The Boat in the Evening (18 page)

The younger ones sat with unaltered expressions.

One had to cling to the page in the album, to the gentle young girl there.

If we looked at the pictures together with people from outside the farm, we would point quickly and indifferently, informing with the outermost finger tip: ‘Mother'. Then leaf quickly on.

‘No, wait,' the outsider might say and leaf back. Then we would all look at her for a long time, and we were tense.

‘Indeed!' they said to us small boys. ‘Indeed!'

A hint of what they put into that annoying ‘Indeed!' must have struck us. Surely they could have kept their mouths shut, they as well as other people?

*

Immersed in the melody.

What was it exactly?

Something we had at home and did not understand.

Outwardly it was the simple plucking that we did not pay much attention to, we who were born without much appreciation of music.

Early winter darkness out of doors. An early winter's night, a long time until bedtime.

It was snowing out of doors. Snow, snow the whole day long, snow floating down invisibly and incessantly. We had no outside lamp.

The living-room window pane squinted indifferently out into the snowstorm. The lamp indoors cared nothing for snowstorms and difficult walking conditions and unploughed, snowed-up roads. The oil lamp indoors burned, muted and cosy.

But someone was going out tonight, in spite of the weather. Out to the music. Snow had never yet shut her out from the music that sang inside her.

Under the lamp she is practising her alto melody, plucking at a long wooden, stringed instrument, plucking through her homework. She will take the melody with her out into the snow and the darkness, her skis dragging heavy on her feet. Determined to reach the others with her melody this evening.

We listen and we know this. We think it strange that she should want to go out in such weather.

Her husband says, ‘Are you going out this evening?'

She does not understand. She is filled with the melody.

‘Of course, why not? We're going to sing.'

‘Yes, yes,' he says.

He is lying over on the bed with a book in his hand, the tall master of the house. It is not a strenuous time of year; on the contrary there are long evenings when you can enjoy yourself with a book. It is possible to read, you are not too tired. And you have the energy to share the music, if you understand it. We are aware of how much better it is to be alive in the dark, cold winter snow, than in the busy summer with an aching body.

He has read many books aloud to us, that severe man over there on the bed. To our great delight. But this evening he is reading to himself, since the melody is plinking.

He has not finished with the subject of going out into the tiring snow.

‘In this weather?' he says.

‘It would have to be very bad,' she replies quickly.

She is immersed in the melody. The rest of us do not know what it means. The man with the book cannot imagine it either. He is like his sons. There is a slight edge to his voice as he continues, ‘Well, I can't make it out.'

She tumbles out of the melody and says bitterly, ‘I know you can't.'

‘No, I think one ought to rest when one has the chance.'

He cannot be so very tired this evening, surely. But he always has a bad back to plague him and set limits.

‘It's no use, whatever you say,' she tells him and puts an end to the little quarrel.

Silence in the living-room. The melody has been shattered. The maid sits as if she did not exist at such moments. The rest of us, little as well as half grown, have heard similar exchanges many times. The eldest thinks, as so often before: What's the matter with them?

It shouldn't be like this.

Will he go with her? No.

We understand what the talk is really skirting: the snowed-up road to the village. The man does not consider he can face going out into the storm to make a ski track over to the music. It is probably true that he is tired out and ought to rest his back. Over to the music—it's not a matter of life and death to get there.

He clears his throat.

Is there more? We wait.

‘Well, well,' is all he says. It sounds like a kind of announcement of his intention to stay where he is.

He takes up his book with a jerk, a favourite book that he has read many times. The plucking on the string has started again too.

*

She goes out into the chaos of snow, accompanied by the melody.

The melody is all about her. The melody must never, never leave her.

We are left sitting, but in a way we accompany her too. We are not afraid of anything happening to her. She has skis on her feet, and she is a good skier and accustomed to using them. The yellow album was given her as a ski prize once. Everyone knows she will manage to get there in spite of the bad weather. And yet ...

Brush it aside.

The melody goes before her in the darkness too.

A strange thought, but you can see it clearly. Both of them are out there together.

We glance at the tired, silent master of the house with his books. He has put the book down and is staring at something on the ceiling.

He is uncomfortable.

We can see that. You learn to know the faces you have in front of you every single day. We are careful about what we say and do not say now.

After a while he coughs, swings himself off the bed, slips into his boots, and goes out.

Did he go after her? What a relief!

No. He comes back in again at once. He has not put on his outdoor clothes either. We do not notice that in our initial astonishment.

‘Is it just as nasty outside?'

The youngest asking in all innocence. His father answers quickly, ‘Nasty? Have I said it's nasty? Oh no, I've seen much worse.'

He looks searchingly at the child, takes off his boots and stretches out full length on the bed, letting the book lie.

Go out after her? Oh no, he's too stiff-necked to do that, the eldest one has learnt. It would have cost far too much to follow her, to overtake her and make a ski-track over that comparatively short distance.

But what is it that comes over them sometimes?

Easy to see her now: with the plinking melody for company, making her way through the drifts, steadily and surely. Over to the house with the many lamps and all the melodies. He sees her like this too, the man with the closed book.

One understands a little more each day. But there is a dark core that one cannot crack—and that's where the answer to the puzzle lies.

We can only see her, simply and straightforwardly, making her way through the drifts. She arrives safely at her meeting with the melody. She goes in and is received with unreserved happiness. And now she is happy herself. And then we know nothing more until we see her again tomorrow morning.

Then she is back in place, serving us food. Food for us everlastingly, morning, noon and night. By the time she came home yesterday evening we were sleeping bundles, sailing in dreams above bottomless whirlpools.

*

Did I say simply?

Years later one thinks about such evenings, and sees her in the storm. No, not simply.

The hidden thing that is the melody is about her: the man she is bound to; the children who have sprung from her womb; the hard, rigorous law that pulsates in the darkness together with the melody, the law about carrying out the duties one has taken upon oneself—all this is part of it too. She is in the middle of it all, forced by life.

Someone like her, having made a promise, would probably never go back on it, as long as she had the strength.

Her skis must be sinking deep into the new snow. She certainly won't let it bother her. She has gone that way so many times that she doesn't even see it. She is going to a brightly-lit room with music and friends filled with music. She will come as a bonus to their happiness, bringing her own alto melody with her.

Those left at home cannot go with her, but she insists on having the music there. It shall be there as long as I am there in that house. My house shall be a house where there is room for the music too.

This is probably what she is thinking as she moves along in the storm.

I shall win him over, she must be thinking. I shall not give up, she must be thinking. I shall leave my mark on my home. Are we too dissimilar? perhaps she is thinking.

If he had gone too and cleared a track for her she would have been immensely happy and immensely embarrassed. Perhaps mostly embarrassed.

*

There were many trees in the farmyard. Splendid trees had stood there when the eldest was a little boy.

When he was a little boy and could say out loud like an easy wish: Wind in my trees. Although he did not use those words exactly.

There was wind enough. The mass of leaves on the big aspen quivered and the many rowans fanned and combed the air on nights when the wind blew strong. Beside the red wall of the loft stood a bird-cherry tree, and at times the heavy scent of the blossom came in through the little round window.

Inside lay the boy in his lonely resting place, usually dead tired. He thought of the fragrance as part of his wild dream, because it never came true.

Nothing was going to fly apart; it only felt as if it might.

But it shall fly apart all the same, it shall happen, someone shall come, it shall arrive like some kind of miracle before everything is over.

The walls of old summer lofts have an odour of gently disturbing dreams that never came to anything. Now yet another naked boy was lying there in the hot weather, staring at the roof, lacking certainty. Yet another boy in the series. The roof that was dark and therefore endless, and not really there at all.

Lying there with his too-young years, thinking about everything that he was not allowed to think about, and not allowed to talk about.

*

Roofs lift off houses on such summer nights, and you can see what is inside. In the attic bedroom beside the loft lie two young girls, brought in by Mother to rake the hay now it is the busy season. The roof lifts off the house and the boy sees them lying there and lying there, but he is not old enough to go in and fool around with them. But others go there. Many late evenings and nights of joking and talk on the other side of the wall. Lively talk and laughter, and soft, intimate talk. For a short while before everyone gets up there is silence. Only the wind whispers in the aspen.

Day breaks. The mistress of the house comes out into the yard and calls to them to get up. Tells them that it is morning. The girls come out, narrowing their eyes against the light, and mother, who was the first to be out in the whispering-leaved yard, gives them their breakfast.

The boy from the loft looks at the two girls a little shyly and curiously. Are they different today?

They must be different, or nothing makes sense at all. They must be renewed or something, after a night full of marvels. Perhaps they are not, after all?

Is there no mark on them, only those narrowed eyes?

Nothing else.

They walk along with their fine legs and everything else that a young boy cannot help noticing and delighting in and thinking about. But they act as if they were indifferent, and look it too.

Their narrowed eyes are happy, to be sure, but so they were before. Mother says that the two of them are so good-natured and pleasant to have around. The boy thinks to himself that one might well be happy, if one had nights like theirs.

But instead their lustre is a little dimmed today. They are not golden, as one might expect.

Such a thing makes you thoughtful. It has to be hidden away, along with other secret matters.

*

The new day has been set in motion. The mowers come out. He looks at them for a long time. Wasn't there a familiar voice in the attic bedroom last night? Have they slept or have they only gone to bed?

And was this in any way important?

In one way. A door was starting to open on to something new. He would have to pay attention to a lot of things, if he were to find some meaning in it.

But something quite different gave the day its particular stamp: the erect, slightly-built woman who had inaugurated it. She it was who stood first in the yard, and who had to remain on her feet until late at night. Her hands and her thoughts were essential wherever something had to be done. And in the busy season something was happening everywhere.

No one giggled behind her back. Nor did she ever have a disparaging word for any of her workfolk.

They might grimace at the farmer instead—even though he was well thought-of really, and tactful. The eldest boy watched him and did not understand him. This man was fond of songs too, and after the meal breaks, when they sat beside the grindstone, the hired men often sang, and the man who could not sing recited songs and discussed songs, and knew more about them than anyone. It was impossible to make him out.