The Birds

by Tarjei Vesaas

  “Well, there’s nothing more,” he mumbled, embarrassed. “I mean, nothing more I wanted to say.”

  “Pity,” said the girl.

  “One, two, three, pang,” said the young man, reminding the two of them that he was there as well, and that there was a weeding race on.

  Behind them the lucky farmer who had these two splendid workers was chuckling. He obviously took no account of Simple Simon, nobody did.

  “Alright, alright,” said the girl in reply. “I can hear you.”

  Pang, said a quiet voice inside Mattis, directed at the young man who’d received this rap over the knuckles.

  They all started working again.

  The sun was getting hotter and hotter. In the furrows frail, uprooted plants lay withering and dejected. A warm smell rose from the soil.

  Mattis looked behind him at the farmer. Was he feeling tired and fed up? Pretty unlikely, a strong, clever man like him. Mattis was both tired and thirsty by now, had lost all control over his fingers. The girl had revived his flagging spirits, but they sank again under the pressure of a job he couldn’t cope with. And now the three of them were moving away again, this time behind him, giving the whole place a sad and desolate air. Every now and again his thoughts got confused, and he found that he was pulling up turnips instead of weeds, and had to stop.

  When at long last he reached the ridge and had to work his way down the other side, he felt even lonelier. The others seemed to be gone for good.

  His shiny green rows stretched out like a challenge. He dug about, thinking: I must at least earn my food. After that he sat down for a while. Nobody could see him, and the confusion he was in upset all the movements of his hands. Besides, it was so nice to sit down when you were tired.

  When he saw the three of them appearing over the ridge again a little later, he gave a start. Already! He started fumbling about, destroying a lot of good turnips. But still, it was nice that someone was coming. It was so desolate on this side of the ridge. The young sweethearts weren’t chirping quite as much as before, but all the same. And the farmer didn’t seem to be tired. When you’ve got a field as large as this you don’t get tired, you just get on with the work. He didn’t even look up.

  A very odd sound jolted them: it was Mattis.

  “Please stop!” he cried. It was a shout forcing its way out.

  The farmer straightened up quickly, dashing the sweat off his brow with a hand covered in earth. He was certainly sweating.

  “What’s the matter, Mattis?”

  Mattis was in a bad way. Although he hadn’t finished one trip across the field, he felt worn out. The dust had formed a faint moustache under his nose. The others might look the same, but it didn’t seem to matter on them. Hesitantly Mattis walked over to the farmer.

  “Can’t you see I’m getting left behind?”

  “Well, what of it?” the farmer replied reluctantly.

  “Did you realize?”

  The farmer dismissed the topic, “Yes, yes.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t like complicated work like this,” said Mattis in a serious tone.

  “No, I suppose not,” answered the farmer, bending right down over the turnips.

  Mattis was tempted to ask: Do you want me to stop? But he didn’t. The farmer mumbled something to himself. The sweethearts took advantage of the pause to give each other a pinch or two.

  Suddenly the farmer asked straight out: “Do you want us to do your rows?”

  A gray cloud drifted in front of his eyes. Something familiar from his old life, just as it was before the woodcock arrived.

  “Not yet,” he answered stiffly.

  “Alright then.”

  The farmer stooped over his hoe.

  Mattis started to walk back to the place where he’d been working, but on the way he gave the girl a glance, a glance imploring her to do something to help and comfort him – after all, she was so young and happy, and she had a boyfriend.

  He cleared his throat, as a sign he needed help quickly.

  She seemed to understand. She smiled at him as if reminding him: Here we are, you and I, waving to each other in the field.

  That was all he needed. What was more, he heard it so distinctly that he put it into words and repeated it.

  “Yes, here we are, you and I, in the field,” he said, just as warm and gently, but not as secretively as she had done.

  “Yes, we are,” said the girl.

  It was really true. She was standing looking at him, awkward and helpless though he was; she was quite spellbound.

  “One two three, pang!” said the young man, giving her leg a pinch – this seemed to be his favorite pastime – and at once the girl became completely absorbed by her boyfriend again.

  “Yes,” said the farmer too.

  The farmer with the big field. They glanced at him quickly and knew what he meant; pang!

  Once again the three of them moved quickly past Mattis. He looked across them. They seemed to have all the things he longed for: the three things. These people were nothing but the three things. They were full of them and yet they didn’t give them a thought, weren’t even aware of them, as far as he could see. How could they go around, calmly thinning out a turnip field?

  He lay flat on his stomach pulling things up, his thoughts roaming wildly. Help me, he thought.

  But his thoughts flitted aimlessly as before. Although he meant to pull up weeds, he pulled up turnips.

  Nobody wants to help me, that’s the trouble, he thought, and colors began dancing in front of his eyes.

  The precious turnips infuriated him. They lay there puny and threadlike when he’d pulled up the things they were resting against. Mattis wanted to shout abuse at them in his wretchedness, wanted to call them dreary little weaklings, not worth lying here for, feeling miserable. His thoughts wandered back and forth. This was what always happened when he tried to work – nothing had changed. And that was what was really bothering him today: no change, just the same old routine.

  Thank goodness! There was a call from the others on the far side of the ridge.

  “Mattis!”

  It was the farmer himself, the wise one. The beautiful one and the strong one said nothing, but they were there all right. All the three things were there.

  “Food?” Mattis shouted back, quick as lightning.

  “Yes, come along!” cried the farmer, still out of sight. The pleasant calls rang back and forth across the ridge. Mattis was already on the move.

  Mattis still had a bit of his first two rows left to do. But the end was at least in sight, so it might have been worse, he reflected, feeling a little better now he was on his way to a good meal.

  The others didn’t say a word about his poor work when he joined them to leave the field. Not a single word was said – but Mattis was sure they were thinking of nothing else. He bottled it up inside him for a while, but in the end he exploded: “You can come out with whatever it is you’re thinking!” he said to them as they washed their dirty hands in the stream.

  “What is it we’re thinking, then?” asked the young man. It was the first time he had spoken to Mattis.

  “I know it alright,” said Mattis who was in a state of great agitation and had to go on tormenting himself.

  “Ah well,” said the farmer, “let’s go back to the house and get something to eat. Have a little rest and—”

  They washed their hands in a clear little stream that flowed near the edge of the field. The girl washed her hands in the same pool as Mattis. Down in the water, made turbid by their mud, their hands touched for a brief moment as they plunged them in. A shock ran right through him. Gradually the running water swept the pool and the hands in it clean again. But now he dared not go anywhere near her.

  The girl looked at him, and he had no time to think.

  “It was almost like touching an electric fence,” he blurted out.

  Afterward he thought he had put it rather well, but all she did was turn away. Surely she wasn’
t laughing? Her boyfriend was washing his hands nearby, too, and when he’d finished he put his arm round her as if it were the most natural thing in the world – and in this way they walked across to the farm where the meal was waiting. Perhaps they weren’t even tired. Mattis thought of the young man’s arm bulging inside his shirt – to think he put the whole of it round her waist. That was how things ought to be.

  “Hello Mattis.”

  It was the farmer’s wife. She gave Mattis a friendly welcome. Her food was good and Mattis ate heartily. There’s something to be said for this after all, he thought. The heavy meal made him tired and sleepy, so he lay down on the grass outside. He didn’t see what became of the sweethearts. He fell asleep.

  11

  WHEN MATTIS WOKE up after having lain asleep in the midday sun he was absolutely scorched. The first thing he noticed when his head cleared was the three turnip-thinners in that awful field. Far away in the distance they were stooping down over rows of turnips. And they had been there for a long time, that was obvious from the work that had been done.

  They had left without waking him. The disgrace was probably no more than he deserved. As he stood there trying to face up to the situation, the farmer’s wife came out of the house. She walked up to him and said without hesitation: “It was me that told them not to wake you. He wanted to give you a shake, but you were so fast asleep I thought it’d be better to let you sleep on. It’s a couple of hours since they went.”

  Mattis blinked, not knowing what to say. The woman was friendly. And now he understood why he had left the road so suddenly this morning. The memory of this face was fixed in his mind, from a previous occasion. He had seen it once before.

  “Perhaps you didn’t get much sleep last night, either?” the woman asked, offering him a reasonable excuse.

  “No, I didn’t!” he said, “I haven’t slept for two nights. There’s a woodcock begun a flight over our house.”

  The way he said it made her start, but it was only for a brief moment, until she remembered who stood in front of her. He did not fail to notice it.

  “My goodness,” she said quietly. “In that case it’s not surprising you need to catch up on some sleep. How did the flight start, then?” she asked patiently.

  Mattis’s face lit up.

  “It just came. Late one evening. I’ve had such strange dreams since, too.”

  “Have you really? Still, dreams are rather private things, don’t you think, so we won’t discuss them,” said the woman who had a lot to get on with.

  She was a wise woman, he could see that. He looked uneasily in the direction of the turnip thinners sweating in the field. The woman understood.

  “Now which would you rather,” she said, “join the others in the field or come in with me and have a cup of coffee?”

  “Oh, I’d rather have the coffee, I think,” he said, livening up.

  “I think you made a wise choice,” said the woman.

  “But it’s fun watching the sweethearts, too,” said Mattis, trying to be honest.

  “Yes, I’m sure, but we’ll let the sweethearts get on with it, shall we, and drink our coffee.”

  “Well, if that’s alright.”

  That’s what women ought to be like, he thought, following her into the kitchen.

  They had some good coffee. The woman asked what his sister was doing.

  “Oh, there’s the never-ending sweaters, you know.”

  After this they sat in silence. Mattis felt awful thinking of Hege having to feed him.

  “I’m a terrible eater, too,” he said. He mustn’t lie to this woman. “I eat up all she earns,” he said.

  The woman didn’t say anything. Just kept filling up his cup.

  “Now she’s turning gray, too,” he said.

  The woman remained silent.

  “It’s not easy having me,” he said.

  Then the woman got up, saying almost harshly: “Let’s stop talking about this, Mattis.”

  Stop talking about it? But he was longing to talk about himself and his problems. It wasn’t often you had the chance of sitting and drinking good coffee and opening your heart to a woman.

  “Well, if I can’t I suppose I can’t,” he said.

  His voice was trembling.

  The woman found an excuse for going into the next room, so that Mattis could be alone. When she came back he had hardly moved; he sat surrounded by baffling problems, waiting with an important question. He began: “But I can ask you something, can’t I?”

  She nodded, but not very invitingly.

  “Yes, you can ask. But we’ll have to see whether I’ll answer or not. If I can.”

  Mattis asked: “Why are things the way they are?”

  The woman shook her head. Nothing more. He didn’t dare repeat the question. He waited patiently. Patient to all appearance. Inwardly he was frantic with impatience. He turned to her again. Once more she shook her head.

  “More coffee?” she said.

  He understood and yet he didn’t. He shuddered. Stared down into an abyss of riddles.

  “You bet,” he said, referring to the coffee.

  “But now the woodcock’s here,” he continued as though asking a question.

  “Yes, that’s a thing we’ve never had over our house,” said the woman quickly, happy at being able to talk about something like this. “Now you stay there,” she said, and left him for a little while, giving his disturbing question time to sink back into the depths from which it came.

  Time passed. Mattis sat where he was.

  “I bet they’re sweating now,” he said to the woman.

  She was getting the next meal ready, it would soon be time for it.

  “Do you think I ought to go and help?”

  “Too late now. They’ll be coming in very soon. You just stay put,” she said. She could see he didn’t know what to do. “They wouldn’t even want you turning up now.”

  There was an air of authority in her voice and in the expression on her face. The thought of meeting the others filled Mattis with dread and made him writhe in his chair. After a while the woman went out into the yard and called them home. How he wished he had been out there, washing his hands in the little pool.

  There they were. The door was open. They hung around a bit outside. Mattis, who had a keen sense of hearing, was listening anxiously to see if anyone said Simple Simon. Yes, there it was. It was the young man who said it. Mattis didn’t hear the rest. The three of them came in. Mattis sat full of anxiety. Shamefacedly he turned to the farmer: “I meant to come and finish off what’s left of my two rows, but I was asked in to coffee instead.”

  The farmer nodded curtly. His back was tired, and he was no longer as friendly as he had been in the morning.

  “We finished that bit of yours long ago,” he replied. “We couldn’t have just left that sort of thing there.”

  The sweethearts walked past Mattis as though he weren’t there. They looked embarrassed.

  “Come and have something to eat, Mattis,” said the farmer, dismissing the matter in spite of all that had happened.

  “Yes, some food would be great now,” Mattis replied. At the same time he groaned inwardly.

  It was the sweethearts that helped him at the table all the same. They were so young that he’d expected sidelong glances and sly grins, but they sat quietly, looking at him in a kindly way. No doubt the woman had told them how to behave before they came in. He’d known that kind of thing to happen many times. Doesn’t matter to me what the reason for it is, he said to himself, hastily turning his anxiety into a feeling of pleasure.

  Pity, though, that the young couple was so tired now that they couldn’t be sweethearts in the same way as they had been earlier in the day. It’s a real shame! he thought. He felt a strong desire to talk to the girl about it, now while they sat opposite one another eating. He brought his gaze to rest upon her. Her freshly washed girl-hands lay on the table. There was something friendly and likeable about her.

&n
bsp; “Are you feeling tired?” he began. He decided to risk it. Without realizing it he had asked gently, like a mother, and everyone around the table looked at him in amazement. The girl turned red and could hardly answer.

  “Yes,” she said in a quick, low murmur, drawn to something she felt to be good and sympathetic, and that held her entranced.

  They were all waiting for Mattis to continue, and he did: “It’s almost a pity to be sweethearts really, when you’re tired!” he said. He sensed that things were going wrong and getting confused. But that was what he’d meant after all.

  They were all able to laugh freely and continue eating again. Mattis had to laugh too. Had he been clever after all? His laughter was like the whinny of a horse, and that made the others laugh even more. Then it became very quiet, as after a sudden blow. What was it? No one knew.

  They got up from the table. Work was over for the day, and the farmer asked the sweethearts if they could come and help again the next day.

  “Suppose so,” they replied and left. Mattis sent a long glance after them. He wasn’t likely to be coming back tomorrow, so he wouldn’t be able to enjoy watching them.

  “I don’t suppose you want me tomorrow?” he forced himself to ask. The way things had gone that day it seemed almost brazen.

  The farmer felt a bit uncomfortable as well.

  “Not much point really, is there?” he said. It was difficult to avoid putting it like that. “What do you feel about it yourself? But let’s settle up for today anyway.”

  “No! I didn’t do any work, you know I didn’t.”

  “Oh, but you must have your pay.”

  “Well, for two rows then,” said Mattis, almost frantically. “But no more. See how much it is.”

  It was a difficult moment for both of them. Mattis saw the woman glance quickly at her husband. The farmer said: “Alright, we’ll leave it at that then. Two rows. Now we’re all square.”

  The farmer paid up and uttered a few customary words of thanks.

  “Hm!” Mattis mumbled to himself.

  “Anything the matter?”

  “No. Just all square. All square,” he mumbled to himself. These two impressive words sent a warm glow through him. That’s how men speak to men.