It is. It does not have to be mentioned – since as little as possible should be spoken about. He can see it is time for a break by the way father put the big, silver turnip away in his pocket.
Almost nothing need be said when you have eyes, and when you have your own song.
The break has been in the forefront of their minds for a good while. And it comes punctually. The fir-tree is standing ready to receive them, a tree all hanging, wide-spreading branches; with the help of the snow a house has formed beneath it. The man sees to the horse. Green, fragrant hay. His son coaxes a flame on the hearth quickly assembled out of three stones, and puts the kettle on. Neither of them has said a word. The horse munches hay. It is pleasant to listen to in the snow; more expressive than any speech. It is as if they are sending one another pleasant messages by means of the only sound in existence.
The fire warms up and crackles. The kettle boils. They munch cold sandwiches mixed with hot liquid and with steam from their wet clothes. The warmth enters their bodies and their sight grows blurred.
The man’s eyes are dim, he is staring inwardly at something. The child is strangely struck, almost scared to see the stern man staring into something far beyond the present. The child is frighteningly alone.
Where is the wordless man wandering, this man who is not wordless when he’s with the right people? The sight of him makes the boy forget his childish ring of animals. What is he thinking about at this moment? It’s not about the people at home – he’s sure of that.
The child ponders this anxiously. And then the question is blurted out. The same question given back from earlier today:
“What is it?”
Without meaning to, it sounds frightened.
The man gives a start.
“Is anything the matter, then?” he says quite sharply. His tireless manner of dealing with unwelcome questions.
“No,” mumbles the child hastily.
The child withdraws again. He has a guilty conscience, that’s the trouble. Because he always sides with the quiet, strong partner at home, is always on her side when something is the matter – and therefore seems to be against this man of few words – who is not at all a man of few words, who is made welcome and makes people laugh as soon, and as quickly, as he likes.
But here there is no one to be happy with, to talk to about horses. The child knows all this far too well. On especially exhausting or boring workdays the man takes on the expression he has now. He stares out into something one dare not ask him about.
He is lonely, and I am lonely – and she who is at home and so very different, what is she? Yet they talk to each other just the same, about many things.
The one who is least lonely here is the horse.
No, no.
The warmth has found its way in. The food and the warmth and the work are all having their effects on the man. He nods and drowses.
The child watches him intently while he is asleep. He cannot discover anything.
He’s dreaming about something now.
What can it be?
What is reflected in his face? There is life in it as he sleeps.
* * *
—
ARE THEY FOND of each other?
Yes! Many signs of that.
But strangers to each other.
Don’t know.
* * *
—
SO VERY BRIEF – his eyes are open already and looking around in confusion. A quick movement to take his watch out of his pocket.
“Oh!” he exclaims in amazement and puts his ear to the watch, to see if it has stopped.
The child has a desire to call to him: Do you think you’ve been dreaming as long as that? But he cannot bring out a word on this occasion either.
The horse is not munching, only half-dozing.
“My word, this will never do,” says the man, in rebuke to someone, and gets to his feet.
His eyes are still distant. He is not here. He puts the bit into the horse’s mouth. The horse opens his lips slightly to make room.
* * *
—
THEY HAVE FINISHED that section and the horse is set to trampling down a new piece. He knows what he is supposed to do; all that’s necessary is to take hold of the reign with scarcely a word.
“H’up, Brownie.”
But something is said to him, at least, so that he will feel they are working together, that there are three of them. He wades, darkening with the wet, is given breathing space, tears at a piece of birch bark, and wades on ahead again.
Using all his strength.
The only one who has any strength.
His steel-shod hooves trample erratically in the deep snow. It is difficult to control his feet in it. He tramples and wades, determined to go forward. A long, long time until supper – and thus is my song.
What was that now?
Was it a sound?
No sound, but something has happened. Something red on the lumps of snow tossed up by the struggling horse’s hooves. Blood on the lumps of snow.
Not a sound. No pause either.
But this man turns the horse in a flash, so that he wades the short distance back again. The child gets out of the way, knowing what this is.
“Has he kicked himself?”
“Obviously.”
Shortly after: “He’s kicked himself badly.”
The man cautiously strokes the bloodied snow away from the horse’s foot. There is a long red weal in the leg just above the hoof. The shining sharp shoe on the other hoof trod in the wrong place. Cut by his own shoe. Dirty melting snow trickles down the leg into the wound.
Dumbly hurting.
The horse droops his head as if dreaming, takes his weight off the leg, then droops lower. He is with man, with man in good and evil times. Has given himself over to man.
* * *
—
HIS STERN MASTER is hurriedly searching his memory. He does not see his staring child, but looks back into distant times, searching for the threads of experience. Never be at a loss. Don’t stand uncertain in the desert places and the blizzard. No man must do that.
Centuries of life with horses and snow. Lore from father to son. Harmful or wise. Inherited down the ages.
Advice about accidents, when far away from any first aid: Use whatever means you have, quickly and firmly. A cold breath from far back in time: Cleanse the warm wound with your own salt water. It has been done since heathen times. Whether it helped or hindered nobody knows.
So the stern man kneels beside the horse’s hoof, fumbles with his wet clothes and makes himself ready.
An echo from heathen times, unknown to the half-grown child. The child is ignorant of what it knows.
* * *
—
THE BIG BOY watches, embarrassed. Why embarrassed? He does not know. He does not know about this, there has never been any need for it. He sees his father making himself ready, sees the horse leaning forward, sees his father fumbling nervously.
No washing of the wound. Nothing at all. He has nothing to offer.
His father, never one to fail, flushes. He raises his voice, as if in pain, turning to the child.
“I’ve been sweating too much today.”
As if this defeat is the child’s fault – that’s what it sounds like, the child senses danger. Wants to get away. It is much too late.
No, I won’t.
Too late.
His voice chops the air: “Come on, you try! What are you waiting for?”
* * *
—
THE EMBARRASSED CHILD is drawn into it, into blind, dark rings. Swelling, incomprehensible opposition, helpless opposition when it is precisely help he must offer.
I can’t do this.
Why not?
A thought shoots far out
to one side, out towards the ring of mist, out to the big creatures standing there with red muzzles and lifted tails and small eyes – standing there making their hidden ring.
He thinks of them as a help.
But they make no move. He is and remains utterly alone. With wild courage he stammers to his father: “What about you, then?”
Although he saw his father’s failure well enough, he manages to say it in defiance, stammering inside the walls of snow.
But what’s to be done besides stammering it to this wall of rock and then giving in?
* * *
—
“YOU HEARD ME,” he says, still on his knees at the horse’s feet.
His tone is harsh. The distant echoes from heathen times thunder in his voice, making it like this, turning it to stone.
The boy answers instantly: “Yes, I heard you.”
“Then come along!”
“All right.”
* * *
—
WHY SHOULD IT SEEM so difficult? It ought to be simple, surely, to give help to the lamed horse?
The things you must do are usually possible.
The impossible becomes real when you must.
The impossible does not exist when you must.
Anyone who knows so many secrets, who knows about the ring of animals, ought to be ashamed of himself.
Yes, he is ashamed too, and comes wading across to the horse and his father. Burning, he kneels down and makes himself ready.
There are three of them. There is nobody else. But all the same this is happening within the ring of animals, which only one of the three knows about.
Close to the horse’s hoof.
The horse droops his head as if dreaming about something, but it is the hurt and the throbbing that make the dumb animal behave this way. He lifts his hoof, standing on three legs, lifts his hoof high enough to raise the wound above the cold snow they are all standing in.
The horse, large and helpless. Strong and utterly helpless, but together with man, trusting man in his hurt. Perhaps trusting completely in the unfledged being down in the snow beside the wound.
Large or small, man must come to a painful wound.
This is my song.
* * *
—
EMBARRASSED AND TREMBLING beside the horse’s hoof.
He wants to do as he is told, but cannot do a thing. He knows beforehand that he cannot, but he must pretend he can. He has a curious sensation: what seemed to be a dark wall opening – and his father stepping out of it to speak words of stone to his child. Stepping straight out of a black wall with strange advice that he himself could not follow.
He failed himself, and turned his failure into words of stone to the frightened child. He stepped out of the stone wall like a barking dog, so that everything is doomed to failure.
No use, in spite of centuries-old lore. Horse and man in isolation must help themselves when in pain. Old, black lore straight out of the wall. You cannot follow it when you are a child.
This stern man has inherited it from down the centuries, and stands self-possessed, giving orders, beside his own defeat. He demands curtly, “Get on with it.”
* * *
—
BITTER MOMENTS. The child can do nothing either.
He could have called to his father: Haven’t I sweated just as much as you today? And it would have been true, and reason enough.
But he is silent for a different reason, one that goes deeper.
The black command that came out of the wall of stone. It cannot be explained. He cannot perform. Not one miserable drop.
A caustic look from the man above him rests on him and paralyzes him so that he cannot move either. But nothing will come of this anyhow; the man’s caustic eye saw this in an instant.
Miserably the child kneels in the snow beside the horse’s raised, smarting leg. The steel shoe glistens on his hoof from the trickling blood on the polished metal.
Go on, shout out loud, he says to himself. Shout at him that he was no better. He was just as hopeless.
No.
You don’t shout such things out loud at a man such as this. You keep silent instead.
Nothing but embarrassment within the wall of mist. Let me shout about something else that’s hidden from you, then: about the thousands of creatures who are switching their tails and standing so close together that the warmth passes from one to another. The creatures with their searching, uplifted muzzles. They will come running if I shout – because they are mine. There are so many of them that it would grow dark in the wood as if it were evening.
Stupid thoughts flashing past. There are only three of them here. Only three, even if he were to shout until he burst.
But he cannot for the life of him manage to wash the wound in this doubtful manner. He regains his power of movement and is already getting to his feet.
Once on his feet he sees unjust anger flushing in the face before him. With slight ceremony he is pushed aside, his own cheeks burning with shame.
Not a word.
It is a double defeat.
Nothing for it but to fumble with his stiff, snow-sodden clothes again.
The horse droops his head and appears to have noticed nothing, as he keeps his leg raised, a helpless creature together with helpless man, dumb for thousands of years with man.
* * *
—
NOT A WORD.
The stern man with his secret, gentle dream, what about him?
He tears of his jacket, tears off his shirt, jerkily, with angry gestures. The defeat seems to have turned into anger. He rips his shirt with a screech of the cloth, winds it around the wounded limb and knots it together. Not a word the whole time. He must try to keep the cold snow out of the open wound, and it is a long way home. A long way in the loose snow; it has not had time to harden in the gully. Home to see the horse as quick as they can.
Three of them equally silent, on the way home.
The dirty wound bleeds in their consciences, whether with reason or not.
The big boy bears the hurt. He will remember this to the end of his life.
No, the horse bears the hurt, but there is a difference. His smart is pure and honest.
What will the man remember? The child knows nothing about that. He does not know anything about him for certain. But he was dreaming over his shovel; that is all he knows.
* * *
—
THE SNOW STARTS to fall again. The mist thickens.
And the ring of animals?
At this moment the whole ring of animals vanishes. They cannot be kept back. No use calling them. They will not be conjured up again.
The big boy bears the hurt instead, a shapeless burden, but one that will settle for good.
The horse bears the burning hurt.
Without a sound, like the others.
I am with man,
and no other than man.
I am with man
all the day long.
I am the horse,
and this is my song.
In the Marshes and on the Earth
A HUGE, BARE MARSH.
What am I doing here, out of doors so early?
I shall go. To see. Just to see.
Here too.
Early morning on a big marsh. I go in perplexity, to search for something important. Why should anyone do that? For reasons that seem decisive to oneself. But reasons that one does not wish to examine too closely.
There is no need to ask: Do I really see this? This is obviously a black marsh early in spring before it has turned green, and early in the morning when the air is full of the taste of ice. The snow was lying here only recently.
It feels as if there is black earth with icy snow patches inside oneself on a m
orning like this. That is why one goes out wandering.
It feels like that when something is wrong. Nothing you can point to, but wrong all the same.
Lurch out of a house. Lurch your way out to a marsh.
I am too young.
But everything is so marvellously wrong. It’s so horribly exciting.
Then you have arrived at the marshes.
Chilly and early. The moss barely escaped being stiffened with frost last night.
* * *
—
BLACK, NAKED AND WIDE. Late spring. There can’t be much use in walking here either when you have lost your footing. You can at any rate pretend it is so, and lose your footing for an instant, no longer. You must go and find something while you are in the void, and when you see a marsh as wide and as bare as this one, which you watched as it hid itself in the spring night yesterday evening, you have to walk out on it the next morning as soon as it is daylight.
Mist has been resting on the marsh during the night. Now it is dissolving into restless skeins. Many of them have moved away, others are still lying about lazily – the remnants of the events of the night, a cold, raw spring night, with its awakening life.
The light comes earlier each morning. There are clear, strict laws of life in such a marsh. One must go out of it. There must be something worth finding.
Always something one must find, though ignorant of what is going on. If only it had had a suitable name, this strange lack one cannot shake off.
If it had had a name it would have been smaller and less aggressive. Then one could have gone straight up to it to see whether it really was anything important.
My body gives a shudder. Am I being watched from somewhere along the edge of the marsh? Sheer fancy. I think so because I am as naked as the marsh.
But the feeling persists.
Someone is watching from the edge of the marsh. It’s that curious tingling you get.
The Hills Reply Page 2