Growth of the Soil - Knut Hamsun
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"Sivert here'll show you the machine; he's better at working her than
his father," said Isak, and went out.
Isak went out. There is an auction to be held at Breidablik that noon,
and he is going; there's but just time to get there now. Not that Isak
any longer thinks of buying the place, but the auction--it is the
first auction held there in the wilds, and it would be strange not to
go.
He gets down as far as Maaneland and sees Barbro, and would pass by
with only a greeting, but Barbro calls to him and asks if he is going
down. "Ay," said Isak, making to go on again. It is her home that is
being sold, and that is why he answers shortly.
"You going to the sale?" she asks.
"To the sale? Well, I was only going down a bit. What you've done with
Axel?"
"Axel? Nay, I don't know. He's gone down to sale. Doubt he'll be
seeing his chance to pick up something for nothing, like the rest."
Heavy to look at was Barbro now--ay, and sharp and bitter-tongued!
The auction has begun; Isak hears the Lensmand calling out, and sees a
crowd of people. Coming nearer, he does not know them all; there are
some from other villages, but Brede is fussing about, in his best
finery, and chattering in his old way. "_Goddag_, Isak. So you're
doing me the honour to come and see my auction sale. Thanks, thanks.
Ay, we've been neighbours and friends these many years now, and never
an ill word between us." Brede grows pathetic. "Ay, 'tis strange to
think of leaving a place where you've lived and toiled and grown fond
of. But what's a man to do when it's fated so to be?"
"Maybe 'twill be better for you after," says Isak comfortingly.
"Why," says Brede, grasping at it himself, "to tell the truth, I think
it will. I'm not regretting it, not a bit. I won't say I've made a
fortune on the place here, but that's to come, maybe; and the young
ones getting older and leaving the nest--ay, 'tis true the wife's got
another on the way; but for all that...." And suddenly Brede tells his
news straight out: "I've given up the telegraph business."
"What?" asks Isak.
"I've given up that telegraph."
"Given up the telegraph?"
"Ay, from new year to be. What was the good of it, anyway? And
supposing I was out on business, or driving for the Lensmand or the
doctor, then to have to look after the telegraph first of all--no,
there's no sense nor meaning in it that way. Well enough for them
that's time to spare. But running over hill and dale after a telegraph
wire for next to nothing wages, 'tis no job that for Brede. And then,
besides, I've had words with the people from the telegraph office
about it--they've been making a fuss again."
The Lensmand keeps repeating the bids for the farm; they have got up
to the few hundred _Kroner_ the place is judged to be worth, and the
bidding goes slowly, now, with but five or ten _Kroner_ more each
time.
"Why, surely--'tis Axel there's bidding," cries Brede suddenly, and
hurries eagerly across. "What, you going to take over my place too?
Haven't you enough to look after?"
"I'm bidding for another man," says Axel evasively.
"Well, well, 'tis no harm to me, 'twasn't that I meant."
The Lensmand raises his hammer, a new bid is made, a whole hundred
_Kroner_ at once; no one bids higher, the Lensmand repeats the figure
again and again, waits for a moment with his hammer raised, and then
strikes.
Whose bid?
Axel Stroem--on behalf of another.
The Lensmand notes it down: Axel Stroem as agent.
"Who's that you buying for?" asks Brede. "Not that it's any business
of mine, of course, but...."
But now some men at the Lensmand's table are putting their heads
together; there is a representative from the Bank, the storekeeper has
sent his assistant; there is something the matter; the creditors
are not satisfied. Brede is called up, and Brede, careless and
light-hearted, only nods and is agreed--"but who'd ever have thought
it didn't come up to more?" says he. And suddenly he raises his voice
and declares to all present:
"Seeing as we've an auction holding anyhow, and I've troubled the
Lensmand all this way, I'm willing to sell what I've got here on the
place: the cart, live stock, a pitchfork, a grindstone. I've no use
for the things now; we'll sell the lot!"
Small bidding now. Brede's wife, careless and light-hearted as
himself, for all the fulness of her in front, has begun selling coffee
at a table. She finds it amusing to play at shop, and smiles; and when
Brede himself comes up for some coffee, she tells him jestingly that
he must pay for it like the rest. And Brede actually takes out his
lean purse and pays. "There's a wife for you," he says to the others.
"Thrifty, what?"
The cart is not worth much--it has stood too long uncovered in the
open; but Axel bids a full five _Kroner_ more at last, and gets the
cart as well. After that Axel buys no more, but all are astonished to
see that cautious man buying so much as he has.
Then came the animals. They had been kept in their shed today, so as
to be there in readiness. What did Brede want with live stock when he
had no farm to keep them on? He had no cows; he had started farming
with two goats, and had now four. Besides these, there were six sheep.
No horse.
Isak bought a certain sheep with flat ears. When Brede's children led
it out from the shed, he started bidding at once, and people looked at
him. Isak from Sellanraa was a rich man, in a good position, with no
need of more sheep than he had. Brede's wife stops selling coffee for
a moment, and says: "Ay, you may buy her, Isak; she's old, 'tis true,
but she's two and three lambs every blessed year, and that's the
truth."
"I know it," said Isak, looking straight at her. "I've seen that sheep
before."
He walks up with Axel Stroem on the way back, leading his sheep on a
string. Axel is taciturn, seemingly anxious about something, whatever
it might be. There's nothing he need be troubled about that one can
see, thinks Isak; his crops are looking well, most of his fodder is
housed already, and he has begun timbering his house. All as it should
be with Axel Stroem; a thought slowly, but sure in the end. And now he
had got a horse.
"So you've bought Brede's place?" said Isak. "Going to work it
yourself?"
"No, not for myself. I bought it for another man."
"Ho!"
"What d'you think; was it too much I gave for it?"
"Why, no. Tis good land for a man that'll work it as it should."
"I bought it for a brother of mine up in Helgeland."
"Ho!"
"Then I thought perhaps I'd half a mind to change with him, too."
"Change with him--would you?"
"And perhaps how Barbro she'd like it better that way."
"Ay, maybe," said Isak.
They walk on for a good way in silence. Then says Axel:
"They've been after me to take over that telegraph business."
"The telegraph? H'm. Ay, I heard that Brede he's given it up."
"H'm," says Axel, smiling. "'Tis not so much that way of it, but Brede
that's been turned off."
"Ay, so," says Isak, and trying to find some excuse for Brede. "It
takes a deal of time to look after, no doubt."
"They gave him notice to the new year, if he didn't do better."
"H'm."
"You don't think it'd be worth my while to take it?"
Isak thought for a long while, and answered: "Ay, there's the money,
true, but still...."
"They've offered me more."
"How much?"
"Double."
"Double? Why, then, I'd say you should think it over."
"But they've made the line a bit longer now. No, I don't know what's
best to do--there's not so much timber to sell here as you've got on
yours, and I've need to buy more things for the work that I've got
now. And buying things needs money in 'cash, and I've not so much out
of the land and stock that there's much over to sell. Seems to me I'll
have to try a year at the telegraph to begin with...."
It did not occur to either of them that Brede might "do better" and
keep the post himself.
When they reached Maaneland, Oline was there already, on her way down.
Ay, a strange creature, Oline, crawling about fat and round as a
maggot, and over seventy years and all, but still getting about. She
sits drinking coffee in the hut, but seeing the men come up, all must
give way to that, and she comes out.
"_Goddag_, Axel, and welcome back from the sale. You'll not mind me
looking in to see how you and Barbro's getting on? And you're getting
on finely, to see, and building a new house and getting richer and
richer! And you been buying sheep, Isak?"
"Ay," said Isak. "You know her, maybe?"
"If I know her? Nay...."
"With these flat ears, you can see."
"Flat ears? How d'you mean now? And what then? What I was going to
say: Who bought Brede's place, after all? I was just saying to Barbro
here, who'd be your neighbours that way now? said I. And Barbro,
poor thing, she sits crying, as natural enough, to be sure; but the
Almighty that's decreed her a new home here at Maaneland ... Flat
ears? I've seen a deal of sheep in my day with flat ears and all. And
I'll tell you, Isak, that machine of yours, 'twas almost more than my
old eyes could see nor understand. And what she'll have cost you I
won't even ask for I never could count so far. Axel, if you've seen
it, you know what I mean; 'twas all as it might be Elijah and his
chariot of fire, and Heaven forgive me that I say it...."
When the hay was all in, Eleseus began making preparations for his
return to town. He had written to the engineer to say he was coming,
but received the extraordinary reply that times were bad, and they
would have to economize; the office would have to dispense with
Eleseus' services, and the chief would do the work himself.
The deuce and all! But after all, what did a district surveyor want
with an office staff? When he had taken Eleseus on as a youngster, he
had done so, no doubt, only to show himself as a great man to these
folks in the wilds; and if he had given him clothes and board till
his confirmation, he had got some return for it in the way of writing
work, that was true. Now the boy was grown up, and that made all the
difference.
"But," said the engineer, "if you do come back I will do all I can to
get you a place somewhere else, though it may be a difficult matter,
as there are more young men than are wanted looking out for the same
thing. With kind regards...."
Eleseus would go back to town, of course, there could be no question
about that. Was he to throw himself away? He wanted to get on in the
world. And he said nothing to those at home as to the altered state of
affairs; it would be no use, and, to tell the truth, he felt a little
out of humour with the whole thing.
Anyhow, he said nothing. The life at Sellanraa was having its effect
on him again; it was an inglorious, commonplace life, but quiet and
dulling to the sense, a dreamy life; there was nothing for him to show
off about, a looking-glass was a thing he had no use for. His town
life had wrought a schism in himself, and made him finer than the
others, made him weaker; he began indeed to feel that he must be
homeless anywhere. He had come to like the smell of tansy again--let
that pass. But there was no sense at all in a peasant lad's standing
listening in the morning to the girls milking the cows and thinking
thus: they're milking, listen now; 'tis almost by way of something
wonderful to hear, a kind of song in nothing but little streams,
different from the brass bands in the town and the Salvation Army and
the steamer sirens. Music streaming into a pail....
It was not the way at Sellanraa to show one's feelings overmuch, and
Eleseus dreaded the moment when he would have to say good-bye. He was
well equipped now; again his mother had given him a stock of woven
stuff for underclothes, and his father had commissioned some one to
hand him money as he went out of the door. Money--could Isak really
spare such a thing as money? But it was so, and no otherwise. Inger
hinted that it would doubtless be the last time; for was not Eleseus
going to get on and rise in the world by himself?
"H'm," said Isak.
There was an atmosphere of solemnity, of stillness in the home; they
had each had a boiled egg at the last meal, and Sivert stood outside
all ready to go down with his brother and carry his things. It was for
Eleseus to begin.
He began with Leopoldine. Well and good, she said good-bye in return,
and managed it very well. Likewise Jensine the servant-maid, she sat
carding wool and answered good-bye--but both girls stared at him,
confound them! and all because he might perhaps be the least bit red
about the eyes. He shook hands with his mother, and she cried of
course quite openly, never caring to remember how he hated crying."
Goo--ood-bye and bl--bless you!" she sobbed out. It was worst with his
father; worst of all with him. Oh, in every way; he was so toil-worn
and so utterly faithful; he had carried the children in his arms, had
told them of the seagulls and other birds and beasts, and the wonders
of the field; it was not so long ago, a few years.... Father stands by
the glass window, then suddenly he turns round, grasps his son's hand,
and says quickly and peevishly: "Well, good-bye. There's the new horse
getting loose," and he swings out of the door and hurries away. Oh,
but he had himself taken care to let the new horse loose a while ago,
and Sivert, the rascal, knew it too, as he stood outside watching his
father, and smiling to himself. And, anyway, the horse was only in the
rowens.
Eleseus had got it over at last.
And then his mother must needs come out on the door-slab and hiccup
again and say, "God bless you!" and give him something. "Take
this--and you're not to thank him, he says you're not to. And don't
forget to write; write often."
Two hundred _Kroner_.
Eleseus looked down the field: his father was furiously at work
driving a tethering-peg into the ground; he seemed to find it a
difficult matter, for all that the ground was soft enough.
The brothers set off down the road; they came to Maaneland, and there
stood Barbro in the doorway and called to them to come up.
"You going away again, Eleseus? Nay, then, you must come in and take a
cup of coffee at least."
They go into the hut, and Eleseus is no longer a prey to the pangs
of love, nor wishful to jump out of windows and take poison; nay, he
spreads his light spring overcoat across his knees, taking care to lay
it so the silver plate is to be seen; then he wipes his hair with
his handkerchief, and observes delicately: "Beautiful day, isn't
it--simply classic!"
Barbro too is self-possessed enough; she plays with a silver ring on
one hand and a gold ring on the other--ay, true enough, if she hasn't
got a gold ring too--and she wears an apron reaching from neck to
feet, as if to say she is not spoiled as to her figure, whoever else
may be that way. And when the coffee is ready and her guests are
drinking, she sews a little to begin with on a white cloth, and then
does a little crochet-work with a collar of some sort, and so with all
manner of maidenly tasks. Barbro is not put out by their visit, and
all the better; they can talk naturally, and Eleseus can be all on the
surface again, young and witty as he pleases.
"What have you done with Axel?" asks Sivert.
"Oh, he's about the place somewhere," she answers, pulling herself up.
"And so we'll not be seeing you this way any more, I doubt?" she asks
Eleseus.
"It's hardly probable," says he.
"Ay, 'tis no place for one as is used to the town. I only wish I could
go along with you."
"You don't mean that, I know."
"Don't mean it? Oh, I've known what it is to live in town, and what
it's like here; and I've been in a bigger town than you, for that
matter--and shouldn't I miss it?"
"I didn't mean that way," says Eleseus hastily. "After you being in
Bergen itself and all." Strange, how impatient she was, after all!
"I only know that if it wasn't for having the papers to read, I'd not
stay here another day," says she.
"But what about Axel, then, and all the rest?--'twas that I was
thinking."
"As for Axel, 'tis no business of mine. And what about yourself--I
doubt there'll be some one waiting for you in town?"
And at that, Eleseus couldn't help showing off a little and closing
his eyes and turning over the morsel on his tongue: perhaps true
enough there was some one waiting for him in town. Oh, but he could
have managed this ever so differently, snapped at the chance, if it
hadn't been for Sivert sitting there! As it was, he could only say:
"Don't talk such nonsense!"
"Ho," said she--and indeed she was shamefully ill-humoured
today--"nonsense, indeed! Well, what can you expect of folk at
Maaneland? we're not so great and fine as you--no."
Oh, she could go to the devil, what did Eleseus care; her face was
visibly dirty, and her condition plain enough now even to his innocent
eyes.
"Can't you play a bit on the guitar?" he asked.
"No," answered Barbro shortly. "What I was going to say: Sivert,
couldn't you come and help Axel a bit with the new house a day or
so? If you could begin tomorrow, say, when you come back from the
village?"
Sivert thought for a moment. "Ay, maybe. But I've no clothes."
"I could run up and fetch your working clothes this evening, so
they'll be here when you get back."
"Ay," said Sivert, "if you could."
And Barbro unnecessarily eager now: "Oh, if only you would come!
Here's summer nearly gone already, and the house that should be up and
roofed before the autumn rains. Axel, he's been going to ask you a
many times before, but he couldn't, somehow. Oh, you'd be helping us
no end!"
"I'll help as well as I can," said Sivert.
And that was settled.
But now it was Eleseus' turn to be offended. He can see well enough
that it's clever of Barbro and all that, to look out and manage to her
own advantage and Axel's too, and get help for the building and save
the house, but the whole thing is a little too plain; after all, she
is not mistress of the place as yet, and it's not so long since he
himself had kissed her--the creature! Was there never an atom of shame
in her at all?
"Ay," said Eleseus, then suddenly: "I'll come back again in time and
be a godfather when you're ready."
She sent him a glance, and answered in great offence: "Godfather,
indeed! And who's talking nonsense now, I'd like to know? 'Twill be
time enough for you when I send word I'm looking out for godfathers."
And what could Eleseus do then but laugh foolishly and wish himself
out of the place!
"Here's thanks!" says Sivert, and gets up from his seat to go.
"Here's thanks!" says Eleseus also; but he did not rise nor bow as a
man should do in saying thanks for a cup of coffee; not he, indeed--he
would see her at the devil for a bitter-tongued lump of ugliness.
"Let me look," said Barbro. "Oh yes; the young men I stayed with in
town, they had silver plates on their overcoats too, much bigger than
this," said she. "Well, then, you'll come in on your way back, Sivert,
and stay the night? I'll get your clothes all right."
And that was good-bye to Barbro.
The brothers went on again. Eleseus was not distressed in any way in
the matter of Barbro; she could go to the devil--and, besides, he had
two big bank-notes in his pocket! The brothers took care not to touch
on any mournful things, such as the strange way father had said
good-bye, or how mother had cried. They went a long way round to avoid
being stopped at Breidablik, and made a jest of that little ruse.
But when they came down in sight of the village, and it was time for
Sivert to turn homeward again, they both behaved in somewhat unmanly
fashion. Sivert, for instance, was weak enough to say: "I doubt it'll
be a bit lonely, maybe, when you're gone."
And at that Eleseus must fall to whistling, and looking to his shoes,
and finding a splinter in his finger, and searching after something in
his pockets; some papers, he said, couldn't make out ... Oh, 'twould
have gone ill with them if Sivert had not saved things at the last.
"Touch!" he cried suddenly, and touched his brother on the shoulder
and sprang away. It was better after that; they shouted a word of
farewell or so from a distance, and went each on his own way.
Fate or chance--whatever it might be. Eleseus went back, after all,
to the town, to a post that was no longer open for him, but that same
occasion led to Axel Stroem's getting a man to work for him.
They began work on the house the 21st of August, and ten days later
the place was roofed in. Oh, 'twas no great house to see, and nothing
much in the way of height; the best that could be said of it was that
it was a wooden house and no turf hut. But, at least, it meant that
the animals would have a splendid shelter for the winter in what had
been a house for human beings up to then.
Chapter II
On the 3rd of September Barbro was not to be found. 'Twas not that she
was altogether lost, but she was not up at the house.
Axel was doing carpenter's work the best he could; he was trying hard
to get a glass window and a door set in the new house, and it was
taking all his time to do it. But being long past noon, and no word
said about coming in to dinner, he went in himself into the hut. No
one there. He got himself some food, and looked about while he was
eating. All Barbro's clothes were hanging there; she must be out
somewhere, that was all. He went back to his work on the new building,
and kept at it for a while, then he looked in at the hut again--no,
nobody there. She must be lying down somewhere. He sets out to find
her.
"Barbro!" he calls. No. He looks all round the houses, goes across
to some bushes on the edge of his land, searches about a long while,
maybe an hour, calls out--no. He comes on her a long way off, lying on
the ground, hidden by some bushes; the stream flows by at her feet,
she is barefoot and bareheaded, and wet all up the back as well.
"You lying here?" says he. "Why didn't you answer?"
"I couldn't," she answers, and her voice so hoarse he can scarcely
hear.
"What--you been in the water?"
"Yes. Slipped down--oh!"
"Is it hurting you now?"
"Ay--it's over now."
"Is it over?" says he.
"Yes. Help me to get home."
"Where's ...?"
"What?"
"Wasn't it--the child?"
"No. Twas dead."
"Was it dead?"
"Yes."
Axel is slow of mind, and slow to act. He stands there still. "Where
is it, then?" he asks.
"You've no call to know," says she. "Help me back home. Twas dead. I
can walk if you hold my arm a bit."
Axel carries her back home and sets her in a chair, the water dripping
off her. "Was it dead?" he asks.
"I told you 'twas so," she answers.
"What have you done with it, then?"
"D'you want to smell it? D'you get anything to eat while I was away?"
"But what did you want down by the water?"
"By the water? I was looking for juniper twigs."
"Juniper twigs? What for?"
"For cleaning the buckets."
"There's none that way," says he.
"You get on with your work," says she hoarsely, and all impatient.
"What was I doing by the water? I wanted twigs for a broom. Have you
had anything to eat, d'you hear?"
"Eat?" says he. "How d'you feel now?"
"Tis well enough."
"I doubt I'd better fetch the doctor up."
"You'd better try!" says she, getting up and looking about for dry
clothes to put on. "As if you'd no better to do with your money!"
Axel goes back to his work, and 'tis but little he gets done, but
makes a bit of noise with planing and hammering, so she can hear. At
last he gets the window wedged in, and stops the frame all round with
moss.
That evening Barbro seems not to care for her food, but goes about,
all the same, busy with this and that--goes to the cowshed at
milking-time, only stepping a thought more carefully over the
door-sill. She went to bed in the hayshed as usual. Axel went in twice
to look at her, and she was sleeping soundly. She had a good night.
Next morning she was almost as usual, only so hoarse she could hardly
speak at all, and with a long stocking wound round her throat. They
could not talk together. Days passed, and the matter was no longer
new; other things cropped up, and it slipped aside. The new house
ought by rights to have been left a while for the timber to work
together and make it tight and sound, but there was no time for that
now; they had to get it into use at once, and the new cowshed ready.
When it was done, and they had moved in, they took up the potatoes,
and after that there was the corn to get in. Life was the same as
ever.
But there were signs enough, great or small, that things were
different now at Maaneland. Barbro felt herself no more at home there
now than any other serving-maid; no more bound to the place. Axel
could see that his hold on her had loosened with the death of the
child. He had thought to himself so confidently: wait till the child
comes! But the child had come and gone. And at last Barbro even took
off the rings from her fingers, and wore neither.
"What's that mean?" he asked.
"What's it mean?" she said, tossing her head.
But it could hardly mean anything else than faithlessness and
desertion on her part.
And he had found the little body by the stream. Not that he had made
any search for it, to speak of; he knew pretty closely where it must
be, but he had left the matter idly as it was. Then chance willed it
so that he should not forget it altogether; birds began to hover above
the spot, shrieking grouse and crows, and then, later on, a pair of
eagles at a giddy height above. To begin with, only a single bird had
seen something buried there, and, being unable to keep a secret like a
human being, had shouted it abroad. Then Axel roused himself from his
apathy, and waited for an opportunity to steal out to the spot. He
found the thing under a heap of moss and twigs, kept down by flat
stones, and wrapped in a cloth, in a piece of rag. With a feeling of
curiosity and horror he drew the cloth a little aside--eyes closed,
dark hair, a boy, and the legs crossed--that was all he saw. The
cloth had been wet, but was drying now; the whole thing looked like a
half-wrung bundle of washing.