Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun (chromebook ebook reader txt) 📕

sensibly⁠—what else was there to do? He knew now why Inger had always taken care to be left alone at every birth; to be alone with her fears of how the child might be, and face the danger with no one by. Three times she had done the same thing. Isak shook his head, touched with pity for her ill fate⁠—poor Inger. He learned of the coming of the Lapp with the hare, and acquitted her. It led to a great love between them, a wild love; they drew closer to each other in their peril. Inger was full of a desperate sweetness towards him, and the great heavy fellow, lumbering carrier of burdens, felt a greed and an endless desire for her in himself. And Inger, for all that she wore hide shoes like a Lapp, was no withered little creature as the Lapland women are, but splendidly big. It was summer now, and she went about barefooted, with her naked legs showing almost to the knee⁠—Isak could not keep his eyes from those bare legs.

All through the summer she went about singing bits of hymns, and she taught Eleseus to say prayers; but there grew up in her an unchristian hate of all Lapps, and she spoke plainly enough to any that passed. Someone might have sent them again; like as not they had a hare in their bag as before; let them go on their way, and no more about it.

“A hare? What hare?”

“Ho, you haven’t heard perhaps what Os-Anders he did that time?”

“No.”

“Well, I don’t care who knows it⁠—he came up here with a hare, when I was with child.”

“Dear, and that was a dreadful thing! And what happened?”

“Never you mind what happened, just get along with you, that’s all. Here’s a bite of food, and get along.”

“You don’t happen to have an odd bit of leather anywhere, I could mend my shoe with?”

“No! But I’ll give you a bit of stick if you don’t get out!”

Now a Lapp will beg as humbly as could be, but say no to him, and he turns bad, and threatens. A pair of Lapps with two children came past the place; the children were sent up to the house to beg, and came back and said there was no one to be seen about the place. The four of them stood there a while talking in their own tongue, then the man went up to see. He went inside, and stayed. Then his wife went up, and the children after; all of them stood inside the doorway, talking Lapp. The man puts his head in the doorway and peeps through into the room; no one there either. The clock strikes the hour, and the whole family stand listening in wonder.

Inger must have had some idea there were strangers about; she comes hurrying down the hillside, and seeing Lapps, strange Lapps into the bargain, asks them straight out what they are doing there. “What do you want in here? Couldn’t you see there was no one at home?”

“H’m⁠ ⁠…” says the man.

“Get out with you,” says Inger again, “and go on your way.”

The Lapps move out slowly, unwillingly. “We were just listening to that clock of yours,” says the man; “ ’tis a wonder to hear, that it is.”

“You haven’t a bit of bread to spare?” says his wife.

“Where do you come from?” asks Inger.

“From the water over beyond. We’ve been walking all night.”

“And where are you going to now?”

“Across the hills.”

Inger makes up some food for them; when she comes out with it, the woman starts begging again: a bit of stuff for a cap, a tuft of wool, a stump of cheese⁠—anything. Inger has no time to waste, Isak and the children are in the hayfield. “Be off with you now,” she says.

The woman tries flattery. “We saw your place up here, and the cattle⁠—a host of them, like the stars in the sky.”

“Ay, a wonder,” says the man. “You haven’t a pair of old shoes to give away to needy folk?”

Inger shuts the door of the house and goes back to her work on the hillside. The man called after her⁠—she pretended not to hear, and walked on unheeding. But she heard it well enough: “You don’t want to buy any hares, maybe?”

There was no mistaking what he had said. The Lapp himself might have spoken innocently enough; someone had told him, perhaps. Or he might have meant it ill. Be that as it may, Inger took it as a warning⁠—a message of what was to come.⁠ ⁠…

The days went on. The settlers were healthy folk; what was to come would come; they went about their work and waited. They lived close to each other like beasts of the forest; they slept and ate; already the year was so far advanced that they had tried the new potatoes, and found them large and floury. The blow that was to fall⁠—why did it not come? It was late in August already, soon it would be September; were they to be spared through the winter? They lived in a constant watchfulness; every night they crept close together in their cave, thankful that the day had passed without event. And so the time went on until one day in October, when the Lensmand came up with a man and a bag. The Law stepped in through their doorway.

The investigation took some time. Inger was called up and examined privately; she denied nothing. The grave in the wood was opened, and its contents removed, the body being sent for examination. The little body⁠—it was dressed in Eleseus’ christening robe, and a cap sewn over with beads.

Isak seemed to find speech again. “Ay,” said he, “it’s as bad as well can be with us now. I’ve said before⁠—you ought never to have done it.”

“No,” said Inger.

“How did you do it?”

Inger made no answer.

“That you could find it in your heart.⁠ ⁠…”

“She was just the same as myself to look at. And so I took and twisted