The Great Hunger

J >> Johan Bojer >> The Great Hunger


And--what next?

"What next?" he mimicked in his thoughts, and started again tramping up
and down the garden paths. What next--what next? Could he not afford
now to take his time--to rest a little? Every man must have an end in
view--must strive to reach this goal or that. And what was his object
now? What was it he had so toiled for, from those hard years in the
loft above the stable even until now? What was it? Often it seemed as if
everything were going smoothly, going of itself; as if one day, surely,
he would find his part in a great, happy world-harmony. But had he not
already found it? What more would he have? Of course he had found it.

But is this all, then? What is there behind and beyond? Hush! have done
with questioning. Look at the beauty around you. Here is peace, peace
and rest.

He hurried up to the house, and in--it might help matters if he could
take his wife in his arms; perhaps get her to come out with him a while.

Merle was in the pantry, with a big apron on, ranging jars of preserves
on the shelves.

"Here, dearest little wife," cried Peer, throwing his arms about her,
"what do you say to a little run?"

"Now? Do you suppose a housewife has nothing better to do than gad
about? Uf! my hair! you'll make it come down."

Peer took her arm and led her over to a window looking out on the lake.
"There, dearest! Isn't it lovely here?"

"Peer, you've asked me that twenty times a day ever since we came."

"Yes, and you never answer. And you've never once yet run and thrown
your arms round my neck and said how happy you were. And it's never yet
come to pass that you've given me a single kiss of your own accord."

"I should think not, when you steal such a lot." And she pushed him
aside, and slipped under his arm, and ran out of the room. "I must go in
and see mother again to-day," she said as she went.

"Huit! Of course!" He paced up and down the room, his step growing
more and more impatient. "In to mother--in to mother! Always and
everlastingly mother and mother and nothing else. Huit!" and he began to
whistle.

Merle put her head in at the door. "Peer--have you such a terrible lot
of spare time?"

"Well, yes and no. I'm busy enough looking about in every corner here
for something or another. But I can't find it, and I don't even know
exactly what it is. Oh well, yes--I have plenty of time to spare."

"But what about the farm?"

"Well, there's the dairy-woman in the cow-house, and the groom in the
stables, and the bailiff to worry the tenants and workpeople. What am I
to do--poke around making improvements?"

"But what about the machine-shop?"

"Don't I go in twice a day--cycle over to see how things are going? But
with Rode for manager--that excellent and high-principled engineer--"

"Surely you could help him in some way?"

"He's got to go on running along the line of rails he's used to--nothing
else for it, my darling. And four or five thousand crowns a year, net
profit--why, it's magnificent!"

"But couldn't you extend the business?"

He raised his eyebrows, and his mouth pursed itself up.

"Extend--did you say extend? Extend a--a doll's house!"

"Oh, Peer, you shouldn't laugh at it--a thing that father took so much
pains to set going!"

"And YOU shouldn't go worrying me to get to work again in earnest,
Merle. You shouldn't really. One of these days I might discover that
there's no way to be happy in the world but to drag a plough and look
straight ahead and forget that there's anything else in existence. It
may come to that one day--but give me a little breathing-space first,
and you love me. Well, good-bye for a while."

Merle, busying herself again in her pantry, glanced out of the window
and saw him disappear into the stables. At first she had gone with
him when he wandered about like this, touching and feeling all his
possessions. In the cattle-stalls, it might be, stroking and patting,
getting himself covered with hairs, and chattering away in childish
glee. "Look, Merle--this cow is mine, child! Dagros her name is--and
she's mine. We have forty of them--and they're all mine. And that nag
there--what a sight he is! We have eight of them. They're mine. Yours
too, of course. But you don't care a bit about it. You haven't even
hugged any of them yet. But when a man's been as poor as I've been--and
suddenly wakened up one day and found he owned all this--No, wait a
minute, Merle--come and kiss old Brownie." She knew the ritual now--he
could go over it all again and again, and each time with the same happy
wonder. Was it odious of her that she was beginning to find it a little
comic? And how did it come about that often, when she might be filled
with the deepest longing for him, and he burst in upon her boisterously,
hungry for her caresses, she would grow suddenly cold, and put him
aside? What was the matter? Why did she behave like this?

Perhaps it was because he was so much the stronger, so overwhelming in
his effect on her that she had to keep a tight hold on herself to avoid
being swept clean away and losing her identity. At one moment they might
be sitting in the lamplight, chatting easily together, and so near in
heart and mind; and the next it would be over--he would suddenly have
started up and be pacing up and down the room, delivering a sort of
lecture. Merle--isn't it marvellous, the spiritual life of plants? And
then would come a torrent of talk about strange plant-growths in
the north and in the south, plants whose names she had never even
heard--their struggle for existence, their loves and longings, their
heroism in disease, the divine marvel of their death. Their inventions,
their wisdom, aye, their religious sense--is it not marvellous, Merle?
From this it was only a step to the earth's strata, fossils, crystals--a
fresh lecture. And finally he would sum up the whole into one great
harmony of development, from the primary cell-life to the laws of
gravitation that rule the courses of the stars. Was it not marvellous?
One common rhythm beating through the universe--a symphony of
worlds!--And then he must have a kiss!

But she could only draw back and put him gently aside. It was as if he
came with all his stored-up knowledge--his lore of plants and fossils,
crystals and stars--and poured it all out in a caress. She could almost
have cried out for help. And after hurrying her through the wonders
of the universe in this fashion, he would suddenly catch her up in his
arms, and whirl her off in a passionate intoxication of the senses till
she woke at last like a castaway on an island, hardly knowing where or
what she was. She laughed, but she could have found it in her heart to
weep. Could this be love? In this strong man, whose life till now had
been all study and work, the stored-up feeling burst vehemently forth,
now that it had found an outlet. But why did it leave her so cold?

When Peer came in from the stables, humming a tune, he found her in the
sitting-room, dressed in a dark woollen dress with a red ribbon round
her throat.

He stopped short: "By Jove--how that suits you, Merle!"

She let her eyes linger on him for a moment, and then came up and threw
her arms round his neck.

"Did he have to go to the stables all alone today?"

"Yes; I've been having a chat with the young colt."

"Am I unkind to you, Peer?"

"You?--you!"

"Not even if I ask you to drive me in to see mother?"

"Why, that's the very thing. The new horse I bought yesterday from
Captain Myhre should be here any minute--I'm just waiting for it."

"A new horse--to ride?"

"Yes. Hang it--I must get some riding. I had to handle Arab horses for
years. But we'll try this one in the gig first."

Merle was still standing with her arms round his neck, and now she
pressed her warm rich lips to his, close and closer. It was at
such moments that she loved him--when he stood trembling with a joy
unexpected, that took him unawares. She too trembled, with a blissful
thrill through soul and body; for once and at last it was she who gave.

"Ah!" he breathed at last, pale with emotion. "I--I'd be glad to die
like that."

A little later they stood on the balcony looking over the courtyard,
when a bearded farm-hand came up with a big light-maned chestnut horse
prancing in a halter. The beast stood still in the middle of the yard,
flung up its head, and neighed, and the horses in the stable neighed in
answer.

"Oh, what a beauty!" exclaimed Merle, clapping her hands.

"Put him into the gig," called Peer to the stable-boy who had come out
to take the horse.

The man touched his cap. "Horse has never been driven before, sir, I was
to say."

"Everything must have a beginning," said Peer.

Merle glanced at him. But they were both dressed to go out when the
chestnut came dancing up before the door with the gig. The white hoofs
pawed impatiently, the head was high in the air, and the eyes flashed
fire--he wasn't used to having shafts pressing on his sides and wheels
rumbling just behind him. Peer lit a cigar.

"You're not going to smoke?" Merle burst out.

"Just to show him I'm not excited," said Peer. No sooner had they taken
their seats in the gig than the beast began to snort and rear, but
the long lash flicked out over its neck, and a minute later they were
tearing off in a cloud of dust towards the town.


Winter came--and a real winter it was. Peer moved about from one window
to another, calling all the time to Merle to come and look. He had
been away so long--the winter of Eastern Norway was all new to him.
Look--look! A world of white--a frozen white tranquillity--woods,
plains, lakes all in white, a fairy-tale in sunlight, a dreamland at
night under the great bright moon. There was a ringing of sleigh-bells
out on the lake, and up in the snow-powdered forest; the frost stood
thick on the horses' manes and the men's beards were hung with icicles.
And in the middle of the night loud reports of splitting ice would come
from the lake--sounds to make one sit up in bed with a start.

Driving's worth while in weather like this--come, Merle. The new
stallion from Gudbrandsdal wants breaking in--we'll take him. Hallo! and
away they go in their furs, swinging out over the frozen lake, whirling
on to the bare glassy ice, where they skid and come near capsizing,
and Merle screams--but they get on to snow, and hoofs and runners grip
again. None of your galloping--trot now, trot! And Peer cracks his whip.
The black, long-maned Gudbrandsdaler lifts his head and trots out. And
the evening comes, and under the wide and starry sky they dash up again
to Loreng--Loreng that lies there lighting them home with its long rows
of glowing windows. A glorious day, wife!

Or they would go out on ski over the hills to the woodmen's huts in the
forest, and make a blazing fire in the big chimney and drink steaming
coffee. Then home again through one of those pale winter evenings with
a violet twilight over woods and fields and lake, over white snow and
blue. Far away on the brown hillside in the west stands a farmhouse,
with all its windows flaming with the reflection from a golden cloud.
Here they come rushing, the wind of their passing shaking the snow from
the pines; on, on, over deep-rutted woodcutters' roads, over stumps and
stones--falling, bruising themselves, burying their faces deep in
the snow, but dragging themselves up again, smiling to each other and
rushing on again. Then, reaching home red and dripping, they lean the
ski up against the wall, and stamp the snow off their boots.

"Merle," said Peer, picking the ice from his beard, "we must have a
bottle of Burgundy at dinner to-night."

"Yes--and shall we ring up and ask someone to come over?"

"Someone--from outside? Can't we two have a little jollification all to
ourselves?"

"Yes, yes, of course, if you like."

A shower-bath--a change of underclothes--how delicious! And--an idea!
He'll appear at dinner in evening dress, just for a surprise. But as
he entered the room he stopped short. For there stood Merle herself in
evening dress--a dress of dark red velvet, with his locket round her
neck and the big plaits of hair rolled into a generous knot low on her
neck. Flowers on the table--the wine set to warm--the finest glass, the
best silver--ptarmigan--how splendid! They lift their glasses filled
with the red wine and drink to each other.

The frozen winter landscape still lingered in their thoughts, but the
sun had warmed their souls; they laughed and jested, held each other's
hands long, and sat smiling at each other in long silences.

"A glorious day to-day, Merle. And to-morrow we die."

"What do you say!--to-morrow!"

"Or fifty years hence. It comes to the same thing." He pressed her hand
and his eyes half closed.

"But this evening we're together--and what could we want more?"

Then he fell to talking of his Egyptian experiences. He had once spent
a month's holiday in visiting ruined cities with Maspero, the great
Maspero himself, going with him to Luxor, to Karnak, with its great
avenues of sphinxes, to El Amarna and Shubra. They had looked on ancient
cities of temples and king's mausoleums, where men thousands of years
dead lay as if lost in thought, with eyes wide open, ready at any moment
to rise and call out: Slave, is the bath ready? There in the middle of
a cornfield rises an obelisk. You ask what it is--it is all that is left
of a royal city. There, too, a hundred thousand years ago maybe, young
couples have sat together, drinking to each other in wine, revelling in
all the delights of love--and where are they now? Aye, where are they,
can you tell me?

"When that journey was over, Merle, I began to think that it was not
mere slime of the Nile that fertilised the fields; it was the mouldered
bodies of the dead. I rode over dust that had been human fingers, lips
that had clung in kisses. Millions and millions of men and women have
lived on those river-banks, and what has become of them now? Geology.
And I thought of the millions of prayers wailed out there to the sun and
stars, to stone idols in the temples, to crocodiles and snakes and the
river itself, the sacred river. And the air, Merle--the air received
them, and vibrated for a second--and that was all. And even so our
prayers go up, to this very day. We press our warm lips to a cold stone,
and think to leave an impression. Skaal!"

But Merle did not touch her glass; she sat still, with her eyes on the
yellow lampshade. She had not yet given up all her dreams of going forth
and conquering the world with her music--and he sat there rolling out
eternity itself before her, while he and she herself, her parents, all,
all became as chaff blown before the wind and vanished.

"What, won't you drink with me? Well, well--then I must pledge you by
myself. Skaal!"

And being well started on his travellers' tales he went on with them,
but now in a more cheerful vein, so that she found it possible to smile.
He told of the great lake-swamps, with their legions of birds, ibis,
pelicans, swans, flamingos, herons, and storks--a world of long beaks
and curved breasts and stilt-like legs and shrieking and beating of
wings. Most wonderful of all it was to stand and watch and be left
behind when the birds of passage flew northward in their thousands in
the spring. My love to Norway, he would say, as they passed. And in the
autumn to see them return, grey goose, starling, wagtail, and all the
rest. "How goes it now at home?" he would think--and "Next time I'll go
with you," he would promise himself year after year.

"And here I am at last! Skaal!"

"Welcome home," said Merle, lifting her glass with a smile.

He rang the bell. "What do you want?" her eyes asked.

"Champagne," said Peer to the maid, who appeared and vanished again.

"Are you crazy, Peer?"

He leaned back, flushed and in happy mood, lit a cigarette and told of
his greatest triumph out there; it was after he had finished his work at
the cataracts, and had started again with a branch of the English
firm in Alexandria. One morning in walked the Chief and said: "Now,
gentlemen, here's a chance for a man that has the stuff in him to win
his spurs--who's ready?" And half a score of voices answered "I." "Well,
here's the King of Abyssinia suddenly finds he must be in the fashion
and have a railway--couple of hundred miles of it--what do you say to
that?" "Splendid," we cried in chorus. "Well, but we've got to compete
with Germans, and Swiss, and Americans--and we've got to win." "Of
course"--a louder chorus still. "Now, I'm going to take two men and give
them a free hand. They'll go up there and survey and lay out lines, and
work out the whole project thoroughly, both from the technical and
the financial side--and a project that's better and cheaper than the
opposition ones. Eight months' work for a good man, but I must have it
done in four. Take along assistants and equipment--all you need--and a
thousand pounds premium to the man who puts it through so that we get
the job."

"Peer--were you sent?" Merle half rose from her seat in her excitement.

"I--and one other."

"Who was that?"

"His name was Ferdinand Holm."

Merle smiled her one-sided smile, and looked at him through her
long lashes. She knew it had been the dream of his life to beat that
half-brother of his in fair fight. And now!

"And what came of it?" she asked, with a seeming careless glance at the
lamp.

Peer flung away his cigarette. "First an expedition up the Nile, then
a caravan journey, camels and mules and assistants and provisions and
instruments and tents and quinine--heaps of quinine. Have you any
idea, I wonder, what a job like that means? The line was to run through
forests and tunnels, over swamps and torrents and chasms, and everything
had to be planned and estimated at top speed--material, labour, time,
cost and all. It was all very well to provide for the proper spans and
girders for a viaduct, and estimate for thoroughly sound work in casting
and erecting--but even then it would be no good if the Germans could
come along and say their bridge looked handsomer than ours. It was a
job that would take a good man eight months, and I had to get it done
in four. There are just twelve hours in a day, it's true--but then
there are twelve more hours in the night. Fever? Well, yes. And
sunstroke--yes, both men and beasts went down with that. Maps got washed
out by the rain. I lost my best assistant by snakebite. But such things
didn't count as hindrances, they couldn't be allowed to delay the work.
If I lost a man, it simply meant so much more work for me. After a
couple of months a blacksmith's hammer started thumping in the back
of my head, and when I closed my eyes for a couple of hours at night,
little fiery snakes went wriggling about in my brain. Tired out? When
I looked in the glass, my eyes were just two red balls in my head. But
when the four months were up, I was back in the Chief's office."

"And--and Ferdinand Holm?"

"Had got in the day before."

Merle shifted a little in her seat. "And so--he won?"

Peer lit another cigarette. "No," he said--the cigarette seemed to draw
rather badly--"I won. And that's how I came to be building railways in
Abyssinia."

"Here's the champagne," said Merle. And as the wine foamed in the
glasses, she rose and drank to him. She said nothing, only looked at him
with eyes half veiled, and smiled. But a wave of fire went through him
from head to foot.

"I feel like playing to-night," she said.

It was rarely that she played, though he had often begged her to. Since
they had been married she had seemed loth to touch her violin, feeling
perhaps some vague fear that it would disturb her peace and awaken old
longings.

Peer sat on the sofa, leaning forward with his head in his hands,
listening. And there she stood, at the music-stand, in her red dress,
flushed and warm, and shining in the yellow lamplight, playing.

Then suddenly the thought of her mother came to her, and she went to the
telephone. "Mother--are you there, mother? Oh, we've had such a glorious
day." And the girl ran on, as if trying to light up her mother's heart
with some rays of the happiness her own happy day had brought her.

A little later Peer lay in bed, while Merle flitted about the room,
lingering over her toilet.

He watched her as she stood in her long white gown before the
toilet-table with the little green-shaded lamps, doing her hair for the
night in a long plait. Neither of them spoke. He could see her face
in the glass, and saw that her eyes were watching him, with a soft,
mysterious glance--the scent of her hair seemed to fill the place with
youth.

She turned round towards him and smiled. And he lay still, beckoning her
towards him with shining eyes. All that had passed that evening--their
outing, and the homeward journey in the violet dusk, their little feast,
and his story, the wine--all had turned to love in their hearts, and
shone out now in their smile.

It may be that some touch of the cold breath of the eternities was still
in their minds, the remembrance of the millions on millions that die,
the flight of the aeons towards endless darkness; yet in spite of all,
the minutes now to come, their warm embrace, held a whole world of
bliss, that out-weighed all, and made Peer, as he lay there, long to
send out a hymn of praise into the universe, because it was so wonderful
to live.

He began to understand why she lingered and took so long. It was a sign
that she wanted to surprise him, that her heart was kind. And her light
breathing seemed even now to fill the room with love.

Outside in the night the lake-ice, splitting into new crevices, sent up
loud reports; and the winter sky above the roof that sheltered them was
lit with all its stars.



Chapter VI


For the next few years Peer managed his estate and his workshop, without
giving too much of his time to either. He had his bailiff and his
works-manager, and the work went on well enough in its accustomed
grooves. If anyone had asked him what he actually did himself all the
time, he would have found it hard to answer. He seemed to be going
round gathering up something not clearly defined. There was something
wanting--something missed that now had to be made good. It was not
knowledge now, but life--life in his native land, the life of youth,
that he reached out to grasp. The youth in him, that had never had free
play in the years of early manhood, lay still dammed up, and had to find
an outlet.

There were festive gatherings at Loreng. Long rows of sleighs drove in
the winter evenings up from the town and back again. Tables were spread
and decked with glass and flowers, the rooms were brightly lit, and
the wine was good. And sometimes in the long moonlit nights respectable
citizens would be awakened by noisy mirth in the streets of the little
town, and, going to the window in their night-shirts, would see sleighs
come galloping down, with a jangle of bells, full of laughing, singing
young people, returning from some excursion far up in the hills, where
there had been feasting and dancing. Here a young lawyer--newly married
and something of a privileged buffoon--was sitting on the lap of
somebody else's wife, playing a concertina, and singing at the top of
his voice. "Some of that Loreng man's doings again," people would say.
"The place has never been the same since he came here." And they would
get back to bed again, shaking their heads and wondering what things
were coming to.

Peer drove out, too, on occasion, to parties at the big country houses
round, where they would play cards all night and have champagne sent
up to their rooms next morning, the hosts being men who knew how to
do things in style. This was glorious. Not mathematics or religion any
more--what he needed now was to assimilate something of the country
life of his native land. He was not going to be a stranger in his own
country. He wanted to take firm root and be able to feel, like others,
that he had a spot in the world where he was at home.

Then came the sunny day in June when he stood by Merle's bed, and she
lay there smiling faintly her one-sided smile, with a newborn girl on
her arm.

"What are we to call her, Peer?"

"Why, we settled that long ago. After your mother, of course."

"Of course her name's to be Louise," said Merle, turning the tiny red
face towards her breast.

This came as a fresh surprise. She had been planning it for weeks
perhaps, and now it took him unawares like one of her spontaneous
caresses, but this time a caress to his inmost soul.

He made a faint attempt at a joke. "Oh well, I never have any say in
my own house. I suppose you must have it your own way." He stroked her
forehead; and when she saw how deeply moved he was, she smiled up at him
with her most radiant smile.

On one of the first days of the hay-harvest, Peer lay out on a sunny
hillside with his head resting on a haycock, watching his people at
work. The mowing machine was buzzing down by the lake, the spreader at
work on the hill-slopes, the horses straining in front, the men sitting
behind driving. The whole landscape lay around him breathing summer and
fruitfulness. And he himself lay there sunk in his own restful quiet.