Frost, school, homework came round once more.

The earth echoed beneath his feet as he tramped off in the morning with his homework simmering in his head, like soup still on the boil. To be the first. That was what mattered at school.

Many things were painful, but when you knew your homework the best and wrote the best essay, then it was all a little less painful.

There was Åsne. She led the group because she was reckless and fun when they played pranks. She was the first to jump down from a wall of rock or climb up a boulder or slide down the frozen rivulets swollen with ice. He looked at Åsne with different eyes now. She wore a dress with three-quarter length sleeves, and when she wrote dictation, she pushed her sleeves even farther up her arms. He never tired of looking at her arms this year. He was full of strange wishes. Things were different this year.

There was Olav Bringa beside him. Didn't Olav notice Åsne's arms? Did Olav think as he did: Åsne's arms, Auntie's arms, girls' arms? He didn't say anything about it. But Per didn't say anything about it either. It was good to sit so close to Olav at the desk that he was nudged by the shiny elbow of his jacket. Olav was next best, and he could just try to be more.

Arms were curious. Something heavy sank to the bottom inside you when you looked at them. You had to look and look. Could they be the same arms he had held when he led   [p. 93]   Åsne through the warm, shallow river? They were rounded and quietly busy on the desk, while the dictation sprinkled down from the teacher's desk, dry and gray, like ant dust from an old tree-stump.

Something had happened to Aunt Anne. An icy horror late in the pre-Christmas winter, poor in snow.

Auntie had laughed happily that summer and autumn. Then Per overheard a conversation one evening out in the passage of the Bufast farmhouse. He was shut in so that he could not help hearing; it was impossible to leave. Father and Mother and Åsmund had driven out that day with Goldie and not yet come home. Auntie and her friend had met up on the road, and the strange man had come down with her. Now they were standing in the dark passage.

"You're not in love with me," said Auntie's dear, familiar voice.

Per felt as if slashed with a knife.

"Really?" said the stranger indifferently.

This was icy horror. Dreadful to listen to, unable to move a finger.

"I didn't know you were like that," said Auntie. "Are you a good-for-nothing?"

Per felt furious hatred for this strange man in the dark. The blood pumped hot into his ears.

"No, I'm not in love with you," said the stranger callously. "I can't help it."

"No---" said Auntie.

A long, painful silence.

"But you were in love with me?" said Auntie anxiously.

Silence.

"Weren't you?"

"Oh---I---"

"And you still did it!"

"Oh---"

"Oh, yes, I understand," said Auntie laboriously, her voice hoarse.

Then the way was free; they had gone. Per could go where he wished, but he stayed on the same spot, trembling. The world was a dreadful place. People killed each other. Auntie's voice had sounded as if she were torn apart.

That he did not fall at her feet, that man, and lie there, stone dead! There was no justice in the world.

Per pulled himself together: the icy yard was rumbling and echoing. Goldie had come home with his load. Aunt Anne went to meet them. He could hear her talking calmly to Mother.

Per dreaded meeting her in the lamplight. Then he saw her. She was a little paler than usual, and Mother asked her whether she felt all right?

"Oh, yes."

Then she began to play with Åsmund, lifting him up, holding him on her lap, teasing him noisily. Åsmund laughed happily.

Per sat frozen through and through. What did Auntie look like inside now?

You were powerless. Defenseless against everything that came and crushed you.

It was almost Christmas. Between Christmas and New Year it began snowing heavily.

Later that winter Per helped Father to clear tracks in the snow and dig out the piles of logs on the days when he was not at school. The woods were snowed under and broken down with snow. In the twilight you could be half afraid, there were so many distorted shapes. In sunshine it was like a fairy story, and even more so in the moonlight.

The timber tracks were deep gullies. It was heavy work to clear them. The piles of logs lay like sleepers deep in the drifts. You had to bring a shovel and bore your way in. Hi, wake up!---and when you had made a hole, the logs breathed strongly and warmly through the opening. The logs were dark, living animals down there; they had been lying breathing all the time. Mice had been running along them.

You're big now, Per; you must be good at clearing timber tracks and log piles.

Nobody said this, but it was demanded just the same, and he shovelled snow until his shirt was wet. When he took off his mittens, steam rose from his hands.

Father and Goldie slid along the deep channels Per cleared in the drifts. Father piled on heavy loads and Goldie pulled them.