The Boat in the Evening

by Tarjei Vesaas

  We listen and we know this. We think it strange that she should want to go out in such weather.

  Her husband says, ‘Are you going out this evening?’

  She does not understand. She is filled with the melody.

  ‘Of course, why not? We’re going to sing.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he says.

  He is lying over on the bed with a book in his hand, the tall master of the house. It is not a strenuous time of year; on the contrary there are long evenings when you can enjoy yourself with a book. It is possible to read, you are not too tired. And you have the energy to share the music, if you understand it. We are aware of how much better it is to be alive in the dark, cold winter snow, than in the busy summer with an aching body.

  He has read many books aloud to us, that severe man over there on the bed. To our great delight. But this evening he is reading to himself, since the melody is plinking.

  He has not finished with the subject of going out into the tiring snow.

  ‘In this weather?’ he says.

  ‘It would have to be very bad,’ she replies quickly.

  She is immersed in the melody. The rest of us do not know what it means. The man with the book cannot imagine it either. He is like his sons. There is a slight edge to his voice as he continues, ‘Well, I can’t make it out.’

  She tumbles out of the melody and says bitterly, ‘I know you can’t.’

  ‘No, I think one ought to rest when one has the chance.’

  He cannot be so very tired this evening, surely. But he always has a bad back to plague him and set limits.

  ‘It’s no use, whatever you say,’ she tells him and puts an end to the little quarrel.

  Silence in the living-room. The melody has been shattered. The maid sits as if she did not exist at such moments. The rest of us, little as well as half grown, have heard similar exchanges many times. The eldest thinks, as so often before: What’s the matter with them?

  It shouldn’t be like this.

  Will he go with her? No.

  We understand what the talk is really skirting: the snowed-up road to the village. The man does not consider he can face going out into the storm to make a ski track over to the music. It is probably true that he is tired out and ought to rest his back. Over to the music—it’s not a matter of life and death to get there.

  He clears his throat.

  Is there more? We wait.

  ‘Well, well,’ is all he says. It sounds like a kind of announcement of his intention to stay where he is.

  He takes up his book with a jerk, a favourite book that he has read many times. The plucking on the string has started again too.

  *

  She goes out into the chaos of snow, accompanied by the melody.

  The melody is all about her. The melody must never, never leave her.

  We are left sitting, but in a way we accompany her too. We are not afraid of anything happening to her. She has skis on her feet, and she is a good skier and accustomed to using them. The yellow album was given her as a ski prize once. Everyone knows she will manage to get there in spite of the bad weather. And yet ...

  Brush it aside.

  The melody goes before her in the darkness too.

  A strange thought, but you can see it clearly. Both of them are out there together.

  We glance at the tired, silent master of the house with his books. He has put the book down and is staring at something on the ceiling.

  He is uncomfortable.

  We can see that. You learn to know the faces you have in front of you every single day. We are careful about what we say and do not say now.

  After a while he coughs, swings himself off the bed, slips into his boots, and goes out.

  Did he go after her? What a relief!

  No. He comes back in again at once. He has not put on his outdoor clothes either. We do not notice that in our initial astonishment.

  ‘Is it just as nasty outside?’

  The youngest asking in all innocence. His father answers quickly, ‘Nasty? Have I said it’s nasty? Oh no, I’ve seen much worse.’

  He looks searchingly at the child, takes off his boots and stretches out full length on the bed, letting the book lie.

  Go out after her? Oh no, he’s too stiff-necked to do that, the eldest one has learnt. It would have cost far too much to follow her, to overtake her and make a ski-track over that comparatively short distance.

  But what is it that comes over them sometimes?

  Easy to see her now: with the plinking melody for company, making her way through the drifts, steadily and surely. Over to the house with the many lamps and all the melodies. He sees her like this too, the man with the closed book.

  One understands a little more each day. But there is a dark core that one cannot crack—and that’s where the answer to the puzzle lies.

  We can only see her, simply and straightforwardly, making her way through the drifts. She arrives safely at her meeting with the melody. She goes in and is received with unreserved happiness. And now she is happy herself. And then we know nothing more until we see her again tomorrow morning.

  Then she is back in place, serving us food. Food for us everlastingly, morning, noon and night. By the time she came home yesterday evening we were sleeping bundles, sailing in dreams above bottomless whirlpools.

  *

  Did I say simply?

  Years later one thinks about such evenings, and sees her in the storm. No, not simply.

  The hidden thing that is the melody is about her: the man she is bound to; the children who have sprung from her womb; the hard, rigorous law that pulsates in the darkness together with the melody, the law about carrying out the duties one has taken upon oneself—all this is part of it too. She is in the middle of it all, forced by life.

  Someone like her, having made a promise, would probably never go back on it, as long as she had the strength.

  Her skis must be sinking deep into the new snow. She certainly won’t let it bother her. She has gone that way so many times that she doesn’t even see it. She is going to a brightly-lit room with music and friends filled with music. She will come as a bonus to their happiness, bringing her own alto melody with her.

  Those left at home cannot go with her, but she insists on having the music there. It shall be there as long as I am there in that house. My house shall be a house where there is room for the music too.

  This is probably what she is thinking as she moves along in the storm.

  I shall win him over, she must be thinking. I shall not give up, she must be thinking. I shall leave my mark on my home. Are we too dissimilar? perhaps she is thinking.

  If he had gone too and cleared a track for her she would have been immensely happy and immensely embarrassed. Perhaps mostly embarrassed.

  *

  There were many trees in the farmyard. Splendid trees had stood there when the eldest was a little boy.

  When he was a little boy and could say out loud like an easy wish: Wind in my trees. Although he did not use those words exactly.

  There was wind enough. The mass of leaves on the big aspen quivered and the many rowans fanned and combed the air on nights when the wind blew strong. Beside the red wall of the loft stood a bird-cherry tree, and at times the heavy scent of the blossom came in through the little round window.

  Inside lay the boy in his lonely resting place, usually dead tired. He thought of the fragrance as part of his wild dream, because it never came true.

  Nothing was going to fly apart; it only felt as if it might.

  But it shall fly apart all the same, it shall happen, someone shall come, it shall arrive like some kind of miracle before everything is over.

  The walls of old summer lofts have an odour of gently disturbing dreams that never came to anything. Now yet another naked boy was lying there in the hot weather, staring at the roof, lacking certainty. Yet another boy in the series. The roof that was dark and therefore endless, and not really there at all.

/>   Lying there with his too-young years, thinking about everything that he was not allowed to think about, and not allowed to talk about.

  *

  Roofs lift off houses on such summer nights, and you can see what is inside. In the attic bedroom beside the loft lie two young girls, brought in by Mother to rake the hay now it is the busy season. The roof lifts off the house and the boy sees them lying there and lying there, but he is not old enough to go in and fool around with them. But others go there. Many late evenings and nights of joking and talk on the other side of the wall. Lively talk and laughter, and soft, intimate talk. For a short while before everyone gets up there is silence. Only the wind whispers in the aspen.

  Day breaks. The mistress of the house comes out into the yard and calls to them to get up. Tells them that it is morning. The girls come out, narrowing their eyes against the light, and mother, who was the first to be out in the whispering-leaved yard, gives them their breakfast.

  The boy from the loft looks at the two girls a little shyly and curiously. Are they different today?

  They must be different, or nothing makes sense at all. They must be renewed or something, after a night full of marvels. Perhaps they are not, after all?

  Is there no mark on them, only those narrowed eyes?

  Nothing else.

  They walk along with their fine legs and everything else that a young boy cannot help noticing and delighting in and thinking about. But they act as if they were indifferent, and look it too.

  Their narrowed eyes are happy, to be sure, but so they were before. Mother says that the two of them are so good-natured and pleasant to have around. The boy thinks to himself that one might well be happy, if one had nights like theirs.

  But instead their lustre is a little dimmed today. They are not golden, as one might expect.

  Such a thing makes you thoughtful. It has to be hidden away, along with other secret matters.

  *

  The new day has been set in motion. The mowers come out. He looks at them for a long time. Wasn’t there a familiar voice in the attic bedroom last night? Have they slept or have they only gone to bed?

  And was this in any way important?

  In one way. A door was starting to open on to something new. He would have to pay attention to a lot of things, if he were to find some meaning in it.

  But something quite different gave the day its particular stamp: the erect, slightly-built woman who had inaugurated it. She it was who stood first in the yard, and who had to remain on her feet until late at night. Her hands and her thoughts were essential wherever something had to be done. And in the busy season something was happening everywhere.

  No one giggled behind her back. Nor did she ever have a disparaging word for any of her workfolk.

  They might grimace at the farmer instead—even though he was well thought-of really, and tactful. The eldest boy watched him and did not understand him. This man was fond of songs too, and after the meal breaks, when they sat beside the grindstone, the hired men often sang, and the man who could not sing recited songs and discussed songs, and knew more about them than anyone. It was impossible to make him out.

  But you could not approach him and ask for advice about all that gnawed at your heart. Never. Nor did the man ever refer to what was gnawing inside him.

  He was liked, although he could make people extremely irritated at times. No doubt about it, he was liked.

  ‘Well, girls?’ he said today, smiling at them. ‘Was it hard to get up?’

  The boy was not the only one to have heard the racket in the night, evidently.

  He smiled at them. They smiled confidently back without replying. They were not in the least afraid of him.

  His wife would not have done that. They would have flushed red if she had made the slightest reference to what went on in the attic bedroom.

  *

  The cruel summer is inescapable: it belongs with life on the farm.

  The eldest watches her. You ought not to be working like this, Mother, he thinks constantly. This isn’t what you ought to be doing.

  Strange girl in the album.

  But haymaking is haymaking, and no way of avoiding it. They must have made an agreement.

  The pleasant morning dew must be turned to account. Sharp-edged scythes slither in cold morning dew, and bite twice as keenly. Up with the dawn for that reason. The girls too. They are turning the piles of hay.

  She is not out yet. First the house and the children, and the food that must soon be ready on the table again. But afterwards: raking the haycocks, turning the windrow, cooking dinner, raking up the dried hay after the wagon has gone jolting past.

  This isn’t what you ought to be doing, Mother.

  Nonsense. No use talking like that. This is why we’re here.

  The sweat runs. Backs stiffen. And the stiffest back belongs to the master of the farm who injured it in his youth, logging in the woods.

  The imperious fine weather hounds us on mercilessly. Perhaps you secretly long for a little shower, a little welcome, relaxing rain. You must not say so. Haymaking weather is important; you ought to be giving thanks for it.

  But Mother must not wear herself out so. Don’t you see that it’s too hard?

  He would like to be able to seize the tanned thin man and shake him and say so that he would understand: Don’t you see?

  No one sees. It’s quite all right.

  Does she think it’s all right to be worn out like this?

  It looks like it, that’s what’s so extraordinary. What kind of promise has she made?

  He watches the book fall from her hands in the evening after the house has been made ready. He sees his father lying on his bed, dozing over a book. From pure exhaustion. This is not as it should be.

  The beautiful girls on the haying strip discard some of their clothes and there is even more to look at. Things that you’re not supposed to see, so that it startles you. The mowers’ eyes are gentle far into the day. But in the evening everything is snuffed out and tired and sleeping and gone. Isn’t it a shame?

  Mother, who bears the brunt indoors, slouches from exhaustion and will be the last to go to bed. Isn’t it a shame? Is it as it should be?

  Her son looks at her and thinks: Did she know this the day she promised to come here and live with him?

  Of course she did. She must have seen it during her own youth. She knew what she was going to.

  She must regret it horribly now.

  It doesn’t look like that, either. And after all, she has us—

  Stop now.

  *

  She sits with one child beside her and one on her arm, looking as if everything is really all right. The man who is their father goes over to them, bringing all his unattractive, made-up pet names for them. He has many of them and invents new ones all the time. They sit together for a while, and the eldest hangs about close by, drawing nearer in case he can catch something of what they are saying at such a happy moment.

  He is terrified that they will part without saying anything besides the pet names he has for the children.

  She says: ‘You really ought to rest your back sometimes. This will never do.’

  He answers curtly: ‘That would certainly never do.’

  *

  He knew what she thought about awkward matters. Those embarrassed and shrinking matters that one never brought oneself to mention. As he grew, his thoughts circled around her more and more nearly, but it was difficult to come close to her. Never really close. But she had said of the awkward matters: ‘I believe there is something behind, guiding it all, and we must not forget that it is so.’

  She had said this in several ways. We were never in any doubt about what she believed.

  But she never made us embarrassed and awkward by asking intimate questions. We were all silently grateful to her for it, from the bottom of our hearts. Her affairs were her own, and ours were our own too.

  We too had our thoughts about such matters. And so we w
alked beside her just as confidently as when we walked beside the giggling girls who were thinking about boys. Well, who knows about that, anyway? They must have thought about other things besides boys; maybe they sometimes thought about the same things as Mother did. One had to keep it to oneself.

  The secret was: we were glad that someone thought the way Mother did. But for pity’s sake no questioning and prying.

  *

  Sunday alone with her in the living-room. Late summer and fine weather. The killing hay-making weather could continue fine into the autumn, now that there was a brief pause between harvests. Sunday was no longer just a doze before Monday.

  The younger ones had gone with their father to the woods. He had actually asked them whether they would come with him for a short walk.

  Grinning with happiness they had accompanied him. She remained sitting in the living-room with the eldest.

  The girls were elsewhere, everyone was elsewhere. But one sat contentedly here with Mother. Nothing would happen. Nor could he broach his own worries, however urgent they seemed to him. It was absurd, but that’s how he was.

  She had a new melody to learn and was plinking through it repeatedly.

  He watched her covertly as she did so. He saw what he had seen before: the same as he had seen in the girl in the yellow album, he was sure of it. Now she was at home in the music, and was the girl from the album. Streaks of relief went through him when he saw it.

  He sat as still as a mouse. No one may come now, no one may come tramping in here. This must not be destroyed by good days and boring Sunday chat.

  She ran through her melody a couple of times more. This evening she would be meeting the others, where she somehow seemed to belong.

  Or was it not so? Did she belong here all the same? If only she did. Had she found her rightful place, or had a sin been committed? He couldn’t make it out.

  She was extremely efficient in her present position. She knew her duty, out and in. And more than her duty. She was the mistress here and behaved as if she were.