The Boat in the Evening

by Tarjei Vesaas

  There are more and more of them. They come because of the pull of the journey. They are released from their old ways and join in before they are aware of it. It is a mighty pull, and offers no comfort, digging them up, prying them loose and forcing them into it.

  Creatures large and small, but not a single human being.

  The innocent drifter in the lead has gradually become a mere pretext.

  *

  A new element.

  The living bark of a dog explodes from behind the trees on the shore. Loud and giving warning, with the correct silence afterwards. Then a whole series of signals from the hidden dog.

  A house? Not a house to be seen. That is his first thought. It was a shocking sound. There is nobody in sight. The watchdog keeps himself hidden.

  The dog’s bark is echoed back from the hillside opposite. This must encourage him, for he goes on barking. Sounds are hurled past each other and split in two—meaningless, but unspeakably joyous among all that is here already.

  The man in the water lets it rain down over him. He is lying in the middle of the din and feels curves and stripes forming in his skull during the ten-fold howling of the dog. None of his own cries have been heard. This is the cry. A growl starts up in his throat, in the slime and the taste of the water, and he startles himself when he opens his mouth wide and howls more horribly than he realizes: ‘Wowwow wow!’

  There is a sudden silence on the shore. Then a frightened bark. What the man said must have sounded dreadful to the dog’s ears; he only manages to squirt out a sound from between his teeth.

  The current gives the drifter a little nudge. The way south is open.

  The drifter is inflamed by all his bewildering visions.

  What is this? The first contact after having been at the bottom in the slime.

  ‘Wow wow!’ he hollers. A language he has only just learnt.

  The hillsides reply.

  Then the dog goes wild, with terror, joy or insult. He forgets to stay hidden, leaps out on to an isolated rock on the shore and barks at the top of his voice, abusing the object he can see out there.

  The man with his nose above water lifts himself up as far as he can and frees his mouth. They greet each other in angry or possibly unpleasant terms, filling the valley with this hostile language.

  The drifter has excited himself far too much, beyond his strength. In the middle of a howl he collapses once more, and gets a ducking. He has enough to do paying attention to more immediate matters.

  The dog falls silent and disappears.

  The journey continues as before. The drifter survived the latest ducking too, but is down in a trough of misery where even the provocative mirrors mean nothing.

  What now?

  It is evening.

  *

  It is the onset of evening at the end of this wearying day. A warm, fine evening.

  The traveller has not gone very far. He has not yet come to any villages. The current allows itself ample time to exert its pressure.

  A beautiful evening for those who could appreciate it. A drifter in the current like himself is not among them. He is floating southward as a part of the hopeless tangle, as a damaged consciousness.

  But he is in contact with the dog.

  After the first skirmish things go more gently. It turns out that the dog is keeping up with him behind the bushes, as the patient crow is keeping up with him still from tree to tree. The crow has not yet lost its faith in a meal.

  The dog has other, hidden motives. Contact with man. The howl told of a web of things known to the dog that the drifter in the current took up blindly and can answer.

  Perhaps it is this that sustains him through the struggle when he is about to give up. He does not sink; he has the thought of the dog.

  At each promontory the dog meets him and gives a short, sharp bark, no longer hostile. It waits for an answer and gets one. ‘Woof!’ comes the reply from out on the water, muffled or loud, according to his strength. He growls in dog fashion, quite taken up with this unfamiliar language and concentrating on it with all his might.

  At every little promontory the dog stands waiting.

  The echo that sang out with them has finished. The valley sides have taken on a different shape and do not send sounds back. They are frothing with the ripeness of late summer, but keep silent.

  The evening is stealing on. The sun that once was reflected in the mirrors has gone; no one will be bewitched by it now. The twilight is setting in, and will bewitch instead. The dog has fallen silent, like one who has come home and forgotten everything out of doors. The crow disappears and will have to go hungry to bed. Evening is evening. It will probably find him tomorrow.

  The drifter feels that much has gone. He appreciated his splendid retinue. He tries out his newly-acquired language again and brings out a weak ‘woof’ a couple of times, without getting any answer. It did not carry far enough.

  The lack of an answer upsets him, making him angry and depressed. He lies on his back with his mouth open ready to call should he have the strength, and in any language. The water is so still that it does not splash over his gaping jaws. He does not move a muscle—that time is past. He clings tightly to the log with his arm, his eyes wide open to the cloudy sky. The sky became cloudy just after sunset. The man lies looking at a darkening ceiling without thinking about it. Gaping at it. Nobody sees this. It is the kind of moment that nobody witnesses.

  He is still afloat on the strength of the contact with the dog. He moves his lips slightly.

  *

  Immediately afterwards the back of his head knocks against something hard. He is drifting head first.

  Perhaps it hurt a little, but he does not know what pain is any more and it makes no impression on him. But it stops his forward movement. The restless current swings his body slowly towards solid ground. There he lies without coming any further.

  Shortly afterwards a large bird shoots over.

  The drifter, who is gaping up into the evening sky and appears to be dead, does not even start. He lies still where he has drifted against the shelf of rock.

  The bird comes back and drops heavily, alighting on his breast and folding its wings. The drifter starts and notices it. He writhes and shrieks, an ordinary human shriek.

  The shriek is piercing. The bird, which is a quiet night bird, rises quickly and noiselessly. It had made a mistake.

  The sudden movement fills the drifter’s mouth with water. The shock passes like a ray through his paralysed body. He thrashes about him with the one arm, as if the bird were still there. He strikes his hand against something, and seizes it. It is a tree-root. A tree at the outermost edge of the shore where the water has washed away the soil. He has run aground on stones and roots.

  His hands dig into the roots of their own accord. Both hands. He is lying on solid ground and can scrabble like this without thinking. A reminder goes through his brain about holding fast, about pulling. He is able to do it because of the sudden stimulation. He can drag himself a little way out of the everlasting water. His feet are still lying in it, that doesn’t matter. There he lies. He is seized with a great fit of trembling.

  The twilight deepens, very slowly; he can see objects around him, but is not sure what they are. He can see with his eyes. He moves and says something. He sees the water and trembles. Water? he wonders. His thoughts are still paralysed.

  He thinks he sees the bird approaching in the twilight and barks a loud, scared yell of terror at it.

  Something answers him.

  Promptly an answer comes from some way off, the frightened baying of a dog once more, excited and aggressive baying, as if at something unlawful.

  The man hesitates. He cannot produce a sound.

  The dog goes on barking.

  If he had wanted to answer he could not have got it in, for the dog is exciting himself more and more. He must be at the other end of the beach now. The drifter lies still, rocking in this rhythmical sound without attempting to join in. />
  A fresh series of unrelated pictures. It seems as if channels of light are passing through him, regardless of the late evening and the twilight. Curious channels of light. He cannot link them with anything. Impossible to understand when you are dead almost all over.

  The dog continues with its warnings. In the drifter they turn into visions that he destroys at once. Then the dog stops. What does this mean?

  Another sound from the shore.

  ‘Hoy!’ calls someone, even louder than the dog.

  ‘Hoy! Hi!’ he calls.

  What is happening? Everything comes to a standstill—and then seems to go up in the air. The human call clangs in his ears. His paralysed thought sequences shiver with tension. His excitement flares up, and he replies like thunder, so it seems to him, as best he can, ‘Wow wow!’

  He cannot find anything to say except the dog’s cry. It was not what he had meant, but what he was able, to say. What he had meant to say had suddenly become far too perplexing and far too much to be shouted.

  He paws at it with stiff fingers, with clenched fists in a web delicate as hair. Impossible, it falls to pieces.

  He listens, lying on his back. He has drawn his feet up. His hands cling convulsively to the root.

  Something is happening over there. No more calling. Something is happening.

  He can hear it; something is approaching him. He hears growling and a few quiet barks, and some quiet splashes that awaken a memory. He cannot reach it.

  Then he sees it in the semi-darkness. All of a sudden a boat appears. It is approaching from land, it is alongside at once.

  The drifter sees it, but he has seen so much this afternoon. He sees this new vision approach, large and strange. He twists towards it.

  ‘Be quiet, will you?’ someone in the boat says to someone else.

  ‘Hi there, what’s the matter?’ comes again from the boat. Someone is standing up in the boat speaking to him.

  The drifter finds it impossible to answer. If he were to say anything just now, everything would shatter and sink to the bottom. He is careful not to say woof, either, because it is not suitable. An avalanche of things from another existence is rushing in on him. He is speechless.

  The boat is made fast to a root at the water’s edge, and a man and a dog on a leash take the few paces towards the drifter. When the dog reaches him he gives a cautious woof.

  The drifter answers with a low woof, out of the enormous upheaval he feels is approaching.

  The stranger leans over in a friendly fashion and acts as if he had heard nothing.

  ‘I expect you’d rather come home with me, instead of lying here?’ he asks, in such a normal fashion that it sounds unnatural.

  It means nothing to the drifter. He is busy clarifying matters and does not reply. He is putting his thoughts in order. The mirrors have reached his channels of light, many of them and very close. They are transmitting their pictures through him. It is wonderful. He understands more and more. His body is still powerless.

  The stranger grips him strongly under the arms and lifts him. He manages to carry him. His feet drag numbly along the ground. The dog walks close beside them without making a sound.

  Beside the boat the man is forced to put his burden down. The wet body is as heavy as stone.

  ‘You’re heavy.’

  No answer.

  The man points at the boat. ‘Boat,’ he explains, pointing again, his voice tense with concern.

  No answer. Putting his thoughts in order.

  ‘Boat,’ says the man, with emphasis. ‘Boat on water,’ he says.

  Yes! A glimmer of life then.

  In confused mirror glimpses and an awakening sense of order he sees that it is a boat, and knows what boat means. That was a good gift from the mirrors. With the boat as his starting point he can go further and understand more and more.

  He finds his voice. ‘Boat,’ he replies, clearly, with understanding. It is too dark to see that his face has lighted up, but perhaps it can be heard.

  The man cautiously pulls the heavy drifter close up to the boat. They say no more to each other.

  The dog sits as if waiting for something, and the man says to him, ‘Yes, you’d better have a sniff at him, good dog.’

  The dog does so for an instant, and then jumps into the boat.

  The man pulls the drifter in over the gunwale, afraid he will be unable to bear it.

  6

  The Wasted Day Creeps Away on Its Belly

  Nobody talks about the wasted day.

  The wasted day creeps away on its belly.

  Only the chairs stand upright in place, in the halls, in the halls. Those empty chairs of ours in the halls—because this day is over.

  The day that was no day, is over. We nodded and went out, went home. The day turned into a day of shame and will never show itself again. Nothing is nothing, the day is past, it is evening and the wind is rising.

  The skulls went home. We sit there no longer. We nodded to everything, giving our approval. A nod is a nod. Then it is evening, and the wind is rising.

  The chairs are deserted, nothing was done. Nothing will be done tomorrow either—but we shall occupy the chairs and the nods will be nodded, and the wind—yes, the wind is rising.

  *

  Nothing was changed, neither ourselves nor others. The day must creep out of the room with it. In its place the room slowly fills with dusk. Someone is calling from outside, but a call from outside does not reach in to the stricken day. The day that has been destroyed—it began as pale pink veils on the mountain peaks in the morning. We knew this and settled ourselves comfortably in our chairs. We were alert and far-sighted.

  *

  Nothing.

  How much can be betrayed by a nod?

  Nobody used his head to prevent misfortune and misery. The day creeps on its belly out of the room, to find a hiding-place far down in the cellars, where the rats lurk with their long naked tails. We sat in the chairs all the day long and nodded a costly span of time down to the rats. We knew everything.

  The day creeps on its belly like a snake, and breaks in pieces in order to make off into thousands of hiding places: in the wilderness, in the upper reaches of lakes, between the blocks of stone in ancient mountain slides. Never out again—until the merciless clock strikes. The betrayed day, once so splendidly equipped, has no chance now. When the clock strikes it is too late.

  Deeper and deeper among the blocks, among stones the size of houses—where it is always dark, and there are always nameless creatures. Among such as these end parts of the wasted day, with small, dark creatures that nibble each other a little in the shell, that bide their time in peace.

  *

  Our chairs are in position, ready for the next time. The wiseacres were there, reclining indolently or sitting nervous and stiff, but all of us sat nodding—and now it is evening and stormy.

  The day has hidden itself in everything that can provide shelter. The day bores in beneath the grass on the graves, to the skulls lying there. Wiseacres who probably sat in the chairs once upon a time. They did not prevent misfortune and misery. They are darkened skulls; it is pitch dark around them. The day comes down to them and vanishes, as smoke vanishes, and as the most dangerous secrets vanish.

  The grass grows over them and fades, and the snow falls and the nights fall, and the spring matures and fades. A tiny speck sits there on one leg, biding its time, and does not know why it does so.

  *

  And then there’s the water.

  The water laps alongside. Laps against all kinds of shores, all kinds of walls, all kinds of hard rock.

  Water for soothing, for washing, for setting limits. Water for expansion and for obliteration. The ocean for breaking down boundaries. The ocean for destruction, for ruin. The wash of its waves passes through the embankments like weighty signals.

  But slow, friendly signals too. Something nobody has yet learnt, but signals. Water is spacious and silent. The lake has enormous depth.
The day sinks through layer upon layer of darkening lake, which meet and are silent. Below exists what is nameless, where the disfigured can dissolve.

  Lapping in the small lakes in the forest. Signals all the way to the graves, from the lakes in the forest. There are graves and the lapping of lakes around graves, and everything that exists is a signal. Shores of peat, water lilies above shifting lake-beds, layer below layer, where what is heavy as lead goes through without hindrance.

  *

  The wind is rising.

  The lake will be dangerous.

  The wind from the ocean blows on to the land in the darkness.

  It is not quite dark, though; there is a moon. The wind sweeps in the night and howls at the chairs from the night-side. The wind grows stronger and blows the doors open, sweeping in towards the empty mass of chairs—but is stopped abruptly as if by a sudden thought. The doors slam shut again. Windows opened by the wind slam shut. It is as if all air stops streaming in. All the chairs are occupied. The skulls from the graves are back in their old places. The windows are thickly curtained. Outside are moonshine and wind.

  The chairs filled for a meeting. Muttering in the chairs. Silence in the chairs. The eternal matter of Sirius’ Slaughterhouse:

  We are tired of the talk about dogs.

  We want no talk about dogs.

  What is all this talk about dogs?

  There never has been any dog.

  Is there a smell of meat here?

  Is a dog howling outside the wall?

  Is this Sirius’ Slaughterhouse?

  Now it is the fourteenth night.

  There is no dog.

  I say there is no dog.

  Nor is there any Slaughterhouse.

  Why should there be a dog?

  There is no smell.

  No smell at all.

  No dog exists.

  It is howling beside a crack.

  Night after night beside a crack.

  A crack that cannot be caulked.

  A crack and a dog?

  There is no dog.