At Tore Peak? Oh, yes, she spent her summers there so as to be among her
equals; you couldn't blame her for that. But she came home every year,
too, as sure as the year came round itself. So I had met her at Tore Peak?
Sometimes I went with Nikolai to the forest for timber, and made myself
slightly useful. He is as strong as an ox, and has endurance almost to the
point of insensibility--a cut, black eye--nothing. And now it becomes
evident that his brain works well, too. He should have had a horse, yes,
but he cannot keep a horse till he can provide more fodder. But he cannot
buy more pasture land till he has more money. But he was learning more
about his trade in the town, and when he had finished his course of
training, he would earn more money. After that he would buy a horse.
I visited the neighbors, too. The farms were small, but the farmers
cultivated as much land as they required, and there was no poverty. Here
were no flowerpots in the windows or pictures on the walls, as at Petra's;
but good, thick furs with woven backs hung over the doors, and the
children looked healthy and well-fed. The neighbors all knew I lived at
Petra's house; every visitor to this district lived at Petra's house--had
done so as long as they could remember. I could sense no hostility to
Petra in these silent people, but the old schoolmaster was more talkative,
and he was quite ready to spread gossip about her. This man was a
bachelor; he had his own house and did his own housework. Had he, perhaps,
at some time felt a secret desire for the widow Petra?
The schoolmaster gossiped thus:
People who had visited the village in Petra's girlhood always used to live
at her parents' house. There was a room and a loft, and the engineer that
planned the big road lived there, and so did the two traveling preachers,
to say nothing of the itinerant peddlers who toured the district all the
year round. So it went on for many a year, with the children growing up,
and Petra getting big and hearty. Then Palm came; he was a Swede, a big
merchant--a wholesale merchant, one might almost say, for that period,
with his own boat and even a boy to carry his wares. Well, there were
glass panes again in the windows of Petra's parents' house, and there was
meat on Sundays, for Palm liked things done in style. He gave Petra
presents of dress materials and sweets. Then he was finished with Petra,
and went away to do business elsewhere. But it happened that the child
Petra gave birth to was a boy, and when Palm returned and saw him, he
stayed, and traveled no more. They married, and Palm added two rooms to
the house, for it was his intention to open a shop there. But when he had
built honestly and well, he died. His widow was left with two small
children, but she had means enough, for Palm had had plenty of money. Then
why did not Petra remarry? She could have got a man in spite of the
handicap of two small children, for Petra herself was still a young girl.
But from her childhood days, said the schoolmaster, she had been spoiled
by this love of roving company, and again housed itinerant tramps and
Swedes and peddlers, and thoroughly disgraced herself. Some of them stayed
there for weeks, eating and drinking and idling. It was shameful. Her
parents saw nothing wrong in this because it had always been their way of
living, and besides it brought them a little money. So the years went by.
When the children were grown and Sophie was out of the way, she might have
married even then, for she still had half her money left, and being
childless again, it was not too late. But no, Petra didn't want to, and it
_was_ too late, she said; it was the children's turn to marry now,
she said.
"Well, she's pretty old now, isn't she?" I said.
"Yes, time passes," the schoolmaster replied. "I don't know whether anyone
has asked her this year, but last year there was someone--one person--or
so I've heard, so I've been told. But Petra didn't want to. If I could
only guess what she's waiting for."
"Perhaps she's not waiting at all."
"Well, it's all the same to me," says the schoolmaster. "But she takes in
all these tramps and peddlers and carries on and makes a public nuisance
of herself...."
As I walked home from the schoolmaster's, I found I understood Petra's
arithmetic much better.
* * * * *
Nikolai has gone back to his workshop in the town, but I have remained
behind. It matters little where I am, for the winter makes a dead man of
me in any case.
To pass the time, I carefully measure the piece of land that Nikolai is
going to break up when he can afford it, and I calculate what it will cost
him, with drainage and everything: a bare two hundred _kroner_. Then
he could keep a horse. It would have been an act of charity to give him
this money in case his mother could not. He could have added another field
to his land then.
"Look here, Petra--why don't you give Nikolai the two hundred
_kroner_ he needs for fodder for a horse?"
"And four hundred to buy the horse," she muttered.
"That makes six."
"I haven't got such a lot of six hundred _kroners_ lying about."
"But wouldn't the horse be useful for plowing?"
A pause. Then:
"He can break the ground himself."
I was not unfamiliar with this line of reasoning. Everyone has his own
problems, and Petra had hers. But the strange thing is that each one of us
struggles for himself as though he had a hundred years to live. I once
knew two brothers named Martinsen who owned a large farm, the produce of
which they sold. Both were well-to-do bachelors without heirs. But both
had diseased lungs, the younger brother's much worse than the elder's. In
the spring, the younger brother became permanently bedridden, but though
he approached his end, he still maintained an interest in everything that
went on at the farm. He heard strangers talking in the kitchen and called
his brother in.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Only someone to buy eggs."
"What's the price per score now?"
His brother told him.
"Then give him the small eggs," he cautioned.
A few days later he was dead. His brother lived till his sixty-seventh
year, though his lungs were diseased. When anybody came to buy eggs, he
always gave him the smallest....
"But," I insisted to Petra, "Nikolai doesn't want to waste time breaking
his ground himself, does he? Surely if he works at his trade he'll earn
more!"
"They don't pay for joinery here," Petra replied. "People buy their chairs
and tables from the shops now; it's cheaper."
"Then why is Nikolai working as an apprentice?"
"I've asked him the same question," she replied. "Nikolai just wants to be
a carpenter, but it won't get him anywhere. Still, he can do as he likes."
"Well, what else could he do?"
A pause. Petra's big mouth is closed. But at length she says:
"There's plenty of traffic now and a lot of tourists in the summer, both
at Tore Peak and down here on the headland. One time we had two Danes
living here; they had traveled on foot. 'If you had a horse, you could
have driven us here,' they said to me."
"Ah," I thought to myself, "the cat sticking its nose out of the bag!"
"'You've got a big house and four rooms,' the Danes said, and 'There are
high mountains and big woods,' they said, 'and fish in the fjord and fish
in the river; there are lots of things here, and there's a broad road
here,' they said. Nikolai was standing next to them and heard it all, too.
'Now we're here,' they said, 'but we can't get away again unless we
walk.'"
Just to say something, I asked her:
"Four rooms--I thought you only had three?"
"Yes, but the workshop could be turned into a room, too," the big mouth
replied.
"So that's it!" I thought. With hardly a pause, I continued:
"But if Nikolai were going to deal with tourists, he'd have to get a
horse, wouldn't he?"
"Well, I suppose we could have managed it," Petra replied.
"It's four hundred _kroner_."
"Yes," she said, "and the carriage a hundred and fifty."
"But this land won't feed a horse!"
"What do other people feed horses on?" she asked. "They buy sacks of oats
on the headland."
"That's eighteen _kroner_ a sack."
"No, seventeen. And you earn as much as that on your first tourist."
Yes, Petra had it all figured out; she was the born landlady, and had
grown up in a lodginghouse. She could cook, too, for had she not put two
snakes of Italian macaroni in the barley broth? The money for coffee, for
the bed at night and waffles in the morning, had grown so dear to her that
she hid it away, watched it increase, and grew rich on it. She did not
produce like other peasant women, but no one can do everything at one
time, and Petra was a parasite. She did not want to live by earning
something; she wanted to live on the tourists who earned enough
themselves, and could afford to come.
Splendor and Englishmen, no doubt, in these parts! If it all works out as
it should--and it probably will.
* * * * *
It is February. I have an idea, a vagrant idea that comes to me, and I
harbor it: now that there is a little snow, and its crust is hard, I shall
walk across the fields into Sweden. That is what I shall do.
But before I can do it, I must wait for my laundry, and Petra, who is
cleanly, washes in many waters. So I pass the time in Nikolai's workshop,
where there are many kinds of planes and saws and drills and lathes, and
there I fashion strange things. For the small boys of the neighboring
farm, I make a windmill that will really turn in the wind. It whirls and
rattles well, and I remember my own childhood when we called this
apparatus onomatopoeically a _windwhirr_.
Besides this, I go out walking, and use my winter head as well as I can,
which is not very well. I do not blame the winter, nor do I blame
anything. But where are the red-hot irons and the youth of omnipotence?
For hours sometimes I walk along a path in the woods with my hands folded
on my back, an old man, my mind gilded for a moment by an occasional
memory; I stop, and raise my eyebrows in surprise. Can this be an iron in
the fire? It is not, for it fades again, and I am left behind in a quiet
melancholy.
But in order to recall my young days, I pretend to be filled with a
heaven-sent energy. It is by no means all pretense, and pictures rise in
my mind, fragmentary flageolet tones:
We came from the meadow
and downy heather;
we came from friendship,
too-loo-loo-lay!
A star that watched
saw lips meet lips.
None else so dear,
so sweet as you.
Those youthful days,
those happy days,
unmatched since then!
but what am I now?
The bees once swarmed,
the swan once played.
There's no play now,
yet too-loo-loo-lay!
I break off, and put the pencil in my pocket with a tone still resounding
within me. I walk on with some pleasure to myself, at least.
There is a letter for me. Who on earth has found me out here? The letter
is as follows:
Forgive me for writing you, but I should like to talk to you about
something that has happened. I should like to see you as soon as you come
back. There's nothing the matter. Please don't say no.
Yours,