The Great Hunger

Chapter VI

Some way up from the high-road there stands a little one-storeyed house with three small windows in a row, a cowshed on one side of it and a smithy on the other. When smoke rises from the smithy, the neighbours say: “The engineer must be a bit better to-day, since he’s at it in the smithy again. If there’s anything you want done, you’d better take it to him. He doesn’t charge any more than Jens up at Lia.”

Merle and Peer had been living here a couple of years. Their lives had gone on together, but there had come to be this difference between them: Merle still looked constantly at her husband’s face, always hoping that he would get better, while he himself had no longer any hope. Even when the thump, thumping in his head was quiet for a time, there was generally some trouble somewhere to keep him on the rack, only he did not talk about it any more. He looked at his wife’s face, and thought to himself: “She is changing more and more; and it is you that are to blame. You have poured out your own misery on her day and night. It is time now you tried to make some amends.” So had begun a struggle to keep silence, to endure, if possible to laugh, even when he could have found it in his heart to weep. It was difficult enough, especially at first, but each victory gained brought with it a certain satisfaction which strengthened him to take up the struggle again.

In this way, too, he learned to look on his fate more calmly. His humour grew lighter; it was as if he drew himself up and looked misfortune in the eyes, saying: “Yes, I know I am defenceless, and you can plunge me deeper and deeper yet; but for all that, if I choose to laugh you cannot hinder me.”

How much easier all things seemed, now that he looked no longer for any good to come to him, and urged no claims against anyone either in heaven or on earth. But when he was tired out with his work at the forge, there was a satisfaction in saying to his wife: “No, Merle, didn’t I tell you I wouldn’t have you carrying the water up? Give me the bucket.” “You?—you look fit for it, don’t you?” “Hang it all, am I a man, or am I not? Get back to your kitchen—that’s the place for a woman.” So he carried water, and his mood was the brighter for it, though he might feel at times as if his back were breaking. And sometimes, “I’m feeling lazy, to-day, Merle,” he would say. “If you don’t mind I’ll stay in bed a bit longer.” And she understood. She knew from experience that these were the days when his nightmare headache was upon him, and that it was to spare her he called it laziness.

They had a cow now, and a pig and some fowls. It was not exactly on the same scale as at Loreng, but it had the advantage that he could manage it all himself. Last year they had raised so many potatoes that they had been able to sell a few bushels. They did not buy eggs any more—they sold them. Peer carried them down himself to the local dealer, sold them at market price, and bought things they might need with the money. Why not? Merle did not think it beneath her to wash and scrub and do the cooking. True enough, things had been different with them once, but it was only Merle now who ever had moments of dreaming that the old days might come back. Otherwise, for both him and her it was as if they had been washed ashore on a barren coast, and must try to live through the grey days as best they could.

It would happen once in a while that a mowing machine of the new American type would be sent in by some farmer to the smithy for repairs. When this happened, Peer would shut his lips close, with a queer expression, look at the machine for a moment, and swallow something in his throat. The man who had stolen this thing from him and bettered it by a hairsbreadth was doubtless a millionaire by now on the strength of it.

It cost him something of an effort to take these repairs in hand, but he bowed his head and set to. Merle, poor girl, needed a pair of shoes.

At times, too, he would turn from the anvil and the darkness within and come out into the doorway for a breath of air; and here he would look out upon the day—the great broad empty day.

A man with a sledge-hammer in his hands instinctively looks up at the heavens. He has inherited that instinct from his great ancestor, who brought down fire and thought to men, and taught them to rebel against God.

Peer looked at the sky, and at the clouds, sweeping across it in a meaningless turmoil. Rebellion against someone up there? But heaven is empty. There is no one to rebel against.

But then all the injustice, the manifold iniquity! Who is to sit in judgment on it at the great day?

Who? No one.

What? Think of the millions of all kinds of martyrs, who died under the bloodiest torments, yet innocent as babes at the breast—is there to be no day of reparation for them?

None.

But there must be a whole world-full of victims of injustice, whose souls flit restlessly around, because they died under a weight of undeserved shame—because they lost a battle in which the right was theirs—because they suffered and strove for truth, but went down because falsehood was the stronger. Truth? Right? Is there no one, then, who will one day give peace to the dead in their graves and set things in their right places? Is there no one?

No one.

The world rolls on its way. Fate is blind, and God smiles while Satan works his will upon Job.

Hold your peace and grip your sledge-hammer, idiot. If ever your conscience should embrace the universe, that day the horror of it would strike you dead. Remember that you are a vertebrate animal, and it is by mistake that you have developed a soul.

Cling, clang. The red sparks fly from the anvil. Live out your life as it is.

But there began to dawn in him a strange longing to be united to all those unfortunates whom fate had blindly crushed; to gather them together, not to a common lamentation, but to a common victory. Not for vengeance, but for a song of praise. Behold, Thou eternal Omnipotence, how we requite Thy cruelty—we praise life: see how much more godlike we are than Thou.

A temple, a temple for the modern spirit of man, hungry for eternity—not for the babbling of prayers, but for a hymn from man’s munificent heart sent pealing up to heaven. Will it come—will it one day be built?

One evening Peer came home from the post-office apparently in high spirits. “Hi, Merle, I’ve got a letter from the Bruseth lady.”

Merle glanced at Lorentz, who had instinctively come close to her, and was looking at his father.

“From Bruseth? How is Louise getting on?” she asked.

“You can see for yourself. Here’s the letter,” said he.

Merle read it through hurriedly, and glanced at Lorentz once more.

That evening, after the children had gone to bed, the father and mother sat up talking together in a low voice.

And Merle had to admit that her husband was right. It would be selfish of them to keep the boy here, when he might be heir to Bruseth some day if they let him go.

Suppose he stayed and worked here under his father and learned to be a smith? The blacksmith’s day is over—factories do all the work now.

And what schooling could he get away here in the country? Aunt Marit offered to send him to a good school.—And so the die was cast for him too.

But when they went with the boy to see him off at the station, the mother’s handkerchief was at her eyes all the time, do what she would.

And when they came home she had to lie down in bed, while Peer went about the place, humming to himself, while he got ready a little supper and brought it to her bedside.

“I can’t understand how you can take it so easily,” she burst out.

“No—no,” he laughed a little oddly. “The less said about that the better, perhaps.”

But the next day it was Peer who said he felt lazy again and would lie still a bit. Merle looked at him and stroked his forehead.

And the time went on. They worked hard and constantly to make both ends meet without help, and they were content to take things as they came. When the big dairy was started close by, he made a good deal of money setting up the plant, but he was not above sharpening a drill for the road-gangs either. He was often to be seen going down to the country store in a sleeved waistcoat with a knapsack on his back. He carried his head high, the close-trimmed beard was shading over into white, his face often had the strained look that comes from sleeplessness, but his step was light, and he still had a joke for the girls whom he met.

In summer, the neighbours would often see them shutting up the house and starting off up the hill with knapsack and coffee-kettle and with little Asta trotting between them. They were gone, it might be, to try and recapture some memory of old days, with coffee in the open air by a picnic fire.

In the autumn, when the great fields yellowed all the hillsides, Peer and Merle had a little plot of their own that showed golden too. The dimensions of things had shrunk not a little for these two. A bushel of corn was much to them now. It hit them hard if their potato-patch yielded a couple of measures less than they had reckoned on. But the housewives from the farms near by would often look in on Merle to see how bright and clean she kept her little house; and now that she had no one to help her, she found time herself to teach the peasant girls something of cooking and sewing.

But one habit had grown upon her. She would stand long and long by the window looking down the valley to where the hills closed it in. It was as if she were looking constantly for something to come in sight, something that should bring them better days. It was a kind of Sunday for her to stand there and look and wait.

And the time went on.