Part 3 (2/2)

V

I fill the fireplace with pine wood, hoist my belongings to my back, and leave the hut. ”Farewell, Madame.”

That was the end.

I feel no pleasure at leaving my shelter, but a touch of sadness--as I always do on leaving a place that has been my home for some time. But all the world stands outside calling to me. Indeed I am like all lovers of the woods and fields; wordlessly we had agreed to meet, and as I sat there last night, I felt my eyes being drawn to the door.

Several times I look back at the hut, with the smoke rising up from the chimney; the smoke billows and waves to me, and I wave back.

The silky pallor of the morning refreshes me; in a long blue haze over the forest, a slow dawn rises. It looks like a cheerful piratical coast in the sky before me. The mountains are all on my left.

After a few hours' march I am like new from top to toe, and I press on swiftly. I beat the air with my stick, and it says ”hoo” as it swishes; whenever I think I deserve it, I sit down and give myself food.

No, you have not my pleasures in the town.

I beat my legs with my stick from the sheer exuberance of living, and nearly cry out. I behave as though the burden on my back had no weight, taking needless leaps, and overexerting myself a little; but an overexertion to which one is driven by inner content is easy to bear. In my solitude, many miles from men and houses, I am in a childishly happy and carefree state of mind, which you are incapable of understanding unless someone explains it to you. I play a little game with myself, pretending to have discovered a remarkable kind of tree. At first I pay little attention, then I stretch my neck and contract my eyelids and gaze.

”What!” I say to myself. ”Surely it couldn't be--”

I throw down my burden and approach, inspect the tree and nod sagely, saying it is a strange, fabled tree that I have discovered. And I take out my notebook and describe it.

Merely jest and happiness, a queer little impulse to play. Children have done it before me. And here comes no postman to surprise me. As suddenly as I have begun the game, I end it again, as children do. But for a moment I was transported back to the dear, foolish bliss of childhood.

Perhaps it was the antic.i.p.ation of soon seeing men again that made me playful and happy!

Next day, just as a raw mist descends on mountain and forest, I reach the Lapp's house. I enter. But though I meet with nothing but kindness, a Lapp hut contains little that is interesting. There are spoons and knives of bone on the peat wall, and a small paraffin lamp hangs from the roof. The Lapp himself is a dull nonent.i.ty who can neither tell fortunes nor conjure. His daughter has gone across the field; she has learned to read, but not to write, at the village school. The two old people, husband and wife, are fools. The whole family share a sort of animal dumbness; if I ask them a question, I may or may not get half a reply: ”Mm-no, mm-yes.” I am not a Lapp, and so they distrust me.

All the afternoon the mist lay white on the forest. I slept a while. In the evening, the sky was clear again, and there were a few degrees of frost. I left the hut. The moon stood full and silent above the earth.

Heigh-ho--what untuned strings!

But where are the birds all gone away, and what kind of place is this?

Here where I stand nothing moves or stirs, in this world that is dead, no event occurs; I stand in a silvermine.

My eyes sweep round, but I sorely miss a homely, well-known outline.

And so he came to a silver wood-- thus ran an ancient tale.

Here rests a song of s.h.i.+mmering fire as though it were sung by a starry choir.

And swift in my youth, I leap to bind fast the troll, the cunning male, and awaken a maid from her sleep.

Today I smile at childish tales, old age has made me wise.

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