Growth of the Soil - Knut Hamsun
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And Oline stays the night.
Next morning she goes off again. Once more she has a bundle of
something with her. Isak is working in the quarry, and she goes
another way round, so that he shall not see.
Two hours later, Oline comes back again, steps into the house, and
asks at once: "Where is Isak?"
Inger is washing up. Oline should have passed by the quarry where
Isak was at work, and the children with him; Inger at once guesses
something wrong.
"Isak? What d'you want with him?"
"Want with him?--why, nothing. Only I didn't see him to say good-bye."
Silence. Oline sits down on a bench without being asked, drops down as
if her legs refuse to carry her. Her manner is intended to show that
something serious is the matter; she is overcome.
Inger can control herself no longer. Her face is all terror and fury
as she says:
"I saw what you sent me by Os-Anders. Ay, 'twas a nice thing to send!"
"Why ... what...?"
"That hare."
"What do you mean?" asks Oline in a strangely gentle voice.
"Ah, don't deny it!" cries Inger, her eyes wild. "I'll break your face
in with this ladle here--see that!"
Struck her? Ay, she did so. Oline took the first blow without falling,
and only cried out: "Mind what you're doing, woman! I know what I know
about you and your doings!" Inger strikes again, gets Oline down to
the floor, falls on her there, and thrusts her knees into her.
"D'you mean to murder me?" asks Oline. The terrible woman with the
hare-lip was kneeling on her, a great strong creature armed with a
huge wooden ladle, heavy as a club. Oline was bruised already, and
bleeding, but still sullenly refusing to cry out. "So you're trying to
murder me _too_!"
"Ay, kill you," says Inger, striking again. "There! I'll see you dead
before I've done with you." She was certain of it now. Oline knew her
secret; nothing mattered now. "I'll spoil your beastly face."
"Beastly face?" gasps Oline. "Huh! Look to your own. With the Lord His
mark on it!"
Oline is hard, and will not give in; Inger is forced to give over
the blows that are exhausting her own strength. But she threatens
still--glares into the other's eyes and swears she has not finished
with her yet. "There's more to come, ay, more, more. Wait till I get a
knife. I'll show you!"
She gets on her feet again, and moves as if to look for a knife, a
table knife. But now her fury is past its worst, and she falls back on
curses and abuse. Oline heaves herself up to the bench again, her face
all blue and yellow, swollen and bleeding; she wipes the hair from
her forehead, straightens her kerchief, and spits; her mouth too is
bruised and swollen.
"You devil!" she says.
"You've been nosing about in the woods!" cries Inger. "That's what
you've been doing. You've found that little bit of a grave there.
Better if you'd dug one for yourself the same time."
"Ay, you wait," says Oline, her eyes glowing revengefully. "I'll say
no more--but you wait--there'll be no fine two-roomed house for you,
with musical clocks and all."
"You can't take it from me, anyway!"
"Ay, you wait. You'll see what Oline can do."
And so they keep on. Oline does not curse, and hardly raises her
voice; there is something almost gentle in her cold cruelty, but she
is bitterly dangerous. "Where's that bundle? I left it in the woods.
But you shall have it back--I'll not own your wool."
"Ho, you think I've stolen it, maybe."
"Ah, you know best what you've done."
So back and forth again about the wool. Inger offers to show the very
sheep it was cut from. Oline asks quietly, smoothly: "Ay, but who
knows where you got the first sheep to start with?"
Inger names the place and people where her first sheep were out to
keep with their lambs. "And you mind and care and look to what you're
saying," says she threateningly. "Guard your mouth, or you'll be
sorry."
"Ha ha ha!" laughs Oline softly. Oline is never at a loss, never to be
silenced. "My mouth, eh? And what of your own, my dear?" She points to
Inger's hare-lip, calling her a ghastly sight for God and man.
Inger answers furiously, and Oline being fat, she calls her a lump of
blubber--"a lump of dog's blubber like you. You sent me a hare--I'll
pay you for that."
"Hare again?" says Oline. "If I'd no more guilt in anything than I
have about that hare. What was it like?"
"What was it like? Why, what's a hare always like?"
"Like you. The very image."
"Out with you--get out!" shrieks Inger.
"'Twas you sent Os-Anders with that hare. I'll have you punished; I'll
have you put in prison for that."
"Prison--was it prison you said?"
"Oh, you're jealous and envious of all you see; you hate me for all
the good things I've got," says Inger again. "You've lain awake with
envy since I got Isak and all that's here. Heavens, woman, what have
I ever done to you? Is it my fault that your children never got on in
the world, and turned out badly, every one of them? You can't bear the
sight of mine, because they're fine and strong, and better named than
yours. Is it my fault they're prettier flesh and blood than yours ever
were?"
If there was one thing could drive Oline to fury it was this. She had
been a mother many times, and all she had was her children, such as
they were; she made much of them, and boasted of them, told of great
things they had never really done, and hid their faults.
"What's that you're saying?" answered Oline. "Oh that you don't sink
in your grave for shame! My children! They were a bright host of
angels compared with yours. You dare to speak of my children? Seven
blessed gifts of God they were from they were little, and all grown up
now every one. You dare to speak...."
"What about Lise, that was sent to prison?" asks Inger.
"For never a thing. She was as innocent as a flower," answers Oline.
"And she's in Bergen now; lives in a town and wears a hat--but what
about you?"
"What about Nils--what did they say of him?"
"Oh, I'll not lower myself.... But there's one of yours now lying
buried out there in the woods--what did you do to it, eh?"
"Now ...! One-two-three--out you go!" shrieks Inger again, and makes a
rush at Oline.
But Oline does not move, does not even rise to her feet. Her stolid
indifference paralyses Inger, who draws back, muttering: "Wait till I
get that knife."
"Don't trouble," says Oline. "I'm going. But as for you, turning your
own kin out of doors one-two-three.... Nay, I'll say no more."
"Get out of this, that's all you need to do!"
But Oline is not gone yet. The two of them fall to again with words
and abuse, a long bout of it again, and when the clock strikes half of
the hour, Oline laughs scornfully, making Inger wilder than ever. At
last both calm down a little, and Oline makes ready to go. "I've a
long road before me," says she, "and it's late enough to be starting.
It wouldn't ha' been amiss to have had a bite with me on the way...."
Inger makes no answer. She has come to her senses again now, and pours
out water in a basin for Oline to wash. "There--if you want to tidy
yourself," she says. Oline too thinks it as well to make herself as
decent as may be, but cannot see where the blood is, and washes the
wrong places. Inger looks on for a while, and then points with her
finger.
"There--wash there too, over your eye. No, not that, the other one;
can't you see where I'm pointing?"
"How can I see which one you're pointing at," answers Oline.
"And there's more there, by your mouth. Are you afraid of water?--it
won't bite you!"
In the end, Inger washes the patient herself, and throws her a towel.
"What I was going to say," says Oline, wiping herself, and quite
peaceable now. "About Isak and the children--how will they get over
this?"
"Does he know?" asks Inger.
"Know? He came and saw it."
"What did he say?"
"What could he say? He was speechless, same as me."
Silence.
"It's all your fault," wails Inger, beginning to cry.
"My fault? I wish I may never have more to answer for!"
"I'll ask Os-Anders, anyhow, be sure of that."
"Ay, do."
They talk it all over quietly, and Oline seems less revengeful now. An
able politician, is Oline, and quick to find expedients; she speaks
now as if in sympathy--what a terrible thing it will be for Isak and
the children when it is found out!
"Yes," says Inger, crying again. "I've thought and thought of that
night and day." Oline thinks she might be able to help, and be a
saviour to them in distress. She could come and stay on the place to
look after things, while Inger is in prison.
Inger stops crying; stops suddenly as if to listen and take thought.
"No, you don't care for the children."
"Don't care for them, don't I? How could you say such a thing?"
"Ah, I know...."
"Why, if there's one thing in the world I do feel and care for, 'tis
children."
"Ay, for your own," says Inger. "But how would you be with mine? And
when I think how you sent that hare for nothing else but to ruin me
altogether--oh, you're no better than a heap of wickedness!"
"Am I?" says Oline. "Is it me you mean?"
"Yes, 'tis you I mean," says Inger, crying; "you've been a wicked
wretch, you have, and I'll not trust you. And you'd steal all the
wool, too, if you did come. And all the cheeses that'd go to your
people instead of mine...."
"Oh, you wicked creature to think of such a thing!" answers Oline.
Inger cries, and wipes her eyes, saying a word or so between. Oline
does not try to force her. If Inger does not care about the idea, 'tis
all the same to her. She can go and stay with her son Nils, as she has
always done. But now that Inger is to be sent away to prison, it will
be a hard time for Isak and the innocent children; Oline could stay
on the place and give an eye to things. "You can think it over," says
Oline.
Inger has lost the day. She cries and shakes her head and looks down.
She goes out as if walking in her sleep, and makes up a parcel of food
for Oline to take with her. "'Tis more than's worth your while," says
Oline.
"You can't go all that way without a bite to eat," says Inger.
When Oline has gone, Inger steals out, looks round, and listens. No,
no sound from the quarry. She goes nearer, and hears the children
playing with little stones. Isak is sitting down, holding the crowbar
between his knees, and resting on it like a staff. There he sits.
Inger steals away into the edge of the wood. There was a spot where
she had set a little cross in the ground; the cross is thrown down
now, and where it stood the turf has been lifted, and the ground
turned over. She stoops down and pats the earth together again with
her hands. And there she sits.
She had come out of curiosity, to see how far the little grave had
been disturbed by Oline; she stays there now because the cattle have
not yet come in for the night. Sits there crying, shaking her head,
and looking down.
Chapter VII
And the days pass.
A blessed time for the soil, with sun and showers of rain; the crops
are looking well. The haymaking is nearly over now, and they have got
in a grand lot of hay; almost more than they can find room for. Some
is stowed away under overhanging rocks, in the stable, under the
flooring of the house itself; the shed at the side is emptied of
everything to make room for more hay. Inger herself works early and
late, a faithful helper and support. Isak takes advantage of every
fall of rain to put in a spell of roofing on the new barn, and get the
south wall at least fully done; once that is ready, they can stuff
in as much hay as they please. The work is going forward; they will
manage, never fear!
And their great sorrow and disaster--ay, it was there, the thing was
done, and what it brought must come. Good things mostly leave no
trace, but something always comes of evil. Isak took the matter
sensibly from the first. He made no great words about it, but asked
his wife simply: "How did you come to do it?" Inger made no answer to
that. And a little after, he spoke again: "Strangled it--was that what
you did?"
"Yes," said Inger.
"You shouldn't have done that."
"No," she agreed.
"And I can't make out how you ever could bring yourself to do it."
"She was all the same as myself," said Inger.
"How d'you mean?"
"Her mouth."
Isak thought over that for some time. "Ay, well," said he.
And nothing more was said about it at the time; the days went on,
peacefully as ever; there was all the mass of hay to be got in, and a
rare heavy crop all round, so that by degrees the thing slipped into
the background of their minds. But it hung over them, and over the
place, none the less. They could not hope that Oline would keep the
secret; it was too much to expect. And even if Oline said nothing,
others would speak; dumb witnesses would find a tongue; the walls of
the house, the trees around the little grave in the wood. Os-Anders
the Lapp would throw out hints; Inger herself would betray it,
sleeping or waking. They were prepared for the worst.
Isak took the matter sensibly--what else was there to do? He knew now
why Inger had always taken care to be left alone at every birth; to be
alone with her fears of how the child might be, and face the danger
with no one by. Three times she had done the same thing. Isak shook
his head, touched with pity for her ill fate--poor Inger. He learned
of the coming of the Lapp with the hare, and acquitted her. It led to
a great love between them, a wild love; they drew closer to each other
in their peril. Inger was full of a desperate sweetness towards him,
and the great heavy fellow, lumbering carrier of burdens, felt a greed
and an endless desire for her in himself. And Inger, for all that she
wore hide shoes like a Lapp, was no withered little creature as the
Lapland women are, but splendidly big. It was summer now, and she went
about barefooted, with her naked legs showing almost to the knee--Isak
could not keep his eyes from those bare legs.
All through the summer she went about singing bits of hymns, and she
taught Eleseus to say prayers; but there grew up in her an unchristian
hate of all Lapps, and she spoke plainly enough to any that passed.
Some one might have sent them again; like as not they had a hare in
their bag as before; let them go on their way, and no more about it.
"A hare? What hare?"
"Ho, you haven't heard perhaps what Os-Anders he did that time?"
"No."
"Well, I don't care who knows it--he came up here with a hare, when I
was with child."
"Dear, and that was a dreadful thing! And what happened?"
"Never you mind what happened, just get along with you, that's all.
Here's a bite of food, and get along."
"You don't happen to have an odd bit of leather anywhere, I could mend
my shoe with?"
"No I But I'll give you a bit of stick if you don't get out!"
Now a Lapp will beg as humbly as could be, but say no to him, and he
turns bad, and threatens. A pair of Lapps with two children came past
the place; the children were sent up to the house to beg, and came
back and said there was no one to be seen about the place. The four
of them stood there a while talking in their own tongue, then the man
went up to see. He went inside, and stayed. Then his wife went up,
and the children after; all of them stood inside the doorway, talking
Lapp. The man puts his head in the doorway and peeps through into the
room; no one there either. The clock strikes the hour, and the whole
family stand listening in wonder.
Inger must have had some idea there were strangers about; she comes
hurrying down the hillside, and seeing Lapps, strange Lapps into the
bargain, asks them straight out what they are doing there. "What do
you want in here? Couldn't you see there was no one at home?"
"H'm ..." says the man.
"Get out with you," says Inger again, "and go on your way."
The Lapps move out slowly, unwillingly. "We were just listening to
that clock of yours," says the man; "'tis a wonder to hear, that it
is."
"You haven't a bit of bread to spare?" says his wife.
"Where do you come from?" asks Inger.
"From the water over beyond. We've been walking all night."
"And where are you going to now?"
"Across the hills."
Inger makes up some food for them; when she comes out with it, the
woman starts begging again: a bit of stuff for a cap, a tuft of wool,
a stump of cheese--anything. Inger has no time to waste, Isak and the
children are in the hayfield. "Be off with you now," she says.
The woman tries flattery. "We saw your place up here, and the
cattle--a host of them, like the stars in the sky."
"Ay, a wonder," says the man. "You haven't a pair of old shoes to give
away to needy folk?"
Inger shuts the door of the house and goes back to her work on the
hillside. The man called after her--she pretended not to hear, and
walked on unheeding. But she heard it well enough: "You don't want to
buy any hares, maybe?"
There was no mistaking what he had said. The Lapp himself might have
spoken innocently enough; some one had told him, perhaps. Or he might
have meant it ill. Be that as it may, Inger took it as a warning--a
message of what was to come....
The days went on. The settlers were healthy folk; what was to come
would come; they went about their work and waited. They lived close to
each other like beasts of the forest; they slept and ate; already the
year was so far advanced that they had tried the new potatoes, and
found them large and floury. The blow that was to fall--why did it not
come? It was late in August already, soon it would be September;
were they to be spared through the winter? They lived in a constant
watchfulness; every night they crept close together in their cave,
thankful that the day had passed without event. And so the time went
on until one day in October, when the Lensmand came up with a man and
a bag. The Law stepped in through their doorway.
The investigation took some time. Inger was called up and examined
privately; she denied nothing. The grave in the wood was opened, and
its contents removed, the body being sent for examination. The little
body--it was dressed in Eleseus' christening robe, and a cap sewn over
with beads.
Isak seemed to find speech again. "Ay," said he, "it's as bad as well
can be with us now. I've said before--you ought never to have done
it."
"No," said Inger.
"How did you do it?"
Inger made no answer.
"That you could find it in your heart...."
"She was just the same as myself to look at. And so I took and twisted
her face round."
Isak shook his head slowly.
"And then she was dead," went on Inger, beginning to cry.
Isak was silent for a while. "Well, well, 'tis too late to be crying
over it now," said he.
"She had brown hair," sobbed Inger, "there at the back of her
head...."
And again no more was said.
Time went on as before. Inger was not locked up; the law was merciful.
Lensmand Heyerdahl asked her questions just as he might have spoken to
any one, and only said, "It's a great pity such things should happen
at all." Inger asked who had informed against her, but the Lensmand
answered that it was no one in particular; many had spoken of the
matter, and he had heard of it from several quarters. Had she not
herself said something about it to some Lapps?
Inger--ay, she had told some Lapps about Os-Anders, how he came and
brought a hare that summer, and gave her unborn child the hare-lip.
And wasn't it Oline who had sent the hare?--The Lensmand knew nothing
about that. But in any case, he could not think of putting down such
ignorant superstition in his report.
"But my mother saw a hare just before I was born," said Inger....
The barn was finished; a great big place it was, with hay-stalls on
both sides and a threshing-floor in the middle. The shed and the other
makeshift places were emptied now, and all the hay brought into the
barn; the corn was reaped, dried in stacks, and carted in. Inger
took up the carrots and turnips. All their crops were in now. And
everything might have been well with them--they had all they needed.
Isak had started on new ground again, before the frost came, to make a
bigger cornfield; Isak was a tiller of the soil. But in November Inger
said one day, "She would have been six months old now, and known us
all."
"'Tis no good talking of that now," said Isak.
When the winter came, Isak threshed his corn on the new
threshing-floor, and Inger helped him often, with an arm as quick to
the work as his own, while the children played in the haystalls at the
side. It was fine plump grain. Early in the new year the roads were
good, and Isak started carting down his loads of wood to the village;
he had his regular customers now, and the summer-dried wood fetched a
good price. One day he and Inger agreed that they should take the fine
bull-calf from Goldenhorns and drive it down to Fru Geissler, with
a cheese into the bargain. She was delighted, and asked how much it
cost.
"Nothing," said Isak. "The Lensmand paid for it before."
"Heaven bless him, and did he?" said Fru Geissler, touched at the
thought. She sent things up for Eleseus and Sivert in return--cakes
and picture-books and toys. When Isak came back and Inger saw the
things, she turned away and cried.
"What is it?" asked Isak.
"Nothing," answered Inger. "Only--she'd have been just a year now, and
able to see it all."
"Ay, but you know how it was with her," said Isak, for comfort's sake.
"And after all, it may be we'll get off easier than we thought. I've
found out where Geissler is now."
Inger looked up. "But how's that going to help us?"
"I don't know...."
Then Isak carried his corn to the mill and had it ground, and brought
back flour. Then he turned woodman again, cutting the wood to be ready
for next winter. His life was spent in this work and that, according
to the season; from the fields to the woods, and back to the fields
again. He had worked on the place for six years now, and Inger five;
all might have been well, if it were only allowed to last. But it was
not. Inger worked at her loom and tended the animals; also, she was
often to be heard singing hymns, but it was a pitiful singing; she was
like a bell without a tongue.
As soon as the roads were passable, she was sent for down to the
village to be examined. Isak had to stay behind. And being there all
alone, it came into his mind to go across to Sweden and find out
Geissler; the former Lensmand had been kind to them, and might perhaps
still lend a helping hand some way to the folks at Sellanraa. But
when Inger returned, she had asked about things herself, and learned
something of what her sentence was likely to be. Strictly speaking,
it was imprisonment for life, Paragraph I. But ... After all, she had
stood up in the court itself and simply confessed. The two witnesses
from the village had looked pityingly at her, and the judge had put
his questions kindly; but for all that, she was no match for the
bright intellects of the law. Lawyers are great men to simple folk;
they can quote paragraph this and section that; they have learned such
things by rote, ready to bring out at any moment. Oh, they are great
men indeed. And apart from all this knowledge, they are not always
devoid of sense; sometimes even not altogether heartless. Inger had no
cause to complain of the court; she made no mention of the hare, but
when she tearfully explained that she could not be so cruel to her
poor deformed child as to let it live, the magistrate nodded, quietly
and seriously.
"But," said he, "think of yourself; you have a hare-lip, and it has
not spoilt your life."
"No, thanks be to God," was all she said. She could not tell them of
all she had suffered in secret as a child, as a young girl.
But the magistrate must have understood something of what it meant; he
himself had a club-foot, and could not dance. "As to the sentence," he
said, "I hardly know. Really, it should be imprisonment for life, but
... I can't say, perhaps we might get it commuted, second or third
degree, fifteen to twelve years, or twelve to nine. There's a
commission sitting to reform the criminal code, make it more humane,
but the final decision won't be ready yet. Anyhow, we must hope for
the best," said he.
Inger came back in a state of dull resignation; they had not found it
necessary to keep her in confinement meantime. Two months passed; then
one evening, when Isak came back from fishing, the Lensmand and his
new assistant had been to Sellanraa.
Inger was cheerful, and welcomed her husband kindly, praising his
catch, though it was little he had brought home.
"What I was going to say--has any one been here?" he asked.
"Any one been? Why, who should there be?"
"There's fresh footmarks outside. Men with boots on."
"Why--there's been no one but the Lensmand and one other."
"What did they want?"
"You know that without asking."
"Did they come to fetch you?"
"Fetch me? No, 'twas only about the sentence. The Lord is kind, 'tis
not so bad as I feared."
"Ah," said Isak eagerly. "Not so long, maybe?"
"No. Only a few years."
"How many years?"
"Why, you might think it a lot, maybe. But I'm thankful to God all the
same."
Inger did not say how long it would be. Later that evening Isak asked
when they would be coming to fetch her away, but this she could not or
would not tell. She had grown thoughtful again, and talked of what was
to come; how they would manage she could not think--but she supposed
they would have to get Oline to come. And Isak had no better plan to
offer.