The Hills Reply

by Tarjei Vesaas

  Down to people now.

  What will happen?

  * * *

  —

  A SULTRY SUMMER’S DAY. He has come down to the highway and there are people on both sides of it. Most of them are busy in the fields and do not notice him as he passes by. A stream of people are speeding past in their cars. He looks for someone who is not busy, and catches sight of a figure sitting in the grass in a garden a short distance from the road. Without hesitation he turns off the road and goes straight towards her. It is a young girl sitting in the hot sunshine.

  A girl, of course.

  He does not know her very well, but is aware of who she is. He has talked to her casually once or twice.

  She sits in the grass, attractive in a thin summer dress, her healthy skin glowing through it. She gets to her feet before he reaches her. Why does she do that? Is she afraid of him?

  He sees she is uneasy.

  “Good day.”

  “Good day?” she replies, clearly in the form of a question.

  “No, it was nothing,” he says quickly, and stops short.

  “No, of course not. Why should there be anything?” she says. But she has begun to look at him.

  Look at him? Yes, look at him. He is uneasy himself, and notices it.

  He says quickly, “I saw you were sitting in the grass. Is anything the matter?”

  “Surely I’m the one who ought to ask that,” she answers his eyes, but she does not sound as if she is repulsing him.

  “Am I intruding?”

  “Why should I think that?” she asks his eyes. “You must have some errand here.”

  Has he an errand? He has an errand that makes him tremble. What can she read in him? She asks abruptly, as if it dropped out of her mouth: “What is it?”

  “No,” he says, cutting it off.

  In a little while he says. “There’s something else I’d like to say.”

  “Oh?” she says to his eyes.

  “That I like you.”

  “No.”

  She is blushing.

  “You don’t mean that,” he says.

  She is silent to his eyes.

  “You don’t mean it, do you?” he says.

  “Run away, then,” he says, trembling in case she takes him seriously. He looks at her forehead, he sees only her forehead that is free and beautiful.

  She does not run away. He understands that she has no intention of running away. He stares at her forehead as if parched with thirst.

  “You’re the first person I’ve met,” he tells her. It sounds stupid to anyone who has not been with him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Never mind. Don’t you want to sit down again?”

  She does not take her eyes off him. She says: “I’ll stand as long as you’re standing.”

  He gives a start. But he does not say: All right, I’ll sit down then. He stands looking at her forehead. One of them must have taken a step forward, for they are close to each other. He is aware of the fragrance rising from her dress. I am among people, I am among people, he thinks.

  He sees she wants to come closer. She has no idea what has been happening.

  “May I ask you something?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” she answers his eyes.

  “I suppose you can tell me what it is,” she says again. Her eyes have changed. They keep changing.

  “Your forehead,” he says, stupidly.

  “What do you mean, my forehead? You’re so strange today. I’ve never seen you like this before.”

  He nods.

  Her forehead is just in front of him. He puts his arms round her shoulders. There are only a couple of narrow straps across them. He tilts her head towards him slightly so that her forehead is projecting. Numb with tension he places his own forehead gently against hers.

  She flinches as if he were burning hot.

  “Ouch, let go!”

  Disappointment engulfs him like an avalanche. It had not freed him; it had not gone away. But the other: dark logs and rivers swirling away into the unknown.

  “What did you say?” he asks afraid. She does not answer.

  He has already released her. His arms are hanging down. His eyes are staring at her in fright.

  “Go on, run,” he says.

  She does not run. She takes a step backwards, and stays there – in a silence that is difficult to bear. She does not take her eyes off him.

  She tells him: “I didn’t mean it.”

  She takes two steps forward, straight towards him. Her eyes are blurred and heavy.

  “My dear,” she says.

  A dark roaring towards the unknown. Logs and rivers….

  “What is it?”

  “I want to kiss you,” she says with open mouth.

  He says indistinctly, in the frightening unknown: “You don’t know what you’re kissing.”

  “I want to kiss you just the same.”

  Words, Words

  HE THOUGHT OF EVERYTHING that might have happened, but never came so far.

  Because it was stopped by someone who was on guard when matters became really serious, but a warning that was always trustworthy.

  So one did not fall into the traps; one could return to one’s own place.

  A clear eye that understood what was important. That could calmly allow this to happen and that to happen, but put a stop to such activity when there was real danger.

  This has been recorded on a tablet.

  One can bring out one’s tablet now and then. There all that should have been said through the time of silence is written down. A time which was also the time of long comradeship.

  * * *

  —

  NOW, THIS WAS ONE CONSIDERATION. And a basic one. But there were others.

  He could sit and think like this: What about the candid generosity that put him in his place when something or other had been done too meanly? How could he react in such a situation?

  Feel ashamed and turn aside. Keep away for a while in anger. Take offense.

  Keep away, and give unjust anger and offended looks time, in order to let them fade finally in bitter acknowledgment of the truth. Come out again after a while, incapable of saying anything, only passing slowly by and perhaps pausing for a little, standing there for a little.

  She would have understood.

  No one mentioned the matter. One’s tongue was useless just then.

  Words can cause trouble like large rocks in one’s path.

  Wrong: Words can clear the largest rocks out of the way.

  Wrong again: Words can turn into dark chasms unbridgeable for a whole lifetime.

  We know very little about the power and the destructiveness of words.

  * * *

  —

  IT’S AS IF THERE WERE NOTHING MORE – when one has brought out the tablet.

  But what about the person who was always there when needed? Always willingly beside you? Important as bread is important and as indispensable.

  He said to himself: Perhaps that’s what I must remember more often. But did I ever speak about what I really knew? Far too difficult. Far too extraordinary to be blurted out in words.

  Nor did he remember everything. Too many years. And there was much that could not be brought out into the open. Certain matters are best left like that.

  He thought: One says far too many stupid, awkward things. Most often they are awkward. The things one says usually seem to be left lying about on the floor like a pair of lop-sided shoes – while the things one wanted to say feel like birds in flight.

  To keep silent about matters of importance is not just modesty. One’s wretched tongue is wooden. Small matters are chattered about, blurted out. One keeps silent about the rest until it is perhaps forgotten and lying in va
rious graves.

  What should he be called, then, he who is responsible for this?

  * * *

  —

  AS IF THERE WERE NOTHING MORE.

  He thought sometimes, to comfort himself: I have it. It has not gone. All this has been carved in vivid letters on that tablet.

  Well, bring it out.

  That tablet will never be brought out. It is a tablet no one may read, no one may see.

  So it exists only in the imagination, I suppose.

  It exists.

  What’s the use, if it’s not meant for anyone.

  It feels as if it’s some use to me, at any rate. And, as I said, the tablet is there.

  As if there were nothing more than this. I could sit at supper remembering new things. They would appear from their graves all the same.

  He thought and thought.

  * * *

  —

  HE THOUGHT: Words, words.

  No more words now.

  Here is my thirsting hand.

  The Dream of Stone

  BETWEEN THE WALLS OF STONE – and there it is better to be alone, they tell you as you are let in to their dense, leaden dream.

  I don’t understand. Stone walls, what business have I there? What have I to do between the stone walls?

  The answer comes: That is a reasonable question.

  Only afterwards does it dawn on you.

  * * *

  —

  NO FURTHER EXPLANATION of how you have arrived between these stone walls. These smooth rocks that stand so defiantly upright. Suddenly you are there, that is all you know.

  Between smooth, sun-warmed stone walls, and between stone mouths that certainly exist, but are not visible.

  You think of the mouths. Then you have entered.

  The rock here is not cold. Accumulated sun. The walls are like the sides of an oven. The heat from the walls is like the gentle strokes of a club on the back of your neck. No one would come here of his own accord; I dare not find out why I am here myself.

  But it’s the stone mouths.

  If only the stone mouths would open and tell me what I am seeking. But the stone must return to its stone and it is not likely to help me. There is really nothing besides burning walls of rock and astonishment.

  Say something, mouth.

  One stands stock-still in bewilderment at the sight: smooth, steep stone walls. Closed. Fathomlessly silent.

  But one prays: Say something, mouth.

  Not the slightest sign of an answer.

  These are upright stone plateaux. Steep and gentle by turns. They lean over dangerously as well, you feel their proximity if you doze off. But no mouth.

  For the third time: Say something, mouth.

  I am sure there is a mouth deep in the stone, but the stone must return to its stone and cannot reveal itself. Do I see this? Where am I?

  * * *

  —

  WHERE ARE MY CLOTHES?

  Time does not exist. It rose up like vapor as one turned round and looked for it. I have stripped long ago in this scorching heat. I prayed three times: Speak! But no mouth is open. You become uneasy and expect violence. Then your own concerns are not enough.

  Smooth rock facing south, and long periods of burning sun. The stone has absorbed it all and is breathing out again. Hot flagstones burn the soles of my feet. They are too hot to walk on when you are completely naked.

  I believe that these great expanses of stone have echoing cries within them. The cries are silent within the walls. They thud on the back of one’s neck if one goes close. One thinks of all the rock walls one has ever seen. Sometimes they plunge steeply into lakes and seas, fissured from thousand-year-old bolts of lightning. Sometimes they plunge vertically down into the quagmires, and from there they will probably cry out one day with crushing horror about the time of the rock in the quagmires. It will certainly be terrible to hear.

  It is already the time of bewilderment, so that one forgets oneself and says, believing it to be of use: Say something, mouth.

  Oh no.

  But one is standing here, caught in all this heat that has accumulated in these upright surfaces. A little fever murmurs somewhere in the seeker who has come and does not quite know how to start.

  One may walk naked for the sake of love – a few words that come to mind because I am walking like this, but they are inappropriate here, in loneliness between scraped rocks. I am naked and do not understand. But it is good to walk beside these warm stone walls. I opened my eyes and was there. Walking with a little fever in an abode of stone.

  Yet another abode of stone.

  * * *

  —

  WILL THE SEALED MOUTHS explain the truth about these abodes of stone, or will they remain, here as elsewhere, silent?

  Or shall I go on walking here until finally I walk into the stone and stand there as if sealed? A mouth without redemption. Then others will come, confused by the heat and the strokes of the club, and say something to each other as they are shut in, that I do not understand. Fever-hot smooth rock, what is happening to me and to others?

  I stand inside the stone without a mouth, and the others have to leave. They asked their question and left.

  Is there more?

  No, there’s nothing to start on. One sees only oneself in the stone. There everything is sealed, yet one sees oneself in the stone exactly as created, and walks quickly past oneself with beating heart. The walls in the rock are smooth yet deeply troubled.

  The stone closes up and is alive without a face. Is alive so that one trembles in there, and then the sides begin leaning forward and turn threatening.

  Can nothing be said to one who has not yet been given a valid answer; who has been to many places and asked, and who has come back none the wiser?

  It has grown late, silent stone mouths. And I do not mean late in time.

  * * *

  —

  THE ROCK THAT PLUNGES vertically down into the quagmires, think of that. Down into the dark depths of the quagmires. Down until it meets rock from the other side. There it must remain. A strange meeting. Moss grows on a small section of the rock up in the light of day.

  Vertically down into the quagmires.

  * * *

  —

  THERE!

  Unexpectedly it starts to rain in the middle of this heat. A cloud has moved in during the past few minutes and begun to shade the sun. An eager cloud full of rain. From its outermost fringes it is already letting fall a few large, lukewarm drops. Towards the centre the cloud is threateningly blue.

  And now there is a sudden change. The first drops fall like small explosions on the hot surface of the stone, followed at once by tremendous turmoil. The flung drops are unusually large, and they are given a special reception.

  * * *

  —

  THEY STRIKE AGAINST THE STONE and are turned into specks of vapour which spread in the air into lazy puffs of pent-up desires. They rise from the hard surface as if from deep sleep. Lazy puffs of breath from the stone mouth.

  The puffs come in quick succession as the drops splash and lick, as more surfaces and walls and flagstones are included and send out their fragrance and their smell and their stink. Whether one wants it or not, the breaths advance towards one, pressing forward from all kinds of hidden places and mingling together.

  With pounding pulse one becomes a part of it.

  The vapour blows in gusts against one’s body. One stands naked; this is for the naked and for nobody. It makes one giddy in an instant.

  Breathing and smells from all sides. The strongest is the smell that is so shut in, elemental and savage. My back feels chilled, but not from uneasiness; these are deep shudders of what I was longing for. The stone mouths must be open somewhere. This is a salutation from within the walls.


  It seems important to move about and receive fresh salutations from the puffs of vapor; to find new pettiness, new ways of handling pettiness and stupidity, and what is larger, and what is too large.

  The smell flows more densely, without becoming rank; it is muted and strange, like the dream, and like one’s use of something unfamiliar. As sleep is creative and renewing, so the senses are there to be sharpened – by standing naked, aware of the flaws in oneself. Aware of the abyss and ready to collapse, and nobody can say a truly comforting word about this, or explain it.

  The stone has acquired life.

  Quicker than it can be told, at breakneck speed, in a few angry seconds it all happens. But the stone mouths have not opened; the rain from outside has woken them. The walls are ready to be shattered by what is shut in. Life rages in the tensions constrained in the spectacle before one’s eyes. One stands in the middle of it, naked as never before, aware of the rock leaning over, threatening with closed mouth.

  One stands there, imagining that the stone is ready to crack open because it is alive. The stone’s breath bewitches a man so that he sees stone surfaces rise up and remain standing as walls and tilting towers.

  * * *

  —

  DO WE REALLY SEE IT?

  Yes, when we want to see it.

  What is the truth about our senses? Do we sense so much as a thousandth part?

  One tries to take part in everything as much as possible, in order to come closer. The scattered raindrops lick the stone and sustain its agitation, and my own agitation comes from being able to stand in the middle of this – to feel them mingling and becoming twice as strong. One can sense it without being annihilated oneself. All the same it passes from the one to the other and turns into some kind of silent avowal, powerful and threatening because it cannot be grasped.

  No sooner is this established than I realize I have eyes in the back of my neck: I can see simultaneously in all directions in the bewitching vapour. Is it because I cannot bear to admit that my strength is borrowed? Because of it I have eyes in the back of my neck. I see the rock rise upwards like towers with battlements wreathed in green, some upright, others leaning and ready to fall. And they begin to move, nodding their crowns of rock like treetops on a stormy ridge. This I see with the back of my neck.