Growth of the Soil Knut Hamsun (summer books .txt) 📖

village, certainly, but the timber was not so good; the ground was less hilly, but a poorer soil; easy to work on the surface, but hard to deal with farther down. That fellow Brede would find it took more than a mere turning over of the soil to made a field that would bear. And why hadn’t he built out a shed from the end of the hayloft for carts and implements? Isak noticed that a cart had been left standing out in the yard, uncovered, in the open.

He got through his business with the shoemaker, and, Fru Geissler having left the place, he sold his cheeses to the man at the store. In the evening, he starts out for home. The frost is getting harder now, and it is good, firm going, but Isak trudges heavily for all that. Who could say when Geissler would be back, now that his wife had gone; maybe he would not be coming at all? Inger was far away, and time was getting on.⁠ ⁠…

He does not look in at Brede’s on the way back; on the contrary, he goes a long way round, keeping away from the place. He does not care to stop and talk to folk, only trudge on. Brede’s cart is still out in the open⁠—does he mean to leave it there? Well, ’tis his own affair. Isak himself had a cart of his own now, and a shed to house it, but none the happier for that. His home is but half a thing; it had been a home once, but now only half a thing.

It is full day by the time he gets within sight of his own place up on the hillside, and it cheers him somewhat, weary and exhausted as he is after forty-eight hours on the road. The house and buildings, there they stand, smoke curling up from the chimney; both the little ones are out, and come down to meet him as he appears. He goes into the house, and finds a couple of Lapps sitting down. Oline starts up in surprise: “What, you back already!” She is making coffee on the stove. Coffee? Coffee!

Isak has noticed the same thing before. When Os-Anders or any of the other Lapps have been there, Oline makes coffee in Inger’s little pot for a long time after. She does it while Isak is out in the woods or in the fields, and when he comes in unexpectedly and sees it, she says nothing. But he knows that he is the poorer by a cheese or a bundle of wool each time. And it is to his credit that he does not pick up Oline in his fingers and crush her to pieces for her meanness. Altogether, Isak is trying hard indeed to make himself a better man, better and better, whatever may be his idea, whether it be for the sake of peace in the house, or in some hope that the Lord may give him back his Inger the sooner. He is something given to superstition and a pondering upon things; even his rustic wariness is innocent in its way. Early that autumn he found the turf on the roof of the stable was beginning to slip down inside. Isak chewed at his beard for a while, then, smiling like a man who understands a jest, he laid some poles across to keep it up. Not a bitter word did he say. And another thing: the shed where he kept his store of provisions was simply built on high stone feet at the corners, with nothing between. After a while, little birds began to find their way in through the big gaps in the wall, and stayed fluttering about inside, unable to get out. Oline complained that they picked at the food and spoiled the meat, and made a nasty mess about the place. Isak said: “Ay, ’tis a pity small birds should come in and not be able to get out again.” And in the thick of a busy season he turned stonemason and filled up the gaps in the wall.

Heaven knows what was in his mind that he took things so; whether maybe he fancied Inger might be given back to him the sooner for his gentleness.

IX

The years pass by.

Once more there came visitors to Sellanraa; an engineer, with a foreman and a couple of workmen, marking out telegraph lines again over the hills. By the route they were taking now, the line would be carried a little above the house, and a straight road cut through the forest. No harm in that. It would make the place less desolate, a glimpse of the world would make it brighter.

“This place,” said, the engineer, “will be just about midway between two lines through the valleys on either side. They’ll very likely ask you to take on the job of linesman for both.”

“Ho!” said Isak.

“It will be twenty-five Daler a year in your pocket.”

“H’m,” said Isak. “And what am I to do for that?”

“Keep the line in repair, mend the wires when necessary, clear away forest growth on the route as it comes up. They’ll set up a little machine thing in the house here, to hang on the wall, that’ll tell you when you’re wanted. And when it does, you must leave whatever you’re doing and go.”

Isak thought it over. “I could do it all right in winter,” he said.

“That’s no good. It would have to be for the whole year, summer and winter alike.”

“Can’t be done,” said Isak. “Spring and summer and autumn I’ve my work on the land, and no time for other things.”

The engineer looked at him for quite a while, and then put an astonishing question, as follows: “Can you make more money that way?”

“Make more money?” said Isak.

“Can you earn more money in a day by working on the land than you could by working for us?”

“Why, as to that, I can’t say,” answered Isak. “It’s