The Hills Reply

by Tarjei Vesaas

  And there! – a grating noise in the crusted snow. A few patches of crust are left, over there between the trees. So there was someone there after all. My ears are keen and hear well.

  Is someone leaving this place? One’s eyes are keen too, when one is experiencing this nameless pull, but there is nothing to be seen. Only the grating footsteps. It must be someone who has been longing to walk on the snow crust, and is looking for the last remaining patches. Now he’s moving away without revealing himself.

  I don’t like that sort of thing. People shouldn’t go creeping about among the trees when one is in the grip of the pulling sensation, naked on a black marsh. No one is to walk among the trees watching me.

  Grey or dun-colored tussocks, with last year’s pale straws flattened by the weight of this winter’s snow. Many creatures have been trampling here, and in the hollow left by each foot there is a tiny puddle. As if the marsh had been given a thousand eyes. Blurred eyes that are sightlessly still or which look indifferently out, utterly strange and all alike. The marsh is still dead; the summer with its whirring life has not yet awoken, seems not yet conceived.

  It is right to walk here, but one is hard put to know why one does so.

  Am I dreaming this?

  Am I not walking here at all?

  How shall I really find out?

  Let’s affirm that I am walking here, that everything I see and feel is real.

  The marsh is unknown to me, and yet it seems familiar. It seems as if I have walked here day after day, and nothing has happened. Yesterday evening I came here and watched the night settling out on the marsh – and yet I feel as though I have been walking here endlessly. Is that when things happen – at night? One must find out something, to pull oneself upright.

  Some of the countless eyes in the marsh seem to focus and look at me. The thought is not unwelcome; it is as if a link has been made, a tiny floating link between myself and what is here. It is important. One must gradually learn the truth about the boundaries between what is great and what is small.

  * * *

  —

  MORE GRATING over there in the invisible snow crust. Why is he over there moving about? Why didn’t he clear off? It’s not his time any longer, it’s morning. One cannot help being shocked by it, although the snow crust is among one’s favorite childhood memories.

  Just let him go.

  This marsh is enormously wide. The edges have disappeared for the most part in drifting morning mist. It is quite noiseless, except for those grating footsteps, and now he has gone for today, I hurriedly decide.

  We shall never meet.

  * * *

  —

  AT THE SAME INSTANT: a darkness in the air.

  Not completely dark: a mighty bird sweeps past just above my head and wheels round to land far away on the marsh.

  That too.

  Is the great crane here?

  Do the cranes come here?

  The first thing to do is to throw oneself flat on the ground, and try to make oneself invisible among the low-growing tussocks and bushes; to make this shy giant, the crane, think one has vanished. To hide one’s human face from the distant voyager, the shy bird that has come home. To bore one’s chin and mouth down into the moss until only the eyes are showing. For with one’s eyes one may mirror the shy, pure crane.

  The moss with its taste of what has been or what shall be – it is on one’s lips, it is the crown of the marsh. Enormous objects exist down in the marsh-darkness and the marsh-horrors – but up in the light of day there is only the moss, delicate and innocent on the summit.

  That was the crane arriving.

  It mistrusts man.

  There are probably more of them, if one has come. Another wheels in and settles.

  Of course. They come in flocks. I’ve probably stumbled on their own marsh, in trying to find an old marsh-dream, or whatever it is I’m looking for. The cranes have come to spend the summer here, to raise their young, this year as last year.

  Shy, shy – they float down far away. In a flash they saw there was something that did not belong here. The powerful wingspan seemed to clutch the air. Better to settle far away. They mistrust the object lying in the marsh. But neither will they give up their own marsh.

  A darkness in the air. Was it a shock? No, they are welcome. I didn’t know about them, but they are welcome all the same. They are a part of what once is circling round, wishing to approach, wishing to fill a void with. Welcome with all that they are.

  The great bird folds his wings. With my eyes above the moss I can watch. It stands in the marsh with an uplifted, inquiring head. The next one follows immediately after and takes up the same position. I am quivering with excitement; it is like a kind of happiness. I am lying in cold marsh moisture, that slowly penetrates my clothes, making me damp and filthy, but I am warmed by the sight of the cranes. I am on the cranes’ own territory; I seem to have entered a sacred place where one has no right to be.

  In any case it is essential to press myself down into the moss and make myself as invisible as I can. To become a pale tussock in a windcheater beside the dwarf birch bushes. To stare blindly, as the hundreds of puddles are doing. To convince myself that the birds will be taken in by it.

  To stare at the cranes. That’s a lot in itself. One after the other arcs down. Are they surprised about something? The spring must be colder and more naked than they had imagined when they set out.

  No one told them about it; they had to make their journey without knowing how things looked on their marsh. They obeyed a sound within themselves, and left. Now they are standing here, somewhat doubtful in a frozen spring.

  Wave after wave of joy passes through me, in spite of the penetrating moisture that is trying to disturb my happiness. The air is continually darkened with wings. They settle down at a distance, long-necked, searching, on guard. My marsh eye watches them and can mirror them.

  The crane’s eye also seems to rest on everything. From the air they saw the windcheater tussock that should not have been there. They move far away and look in that direction.

  Come closer! I wish at the same moment, as intensely as never before.

  They do not understand. It does not occur to them to approach a human being. They have returned from a long journey. They walk, dignified and cautious, far away and without apprehension. The human means nothing to them.

  But how must this end? And what is really happening to me?

  They walk there in the serene ferment after their long journey. They stretch their necks, manoeuvring in order to settle down and rest in familiar surroundings. In equal ferment, the bundle lies among the tussocks, following their movements.

  This must end in something special from the way they’re moving. They don’t seem to be settling down yet, after all.

  Fresh stab of joy. It’s sure to end in the dance I’ve heard about. The dance will soon begin.

  Now that they have arrived after their great journey, and their mysterious experiences, the dance will break free. They have reached their goal in the land of snow.

  * * *

  —

  AND BEFORE one is prepared for this rare sight, it happens.

  The crane is dancing.

  The marsh has acquired a new content, a hidden magnitude brought by the crane. The marsh has been lying here, knowing about it all winter. The crane is dancing now.

  * * *

  —

  LOOK AT IT ONCE, and then never again.

  The crane is dancing. Look at it once and for all.

  The cold marsh moisture penetrates my clothes and my skin.

  My position is cramped, making many muscles ache or sleep – but I scarcely feel it, it is not important, I think only of concealing as much of myself as possible.

  How long have I been lying without moving and become one with marsh moisture
and marsh cold and with all the puddles around me? I don’t know.

  It is not relevant. One does not inquire about time or moisture. The cranes began dancing.

  Something broke out in them, together with the spring, and broke out as dance with extraordinary gestures and strange exaggerations.

  They are certainly not thinking as clearly now as when they came sweeping in over the land. Their sight is not as keen. In the fever of the dance they are moving gradually in my direction. They are much closer than before – in their stiff, solemn, yet harrowing dance. Blinded by the dance they do not see the strange tussock. Still for some reason moving in this direction.

  Soon they will be close beside me.

  Oh no, it won’t happen – the ritual will not make them so blind as to trample on me. But gradually I am among them all the same. That’s the effect they have on me.

  Come closer, I wish in my delirium.

  It is a strong wish. Stronger than necessary perhaps, if this were observed from the outside, but extremely important to me in the moss.

  They dance and mime, and it is important. Their curious writings in the ritual seem to become extremely important to me too. Come closer.

  They come closer as the pace quickens, but not on account of me and my delirium. Perhaps there is something about their movements that causes it, that guides them.

  * * *

  —

  AGAIN ONE HAS TO ASK: Do I see this? Or have I fallen deep into a marsh-dream?

  Is it mirrored in all these blurred marsh eyes round about, as in mine?

  One has to ask: Who is this, dancing and gesticulating? Do I see it?

  Crane after crane – what does it mean?

  It could have been a dream, it is true. But it is no dream. I am lying in the marsh all wet and I know that it is real. I might be bewitched of course.

  Birds, one says, facilely. They are a heavenly throng. This is more than mere birds. Far more than what one sees when not bewitched. Someone has bewitched me and the marsh and all the puddles.

  This is beyond my concerns. I only feel that it is so. I see it mirrored and feel it once more, even though it is beyond my concerns. The great birds were ecstatic and bewitched when they arrived, and they sweep all else with them.

  The ritual will be played out in the guise of a bird.

  But it is still beyond me. There is savagery and frenzy in their stiff, dignified cross-turns and inventive gestures. Something chilled and harrowed and solemn. Some sort of suppressed and yet uncontrollable sound must guide the antics that are released and re-captured themselves with a crosswise motion. They are not birds, they are ourselves when we have passed between the millstones, crossed the thorny wastes, gone through the fire, undertaken wondrous journeys and given away our hearts to things unworthy of it – with the resulting humiliation unto death.

  Then it happens.

  Then we must dance like this. Then we clothe ourselves in the proud guise of the crane and sail through the world, away from the fleshpots, to find a familiar marsh, utter wild shrieks and invent frenzied gestures.

  * * *

  —

  IN ALL THIS the puddles, too, act out their ritual. Between the small ones that have formed in animal tracks there are large puddles and pools around a brook that has wandered out on to the marsh and is finding it difficult to escape. There are deep pools, with swaying, half floating turves. In this water one sees the dance when it spreads out to the banks. Someone lying with his chin in the moss can catch only glimpses of it, but he does see it: the dance in the water-mirror, head down and feet up, making it even more real and true.

  * * *

  —

  THE WEAK BANKS give way under the weight of the enormous birds. They move right out among the broken stalks of last year’s withered grasses that dip their heads in the water. The turves shiver delicately. The water shivers in rhythm, and the ripples shatter the mirror image. But not for long. The surface is smoothed out, the image returns; it all shivers anew, it all moves in rhythm and all is solemn frenzy.

  On floating turves the dance now glides suddenly away from me. They throw themselves backwards so that they seem to crash on the bottom of the marsh at the bottom of the water. None of them are afraid, but all show signs of what looks like extreme anxiety. Not because of the human being; they cannot see him. From the dance it appears that they have frost at the core and fever in the blood. All of them have doubly displayed their ritual and their hearts’ core; as for the one who sees the end – head up or down, it will be all the same to him.

  But the end has not yet come, I exclaim soundlessly, down in the moss. They have plenty of strength left.

  An excess of strength, sweep of wings and flight across country after country. Yet there is stamina left for this power-squandering spectacle, even upside down.

  Dance! I beg, agitated and silent, from where I lie, my extremities numb. Dance! I must see how it ends.

  An end I scarcely dare contemplate.

  Within my numb exterior there is a turmoil almost in step with the dance of the cranes. The dance has taken possession of me. I am unable to see the puddles like eyes in the marsh, but I know how indifferently they blink. My own eyes burn. This is torture as well as excitement. Torture to hold out without stirring. So one throws oneself as best one can into a muffled echo of the cranes’ frenzy. If only one could share their movement and shrieking, shriek with the shrieking birds, about what one wishes to know!

  I dare not. They would be gone before I was halfway to my knees.

  Dance, I beg them – because I seem to have been able to echo their fever, so that it feels as if I am shouting my message aloud when the birds shriek theirs. There is no sound really. If I were to try to imitate the shriek of the cranes the huge birds would stand as if turned to stone and then disappear into the clouds.

  The sky would darken with mighty wings in broad daylight. Perhaps they would never come back.

  Or perhaps they would attack me, the whole flock, and torture me. There are so many of them, they have the strength to do it. Oh no, not that!

  But perhaps I would remain here as perplexed as ever after being able to call out, after giving vent to a burden borne for a long time.

  They had better dance instead.

  Dance, I beg them. They are not the only ones who are liberating themselves from their burdens; it is of equal concern to me.

  * * *

  —

  BUT IS THAT IT? Liberation for someone?

  Liberation is a big word. It doesn’t suit me; what am I to be liberated from? On the contrary, I must be able to receive. To fill a void.

  One deludes oneself daily.

  I felt achingly hollow and destitute when I came this way over the marsh in the morning chill. What is it that glimmers now? Is it something for that void?

  There is still movement.

  As long as the dance lasts.

  The difficult knot will not loosen; it has not been torn apart by the pressure. That is not why the cranes are dancing in any case. They are not dancing it away, they are showing it to one another. One cannot see through the tangles anywhere. Not yet.

  Part of oneself lying numb in the moisture, feeling stabs of heat elsewhere, burning with impatience.

  Must I find out more?

  About what?

  Oh, there are so many things.

  The cranes intensify this feeling. One can always find out more. As long as the mirrored head or the upright head is above the surface. As long as one manages to travel across floating, shivering tussocks one can find out more.

  From these bewitched birds one can find out more.

  * * *

  —

  IF ONLY ONE could give them a message about this, telling them to dance more and to dance differently. Very differently. They look as if they can do it.

&
nbsp; With my chin buried in the moss I wish to the nearest one that is rising and falling: Come closer. Come close.

  Boldly they reveal themselves in the dance. They reveal their harrowed and astonished bird minds so that one is in no doubt. Come closer.

  They do not immediately obey my intense wish. There was not enough force behind it for that. They are moving on hanging tussocks, feeling the ground give way and urge them on to more frenzied gestures. If they were to drift over here, it is not likely to be on account of my intense wish.

  But a stream of wishes is directed at them from the boy with his face half buried in the marsh. The sight of them makes one confused. No one can shout and no one can sing with his mouth in the marsh, but some kind of intuitive contact has been made all the same.

  They come closer. The nearest one is not so very far away.

  Several of them have paused, their heads lifted high on their long necks, looking inquiringly about them. Sharp-eyed as they are, they must have noticed the object in the moss again.

  Does he no longer startle them? He can well believe it might be so.

  Are they coming here?

  No, they are turning away.

  Nothing to bother about, on their wild, joyous day. They are still possessed by the dance.

  But the nearest one seems curious all the same. It intends to come this way, stepping tentatively on the thin tussocks. It moves gradually in this direction, its head lifted high.

  Another one notices this, and follows, cautiously and a little anxiously.

  All the others resume the dance. Some of them have not even paused. Only these two are still looking this way.

  Shall I call to it?

  No, it would be gone at once.

  As it is, they are approaching through the stagnant puddles. The birds are walking towards this strange object in the marsh that they noticed a long time ago, that does not move, that they are inquisitive about, and that does not threaten them.