When I get tired of Associate Master Höy and the ladies.... Sometimes I
think of Mrs. Molie. She sits sewing while the Associate Master gravely
keeps her company; they talk about the servants at home whose only desire
is to stay out all night. Mrs. Molie is a thin, flat-chested lady, but
probably she has at one time been less plain; her bluish teeth look as
though they were cold, as though they were made of ice, but perhaps a few
years ago, her full lips and the dark down at the corners of her mouth
seemed to her husband the most beautiful thing he knew. Her husband--well,
he was a seafaring man, a ship's captain; he only came home on rare
occasions, just often enough to increase the family; usually he was in
Australia, China, or Mexico. It was hail and farewell with him. And here
is his wife now for the sake of her health. I wonder--is it only for her
health, or are she and the Associate Master possibly children of the same
provincial town?
When I get tired of Associate Master Höy and the ladies, I leave them and
go out. And then I stay out all day long and nobody knows where I keep
myself. It is fitting that a settled man should be different from the
Associate Master, who is very far from being so settled. So I go out. It
is a bright day with just the right amount of warmth, and my summer woods
are filled with the fragrance of plants. I rest frequently, not because I
need to, but because the ground is full of caresses. I go so far that no
one can find me; only then am I released. No sound reaches me from farms
or men, no one is in sight; only this overgrown little goat track, which
is green at the edges and lovely. Only a bit of a goat track which looks
as though it had fallen asleep in the woods, lying there so thin and
lonely.
You who read this feel nothing, but I who sit here writing feel a kind of
sweetness at the memory of a mere track in the woods. It was like meeting
a child.
With my hands under my neck and my nose in the air, my eyes flit across
the sky. High up above the peaks of Tore, a clustering mist sways in slow
rhythm, breaks apart and presses close again, fluctuates and strains to
give birth to something. But when I rise to walk on, the end is not yet in
sight.
I meet a line of ants, a procession of ants, busy travelers. They neither
toil nor carry anything; they simply move. I retrace my steps to see if I
can find their leader, but it is useless: farther and farther I retreat, I
begin to run, but the procession is endless before and behind me. Perhaps
they started a week ago. So I go on my way, and the other insects go on
theirs.
Surely this is not a mountainside I walk on; this is a bosom, an embrace,
in its softness. I tread gently, for I do not wish to stamp or weigh it
down, and I marvel: a mountain so tender and defenseless, indulgent like a
mother. To think of an ant walking on this! Here and there lie stones,
half-covered with moss, not because they have fallen there, but because
this is their home, and they have lived here long. This is peerless.
When I reach the top and look back, it is high noon. Far away on another
peak walks one of the cows of the cotters, a strange little cow with red
and white flanks. A crow sits on a high cliff above me and caws down at me
in a voice like an iron rasp scraping against the stone. A warm thrill
runs through me, and I feel, as I have done in the woods so many times
before, that someone has just been here, and has stepped to one side.
Someone is with me here, and a moment later I see his back disappearing
into the woods. "It is God," I think. There I stand, neither speaking nor
singing. I only see. I feel all my face being filled with the sight. "It
was God," I think.
"A vision," you say. "No, a little insight into things," I reply. "Am I
making a god of nature? Do not you? Have not the Mohammedans their god,
the Jews theirs, the Hindus theirs? No one knows God, my friend; man knows
only gods. And sometimes I meet mine."
I go home by a different route, which forms a vast arc with the one I came
by. The sun is warmer now and the ground less smooth. I reach a great
ruin, the remnant of a landslide, and here, to amuse myself, I pretend to
be tired, flinging myself on the ground exactly as though someone were
watching me and saw how exhausted I am. It is only for my amusement,
because my brain has been idle so long. The sky is clear everywhere; the
clusters of mist over the Tore peaks are gone, heaven knows where, but
they have stolen away. In their place, an eagle swings in great circles
over the valley. Huge, black, and inaccessible, he traces ring after ring
as though held on a rail in the air, moving with voluptuous languor, a
thick-necked male, a winged stallion exulting. It is like music to watch
him. At length he disappears behind the peaks.
And here are only myself and the ruin and the little juniper trees. What
miracles all things are! These stones in the ruin perhaps hold some
meaning; they have lain here for thousands of years, but perhaps they,
too, roam, and make an inexpressible journey. The glaciers move, the land
rises, and the land falls; there is no hurry here. But since my
consciousness cannot associate fact with such a conception, it grows blind
with fury and revolts: The ruin cannot move; these are mere words, a game!
This ruin is a town; here and there lie scattered buildings of stone. It's
a peaceable gathering, without sensations or suicides, and perhaps a
well-shaped soul sits in each of these stones. But heaven protect me just
the same from the inhabitants of these towns! Rolling stones cannot bark,
neither do they attract thieves; they are mere ballast. Quiet behavior:
that is what I hold against them, that they make no fiery gestures; it
would become them to roll a little, but there they lie, with even their
sex unknown. But you saw the eagle instead! Be still....
A gentle wind begins to blow, swaying the bracken a little, the flowers
and the straw; but the straw cannot sway, it only trembles.