The Hills Reply

by Tarjei Vesaas

  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 odor 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 luster 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 has 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 th
e 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 walked 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 beside 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.

  But at this moment she was the beautiful girl from the album, who had grown and changed, but was still the same. It was the first time he had seen it clearly.

  She laid the instrument aside, and came over to him. Right up to him.

  At once he was flustered. Had he been mistaken? Did she want something since they were so completely alone? As long as it wasn’t about these awkward matters.

  He squirmed. Was she going to spoil this happy time? It must be something unusual.

  She said, “You’re so big now, that there’s something I want to tell you.”

  “There’s no need to be nervous,” she added, when he started noticeably.

  Out with it then, he wished. Don’t torture me.

  “There are one or two things I want to tell you about us girls,” she said calmly. “So that you needn’t go worrying yourself about all the nonsense you may hear.”

  This made him even more flustered, but for different reasons now. She had a teasing expression in her eyes. She said, “You’re beginning to take notice of them.”

  “Am I?”

  “You know you are.”

  Yes, he thought. I know I am.

  And then she told him about girls, and about their periods, and about boys. Some of it he knew already and a good deal of it he did not know.

  Finally she said, “I sent the others out, so that we would be on our own.”

  He had never experienced so strange a Sunday in all his life.

  * * *

  AFTER THAT DAY there was a new bond between them. But it could not be an entirely uninhibited one. Indeed, it never became so. There was a hidden obstacle in him that he could not surmount. On her side there would certainly have been nothing in the way.

  A black autumn evening.

  Late. One after the other they went to bed. The master of the house was not at home. Finally only two of them were left. They sat waiting for the traveller’s return.

  Everything was silent. There was a smell of rotten leaves and grass around the house. And then the waiting for someone who ought to have come home, but had not. He had gone to the neighboring district that morning, to meet someone. He had many acquaintances round about, especially among people who were fond of horses.

  Now the two of them were sitting waiting. She must have noticed that he had no intention of going to bed, but was simply finding something to do in order to stay with her.

  Without looking up from her book, she said, “Go to bed now.”

  “I can stay up a bit longer, can’t I?”

  “You’d best go to bed, do you hear?”

  He understood very well why. She wanted him out of the way. He was not to be an observer, in case all was not as it should be when his father came home. This might happen at long, long intervals, not as often as twice a year, even. But that was what she was so absurdly afraid of, beyond everything else. She was crushed by it.

  “Why?” he asked, knowing the reason perfectly well.

  “Oh—”

  “I want to see too,” he said, in unexpected defiance.

  She reddened, and put down her book. He had gone too far, but was not going to turn back now.

  “I know what it is, you see,” he said again, “so why shouldn’t I stay?”

  She rose and came across to him.

  “You’re to go. This is my affair. You haven’t the slightest idea what we’re talking about. It’s between me and him. You have no part in it.”

  Unsettling words. He went to his room at once. His younger brother was lying asleep, his mouth wide open.

  * * *

  —

  BEFORE THE MAN SET OUT that morning he had been in great good humour. It was a holiday for everyone and he had been lying on the bench where he rested, chatting and telling them about the Khirgiz steppes and the herds of horses there. Not a new topic for him. The Khirgiz steppes was his pipe dream. Through purposeful reading he had collected a good deal of knowledge about that part of the world. To him it must have been the land of heart’s desire.

  We always enjoyed listening when he described it. It was a tale told with love, and therefore remembered long.

  Then he had harnessed his horse this morning and driven to see his friends.

  What sort of company was he keeping now, instead of coming home? It obviously had something to do with horses and old friends. No more dangerous than that. But this touched a fiercely sensitive spot in the girl from the album. There she sat waiting. Her mood immediately transferred itself to him, turning into deep
anxiety. It linked up with other matters that were not going to be explained. They never would be. A matter so private that it could not even be passed on to the children.

  Sleep now.

  No. Lying awake, listening for sounds from the living room. We’re sure to hear the sound of cartwheels soon.

  After all, there’s nothing extraordinary about coming home from a party. From the companionship of good friends who understand about the Khirgiz steppes and that sort of thing. Who like hearing about the enormous steppes and the beautiful horses. He’s probably telling them all about it.

  May he not come home in party mood after such an evening? A little to drink and the Khirgiz steppes.

  She’s fond of parties herself. That’s where there’s music. She can go to parties and dances herself, and take part in the dancing – as long as the melody is there. And she comes home afterwards, walking on air. May he not come from his dreams occasionally, a little happier than usual?

  No, there’s something I’ve not been told. Something the two of them keep strictly to themselves. It must be more serious than it looks. I’ll never dare ask about it. I’d rather not know.

  * * *

  —

  STILL NO WAGON in the yard. Silence in the house.

  She’s sitting with her book. Or perhaps with a different one.

  Both of them sit reading whenever they have time to spare. They have a good point of contact there. They talk about books they have read. One listens to them thirstily. If there had been no books, what then? In this household the books seem heaven-sent.

  Could there have been an accident? A serious accident? And we have no telephone. The thought of an accident gives him the excuse to creep in to her.

  She starts up, book in hand.

  “Oh, it’s you! What do you want?”

  “Could something have happened?” he stammers.

  “No, of course not. They’re enjoying themselves, I expect, and time passes as usual.”