The Hills Reply

by Tarjei Vesaas

  * * *

  —

  WHAT OF ITS ERUPTING?

  It had to come.

  Tonight they are shining.

  It had to come like that. There is order, though late. The tortured faces began to shine and it is a perilous light. It will be talked about late, but this order is late.

  The rain is about to taper off. Tomorrow is the day for all the flies.

  The destroyed faces are shining, and it is impossible to describe. It is not what one calls light. The creeping things vanish before it, as smoke vanishes. Torture vanishes too, at last.

  What has happened tonight will never be made known. The millstones sink with their load to the bottom of the sea.

  If a five-fold light were to shine afterwards through earth and trees and stones? Nothing. It will never be made known.

  The decaying gleam is there only tonight. It will never be made known.

  Fire in the Depths

  THE ROAD THAT WINDS up the mountainside is deserted, no life there at all. No sound to be heard either. Nothing but stone and persistent sunshine. In the gashes in the rock stand a few hardy trees, their dry knuckles exposed, beside old, stunted bushes.

  The heat comes from the steep walls of rock, which rise straight up from the roadway on the inner side. The sunshine is splintered against this wall and magnified by it.

  On the outer side of the road there is nothing but blue air hanging in a heat haze above a deep valley far below. That’s where the people are, that’s where there’s life and movement. No one travels up here on this mountain road any more.

  This abandoned road in the mountain was blasted out with poor tools and much toil once upon a time; now it is useless and forgotten. The wound in the mountainside has darkened: in the cuts you can no longer see so clearly the boundaries of the ages, endless stone ages. It all hides itself beneath complicated patterns of moss and a common surface color. The large crevices in the rock, left after the upheavals of other epochs, have through the millennia been blown full of dust and seeds. Fertile soil for bushes and tussocks of grass. Dynamited masses of stone that tumbled downwards during the building of the road are now darkening scree at the foot of the mountain far below, overgrown with eager woods and thick layers of dead leaves.

  * * *

  —

  FROM A CREVICE somewhere in the rock wall, about twice the height of a man above the road, there hangs a faded loop, as if placed there for pulling oneself up through the clefts in the stone. The loop hangs there all the time, but no one comes to grasp it. The slack noose hangs and hangs. No one has looked to see whether it is there day and night and forever. It must be, for it is always hanging in the same way. If a strong mountain wind is blowing one day it swings a little in the gust, just as any rope would do.

  The slack, slightly withered noose or loop fits in with the rest of the unchanging scene, hanging there as if by chance.

  To be grasped?

  No, no one has done that. There is life in the rope. It is a part of something. The rest of the splendid serpent is hidden among the stones.

  There is something about this that makes one reply instead: Nothing has been said about it.

  Nobody knows of anyone who has tried to grasp it.

  * * *

  —

  THE ROAD LEADS to a deserted valley. Once many people lived there, but life was more strenuous than in other places, and so one by one they went away. The last one left long ago, and the houses that stood there have disappeared. So no one returns. No one has any business there. So the road falls into disrepair. Eternally patient the loop hangs from the crevice. To be grasped. As if waiting for a long time – perhaps, all the same, someone will. A man cannot explain what kind of patience this is.

  And men do not walk here.

  Living things that look dead are avoided by men because they feel a numbness in themselves at the sight. A man is not like that. A man’s blood is warm, his thoughts leaping and wild; and stubborn and impatient too. A normal man is a bird among birds, with the bird’s unexpected plunge, and with the bird’s wall-breaching song in his throat.

  And what is this?

  A loop.

  Waiting year out and year in for someone to grasp it. Not a comfortable state of affairs.

  But patience gets its reward.

  * * *

  —

  AT LAST A REWARD.

  At last a man on the road.

  Such unbelievable, cold patience has not been waiting for nothing. A man will come here. What more he will do is his own affair when he arrives.

  There are many bends and turns on this road. The man has just started on the very first of them. How far up will he walk? But he is walking quickly so far – considering how steep the road is and how hot the day. It looks as if some strong incentive is driving him on.

  What does he want?

  He is a man with the heart of a bird. It is fitting that he should be walking here above dizzy heights, with the blue air beneath him.

  He is just walking. He rounds another bend. The ascent and the sunshine make him breathe heavily. He is not a bird in everything.

  He seems to be pushed forward by his own hot breath, on this road where nobody walks. It is good enough testimony that he is on the road at all. He is searching for something. It looks as if he is driven to it.

  He is already beginning to peer upwards along the steep walls of rock to his left. He never crosses over to the other side of the road, although the most beautiful view is to be had from there. He does not look down into the valley. He looks quickly and searchingly at every new chunk of rock that comes into view as he rounds the bends. He is obviously expecting to find someone.

  How has he found out about it? No one is likely to have told him.

  He is a young man.

  There’s that too. A young man.

  Curious not to go over to the edge where the view is, and the freedom puts flight into one’s brain. Instead he scans the confining rock wall where it is difficult to breathe and the sun’s heat is burning.

  So he must know about something that is irresistible to someone like himself.

  The one bend after the other. Irresistible. He has a young heart, which cannot find rest. All it can do is search, and never mind about the result. The heat from the walls meets his own burning urge to walk, and to walk fast. He does not pause, scanning the walls as he walks.

  Perhaps he knows about something and is afraid of it, but must see it, must find it. And find it alone. He walks like one who is very much alone.

  A delicate trickling meets his ear as he rounds a bend. He starts in surprise at first, but there is no cause for alarm, it is water, trickling right out of the rock and down into a mossgrown horse trough hewn out of stone.

  A memento of time past. The water still trickles out of the stone, from a vein that never dries up, still cold in the extreme heat. A welcome sight. The man looks round him before bending down to drink. In the trough he encounters his own face and avoids looking at it, drinking the refreshing mountain water quickly and walking on.

  He looks with the same suspense as before at everything along the roadside. There is not much to see. He walks like a tired, frightened boy, but with the bird’s heart, which he cannot help having.

  Bend after bend.

  The sun strikes his back. Utter stillness. The scraping of his footsteps in the gravel the only sound.

  And then he is there.

  The bends have become sharper. In his suspense he has not noticed.

  * * *

  —

  SHARPER – so that he comes on the thing all of a sudden. It is the loop. The dead noose hanging from the crevice. Right in front of him all of a sudden. Twice the height of a man up the rock wall. It resembles a tree-root that has looped itself unexpectedly in the air, and then turned and crawled in again.


  The young man looks at it. It does not seem important hanging there. A loop like that hanging without reason, in burning sun. But he does not move a muscle, so fascinated is he. Unable to take his eyes off it.

  He knew about it all the time. Here it is, and now matters must take their course.

  Something is happening, unseen. And there is no name for it. An encounter between the young man and this object in the rock that looks like a loop. An encounter between what he possesses himself and what has been biding its time here, and is ready to meet him now.

  He stands still as they meet.

  No, they are not meeting yet, they have not come so far. This is only an initiation, an opening.

  He receives images of things he did not know about, and hints of things over which he has no control, being uncertain about their limits.

  The bird in him brings this about perhaps, though it does not seem to have much to do with birds.

  The loop does not move and the young man stands stock-still in front of it. He must be thinking, startled: So it was this.

  But that it should be like this?

  And that it must be like this?

  I don’t think I will.

  He thinks this in the small space he has left to move in. The two that are to meet in him are beginning to fill it up.

  He looks at the loop a little longer, and then he says: I will.

  He only says it for the sake of saying it. He knows there is only one thing to do: He must do it.

  Should he go over and press his forehead against it? Is that all that must be done?

  No, no, he thinks.

  But he will. He thinks: That it should be like this!

  I can’t, he thinks.

  He has to think all this for the sake of appearances. The moment he saw the loop hanging there he knew what he had to do. It is futile to pretend to push it aside. In a while he is ready. He will and he can scramble up and take hold of the loop. He will soon find out what happens afterwards.

  I shan’t get up there, the rock is smooth.

  He knows very well that he will get up. This is fate – and he is the helpless heart of a bird that has let itself be lured.

  Smooth rock. Impossible to get up there without special equipment. No sooner has he thought this than he looks more carefully, and sees good handholds and footholds in the twelve feet he needs. Does he know what he is nearing? No way round it.

  No way round – had he thought there was? Something in him wants to run away.

  No, he says sharply.

  It’s too late anyway. He is really hanging already on the rock wall like a fly.

  The loop still hangs motionless above his head. He is half-way up to it, and it is no problem to climb the rest of the way, but still he pauses. As if to show that he can do that.

  That I can make some decisions myself.

  Then he crawls the last short stretch, using the safe footholds. Then his bare forehead is on a level with the loop.

  Ugh, with my forehead.

  Why not?

  Precisely with my forehead.

  With his hands he clings to the rock. His hands are trembling. The brown, or brownish-black, loop is just in front of his eyes. Then he does it: he touches the loop cautiously with his forehead.

  The loop gives a tiny jerk.

  Then there is nothing more, then the loop seems dead again.

  It almost makes him fall from the cleft he is standing in. Fire runs through him. The first. There will be no more. He seizes the edge of a crevice and saves himself.

  If he had expected something cold it had turned out otherwise. The loop was as mild as the air it hung in, warmed by the sun like everything else. But it was not a dead thing. Against his forehead he had felt the tiny, sudden jerk of life. What kind of life?

  In a flash there was a meeting. The two that met in him have settled side by side and have started to burn.

  He cannot move a finger. He is here now. Before him hangs the loop. Should he grasp it, since it was made to be grasped? No no. He is tempted to do so, to let go with his right hand and clutch at the thick loop. No no.

  A cautious grip would be impossible, he is so dazed. A clutch. What would happen?

  Impossible to tell, but what has happened would be destroyed. Why don’t you get away?

  I can’t.

  Neither of them move. Nothing seems to be happening. Things did happen in a flash before they began burning. From the one to the other and back again.

  The loop does not begin to glide, does not haul itself up or down, there is no more to be seen of it than is there already. There is no one here who can look into the young man’s eyes to see if they are dead. If that’s what has happened. He has not moved a muscle. Is he going to stand here forever, like the other? Does he no longer exist?

  Minutes pass perhaps. No one is counting them. Everything has turned to stone.

  Dead? Oh no. Rushing rivers move towards the unknown. One understands it, one knows it, even when turned to stone. Towards the unknown. Rivers. If he should become anything after this, he will never be the same as before.

  He relaxes his muscles at last. His body loses the tension that was turning him to stone. He opens his mouth, but checks what he was about to say. His fingers, itching with the desire to grasp the rope, fumble for crevices to bear him during the climb down. His hands change handholds, his feet change clefts for standing in. Then there are no clefts, and he slides down the last little stub of smooth rock to the road.

  Above him hangs the loop as before. No difference in colour or shape.

  * * *

  —

  THE FIRE IS RAGING in the young man. A fire in the depths. And experiences have passed through him like dark logs on the rivers. They are still doing so.

  He is back on the old, neglected road in front of the rock with the loop. He makes no attempt to look up at it. Shrinking from it, he walks instead across the road, out to the edge above the giddy precipice. There is a blue haze downwards and outwards. Far below he can see a cluster of human dwellings on the bank of a foaming river. He is looking straight down at the roofs of the houses. He sees cars speeding along the highway like small beetles. He sees people walking without moving from the spot, tiny as ants.

  He looks at it thirstily. He is thirsty for it at this moment. He has become so now. At this moment, now that something seems to have been moved out of the way. When the thought passed through him that the way ahead was open.

  The rivers passed into the unknown. He knows no more than that. He has found no certainty. He stands at the outermost edge of the road, where the warm gusts of heavy valley air dance towards him from the slopes below.

  Standing and standing. It is a different person standing here. Different in a flash. Different because of things one refuses to think about. Fire in the depths.

  There had been fire before. That was what had driven him upwards, that had brought about the encounter. Fire met fire. Then the way became open. It cannot be explained, it’s a riddle, but the way is somehow open in the daze.

  Burnt and free, is that what he is? He stands looking down into the valley at the others. There they are, side by side. At his wit’s end he stands looking down at them. On fire. The way open.

  What is this open way buzzing around him? He cannot shout about it to the people down there, if he does go back to them in a while. The things he must say are spoken silently to himself for lack of courage.

  He was driven into this, afraid, but going straight towards it. Now he suddenly feels lonely.

  Side by side – does it mean that I can never experience that any more after this?

  Was that what burnt up?

  * * *

  —

  THE HOT ROCK STANDS, housing and hushing up secrets, the things a young person feels in himself and longs for.
He who rushes away, burnt and giddy, has nothing to tell. We met and caught fire – such things cannot be told, for fear of ridicule.

  It is his fire, but he has become lonely. He did not know this. Lonely in an instant maybe.

  There are the shadows and the ascents and the rock crevices and the hiding places. And what one does not name. There are the graves too, for the things no one knows, when what can happen up in the mountain is already accomplished. He who stands thus does not shout about these things; he must not after the fire in the depths. Perhaps he may some time, but not now. He stands repeating to himself with trembling voice: Met and caught fire.

  What did meet is hidden from the man who stands here trembling.

  * * *

  —

  SIDE BY SIDE.

  One must be side by side.

  Certainly not in order to talk about it. Absolutely nothing must be told. But to avoid the loneliness after the fire.

  What was that about the open way? Was it a moment of fantasy?

  The winds from the valley rise in gusts against his face, from the dells, from the banks, from the knolls below. Beneath flows the river in bright waterfalls at night, while people pass into the night and think no more. He stands up on the road, looking down. Do they remember how quickly it can change? The next morning the snow of death may be lying on the peaks.

  Suddenly he looks thirstily for people. They are moving about below. He must go down.

  What will happen then?

  Happen? he asks himself, afraid.

  After a while he has recovered sufficiently from the strain to begin the walk downhill. He soon feels better. Better the further down he goes.

  Soon he will be walking alongside the river. The river flows quite fast down the steep valley, but without much volume at this time of year. Up at the bend in the road he played with the idea of the shining river flowing through the summer night. He only did it for pleasure and because he needed to. No waterfall can shine now.