There was an emptiness around him.

Per stood clearing snow. Father slid away with a fresh load. Per had to dig out a new pile.

He had a hollow feeling. What was this? Was it God calling? God was no longer so frightening; he was not afraid of him now. As long as you were not a scoundrel, God would do you no harm. He thought about God more shyly now. It was impossible to talk about him. What were those people made of who thought it amusing to talk about him? Ugh, the teacher in school who moralized and chattered about Jesus as if it were an ordinary name passing his lips---this name that Per found impossible to say unless ordered to do so, that he would rather not even think about, he felt such awe and diffidence towards it. But some adults chattered and moralized about Jesus, pronouncing this wondrous name without a downward glance. Such people made you despise them.

Mother and Father kept silent about it, and he was glad. If they had started on that he would have been deeply disturbed.

What was the Holy Spirit?

He felt a fine vibration pass through him as he stood shovelling the snow: the Holy Spirit! There he was. No sooner   [p. 96]   had you thought about him than he shot through you, announced himself, and was gone again.

He stood empty-eyed in the snowy twilight. All kinds of things shot through you; this time it was the Holy Spirit.

He went on shovelling.

Åsne might have come along now, skiing between the bending trees. She would glide lightly on skis. The drifts had settled, so that her tracks would remain here all day.

She was reckless on skis. Yesterday she had jumped from a wall of rock where nobody had ever jumped before. But if she were to come here today, she would glide past lightly and quietly, and he would say something to her as she shot past him. Then he would go on shovelling until suppertime.

A thought struck him and cut through it all: Is Aunt Anne going to have a child by that good-for-nothing?

No, no!

But it was not impossible.

He shovelled and pondered. He was well enough informed about all that. It was no secret; he knew very well what happened. From the time he was small he had seen animals come together in order to have young. People came together too. He had understood this long before anyone had stated it, and it was nothing to laugh and whisper about as some of them did at school. All the same he often thought of all the ugly stories he had heard. They burned themselves into your brain the first time you heard them.

Was Aunt Anne going to have a child?

She would be kind to it! was his next thought. And she would be full of milk. The baby would drink until it burst from all that milk. No, no, she must not have a child!

He could have ground his teeth.

Åsne kept on getting mixed up in this. But Åsne and this did not belong together. Around Åsne hovered the Holy Spirit.

At that point he came back to earth, in the middle of his shovelling. The logs were fragrant. Pale straws and bits of heather were frozen fast to the chunks of snow loosened from   [p. 97]   the ground. The mice had been running up and down, gnawing pieces of bark.

There was the black earth, the faded grass. Did he love it? He could say neither yes nor no. He no longer tried to see if he was, as he had done for years. He was big now. Next year he would be confirmed. Yes, but what then? What was this hollow longing? Something was calling come, come, and yet there was nothing.

The thing to do is to slip away and let nobody see me.

No, I ought to go up onto a high hill where everybody could see me and see how difficult and unjust everything is for me.

I ought to go up on a hill and pray to the Holy Spirit.

The snow was falling more thickly; he was shivering from the sweat inside his clothes and the melting snow outside. A wild wish came into his head: I wish something good would happen!

He went on shovelling. The snow too had a fragrance when you stood cutting it into slices with a shovel. It gave off a faint scent, like that of spring water and rain. The logs gradually appeared, lying rough and tall on the faded grass. Father and Goldie came gliding along. They were large and wet, both of them. Goldie stamped his hooves. His black eyes were like wells. He tore off birch twigs with his teeth and did everything that was expected of him. He worked for a man who was good to animals.

Father looked about him despondently. This was what life was like in winter. It was an unpleasant time for him: snow lying at a depth of many feet above the earth he was thirsting to dig.

The fresh load moved slowly along the channel.

Per went on shovelling alone. Then Åsne Bakken came.

Per straightened up in astonishment.

Åsne came alone on skis and stopped beside the long, open grave that the log pile resembled. With her ski pole she struck at a little fir tree bent over by the snow. The fir shook itself, righted itself, awoke.

  [p. 98]  

"What are you doing?" said Per without the slightest introduction, alarmed because there seemed to be no reason in getting what you wanted! He felt as if he had conjured her up. He was incapable of speaking pleasantly to her. Why had she come?

"I'm going to the farms," said Åsne, and it seemed quite natural after all.

"Is the snow good enough to ski anywhere now?" he asked skeptically.

"Yes," she said.

They just stood.

"Are you shovelling snow?"

"Yes," he said, at a loss what to say next.

She struck the skis with her pole to get rid of a lump of snow and then went on downhill. It was steep; she was soon gone.

Per stood looking at her tracks. It had not been a vision; the flesh-and-blood Åsne had sped past: there were her tracks. She had come when he most wished it. Why had she come like that and ruined his thoughts? Now he could not be fond of her again for a long while!

The Holy Spirit had nothing to do with her, he thought crossly. There had not been the slightest suspicion of it about her. A tall girl, that was all there was to it. To come like that---and make him disappointed.

He went on shovelling, so tired that his arms were trembling. But it didn't matter.

Then the evening came, and came early. The bending forest was full of strange animals. The log pile had been cleared and was a long, dark grave in the drifts. Per took his skis and followed Åsne's tracks as far as he could; then he turned aside and went home. All of a sudden he felt incredibly happy.

Throughout the spring he and Åsne spoke very little to each other. Sometimes he dreamed senseless things about her.

He could not look her straight in the eyes. When she turned   [p. 99]   up her sleeves to write dictation, he felt hot and strange. Why did she do that? None of the others had turned up their sleeves until now, when they began aping her. Nor did any of them besides himself seem to notice that she did so.

All the others looked at her openly and talked to her and quarrelled with her---as if she were an ordinary girl. The biggest and strongest girl. Not even Olav noticed that she was quite different from before. It was incredible.

Then he realized that he did not think the way the others did when they were with girls. He brooded, ashamed, and hid it away.

One day just before school broke up, a girl stood looking him straight in the eyes. It was Signe Moen. She simply studied him with her clear eyes. He knew that Åsne and Signe were together most of the time. Girls always kept together. Signe was looking at him as if trying to find out something. She must have been doing it for Åsne. She had noticed something and wanted to know more about it.

He could not shake off those cold, searching eyes for several days. What did she want to find out? It had to do with Åsne. Everything had to do with Åsne Bakken now. But the fact that it was so must be hidden, or dreadful things might happen.

It was the spring thaw, and there were light evenings and a tall, tall sky. Per went about staring. He had a stone in his breast. On the day of the examination it rained: strange, spring rain; tender, impossible spring rain and the smell of all that was to be throughout the length and breadth of the country. In the afternoon when everything was over, Åsne Bakken and Signe Moen went home along with the others. Past Per they walked, in the middle of the crowd, and he stood waiting for a voice to call out his innermost secrets all over the school yard---and for the heavens to fall afterwards.

The voice did not speak. He was saved. Åsne and Signe went on. They disappeared behind some dripping black birches. It went on raining, cool and fresh. Gray snowdrifts sighed and received the rain.

  [p. 100]  

Far, far away there was something. Hopelessly far away. It was in today's rain, and in the black earth beside the wet snow, and in the concluding Our Father that had been read slowly and solemnly today, and in Åsne Bakken's eyes, and in the yawning emptiness after Botolv; it swirled around confusedly and was nameless.

Olav Bringa was standing in front of him, looking sideways past him.

"'Bye. See you."

"'Bye."

"Are you herding the sheep this spring?"

"Yes. Are you?"

"Yes."

Olav went home. He too disappeared behind the wet birches; he came to school the same way as Åsne and Signe. Nobody else came to him to say good-bye, nor did Per go over to anyone and say it. He went home to Bufast, with his worn books and his pencil-box hidden under his jacket because of the rain.