The Great Hunger

J >> Johan Bojer >> The Great Hunger


That is what I was going to tell you.

The thing that happened came just when things were beginning to look
a little brighter for us. For some time past my head had been less
troublesome, and I had got to work on a new harrow--steel again; it
never lets one rest--and you know what endless possibilities a man sees
in a thing like that. Merle was working with fresh courage. What do you
think of a wife like that? taking up the cross of her own free will, to
go on sharing the life of a ruined man? I hope you may meet a woman of
her sort one day. True, her hair is growing grey, and her face lined.
Her figure is not so straight as once it was; her hands are red and
broken. And yet all this has a soul of its own, a beauty of its own,
in my eyes, because I know that each wrinkle is a mark left by the time
when some new trouble came upon us, and found us together. Then one day
she smiles, and her smile has grown strained and full of sadness, but
again it brings back to me times when both heaven and earth breathed
cold upon us and we drew closer to each other for warmth. Our happiness
and our sufferings have moulded her into what she now is. The world may
think perhaps that she is growing old; to me she is only more beautiful
than before.

And now I am coming to what I was going to tell you. You will understand
that it was not easy to send away the two children, and it doesn't make
things better to get letters from them constantly begging us to let them
come home again. But we had still one little girl left, little Asta, who
was just five. I wish you could have seen her. If you were a father and
your tortured nerves had often made you harsh and unreasonable with
the two elder ones, you would try--would you not?--to make it up in
loving-kindness to the one that was left. Asta--isn't it pretty? Imagine
a sunburnt little being with black hair, and her mother's beautiful
eyebrows, always busy with her dolls, or fetching in wood, or baking
little cakes of her own for father when mother's baking bread for us
all, chattering to the birds on the roof, or singing now and then, just
because some stray note of music has come into her head. When mother is
busy scrubbing the floor, little Asta must needs get hold of a wet rag
behind her back and slop away at a chair, until she has got herself in a
terrible mess, and then she gets smacked, and screams for a moment, but
soon runs out and sings herself happy again. When you're at work in
the smithy, there comes a sound of little feet, and "Father, come to
dinner"; and a little hand takes hold of you and leads you to the door.
"Are you going to bath me to-night, father?" Or "Here's your napkin,
father." And though there might be only potatoes and milk for dinner,
she would eat as if she were seated at the grandest banquet. "Aren't
potatoes and milk your favourite dish, father?" And she makes faces at
you in the eagerness of her questionings. At night she slept in a box
at the foot of our bed, and when I was lying sleepless, it would often
happen that her light, peaceful breathing filled me too with peace; and
it was as if her little hand took mine and led me on to sleep itself, to
beautiful, divine sleep.

And now, as I come to the thing that happened, I find it a little hard
to write--my hand begins to tremble. But my hope is that there may be
some comfort in it for you too, as there has proved to be for Merle and
me in the end.

Our next neighbours here were a brazier and his wife--poor folks, like
ourselves. Soon after we first came I went over to have a talk with him.
I found him a poor wizened little creature, pottering about with his
acids, and making a living as best as he could, soldering and tinning
kettles and pans. "What do you want?" he asked, looking askance at me;
and as I went out, I heard him bolt the door behind me. Alas! he was
afraid--afraid that I was come to snatch his daily bread from him. His
wife was a big-boned fleshy lump of a woman, insolent enough in her
ways, though she had just been in prison for criminal abetment in the
case of a girl that had got into trouble.

One Sunday morning I was standing looking at some apple trees in bloom
in his garden. One of them grew so close to the fence that the branches
hung over on my side, and I bent one down to smell the blossom. Then
suddenly I heard a cry: "Hi, Tiger! catch him!" and the brazier's great
wolf-dog came bounding down, ready to fly at my throat. I was lucky
enough to get hold of its collar before it could do me any harm, and I
dragged it up to its owner, and told him that if anything of the sort
happened again I'd have the sheriff's officer after him. Then the music
began. He fairly let himself go and told me what he thought of me. "You
hold your jaw, you cursed pauper, coming here taking the bread out
of honest working people's mouths," and so on. He hissed it out,
flourishing his arms about, and at last it seemed to me he was fumbling
about for a knife or something to throw at my head. I couldn't help
laughing. It was a scene in the grand style between two Great Powers in
the world-competition.

A couple of days later I was standing at the forge, when I heard a
shriek from my wife. I rushed out--what could be the matter? Merle was
down by the fence already, and all at once I saw what it was--there was
Asta, lying on the ground under the body of a great beast.

And then--Well, Merle tells me it was I that tore the thing away from
the little bundle of clothes beneath it, and carried our little girl
home.

A doctor is often a good refuge in trouble, but though he may sew up a
ragged tear in a child's throat ever so neatly, it doesn't necessarily
follow that it will help much.

There was a mother, though, that would not let him go--that cried and
prayed and clung about him, begging him to try once more if nothing
could be done. And when at last he was gone, she was always for going
after him again, and grovelled on the floor and tore her hair--could
not, would not, believe what she knew was true.

And that night a father and mother sat up together, staring strangely in
front of them. The mother was quiet now. The child was laid out, decked
and ready. The father sat by the window, looking out. It was in May, and
the night was grey.

Now it was that I began to realise how every great sorrow leads us
farther and farther out on the promontory of existence. I had come to
the outermost point now--there was no more.

And I discovered too, dear friend, that these many years of adversity
had shaped me not in one but in various moulds, for I had in me the
stuff for several quite distinct persons, and now the work was done, and
they could break free from my being and go their several ways.

I saw a man rush out into the night, shaking his fist at heaven and
earth; a madman who refused to play his part in the farce any more, and
so rushed down towards the river.

But I myself sat there still.

And I saw another, a puny creature, let loose; a humble, ashen-grey
ascetic, that bent his head and bowed under the lash, and said: "Thy
will be done. The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away--" A pitiful being
this, that stole out into the night and disappeared.

But I myself sat there still.

I sat alone on the promontory of existence, with the sun and the stars
gone out, and ice-cold emptiness above me, about me, and in me, on every
side.

But then, my friend, by degrees it dawned on me that there was still
something left. There was one little indomitable spark in me, that began
to glow all by itself--it was as if I were lifted back to the first day
of existence, and an eternal will rose up in me, and said: Let there be
light!

This will it was that by and by grew and grew in me, and made me strong.

I began to feel an unspeakable compassion for all men upon earth, and
yet in the last resort I was proud that I was one of them.

I understood how blind fate can strip and plunder us of all, and yet
something will remain in us at the last, that nothing in heaven or
earth can vanquish. Our bodies are doomed to die, and our spirit to
be extinguished, yet still we bear within us the spark, the germ of an
eternity of harmony and light both for the world and for God.

And I knew now that what I had hungered after in my best years was
neither knowledge, nor honour, nor riches; nor to be a priest or a great
creator in steel; no, friend, but to build temples; not chapels for
prayers or churches for wailing penitent sinners, but a temple for the
human spirit in its grandeur, where we could lift up our souls in an
anthem as a gift to heaven.

I could never do this now. Perhaps there was nothing that I could do any
more. And yet it seemed to me as I sat there that I had conquered.

What happened then? Well, there had been a terrible drought all that
spring--it is often so in this valley. The eternal north wind sent the
dry mould sweeping in clouds over the whole countryside, and we were
threatened with one of our worst years of scarcity if the rain didn't
come.

At last people ventured to sow their corn, but then the frosts set in,
and snow and sleet, and the seed froze in the earth. My neighbour the
brazier had his patch of ground sown with barley--but now he would have
to sow it again, and where was he to get the seed? He went from farm to
farm begging for some, but people hated the sight of him after what had
happened about Asta--no one would lend him any, and he had no money to
buy. The boys on the roads hooted after him, and some of the neighbours
talked of driving him out of the parish.

I wasn't able to sleep much the next night either, and when the clock
struck two I got up. "Where are you going?" asked Merle. "I want to see
if we haven't a half-bushel of barley left," I said. "Barley--what do
you want with barley in the middle of the night?" "I want to sow the
brazier's plot with it," I said, "and it's best to do it now, so that
nobody will know it was me."

She sat up and stared at me. "What? His--the--the brazier's?"

"Yes," said I. "It won't do us any good, you know, to see his bit of
field lying bare all summer."

"Peer--where are you going?"

"I've told you," said I, and went out. But I knew that she was dressing
and meant to come too.

It had rained during the night, and as I came out the air was soft and
easy to breathe. The morning still lay in a grey half-light with yellow
gleams from the wind-clouds to the north. The scent of the budding
birches was in the air, the magpies and starlings were up and about,
but not a human soul was to be seen; the farms were asleep, the whole
countryside was asleep.

I took the grain in a basket, climbed over the neighbour's fence and
began to sow. No sign of life in the house; the sheriff's officer had
come over and shot the dog the day before; no doubt the brazier and his
wife were lying sleeping, dreaming maybe of enemies all around, trying
their best to do them harm.

Dear friend, is there any need to tell the rest? Just think, though, how
one man may give away a kingdom, and it costs him nothing, and another
may give up a few handfuls of corn, and it means to him not only all
that he has, but a world of struggle and passion before he can bring his
soul to make that gift. Do you think that is nothing? As for me--I did
not do this for Christ's sake, or because I loved my enemy; but because,
standing upon the ruins of my life, I felt a vast responsibility.
Mankind must arise, and be better than the blind powers that order its
ways; in the midst of its sorrows it must take heed that the god-like
does not die. The spark of eternity was once more aglow in me, and said:
Let there be light.

And more and more it came home to me that it is man himself that must
create the divine in heaven and on earth--that that is his triumph over
the dead omnipotence of the universe. Therefore I went out and sowed the
corn in my enemy's field, that God might exist.

Ah, if you had known that moment! It was as if the air about me grew
alive with voices. It was as though all the unfortunates I had seen and
known were bearing me company; more and more they came; the dead too
were joined to us, an army from times past and long ago. Sister Louise
was there, she played her hymn, and drew the voices all together into a
choir, the choir of the living and the dead, the choir of all mankind.
See, here are we all, your sisters and brothers. Your fate is ours. We
are flung by the indifferent law of the universe into a life that we
cannot order as we would; we are ravaged by injustice, by sickness and
sorrow, by fire and blood. Even the happiest must die. In his own home
he is but on a visit. He never knows but that he may be gone tomorrow.
And yet man smiles and laughs in the face of his tragic fate. In the
midst of his thraldom he has created the beautiful on earth; in the
midst of his torments he has had so much surplus energy of soul that he
has sent it radiating forth into the cold deeps of space and warmed them
with God.

So marvellous art thou, O spirit of man! So godlike in thy very nature!
Thou dost reap death, and in return thou sowest the dream of everlasting
life. In revenge for thine evil fate thou dost fill the universe with an
all-loving God.

We bore our part in his creation, all we who now are dust; we who sank
down into the dark like flames gone out;--we wept, we exulted, we felt
the ecstasy and the agony, but each of us brought our ray to the mighty
sea of light, each of us, from the negro setting up the first mark above
the grave of his dead to the genius raising the pillars of a temple
towards heaven. We bore our part, from the poor mother praying beside
a cradle, to the hosts that lifted their songs of praise high up into
boundless space.

Honour to thee, O spirit of man. Thou givest a soul to the world,
thou settest it a goal, thou art the hymn that lifts it into harmony;
therefore turn back into thyself, lift high thy head and meet proudly
the evil that comes to thee. Adversity can crush thee, death can blot
thee out, yet art thou still unconquerable and eternal.

Dear friend, it was thus I felt. And when the corn was sown, and I went
back, the sun was glancing over the shoulder of the hill. There by the
fence stood Merle, looking at me. She had drawn a kerchief forward over
her brow, after the fashion of the peasant women, so that her face was
in shadow; but she smiled to me--as if she, too, the stricken mother,
had risen up from the ocean of her suffering that here, in the daybreak,
she might take her share in the creating of God. . . .



TRANSLATOR'S NOTE


PRONUNCIATION OF PROPER NAMES


For the convenience of readers a few points in which Norwegian
pronunciation differs from English are noted below:

The vowels a, e, and i in the middle of words are pronounced much as in
Italian.

aa = long o, as in "post" or "pole."

e final is sounded, as in German; thus Louise, Merle, etc.

d final is nearly always elided; thus Raastad = Rosta'.

g before e or i is hard; thus Ringeby, not Rinjeby.

j = the English y; thus Bojer = Boyer, Jens = Yens.

l before another consonant is sounded; thus Holm, not Home.


CURRENCY


The unit of currency in Norway is the crown (krone), which in normal
conditions is worth something over thirteen pence, so that about
eighteen crowns go to the pound sterling. Thus Peer Holm's fortune in
the Savings Bank represented about L100 in English money, and a million
crowns is equivalent to about $260,000 in American money.

To avoid encumbering the reader unnecessarily with the details of
Norwegian currency, small amounts have been represented in this
translation by their equivalents in English money.