The Birds (4 page)

He mustn’t touch her yet.

“Do something,” he said.

She understood at once.

“Yes,” she said, “look.”

She waved her arm, and all around the air was filled with the song of birds.

“Yes, and you were born in the flight of the woodcock,” Mattis began, “and you’ve long been in my thoughts. If there’s something you want to say, you must say it now.”

“Say?” she said.

“Yes.”

“No, there’s nothing more I want to say now.”

He looked straight into her eyes. At the same time he quietly bent his left arm, making his sleeve tear with a little rip. The enormous, smooth, round muscles glistened in the sun right in front of her face.

“Nothing to worry about,” he said calmly. “I’ve got plenty of shirts.”

“And the left arm?” she asked, full of amazement.

“Yes,” he said, dismissing the matter, “the right sleeve got torn long ago.”

She said no more, was so fascinated by what she saw that words failed her. That was how he had wished it. All his wishes were coming true. And what was more, he was able to say things in the right way.

“Now you do just what you want,” he said to her. “You’re wonderful.”

She came nearer at once.

“I’m beginning to understand better now why I’ve been waiting so long,” he added.

She remained silent the whole time – because she had a secret she wanted to tell him. All she did was come closer. She had waved her arm and all around the air had been filled with the song of the birds – now she moved her whole body and he was spellbound by her magic.

Moved her whole body, and he couldn’t say what happened. Something nameless. She was coming nearer, that was all. She was close to him, born of the flight of a woodcock, she belonged to him.

AS USUAL HEGE was the first to get up. Mattis was wide-awake, but stayed in bed reliving his dream. He heard Hege moving about in her room. Then she came out. Mattis hurriedly turned toward the wall and pretended to be asleep. That seemed the safest thing to do, after the way they’d parted last night.

Hege stopped by him for a moment on her way out to the kitchen. Tense. But it passed. She moved on again. Soon he heard the familiar morning sounds of cups and knives.

Things are going to be different, Mattis thought dreamily. He found his clothes and got dressed. Felt different already, seemed to be supported by two strong arms – the woodcock and the dream, one on each side. He couldn’t help listening to see if anything special was going to happen today as well. An unexpected word or some pleasant surprise might be waiting for him – now that things were different.

Not yet. But today mustn’t be like any other day. He’d have to make sure of that himself.

“Early bird,” he said to Hege from the kitchen door. Part of the old proverb came to him, and he used it instead of saying good morning.

He felt unsure of himself. His last glimpse of Hege the night
before had been unbearably sad. He could only think it was his fault she’d been lying there turned to the wall, crying.

And just afterward he’d had the dream!

At any rate, Hege had got over it now after her night’s sleep. She stood there, small and agile, cutting bread. It almost looked as if she were making a special point of being carefree and unruffled, to smooth things over from last night. She answered his words about the early bird: “You’re in a good mood, aren’t you?”

He laughed inwardly, but replied: “How do you mean?”

“Well, aren’t you?”

“You don’t know why,” he said.

Not a word from her about last night. And then she almost went too far: “I think I do. It’s because you’re off to do something really big today, just as we said. And I’m sure the early bird will come home with the worm.”

Ugh! He had forgotten he’d promised to go and look for work. But Hege hadn’t forgotten, that was pretty obvious. There was no denying this cast a shadow over his joy.

“No, you’re wrong there,” he said.

“But aren’t you—”

“There’s a woodcock here now,” he interrupted her. He said it as one offering information, to explain the new state of affairs. Surely he wasn’t expected to make the painful trip round the
farms asking for work now, when so many pleasant things had happened.

But Hege wasn’t the least bit moved.

“So what?” she said. “What difference does it make whether there’s a woodcock here or not?”

“I don’t really know. Are you sure you don’t know either?” He felt braver now, but it was no use.

“Eat your breakfast,” said Hege.

And so he did. He was still living in his dream. He would have to make Hege understand later, understand the important thing that had happened, and that she refused to accept.

All of a sudden he broke the silence: “Hm!” he said and tapped the floor three times with the toe of his shoe.

“Well?”

“Nothing to do with you.”

“Isn’t it?” said Hege. “You look as if you’re bursting to say something.”

Mattis ate several mouthfuls without saying anything, but he couldn’t restrain himself.

“It’s strange the kind of things people can dream, if they really want to,” he said.

Hege wasn’t playing along with him.

“Oh, so you’ve been dreaming,” she said, as if the whole thing was of no importance at all.

“Hm!” said Mattis once more.

“You better tell me, or you’ll burst.”

Her reaction made the dream still more vivid and real. It seemed almost true.

“Tell you what I dreamt?”

She nodded.

“I can’t,” he said earnestly and looked at her with wide-open eyes.

“Then it can’t have been much of a dream,” Hege said a little snappily, pouring him some of the weak coffee they always drank. She was already starting to move away from him.

Mattis said: “Decent people don’t talk about the kind of thing I dreamt about. So now you know.”

“Oh?”

“It’s no good your asking and asking. Now you can guess, surely.”

She didn’t grow the least bit more curious, poured cold water down the whole thing: “Well, you can console yourself with the fact that dreams always go by opposites. The reverse of what you dream comes true.”

“What!” he burst out. Her words made him shudder. It sounded as if she wanted to hurt him. But she didn’t know what she was talking about, that’s what it was. “That was a nasty thing to say you know,” he said horrified, and refused to eat anymore. He got up so abruptly that he took the top of the table with him – sitting
squeezed in as he was. The weak coffee ran all over the place and a cup smashed as well.

“What a mess you’re making, Mattis.”

“Well, whose fault is that?”

Surely she understood how she was spoiling everything for him.

“But I won’t allow you to spoil it for me,” he said.

“Calm down now, Mattis.”

He pulled himself together:

“No, it doesn’t matter, because things are going to be different from now on. It began last night.”

Hege remembered how cross she had been the night before and felt sorry about it.

“I will come with you and look at that woodcock one evening. Only don’t keep on about it.”

“It’ll never be like the first time.”

Hege left it at that, cleared the table, and took the half-finished sweater. Meanwhile she kept an eye on Mattis to see what he was going to do. He could feel her looking at him and asked in an irritated voice: “What’s the matter now, then?”

“I’m waiting to see whether you’re going over to the farms, as you said you would.”

She had no mercy.

“But the woodcock—”

Hege hardened.

“Woodcock, birds, that’s no excuse. You said you were going, and now you must go.”

Mattis became frightened. Hege must really have set her mind on it this time, seeing she was so stubborn. Did she still not understand what misery it caused him? He got up from the security of his chair and asked uneasily: “Is this how things are different here after the woodcock?”

“We must never give in,” said Hege, “I’ve told you so a thousand times.”

“It’s easy for you to talk.”

He pondered for a while.

“Why don’t I have muscles big enough to rip my shirt?” he said, and his voice was loud and harsh.

Hege made no reply.

“You never ask me!” he went on in his excitement.

“What about?”

“The sort of things people don’t ask about.”

Hege’s voice was sharp: “Stop it now.”

They had touched on matters that were awkward for both of them.

“Can I wait till tomorrow?” he asked, referring to the humiliating trip round the farms to look for work. She had so often been a good
sister to him – but now she was starting to lose her temper more easily than before.

“Today is today, you see.”

“Alright, we’ll call that a bargain,” said Hege.

TODAY WAS TODAY.

Matt is went strolling around.

There were three things in the dream, he thought to himself.

I was different in three different ways.

He was walking about in the warmth of a fine summer morning. Hege was probably sitting indoors sulking because he’d refused to go and look for work. Well, he couldn’t help that. Recent events were too near and too important. Sweet smells and fresh breezes were all around him.

Three great changes. They were gone again this morning, there was no doubt about that. He had nothing but the memory of it all, quivering beneath him like the string of a fiddle. It was as though he’d happened to tread on one of these strings on the ground below, and a sound had rung out, magical, real, and true.

Different in three ways – but today was today. Strange how little Hege seems to understand, he thought, and went down to the lake.

There he stood throwing stones into the water like a child. The lake was absolutely smooth, there was no point at all in trying to fish, so he could safely leave his ramshackle old boat where it was.

The three things. They were around him somewhere, and last night he and they had been one. All the things in himself that he wished were different had been different.

He stood there tossing stones into the lake with a glazed and faraway expression in his eyes.

“Mattis! Food!” Hege called down to him from the cottage. The comforting sound of a woman about the house.

The three things gave a jump.

There was no need for her to shout “Come at once!” Mattis was quick enough when he was called to a meal. He hurried up the slope and sat down at the table.

“You’d better eat while you can,” said Hege, pushing the plate across to him. He knew very well that her tone had something to do with his refusal to go out and look for work. That was why she was talking to him like this.

“If only one was different in three ways,” he said as he ate.

“What three ways?”

“It’s to do with what I didn’t tell you. And with girls and—”

“Alright, but finish your food.”

“You’re always the same,” he said in a peevish voice. “You just can’t understand.”

“Yes,” said Hege, “but are you going to make that trip tomorrow?”

How strange and stubborn she is, he thought, but then that’s the way you get food.

“If I said I’ll do it then I’ll do it,” he replied, shuddering at the
thought of standing helpless, exposed to the gaze of those efficient workers.

Hege was busy with the sweater she was making. Mattis said almost entreatingly: “Are you going to watch the bird when it comes back this evening? This morning you said you would sometime.”

“Not this evening, it means being up so late.”

“But you said—”

“I’d rather get some sleep,” said Hege firmly.

“But supposing you never woke up again!” said Mattis harshly. “You’d be really sorry then.”

She gave a start. His words had an effect he didn’t understand.

“Stop it, Mattis,” she shouted.

He fled. He heard her saying something behind him, but he slunk out of the door, frightened.

That evening he sat on the steps, uneasy, fidgeting nervously with his fingers. Hege had taken the risk and gone to bed after all.

The time came, for the bird.

There was his cry, and there came the wings, flapping helplessly somehow, beating quickly.

The wings were high up in the mild night air, but at the same time they touched the very center of Mattis’s heart. The soft dark touch
of something beyond understanding. It spread right through him. Me and the woodcock, sort of, ran his formless train of thought.

In his joy he had made a promise: tomorrow I’ll go just as Hege wants, as long as there isn’t a thunderstorm. Lightning is lightning. I won’t go then – and well she knows it.

He waited for the woodcock to fly across twice more before going to bed in a room filled with the warmth and half-light of a summer’s night. But if he had expected the dream to reappear, he was disappointed. There was not so much as a hint of a grove full of girls.

THE TWO ASPENS, Mattis-and-Hege, stood pointing up into the morning sun and the deep blue sky. Mattis walked past them and up onto the road. He was walking with his lips pressed tightly together. What’s the woodcock come for if everything’s going to stay the same as before? Wouldn’t the best thing be just to wait and see if anything happened? No, Hege had said.

He wasn’t quite so eager now as he’d been the night before, after he’d been greeted by the bird.

If Hege had been a different sort of person she’d never have sent him out on this pointless trip, she’d have realized she shouldn’t. But Hege will never be different. Doesn’t need to be either, somehow.

He plodded on.

As soon as he came out of the wood a whole cluster of farms lay stretched out before him. Almost every one of them held the memory of an unsuccessful attempt to work.

The road was busy already. As usual the cars were forcing people onto the side. The verges were gray with dust that had been thrown up in the air.

Mattis sometimes walked along this road even if he wasn’t looking for work. Occasionally Hege sent him to the store with a little money to buy food, or with a sweater she’d finished. It was always a
risky business, it might turn out well, but it could also end in shame and disgrace.