long ago, and now lay between the trees, covered with moss.
He heard something unexpected—there on the other side of the stone.
It was weeping. He thought he recognized the weeping from many fights, but could not make it out all the same. Unrecognizable and yet familiar.
It’s Aud weeping.
No doubt about it.
And at once he was certain: something new is about to begin.
4
Aud’s Weeping
Aud’s weeping behind the stone.
In the undergrowth.
Out into the twilight. Out into nothing.
Aud’s weeping behind the stone spreads through the undergrowth, it ripples along the floor of the wood. A young person lying on the deep, dark earth, bent towards the ground because everything suddenly seems to be too blind.
It’s too much to bear.
Sorrow lies behind a stone, but travels further, out beyond this, further than the wind that penetrates inland, spreading out from what is tom up, from what is shut in—when it feels as if what is of most value has foundered.
When your whole body is aware that it is so. More aware with every moment.
I can’t bear it any more. It’s not true that it is so. But it is true, and I don’t understand. I feel something rising up in me from the earth itself. What is it that possesses me? I want to share in it. Everything wants to share in it.
Aud’s weeping behind the stone spreads, settles and is gone, yet is renewed again and again, because of its source.
When you have thought and dreamed about the very thing that has foundered here so fearfully ...
You can never be sure.
Sorrow lies behind a stone.
Aud’s frantic weeping behind the stone. Whoever hears it knows that this girl is naked and exposed—for the moment there is nothing concealing her.
5
Into the Darkness
When Torvil understood what the sound was, he leapt to the other side of the stone in one bound.
‘Aud!’
She was lying full length on the ground with her face in her hands. She heard nothing.
‘Aud?’
At the same time he looked hastily about him to try to find out why she was in this state. There was nothing to explain it. He saw Aud, and the twigs and brushwood on the ground, and nothing else but the dense woods surrounding them. Tree trunks and thick undergrowth.
‘Aud?’
At last she started up and looked at Torvil in bewilderment. Then she saw it was someone she knew.
‘Go away,’ she said wildly. ‘You’ve no business here.’
Aud’s face was streaked and almost unrecognizable. He had not known she could look like this. He was shocked, and stuttered, ‘But what in the world ...?’
‘I told you to go away, Torvil.’ The icy thought struck him that perhaps she was not in her right mind. Can this be Aud?
He did not obey her. Instead he bent over and gripped her by the arm.
‘You must tell me, Aud.’
‘You mustn’t—’ She stopped abruptly.
He tried to meet her eyes but they slid away. She turned her back on him. He became more frightened and turned her towards him again without releasing her. Her body was trembling in his arms.
‘I mustn’t tell you what it is.’
He compelled her with his eyes.
‘You mustn’t walk about here, I’ve told you. You simply mustn’t walk about here. This is none of your business and you’re not going to get mixed up in it. And you can just stop this!’ she finished vaguely.
Still Torvil would not let her go. Aud tried unsuccessfully to free herself. They had had plenty of scuffles in the past, but nothing as violent as this. Aud twisted and bent, but Torvil was the stronger. Gradually she quietened down and merely trembled.
Dusk was falling, slowly and surely, calmly. It could have been pleasant and peaceful here. Now the peace was shattered in frenzy.
‘Come to your senses, Aud,’ Torvil said softly as soon as she was quiet. ‘Now, you’re going to tell me what’s wrong, and then we’ll go home.’
He felt Aud stiffen again. She started back. Torvil continued to hold her. She seemed quite inconsolable about something. He would have to take her home to the placid people there, to the kind woman with the apron and the saucepans. Yes, there you go, he thought; home to them just the same.
Aud said, ‘You won’t take it the right way, Torvil. Will you go and leave me alone?’
‘I can’t take it any way when I’m not told anything and there’s nothing to see.’
He did not let her go but began to draw her away.
‘No.’ She spoke with such authority that he stopped at once. He looked her in the eyes again. They were clear, not misted over at all: her own beautiful eyes. They looked at each other searchingly in the dim evening light. Torvil understood that she would soon tell him her reasons for this commotion.
‘Tell me, Aud.’
Her opposition crumbled. She gripped him. ‘All right. I won’t manage it alone anyway. I can see that. I won’t manage it. It’s something that’s ...’
‘Yes? Yes?’
‘It’s something I found. Here.’
Torvil asked no more questions. She must tell him in her own way, then it would probably all come out. But he did not loosen his grip.
Aud began again, hesitatingly, as if still afraid of Torvil and unwilling to say anything.
‘You must look at it. Then you’ll share in it too,’ she added. ‘You oughtn’t to, but still ...’
But wouldn’t that be foolish? he thought suddenly, in sheer self-defence. He was going to be let in on something frightening, that was obvious. He dreaded it already. All sorts of random guesses flashed through his mind.
‘Well, where have you got it?’ he asked.
‘Right here. And I’m not going to run away, so you might just as well let go.’
He let go. Aud stood free, and told him, ‘I’m going to drag you into it
after all. At first I thought I’d manage alone, but now I see that I probably won’t be able to. Come over here.’
She took a few steps. Torvil followed her unwillingly through the twigs and thick undergrowth. His heart began pounding fearfully. He hung back.
‘Here,’ said Aud, kneeling down in the brushwood. There was a pile of blackening twigs that looked as if they had been lying there for a long time. Torvil knelt down beside her.
Whispering: ‘Can you see it?’
Torvil nodded. He felt numbed.
Yes, he could see it, dimly in the half-light. Something that could only be a new-born, naked, lifeless child. It was lying under a few blackening twigs that had been awkwardly scraped together, ready to darken along with them.
It was a frightening sight when you had never imagined anything like it. The light fading around it made it seem even harder to bear.
Quick glances at each other.
‘Did you see it?’
‘Yes.’
He gulped; his throat was burning.
Torvil found his voice. ‘But how did you find it?’
Aud whispered brokenly, ‘I stumbled over it a little while ago. Slipped on some twigs, and fell. My arm sank down through the twigs, so I ...’ she shivered.
Torvil said in anguish, ‘Yes, I see.’
They could not look at each other, nor rise to their feet. Torvil was staring at Aud’s knee among the twigs—as if it would rescue him, perhaps. Then he noticed that, as she knelt, Aud was staring at the thing she had found.
He gulped once more. A question hovered in the air, forcing itself out.
‘Aud?’
She jerked away, knowing very well what was coming. The dangerous question.
But first Torvil said, ‘You were crying so.’
Aud did not answer.
‘Do you know anything?’
‘No.’
‘You know what I mean.’
She shook her head.
‘I don’t know what you mean. But I don’t know anything, so it’s no use asking.’
He believed her at once. It would never have occurred to him to do otherwise. The fact that this was close to home meant nothing. After all, the main road, and all it brought with it, passed dose by, so why should Aud know anything? Of course she didn’t know anything; she had simply stumbled on to this sinister story.
She whispered, ‘You mustn’t ask such things.’
He nodded.
But he knew one question was unavoidable.
They looked at it again: it was slowly merging with the twilight. Becoming indistinct. Strange. Shocking.
Aud was whispering again as if forced to whisper. ‘But what shall we do?’
Torvil could only shake his head. He had no idea what to do. The object in the brushwood was receding gradually as if into complete oblivion.
The two of them wished with all their hearts that it was disappearing for good, into deep darkness and oblivion. Most of all they wished they had never found it, had never become so abruptly involved.
Torvil was thinking about the next step.
‘In any case we must go home at once and tell them,’ he said, getting to his feet.
Aud started violently. ‘No, no!’ She jumped to her feet.
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘No, no, I tell you!’
Aud was suddenly tense, spitting resistance right into his face.
‘I don’t understand—’ began Torvil to this volcano facing him.
‘All right, so you don’t understand,’ said Aud, desperately, ‘but you mustn’t do any more harm.’
‘Do you understand?’ asked Torvil in bewilderment, ‘since you seem to know exactly what’s to be done when something like this happens?’
Aud answered curtly, ‘No. But I do know that we’re not going to involve more people just yet. Someone needs all the miserable help we can give.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘And you weren’t considering help, but just the opposite.’
‘Yes, I didn’t think.’
He dared not contradict Aud. She was a girl, and much more likely to understand than he was.
There was a silence, confused and unbearable.
Something must be done.
Aud is a girl and must decide.
In any case it was getting dimmer and dimmer in the wood. They could no longer see anything beneath the twigs; the shocking thing that had been there had disappeared into the twilight and the coming night, into a false oblivion, as if it had never existed.
Silence.
Torvil said under his breath, ‘What do you think?’
Aud did not answer.
‘You’re a girl,’ he went on, talking at random as if to give her the strength to make a decision.
‘I don’t know, Torvil. I suppose you’ll have to be in this too, though you’re not a girl. All I know is there must be no more than two of us.’
‘As long as it’s up to us, you should add,’ said Torvil. ‘We don’t know how many others there may be.’
‘Yes, as long as it’s up to us.’
Torvil could not help thinking of the bright kitchen he had just come from, and the kind, wise woman who was there, only a short step from this distress. He felt a strong desire to bring her into it.
No. Aud would know, quick as a flash.
Torvil noticed how the darkness was increasing and said, ‘We’ve been wasting time. If we were going to do something we ought to have started at once.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s dark now, don’t you understand? We can’t start—we can’t see a thing now. Or do you want to—?’
‘Ugh, no!’
‘And then, perhaps someone will come here when it’s quite dark,’ said Torvil on a sudden inspiration.
They both took a step back at the thought. They dared not stay here by the heap of twigs. Then came a twinge of hope: perhaps everything will have gone tomorrow. And then we shan’t have seen anything and will never mention it to anyone.
A hint of a wish. But neither of them really believed it. They would have to come here again tomorrow, and the daylight would almost certainly reveal what they had seen this evening.
Torvil said thickly, ‘We’d better go. If anyone should come, we don’t want to be seen.’
Aud stayed where she was. ‘We can’t go until we’ve done something to make it look better. I don’t believe anyone will come.’
‘We can’t do anything in the dark.’
‘We can put something over it, surely,’ said Aud. ‘Pile up a little more than there is already. A dog might come and—and lick it,’ she added hastily.
Again, words that made them wince; words that stuck fast, that ate their way in.
‘Ugh, be quiet.’
She regretted her words, but it was too late. She went on, stammering, ‘I think we ought to put something over it, some stones and something else. Twigs.’
‘Yes, but hurry.’
They pulled at the brushwood that lay there, and started to hunt for suitable stones in the darkness. The ground was rocky, so there were a few stones lying among the trees. They were just visible. They ran breathlessly, bringing the few they managed to pull free, afraid that someone would come while they were doing it. They provided a little more covering.
‘Until we come back tomorrow morning,’ said Torvil. It was Torvil who was in charge now.
Aud asked uncertainly, ‘Yes, but what shall we do then?’
‘Finish it off, surely?’
‘Yes?’ said Aud. ‘How shall we do that?’
‘We’re not going to do anything more tonight; we’ll have to take the risk. Now we must hurry.’
They ran as if pursued. They felt pursued. Their thoughts clashed:
We’ll never come back.
We’ll come back tomorrow morning.
Torvil, who had been setting the pace, halted. Now that they had escaped they could breathe again.
�
��Did you know anything after all?’ he said, and wished at once he could take the words back. They had simply dropped out.
‘Why should I?’
‘No, I—I was talking nonsense.’
‘I don’t know anything! I’ve told you so already.’
‘Yes, of course. Don’t be angry.’
But she’s a girl, he thought. And it’s a girl who’s been in trouble.
‘But nobody else is to know about this!’ said Aud again, in desperate defence of someone.
‘That’s all right,’ he said.
And don’t ask me again, he wished. I understand.
Aud gripped him by the arm and said, ‘Can I count on it, Torvil? This will always be between us two alone?’
‘I’ve said yes,’ he replied, hiding the fact that he was hurt.
Aud quickly hugged him tight. So that he was no longer hurt, only sealed.
‘We’ll go down to the river and wash,’ said Torvil when they were clear of the wood. ‘We can’t arrive home looking a mess if we’re going to pretend we haven’t been doing anything.’
They could glimpse the river in the darkness, and the bridge jutting out. Two or three solitary cars sped across the arches; their sweeping autumn-evening headlamps played over water and woods and solid homesteads.
Aud and Torvil stood close to each other on the bank. Torvil had not yet had a chance to tell her about the lorry that had almost run him down, and about the moment of shadow afterwards. He had almost forgotten the incident: the latest events had taken up all his thoughts.
We’ll wash ourselves a bit, they thought.
That’s how it is, somehow.
Leaning over the strong current in the darkness.
The water felt good against their hot throats and streaked faces. They let it splash them and cool them again and again.
The river was as still and silent as the dead. It reflected a few late-summer stars. Torvil and Aud watched them as they let the water dry on their faces.
6
In the Twin Houses
‘I’ll come in with you to see your mother,’ said Torvil when they reached the yard. He was longing for the happy kitchen he had visited earlier that evening.
‘All right. Mother doesn’t ask many questions,’ answered Aud. ‘And then we can go over to you afterwards.’
The kitchen was as pleasant as before. The syrup-making was over. A wasp that had not escaped in time had given up trying and was crawling frantically over the lees in a saucepan. Aud’s mother was bustling about as usual; she was unable to sit still for long. Her husband was probably in his study with his books and schoolwork.
The Bridges Page 2