Per went regularly up to the gravel pits by the main road, where Jens was. He had spent time there with Jens as long as he could remember.

"Is that you?" said Jens.

Per was always welcome. For a while.

Gravel was taken from the pits for the long, long road. The gravel on the road had to be replaced all the time; it blew away in dry weather and ran away in the rain, and all the cart wheels and horses' hooves wore it out. Then the drivers came and loaded their carts with gravel from the heaps and drove it away and spread it over the long track. There was gray gravel and brown gravel. When the sun shone on the heaps you could smell a dry, peaceful odor, not good and not bad. Jens wore a red undershirt with a black vest over it. He chewed tobacco; Per would do that too when he was big.

"You must go back to your father now," said Jens.

"Why?"

"Oh, he wants you."

So Per understood that Jens wanted to be rid of him. He went down to the farm again. There was a clanging from the smithy. That meant Father was there whetting drills for dynamiting a huge stone on the cleared land. Father was a smith too. And a carpenter. His carpenter's shed lay alongside the house and was full of tools that were not to be touched. The smithy was a long way from the house, on a   [p. 38]   patch of scree. That was because of the fire. The risk of fire. The risk of fire, people said, and their faces turned stiff and dry, as hard and severe as if made of wood. The risk of fire had always lived with the matches, and it was the worst sin of all to play with matches.

Sometimes Father stood in the smithy working with the fire so that the sparks flew. Per had often thought what a dreadful sin he was committing. Later on he learned that the same things are not sinful for everyone.

Now Father was whetting drills, so there would soon be bangs and explosions. Then the other farms would hear that new land was being cleared.

Father did not dig gravel up in the pits by the road; he only dug in his own soil. He began in the early spring as soon as the snow slackened off, digging a deep, dark furrow with melting snow around it. Fresh April snow might fall, soft and wet, so that everything was white in the morning, but the black furrow thawed at once and moved slowly upwards.

Father's clothes were always streaked with earth, except on Sundays. There was a smell of gravel and earth when he passed. His face was often wet with sweat or rain, and he would touch it with his earthy hands. The earth stuck, and fresh sweat made furrows in his face. When it was so dry that the soil smoked, Father would get a narrow rim of it on his lips. It was not work for a sissy.

"You're all horrible and black," Per had said once.

It had been an unfortunate day for making such a remark. Father had been angry about something, and when Per commented on his black face, he had lost patience.

"Are you turning up your nose?" he had asked scathingly. "This isn't work for a sissy, and you'll learn it soon enough, my boy.

"Oh, well, never mind," he said in another tone of voice, hurriedly trying to shrug it off. But it was too late; the words had sunk in. Per felt a strong aversion for it all. But what   [p. 39]   was the use when two big grown-up fellows had sentenced him to stay at Bufast to the end of his days? His aversion only grew greater.

He went up to Jens. He would not stay at Bufast; he would dig gravel like Jens. Jens took shelter when the weather was bad; Father went on working in howling rain and wind.

"Jens can do as he likes," Mother had said once. "He has no land." She almost looked as if she wished she were Jens.

So Per went up to him again.

"Is that you, Per?"

"You can do as you like, can't you, Jens?"

"Who in the world says that?" Jens straightened up behind the cone-shaped pile of gravel he had raised.

"You have no land, that's why," said Per enviously.

A shadow came over Jens' face. "No, I have no land," he said wearily; "I just dig gravel where nothing grows."

Per was astonished. Jens said, "You can look forward to taking over a farm. Don't come here with that sort of talk. You should thank God for it, my boy."

Then he began hacking at the gravel again. It was all a riddle to Per. He went down to the farmyard and tried to tease Botolv to get him into a real fury. But Botolv did not get angry, merely looked at Per strangely wide-eyed.

So Per went away with a heavy heart, out into his loneliness.

"You go on digging out there till you neither hear nor see," said Mother to Father one day.

"Yes," he replied, and went on doing so.

Father was a silent man. It must have had something to do with his work; he dug till he neither heard nor saw.

There was a song he sang on Sundays when he sat with the baby. The song had a merry tune, and it was about everything the baby would be when he grew up. Per noticed that the song was different nearly every Sunday; Father found new things for the baby to be, and Per listened with excitement and delight, secret delight. He could never play with   [p. 40]   Father; it was unthinkable. When Father turned his huge body and his huge face towards him, it never entered his head to play. He only watched him with respect. Aunt Anne was the same. Botolv was different; he ran just as willingly to Father as to the rest of them. Mother behaved towards Father in the same way as Per and Auntie.

"Why is Father like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like that." As if she didn't know what he meant!

"He digs too much in the cleared land. You don't understand."

No, he didn't. He asked his mother: "Do you have to stay at Bufast to the end of your days?"

"Yes," she said.

"Do you thank God for it?"

"I don't know," she said in confusion, and left him.

How odd it was: it was she who taught him all about God, and then she disliked him asking her about such things.

Now he began to think about Åsne a great deal. She and Aunt Anne had equal rank; maybe Åsne even took first place. But she never came. He suggested that they should visit the farms to the north of them, but nobody wanted to, not even Auntie. They didn't want to be anywhere but at Bufast, it seemed.

Auntie said, "You'll find Åsne Bakken again when you go to school. That'll be time enough."

How did Auntie know what was time enough? They were odd.

He longed for school and dreaded it. Aunt Anne taught him his alphabet and numbers. He must be able to read when he went to school, she said. And add and subtract as well.

Per stood watching, as if from a high mound.

About him revolved the year. Harvesttime came; potato digging; autumn plowing; autumn leaves on the trees. The autumn slaughtering season one gray day with crackling puddles. He was shut indoors and had to imagine what was   [p. 41]   happening: they're killing them out there. Brownie would snort in his stall at the smell of slaughter on the hands and clothes of those who came in to handle him.

Per watched from a high, rounded hill as the year revolved and the work changed with the seasons. He was not included. He had a clear picture of himself: he was standing on his hill watching. The others were in a world apart.

The first cow had calved: a heifer for breeding. The snow came.

Father could no longer dig in the earth; now he drove Brownie to the forest and brought home wood. Brownie was shaggy and warm in his winter coat.

Per played a little in the snow. Something was the matter, but he did not know what it was.

He was lonely.

Botolv preferred to sit or stand with Mother. Per preferred Botolv to be with her too. He was afraid of Botolv.

Christmas came after much fuss and bother. They passed the time quietly. On Christmas Day Mother and Father drove to church, and Aunt Anne stayed home with Per and Botolv and the baby. After that came two more quiet days. Per thought a great deal about God. Few strangers looked in, for they themselves seldom visited the other farms. It was quiet. And there was better food than usual.

On the evening of the fourth day Per and Botolv went with Mother all the way to the schoolhouse to a Christmas party. So he would see Åsne again.

The Christmas party was wonderful; it was wonderful every time. He saw a lot of children he did not know. Åsne was not there. He managed to find out that she had gone away with her mother to the neighboring village to see relatives.

He neither spoke nor fought with the other children. It didn't seem worth it.

My father was killed driving the horses when I was small, Åsne had said proudly. How many of these could say the same?

  [p. 42]  

But she was not there.

He sat twisting and turning the orange he had been given along with all the others.

"Shall I peel it for you?" Mother tried to take the gleaming, golden apple.

"No," he said despondently.

Botolv sat on Mother's lap as if all the festivities were for him. The high-pitched singing of the children and all the candles and all the colored glass balls and swinging peacocks and the big silver star at the top of the tree---it all seemed to be for Botolv. He sat wide-eyed, drinking it all in. Per could see the whole Christmas tree in his eyes!

Botolv lost his orange. It rolled away between the feet of a boy who looked about him quickly and stuffed it into his pocket. Then he looked about him again.

Per wished he were twice as strong so that he could get the orange back. No one had noticed. Botolv himself was watching the party, but then he came to and missed something. "Here it is," said Per and gave him his own orange, not out of kindness, but in vexation because Åsne was not there.

Voices spoke and read to them, and he heard nothing. God could not love him, or Åsne would have been there.

But on the fifth day, when he thought it over, there had been a Christmas party just the same. He still had the echo in his ears and the flickering of the candles in his eyes and the scent of the Christmas tree in his nostrils.

He was taken to church twice that winter, but Åsne was never there. The service was long, and people dozed. Mother dozed too.

Mother had stopped nursing the baby long ago, so Aunt Anne could look after him now as often as necessary.

"Did you see Åsne?" asked Auntie teasingly when they got home.

He reddened, wondering why Auntie wanted to hurt him.

"Perhaps you'll be my boy again now, won't you?" she asked.

  [p. 43]  

He did not reply.

She put her arm around his neck. There was nobody to see, and so the arm was good.