Pan. Knut Hamsun
trader; I knew him because he was from the store where I used to get my bread. He had asked me to look in at the house any time, but I had not been there yet.
“Aha, it's you, is it?” said Mack at sight of me. “We were going up to the mill, but had to turn back. Ever see such weather—what? And when are you coming up to see us at Sirilund, Lieutenant?”
He introduced the little black-bearded man who was with him; a doctor, staying down near the church.
The girl lifted her veil the least little bit, to her nose, and started talking to Æsop in a whisper. I noticed her jacket; I could see from the lining and the buttonholes that it had been dyed. Mack introduced me to her as well; his daughter, Edwarda.
Edwarda gave me one glance through her veil, and went on whispering to the dog, and reading on its collar:
“So you're called Æsop, are you? Doctor, who was Æsop? All I can remember is that he wrote fables. Wasn't he a Phrygian? I can't remember.”
A child, a schoolgirl. I looked at her—she was tall, but with no figure to speak of, about fifteen or sixteen, with long, dark hands and no gloves. Like as not she had looked up Æsop in the dictionary that afternoon, to have it ready.
Mack asked me what sport I was having. What did I shoot mostly? I could have one of his boats at any time if I wanted—only let him know. The Doctor said nothing at all. When they went off again, I noticed that the Doctor limped a little, and walked with a stick.
I walked home as empty in mind as before, humming all indifferently. That meeting in the boathouse had made no difference either way to me; the one thing I remembered best of all was Mack's wet shirt front, with a diamond clasp—the diamond all wet, too, and no great brilliance about it, either.
III
There was a stone outside my hut, a tall grey stone. It looked as if it had a sort of friendly feeling towards me; as if it noticed me when I came by, and knew me again. I liked to go round that way past the stone, when I went out in the morning; it was like leaving a good friend there, who I knew would be still waiting for me when I came back.
Then up in the woods hunting, sometimes finding game, sometimes none …
Out beyond the islands, the sea lay heavily calm. Many a time I have stood and looked at it from the hills, far up above. On a calm day, the ships seemed hardly to move at all; I could see the same sail for three days, small and white, like a gull on the water. Then, perhaps, if the wind veered round, the peaks in the distance would almost disappear, and there came a storm, the south-westerly gale; a play for me to stand and watch. All things in a seething mist. Earth and sky mingled together, the sea flung up into fantastic dancing figures of men and horses and fluttering banners on the air. I stood in the shelter of an overhanging rock, thinking many things; my soul was tense. Heaven knows, I thought to myself, what it is I am watching here, and why the sea should open before my eyes. Maybe I am seeing now the inner brain of earth, how things are at work there, boiling and foaming. Æsop was restless; now and again he would thrust up his muzzle and sniff, in a troubled way, with legs quivering uneasily; when I took no notice, he lay down between my feet and stared out to sea as I was doing. And never a cry, never a word of human voice to be heard anywhere; nothing; only the heavy rush of the wind about my head. There was a reef of rocks far out, lying all apart; when the sea raged up over it the water towered like a crazy screw; nay, like a sea-god rising wet in the air, and snorting, till hair and beard stood out like a wheel about his head. Then he plunged down into the breakers once more.
And in the midst of the storm, a little coal-black steamer fighting its way in …
When I went down to the quay in the afternoon, the little coal-black steamer had come in; it was the mail-packet. Many people had gathered on the quayside to see the rare visitor; I noticed that all without exception had blue eyes, however different they might be in other ways. A young girl with a white woolen kerchief over her head stood a little apart; she had very dark hair, and the white kerchief showed up strangely against it. She looked at me curiously, at my leather suit, my gun; when I spoke to her, she was embarrassed, and turned her head away. I said:
“You should always wear a white kerchief like that; it suits you well.”
Just then a burly man in an Iceland jersey came up and joined her; he called her Eva. Evidently she was his daughter. I knew the burly man; he was the local smith, the blacksmith. Only a few days back he had mended the nipple of one of my guns …
And rain and wind did their work, and thawed away the snow. For some days a cheerless cold hovered over the earth; rotten branches snapped, and the crows gathered in flocks, complaining. But it was not for long; the sun was near, and one day it rose up behind the forest.
It sends a strip of sweetness through me from head to foot when the sun comes up; I shoulder my gun with quiet delight.
IV
I was never short of game those days, but shot all I cared to—a hare, a grouse, a ptarmigan—and when I happened to be down near the shore and came within range of some seabird or other, I shot it too. It was a pleasant time; the days grew longer and the air clearer; I packed up things for a couple of days and set off up into the hills, up to the mountain peaks. I met reindeer Lapps, and they gave me cheese—rich little cheeses tasting of herbs. I went up that way more than once. Then, going home again, I always shot some bird or other to put in my bag. I sat down and put Æsop on the lead. Miles below me was the sea; the mountainsides were wet and black with the water running down them, dripping and trickling always with the same little sound. That little sound of the water far up on the hills has shortened many an hour for me when I sat looking about. Here, I thought to myself, is a little endless song trickling away all to itself, and no one ever hears it, and no one ever thinks of it, and still it trickles on nevertheless, to itself, all the time, all the time! And I felt that the mountains were no longer quite deserted, as long as I could hear that little trickling song. Now and again something would happen: a clap of thunder shaking the earth, a mass of rock slipping loose and rushing down towards the sea, leaving a trail of smoking dust behind. Æsop turned his nose to the wind at once, sniffing in surprise at the smell of burning that he could not understand. When the melting of the snow had made rifts in the hillside, a shot, or even a sharp cry, was enough to loosen a great block and send it tumbling down …
An hour might pass, or perhaps more—the time went so quickly. I let Æsop loose, slung my bag over the other shoulder, and set off towards home. It was getting late. Lower down in the forest, I came unfailingly upon my old, well-known path, a narrow ribbon of a path, with the strangest bends and turns. I followed each one of them, taking my time—there was no hurry. No one waiting for me at home. Free as a lord, a ruler, I could ramble about there in the peaceful woods, just as idly as I pleased. All the birds were silent; only the grouse was calling far away—it was always calling.
I came out of the wood and saw two figures ahead, two persons moving. I came up with them. One was Edwarda, and I recognized her, and gave a greeting; the Doctor was with her. I had to show them my gun; they looked at my compass, my bag; I invited them to my hut, and they promised to come some day.
It was evening now. I went home and lit a fire, roasted a bird, and had a meal. To-morrow there would be another day …
All things quiet and still. I lay that evening looking out the window. There was a fairy glimmer at that hour over wood and field; the sun had gone down, and dyed the horizon with a rich red light that stood there still as oil. The sky all open and clean; I stared into that clear sea, and it seemed as if I were lying face to face with the uttermost depth of the world; my heart