The Hills Reply

by Tarjei Vesaas

“Maybe I should warm you.”

  “No,” she said quickly.

  “All right,” he said.

  All she said was, “That’s good.”

  He stood looking at her. Everything seemed to be standing on its head. And it was so incredibly mild.

  “The snow’s quite wet,” she said confused.

  “Oh yes,” he answered, almost as an aside.

  But would he go now? She had been a little abrupt with him. So he would probably go.

  She stammered, “Are you going?”

  He muttered something and there was an embarrassed silence. He mustn’t go. She stammered again, “What about those cold fingers of yours?”

  He brightened a little and asked, “What about them?”

  “Nothing.”

  “If they really are so cold,” she said again.

  “Oh no. They’re not so cold really. They’ve been colder.”

  “Yes, I expect they have.”

  Everything was standing on its head.

  “Why don’t you feel them?” he asked.

  It was incredibly mild. She let the hands come. The hands, cold as ice, held her close. They made her burning hot. Neither of them could feel cold now.

  He said softly: “Awfully good to hold in your hands.”

  “Yes,” she replied, in scarcely a whisper.

  Daybreak with Shining Horses

  WE MET UNEXPECTEDLY at daybreak one morning. Two young men. The other was called Per. We were acquainted, but not close friends. Now we met on the grass one warm, fine summer morning, before anyone else was up.

  Was there something different about Per? As soon as I saw his face, I thought: What is it?

  I saw he thought: What is it? when he saw me.

  Then one of us said aloud: “What is it!”

  It was Per who said it. As if it had nothing to do with him. Perhaps that’s how it was. Perhaps my impression of him was distorted.

  In any case I could not answer his question. But why was he out of bed at such an unusual time if nothing was the matter?

  Neither of us asked again.

  * * *

  —

  FOR MY PART I had got up for reasons that I cannot explain. I had simply done so – as one does when desperately waiting for something.

  We looked about us. A warm summer morning. Early, early! was the feeling inside us; it’s the only way to describe it. We knew in advance that something was going to happen; it came to us in the moment we met and thought we looked alike. Then we felt this early, early! that there was no other name for.

  The landscape had just taken on its distinct solid day-shape with everything in its place – it wasn’t because of that.

  * * *

  —

  EVERYTHING AS IT SHOULD BE – but was it? We didn’t have to look about us to answer no. It was earlier than early inside us. We were wide open. The one looked at the other and realized that our ordinary everyday life had vanished for the time being. If this had been true of only one of us at first, now it was true of both. It had leaped across like lightning.

  Suddenly there was a strange shimmer in the air.

  I wished he would say: I can see it on you.

  He looked at me and said, beyond all reason: “I can see it on you.”

  I felt myself burn. Don’t say any more, I wished, and he didn’t.

  What was to come of this?

  Something is approaching.

  Per was no longer his usual self. What had we done to each other?

  Without saying anything more, we knew: it is today.

  * * *

  —

  AND IT HAPPENED.

  In the first place it came facing the sun, which was odd.

  A shining aura settled above the hill, facing the sun, before the sun rose in the opposite direction. We were out as early as that. Whatever else we might have wanted to look at, our eyes turned towards this.

  We could not help but believe that what was approaching had its own sources of power. We had a premonition, too, of incredibly long distances to travel across unknown tracts, and of terrific speed – and first and foremost of fascinating things.

  Our bodies were buoyant. At the same time we were nudged by a kind of absurd anxiety: the kind that prepares the way for a sudden involvement and happiness. Meanwhile the light approached in a way that we did not understand.

  We thought of it as air, but knew it was the glow from something approaching, just as the sun with its light was approaching over a hill to greet us. Our senses alert, we watched it coming from the opposite direction. We compared it fleetingly and haphazardly to many things. We did not compare the enchantment to anything; it was simply enchantment.

  * * *

  —

  AND INDEED THE ENCHANTMENT sprang up around us in our own landscape as never before, in unexpected forms. In our happy bewitchment we suddenly saw a naked girl at the top of a rock on the other side of the sound. Our own familiar narrow sound. Quite incredibly she stood there waiting, erect, and immovable like ourselves. Like ourselves she was turned towards what was coming, and we understood her so well: understood why she had stripped to face this. We did not know who she was, we did not know where she came from.

  When we saw the girl thus confident

  as if sprung out of our own thoughts,

  on the bank of our own narrow sound,

  everything seemed to us to be gentler

  within us and without.

  We could not yet come closer to it.

  We could only stand there.

  We said nothing about it to each other,

  but saw that the other saw,

  so it was no fantasy.

  She had stripped to face the same event as us.

  IN SILENCE also we saw the gleam grow stronger up on the uneven hillside we were watching.

  Perhaps the trees and tussocks of heather up there would soon catch fire? Surely they would not be able to withstand the flames?

  But it was not like that either. At the same moment we saw that they did not begin to burn before the still hidden storm of light – we were expecting too much all at once in our excitement.

  We were expecting fire, but something else too that would abruptly and decisively clarify the clouded future, tell us the truth from this day onwards, one early summer morning.

  Everything we had wished for, somehow.

  More than wished for.

  Had wildly wished for.

  We included the girl over there across the sound. She was standing as before, waiting as silently as us.

  * * *

  —

  SO IT HAD BEEN worthwhile wishing so wildly.

  Was it not our innermost wish we now saw gleaming in the air?

  Were we seeing it on its way at last, at the moment when it would soon break over the threshold within us, when it could no longer be stopped by doubt.

  The incredible is approaching from over there. It will not leap past us, we shall not be left in our dark vale to watch it go.

  What form it had was not our concern. Whether the bush burned or not – not our concern. Our concern was a blazing field of light. Our wish was for explanation. Our concern was what we did not know. We had form on the other side of the sound. We saw it with our boys’ eyes, proud that such should exist on our own home ground. We included that in the shared mood of exhilaration we were in. Our naked girl would enter the approaching field of light as an assured point of rest, as a kind of quivering anchorage in what we, in spite of everything, possessed.

  We did not know her, as she stood there sparkling, but she was one of us. We almost felt that it was we who had come to meet her.

  * * *

  —

  WE STIFFENED: there it was up on the hill, shining among t
he trees and bushes.

  First only as light.

  Nothing caught fire there, but the sight of it was so strong that it blinded us.

  We did not see whether it was the light of truth; there were horses, horses, a wave of shining horses, or a waterfall of them.

  A waterfall of horses over the crest, pouring down our hillside like an unpent dam. But without noise, soundless as the shadows and the light. This light would fill us, we would become capable of doing something remarkable, we suddenly persuaded ourselves.

  * * *

  —

  HUSH, we thought as the searing notion presented itself – that we were in reality seeing nothing, but that instead we were about to die. Thus it could shift and become distorted in the space of a moment.

  Why is nobody riding on the horses? Why is there no thundering of numberless hooves?

  It is death. Nobody could ride a horse made of light, surely?

  I am dying.

  And in the same instant, like a stab: Already? No, no.

  Hush, we said to the thought, but it would not obey, it went on nagging us, spoiling our great joy, trying to destroy our exhilaration and the happy impulses we were beginning to feel. Then I saw that Per was pointing like a rescuer across the sound, pointing at the girl who was standing on the rock as before, waiting as before. Everything was changed again, we were not about to die, we were alive and more than alive, we were open and ready to be filled with what was coming.

  * * *

  —

  IT POURED ON DOWN the hillside. An unbridled dance of shining horses.

  And on that hillside.

  Ours, our hillside. There these inflaming visions were to be played out.

  The hillside – where the dew had many a time collected on my shoulders through the night, in the grass beneath trees dense with leaf, where the darkness had been fearful and enticing. The arm of the brook beside which I had sat thinking illicit, strange thoughts. And the place where the cliffs hid in the tall grasses edging them, turning the drops into terrifying pitfalls. On this hillside, where I had sat thinking until it seemed as if I had never really been there at all, the rushing wave of light swept down as runaway horses. Our wild exhilaration was sweeping along, making straight for us.

  To change us in some way?

  Irregular gleams flickered between the trees.

  Tall grasses and stiff angelica heads slapped against the horses’ dancing flanks, their gleaming flanks, it was quite beyond reason and there was no thunder of hooves, they were noiseless. Since there was no sound, our tongues were paralyzed. No one could shout in that silence. No one dared to look across the sound now; we were standing stiffly to receive them.

  Thinking that now everything was different.

  We were not to die, but to be created anew, on our familiar hillside.

  * * *

  —

  BEFORE LONG it looked as if the whole hillside were alight – as if our wish had come true. How could we tell? We stood there in a kind of elation. Tensely we saw that the terrifying cliffs did not exist: the stampede swept straight over them and nothing happened, none of them disappeared in the pitfalls, the web of light was unbroken.

  And then:

  They are here.

  What will happen?

  Welter of thoughts

  forwards, backwards,

  the moment the stampede began,

  reached us,

  bore us up and shattered us.

  It cannot be spoken, but

  straight towards us,

  straight, straight, our desire.

  We saw no eyes,

  we saw spears of light;

  not those either, we

  were in the centre,

  lifted like down and like silk,

  at the same time it was scorching fire.

  It felt like becoming many,

  many out of one.

  Not like that either:

  it sped right through us,

  not stopped by our presence in the way,

  it rushed right through us

  – and we shone too.

  We knew now was the time, but

  time for what?

  Per, my friend, lay on the ground

  bow-shaped, and shone.

  He jumped up again, touching me

  and at once I shone.

  I told him: “You’re shining!”

  He called out, elated:

  “Don’t forget!”

  No more, made dumb,

  dumb by new currents,

  what he wished to say lost.

  He was here, out of reach.

  His severed cry floated

  up the fiery hillside, as the cloud shadows do,

  the fleeting cloud shadows on an innocent everyday.

  Do not forget? What did he mean?

  And where was I?

  Wild groping in the brain,

  and the first already long past.

  We stood mingled with new, never seen things,

  the nameless ones, and

  in the midst of commotion dear things that have names:

  lovely angelica from my own hillside.

  Angelica man-tall at my side rustled

  its sunshades as if there was something important

  to tell me

  which I should fathom.

  Fathom, fathom – the generous message

  did not reach me

  and Per lay on the ground shining,

  no, not shining, a field of light.

  The last horses were streaming through,

  time was up.

  Too late to reach them,

  too late to hold anything back.

  Too late. What had been wrong?

  Pointless groping.

  The sunshades rustled, but uselessly.

  The stampede was already leaving.

  We were already behind it,

  as if we had never been.

  What was it that had not been grasped?

  Had no one stretched out their hands?

  We saw the shining stampede depart.

  Saw without knowing,

  as if we had never been.

  Watching and watching as it rushed along.

  We had not grasped it.

  The field of light, Per, again took form

  and stood groping with empty hands.

  He had not grasped it.

  We did not speak.

  It all had happened at whirlwind speed,

  passing through us and passing on.

  We still could see the stampede of light

  sweeping over the sound without a flicker

  of the surface. Trembling we watched.

  Sweeping over the water, turning the sound into fire.

  On the other side our naked girl

  dissolved into a thousand winking stars.

  That too.

  We saw that, then?

  But without understanding.

  It happened before our very eyes:

  dissolved into a thousand winking stars.

  It rushed on. Had she grasped it?

  We saw without understanding: had she

  grasped it?

  Saw, unable to think.

  A thousand winking stars, we thought, like

  some holy shock.

  Death had not come, we stood as before on the

  sweet slope.

  We had not grasped the greatness

  while it was here.

  We did not speak.

  A flower of angelica, man-tall at my side

  rustled
with all its sunshades,

  rustled in our own silent storm. Already

  the field of light was beyond another crest.

  No figure stood on the rock across the sound.

  The Drifter and the Mirrors

  LEANING OUT over the water and the mirrors.

  They twinkle and bewitch.

  Be drawn towards the slime? Don’t think. Don’t think. Climb away from the slime? Don’t think. The slime was imagination? Don’t think. Nobody knows what flatters and bewitches.

  * * *

  —

  BEWILDERMENT increases in the presence of the mirrors. Leaning over as far as possible, to the point where one almost topples in. The deep water reaches right up to the rock here; tilt too far, and it would all be over. But there is still a foothold left in the heather and the scents and the hopelessness, and in all that hounds one on and that one wishes to be rid of.

  Leaning over, thinking, or at any rate trying to think. No use. No thoughts there.

  Leaning over, knowing one is about to slip. The thought of slipping becomes stronger the longer one looks down into the water. The picture down there is distinct; one can read it like a book. There is no current to pull the features awry; the mirror does not deform anything. There is a current deep down; one thinks of that.

  Yet the face is deformed now, distorted and unlike itself, the result of the misfortunes that have come like avalanches – there behind him, where he has left his half-lived life. What has really happened? He meets his own shocked eyes down below.

  Leaning a little bit more.

  Meeting an eye that says: Come.

  It’s as bad as that. It does not matter what the eye is now that everything has gone so perversely and painfully aground.

  Bewilderment has set in. Soon the picture will begin to glide. Begin to pull and bind and distort him. His own eyes are there no longer; he sees a fragmented eye and it numbs the link with his mind.

  A stranger on one’s own shore, become chillingly lonely. He did not consider the strength of his own resistance while there was still time. While there was still resistance.

  At the pace where he has come from yawn two great sorrows and a couple of shattering defeats. Never back there, he says in this twisted moment. No, your last card has been played, he reads in the sinister eye in the water.