It was between Christmas and the New Year, and I had accompanied Nikolai
to his home. Since the town workshop was closed in any case, he had
decided to go home and fell timber in the woods.
It was a big farmhouse, enlarged from the old cottage by Nikolai's father,
while Nikolai himself had moved up the roof and built on a second story.
He has plenty of room for me; I have a small room to myself.
His mother is hard-working and honest; she has a few animals to see to,
and usually she is washing something or other, even if it is nothing more
than some empty potato sacks. She cooks on the kitchen stove, and keeps
her pots and pans shining. She is cleanly, and strains her milk through a
muslin cloth, which she afterward washes and rinses twice. But she picks
food remnants from between the prongs of forks with a hairpin!
A mirror, pictures of the German Kaiser's family, and a crucifix hang on
the walls of the living room; in one corner are two shelves with oddments,
including a hymnbook and a book of sermons. They are still simple and
orthodox in these parts. The rest of the furniture in the house, the
chairs and tables and cupboards and a cleverly constructed chest, have all
been made by Nikolai himself.
Nikolai is just as slow and speechless here as in the town; the day after
we arrived he went out to the woods without telling his mother. When I
asked for him, she said:
"I saw him take the sleigh, so I expect he's gone to the woods."
His mother's name is Petra, and judging from her appearance she cannot be
much over forty; like her son, she is ruddy and big-muscled, with a fair
complexion and thick, graying hair, a veritable lion's mane. Her eyes are
good companions to her hair--dark, and a little worn now, but still good
enough to see far and sharply across the fjord. She, too, is taciturn,
like all the peasants here, and usually keeps her large mouth shut.
I ask her how long she has been a widow, and she says, "For nearly a
generation--no, don't let me tell a lie," she corrects herself. "Sophie is
four and twenty now, and it was the year after her birth that he died."
They had only been married a couple of years. Nikolai is six and twenty.
I ponder over this arithmetic, but as I am old and incapable, I cannot
make it tally.
Petra was very proud of her children, especially Sophie, who had gone to
school and passed an examination, and now held such an important post. Of
course her inheritance was used up, but she had her learning instead.
Nobody could ever take that from her. A big, handsome girl, Sophie--look,
here is her portrait.