Grindhusen works away a couple of hours with his putty and paint, and
soon one side of the little house, the north side, facing the sea, is
done all gaily in red. At the mid-day rest, I go out and join him,
with something to drink, and we lie on the ground awhile, chatting and
smoking.
“Painter? Not much of a one, and that's the truth,” says he. “But if any
one comes along and asks if I can paint a bit of a wall, why, of course
I can. First-rate _Brændevin_ this you've got.”
His wife and two children lived some four miles off, and he went home
to them every Saturday. There were two daughters besides, both grown up,
and one of them married. Grindhusen was a grandfather already. As soon
as he'd done painting Gunhild's cottage--two coats it was to have--he
was going off to the vicarage to dig a well. There was always work of
some sort to be had about the villages. And when winter set in, and the
frost began to bind, he would either take a turn of woodcutting in the
forests or lie idle for a spell, till something else turned up. He'd no
big family to look after now, and the morrow, no doubt, would look after
itself just as today.
“If I could only manage it,” said Grindhusen, “I know what I'd do. I'd
get myself some bricklayer's tools.”
“So you're a bricklayer, too?”
“Well, not much of a one, and that's the truth. But when that well's
dug, why, it'll need to be lined, that's clear....”
I sauntered about the island as usual, thinking of this and that. Peace,
peace, a heavenly peace comes to me in a voice of silence from every
tree in the wood. And now, look you, there are but few of the small
birds left; only some crows flying mutely from place to place and
settling. And the clusters from the rowans drop with a sullen thud and
bury themselves in the moss.
Grindhusen is right, perhaps: tomorrow will surely look after itself,
just as today. I have not seen a paper now these last two weeks, and,
for all that, here I am, alive and well, making great progress in
respect of inward calm; I sing, and square my shoulders, and stand
bareheaded watching the stars at night.
For eighteen years past I have sat in cafés, calling for the waiter if
a fork was not clean: I never call for Gunhild in the matter of forks
clean or not! There's Grindhusen, now, I say to myself; did you mark
when he lit his pipe, how he used the match to the very last of it, and
never burned his horny fingers? I saw a fly crawling over his hand, but
he simply let it crawl; perhaps he never noticed it was there. That is
the way a man should feel towards flies....
In the evening, Grindhusen takes the boat and rows off. I wander along
the beach, singing to myself a little, throwing stones at the water,
and hauling bits of driftwood ashore. The stars are out, and there is
a moon. In a couple of hours Grindhusen comes back, with a good set
of bricklayer's tools in the boat. Stolen them somewhere, I think to
myself. We shoulder each our load, and hide away the tools among the
trees.
Then it is night, and we go each our separate way.
Grindhusen finishes his painting the following afternoon, but agrees to
go on cutting wood till six o'clock to make up a full day's work. I get
out Gunhild's boat and go off fishing, so as not to be there when he
leaves. I catch no fish, and it is cold sitting in the boat; I look at
my watch again and again. At last, about seven o'clock: he must be gone
by now, I say to myself, and I row home. Grindhusen has got over to the
mainland, and calls across to me from there: _“Farvel!”_
Something thrilled me warmly at the word; it was like a calling from my
youth, from Skreia, from days a generation gone.