The Hills Reply

by Tarjei Vesaas

  * * *

  —

  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 farsighted.

  * * *

  —

  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 nervously 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 rocks.

  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 single. 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’s 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’s 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.

  Sirius’s Slaughterhouse—

  what is that?

  Such a thing has never

  existed.

  Sirius’s Slaughterhouse—

  which of us is mad?

  I say there is no dog.

  It howls on the seventh night,

  howls on the fourteenth night,

  beside a crack leading into

  Sirius’s Slaughterhouse.

  Nightly the moon waxes larger.

  There is no trace of a dog.

  Not the slightest trace of a dog.

  The moon has been sent to the earth

  to shed light on all things.

  Nightly the moon waxes larger,

  shining longer,

  shining stronger,

  shining down its broad path.

  As you know the moon is now at its zenith.

  This very evening the moon will wane.

  No dog has ever existed.

  I say there is no dog.

  Silence.

  Silence?

  The night passes and the storm moves on. From this evening the moon will wane. The skulls are back beneath the grass, lying in great peace. The night passes and passes, and from this evening the moon will wane.

  Is there more?

  The wind. Nothing else. The wind that will never drop.

  At long last a clangour of copper: Clang – clang.

  Morning.

  Clang – clang.

  * * *

  —

  THE MORNING AS REVELATION. The new day is reddening on the mountain peaks. A brand new day. Far above the rats, one might say, if one wanted to say such a thing.

  And there was no day yesterday.

  It has suddenly struck us. We are wise as after some wonderful liberation: there was no day yesterday.

  That’s how it goes when things go as they ought.

  Everything is new. There was no day yesterday.

  Clang – echoing copper strokes.

  The skulls are resting peacefully beneath the grass. Inside the halls morning-pale women are washing the chairs clean as gold, for the day’s meeting. Waves are lapping the embankments on all the shores.

  * * *

  —

  SOMEONE IS IN PAIN. It did not happen here. Someone is dying. It did not happen here. It was a long way away – and it’s not certain to be true. The world is large. The world contains such infinite variety – and we need not know more about it than that.

  The chairs are waiting here. The rats are waiting in the cellar here. Small beetles are sending obscure signals here. Here we shave our chins and make ourselves smart and well-scented for important meetings.

  The waves lap against the embankment fro
m ocean to ocean.

  The grass grows up and fades. The spring matures, the graves flower. The autumns are cool and fine, they mature and fade. Beetles nibble at each other in the back. He who does not know this, knows nothing.

  * * *

  —

  CLANG – CLANG.

  Those copper strokes again.

  They sound deep, rich, right.

  Like everything.

  We skulls recognize all confident copper voices. They report that the lines are straight and secure.

  Clang – clang.

  To the chairs. To the chairs.

  To a completely new day.

  Completely new – it dawned rosy as a virgin up among the peaks.

  We process to the chairs. Our skulls tingle with the morning. Chairs clean as gold. A brand new day.

  Washed Cheeks

  A SOLITARY, THICK GROVE of leafy trees. And the loveliest weather. Warm rain that has a quality of great gentleness, a quality of deep peace.

  It doesn’t look as if there is anyone in the grove – although there are actually five men. It is much too quiet in there. Quiet has come to these five men for good.

  But who are the five?

  Nobody knows.

  They are five soldiers, five completely strange soldiers who have been forgotten. They came here shooting or not shooting, came marching through this district together with countless others, but more to one side than the rest. It happened that way. They are very young. Most likely they were highly regarded.

  That is irrelevant now. They are lying on the ground in different attitudes, and it is raining on them.

  * * *

  —

  YES, THE MEN are lying on the ground and it is raining on them. They have not moved today nor did they yesterday. It rained on them calmly and peacefully both yesterday and today, the same quiet, warm rain that is raining now.

  It rained during the night between the two days of rain as well. The days of rain were linked by a night of rain.

  * * *

  —

  DURING LAST NIGHT, which was unexpectedly quiet after all that shattering hellish din, it rained on the five men in the darkness all the time. Early this morning their stiff cheeks were washed and white.

  The color must be called white, but it is much closer and at the same time much further away than white; it has no human name.

  Five men. That’s not many.

  One for each finger on your hand.

  Practically nothing.

  The rain is washing them.

  * * *

  —

  TALK OF QUIET.

  The night before last various sounds and cries came from this thick, leafy grove. Gradually, as the night wore on, it fell quiet there. One after the other had nothing more to groan about. There was no more to tell about the five, nor were there more than five of them.

  That night was anything but quiet. The earth trembled and death mowed in wide swathes. The five men were furthest off to one side in an outpost, but death sought them there too. They did not fall quiet in a flash; they fell quiet eventually. Eventually. It has been raining since. They needed washing, so there seemed to be some order in it.

  Nobody can understand what really happened that night and the preceding days, but it happened in a din that hounded all the animals and birds far, far away to other, quieter places. The five will not be found by animals or birds for a long time. Nor will they be found by people clearing up – for they have other things to do: new and bigger things are happening in new areas every day.

  There was no time to search in all the outlying areas. A new great day is shaking the earth at this moment, but far away, and it demands all possible help there. There are many thousands. Here in the grove there are only five.

  * * *

  —

  THOSE WHO ARE HERE now will remain here. They will never be identified. They are far from where anyone lives and anyone walks. And they are not in a friendly country. No one will organize big search parties. No one will find them except the flies. When the rain finally stops the flies will crawl out. The flies do not let themselves be frightened by cannon.

  That’s all there is to it, and no one in their own country knows anything about them. Missing in the storm. In the country far away someone is asking after them day and night. There they have their little circle of desperate friends. No use. The five simply vanished. No one has seen them.

  Order? There must be some kind of grim order somewhere. What’s the use of that?

  Whiter and whiter the men’s cheeks.

  It’s so simple. The rain streams down peacefully, and the cheeks lying on the ground are washed ceaselessly. The hands too. Their hands have clenched against something in the hour of extremity. The rain bleaches and cleans these hands too. It soaks them with soft rain water as if to open them, but they cannot be opened, cannot be made gentle. Even if they lie there until everything has blown away, they will not be made gentle. They will forever remain damning clenched fists.

  * * *

  —

  THE TREES IN THE GROVE seem to lean closer together in this weather. They stand forming an extra screen of dew and mist. The low bushes, too, spread out even more widely in the rain, as if to close all openings.

  The white cheeks form a disorderly heap.

  Whiter and whiter, against what is coming: soon they will shine.

  An incredible thought, but one that is playing here, waiting.

  There is opposition somewhere: No, no, don’t shine!

  Is there no blind order in such matters?

  Senseless order, but order. Do not shine. There must be some order that can stop whatever becomes too difficult to accept.

  There is certainly order. When matters have come as far as this, then grim order begins. When it is too late. When the storm has passed on, to cause more pale cheeks – then an order that is too late can come to the five lonely men in the grove.

  But yet again: the stakes are high.

  This is the number five.

  What does five mean in such stakes?

  It does not mean so much as a jerk in a commanding eyebrow, far less any reason for a dirge.

  It means less than a mote in the eye, in the right place. If the number were one hundred times five, or a thousand – the stakes are high, as we said. And the game must be played. Among glittering stars down on earth it will be said that the stakes are high and must be regarded as high.

  What does five mean then?

  The fingers on one hand, if you count like that.

  For each of them being alive meant everything. Being included. Being a reason for existence together with the others. The groves lean in the rain, the five will be washed until they shine. No less than five times it meant everything.

  * * *

  —

  THEY BECOME WHITER and whiter. They are nearing an eruption of light that is gaining ground.

  They are washed all the day long. At the same time the grove seems to become denser. Another night is being made ready. The darkness will be sufficiently dense in there, as it must and shall. Such things must not lie in the half-dark. There is strict order – however late it may come.

  During this third night the polishing is finished.

  On the third night it begins.

  Slowly, slowly the five faces begin to shine.

  * * *

  —

  IN DENSEST NIGHT, while the warm, friendly rain continues unceasingly, bleaching in its gentle way – then this other thing is ready and erupts, without any gentleness.

  The trees do not stir. There is no wind. No animals are padding about either; the storm of death has chased them away. Only grass and leaves, and grass and leaves show no surprise that this is happening: a growing gleam of light from the five.

  Their faces a
ppear dimly out of the pitch blackness.

  A clear, calm gleam. No flickering. Cheeks that have been washed until they triumph over the darkness, not by the rain but by other things, washed inwards to where they must shine. Silently and steadfastly like deep sorrow.

  It is good that there are no people in this area. An ordinary person would not be able to bear it. This light is for those who are behind this cycle of events.

  Now there is turmoil in the night. The darkness strides silently along. The grove shrinks to enfold what man brings about, yet cannot endure.

  The music in the night – where is it? The rain continues. The gleam becomes stronger, more perilous. A dimly decaying gleam. There are a hundred thousand other places – this concerns only five. They are beginning to shine now.

  Beginning to shine in the dark. Tomorrow the rain is likely to stop, and then the black flies will come. Now it is night and no fly dare come out.

  * * *

  —

  THE GLEAM IS STRONGER already. Unwavering. The faces acquire it from unknown sources. The afterglow of crimes that rises up to heaven.

  A gleam that draws and attracts and creates confusion and movement. In the grove where all life seems extinguished, there is now nothing but movement.

  The darkness comes alive, is full of tiny life. The gleam awakens all minute sleeping creatures within reach. They come creeping out, infinitely small, but with the ability to notice anything unusual, moving jerkily towards the gleam in close formation. Attracted by it and lost by it: in that light they will vanish like dew.

  Five faces are shining with the increasing strength of decay. Sharp rays that will be stopped by nothing. They pass through trees, through stones, through everything, lit by the need of innocent men.

  The small voiceless creatures crawl towards them. They crawl out of their night to become witnesses. Secret voiceless witnesses.