Now you're grown-up, they had begun saying.

Per was told this from time to time during the course of the summer. He did not feel grown-up. He felt nowhere near as grown-up as they all seemed to expect.

It never sounded as if it were a good thing when they said, Now you're grown-up. When Mother and Aunt Anne said it, it was a complaint. It meant that he had acted childishly again. Or they said it as a reason for finding more and heavier work for him to do.

Father did not say it.

But if any of the neighbors dropped in, they would say, "Yes, Per's grown-up now, oh, yes---" And then they would smile in a friendly, well-disposed way, even though they knew they didn't mean a word of it. He felt like grinding his teeth over all these empty habits people had.

What was the next step? The future was vague. He had not decided to stay, yet he went on with the daily round just the same, doing what he was asked, doing it like a sleepwalker, taking no part in it.

Bufast held him in an iron grip. He was to be here to the end of his days; it had been inscribed on tablets of stone. That was how it would be.

He felt so small and impotent that he had a desire to throw himself down on the earth, kicking and screaming.

Yes, now you're grown-up too, Per, they said.

What did he want?

He did not know. Yes, he did. He wanted to be rid of all that weighed on him and of all memories---and then he wanted to go elsewhere. That was how he thought: go elsewhere. Everything was uncertain.

To go elsewhere sounded so easy and splendid that it made him think of light little clouds high up in the sky, or a pleasant   [p. 122]   Saturday afternoon free from work and with the longing stilled.

That year was a drought year. The drought summer, they said for years afterwards.

Per minded the sheep no longer. A poor little wretch from the neighboring parish came and did it, a boy called Knut, who was so poorly clothed when he came that Mother immediately found more suitable rags for him to put on. Knut Prikken was his name. The farm he came from was not really called Prikken,^[1*] but was so small that it was known as such all the same. Knut was ten years old and was to mind the sheep with Åsmund. Åsmund was to be made use of too now. Bufast had seized him.

Not a single question was asked as to what Åsmund himself thought about it. He was just to be with Knut Prikken. The two boys were simply awakened in the morning and given food, and then off to the woods they went. They were as if dead and gone for many hours. But they returned the minute they were allowed home. They had a watch. They came shouting and leaping, swept the sheep behind the fences, ate, and were gone from sight, off to more important affairs of their own behind the house or down by the river or up in the gravel pits. Then it was noon, and the sheep bells jingled again on their way to the wood, to the long, long afternoon of herding.

Per saw and heard them from the cleared land or from some other work place out in the meadow or among the crops. He was the farm hand at Bufast now. He could not deny that he liked it better, even though the work was harder. He would not have changed places with the two shepherds.

This year as every year Father had a patch he was going to convert from wasteland to cultivated ground. Per dug there with him. It was exhausting. The new patch had been there as long as anyone could remember, so that you no longer saw   [p. 123]   it. It simply moved a bit, and you dug and dug. Thin soil that had never seen the sunlight was turned up with great effort. The sun came pouring down. Then the earth was fragrant for the first time.

Drought summer.

The steepest slopes turned brown. There were withered patches where the rocks lay just below the surface. The grain grew sparsely and turned yellow when it should have been green.

The cows came home thirsty from the pasture and jostled around the well in the yard. Aunt Anne went among the big animal bodies, pushing them about, pouring water into tubs and pails, standing in a cloud of small black flies that had followed the irritated herd of cows home from the woods. Auntie was as brown as copper.

It was hot week after week. At Bufast day after day they turned up new earth, which was burned and baptized in a flood of sunshine. The sweat poured off them.

There was no more conversation this year than was usual when working with Father.

It occurred to Per that Father had a disease. It was a disease, this digging of his in the earth.

It was dreadful to watch how he dug. To see the gleam in his eye. He was sick and crazy about digging in the earth. It blinded him to other important things so that he did not see all that he should. Mother and Aunt Anne had said so many years ago when they said he dug till he was crazy.

It must be a disease.

Father did other things on the farm only because he had to---and then he turned back to his patch again with an altered face and dug and shovelled until he sighed. But there was no complaint in his sigh. He dug until you could see it was painful for him to straighten his back, but there was great peace in his expression. He was where he belonged; so he would sit and lean against the red edge of the unturned earth and let his back straighten out a little.

There should not have been anything dreadful about it. But it was easy to see that Father was overtaxing himself, wearing himself out over it, the way he kept on without being able to hold himself in check. Besides, he was breaking up too much ground at a time. Per did not know very much about it, but he had heard people say so; Ivar told Father to his face that if he couldn't manure all that newly-turned earth properly, it would be better to take on no more than could be tilled little by little. They knew very well he was too hard up to buy manure.

Father only smiled, presumably thinking they could just try to take away what he took pleasure in. He must have been wrong, but he smiled and went on as before.

He was not strict with Per in that he stood over him and drove him. He simply enjoyed himself in silence, digging tensely and urgently. It was difficult to avoid being drawn into his rhythm. Per was so drawn.

The sun shone, and there was no end to its warmth. But the water dried up in one well after the other on the neighboring farms. At Bufast water had to be carried up from the river in barrels. The cows came home and drank thirstily. Auntie pushed them about, flailing her arms, so that each one got a drop.

Olav and Per met occasionally, but Per saw nothing of Åsne and the others. That was both good and bad. He was uncertain how to behave if he met them now; it had been quite different during their school days.

Everyone they met complained about the sun and the drought. The crops were ruined, they said. The small amount of grass left was mown before that was scorched too.

"This year we'll have to reduce the herd," they said.

One Sunday there was something Olav wanted to say before they parted. He seemed to have to struggle to get the words out.

"Åsne's going to stay with us at Bringa this year. For the haying."

Per said, "Oh, is she?"

"Yes. She's coming tomorrow."

"Is she going to stay after the haying?"

"Yes, I expect so."

"Is she going to stay for the winter too?"

"Yes."

They each went their own way.

Olav had told Per as if confessing a crime, and Per almost felt it as a crime, a sin.

He watched Olav walking away between the bushes. A lump came into his throat. Olav would not come to meet him any more.

It was unbelievable, but that's how it was: Olav won't come any more.

He felt a sharp, stinging pain, as if he had breathed in smoke. Tomorrow they would start mowing the thin grass that was left on the scorched meadow at Bringa. They would be starting at Bufast too. Ivar would be coming to Bufast. Åsne Bakken would be coming to Bringa.

Olav was lost. There, he had gone!

We'll have to reduce the herd this autumn.

It hung over the herd of cows more threateningly than the black cloud of flies. It was said each time two men met on the road. It was said each time anyone dropped in at the kitchen at Bufast. At the counter in the store it was said more often than anywhere else.

"There'll be fine herds going to the town this autumn," said Ivar.

"Don't talk about it," said Auntie. She felt haunted. There was something about it from which you recoiled; you refused to think about it. Mother said, "Go get us more water, Per."

He went to get Goldie. He had learned how to harness him. He did so and rattled down the slope towards the river with   [p. 126]   the empty water barrel. Father and Ivar were lying in the yard resting after dinner.

It was fun holding the reins, but not while others were resting. Åsmund went with him. Knut Prikken had left, so Åsmund tagged after Per wherever he went.

Per carried the buckets across the dried-out beach of sand between the bank and the little trickle of water still flowing like an eel. Goldie stood stamping and flicking at the flies. Åsmund stood and held the reins, Goldie looking at him as if wanting to say something.

Per walked along the white mounds of dry sand. It wasn't right: this was the bottom and should have had clear water flowing over it. This was what it was like outside himself, and he was like this inside as well, plodding along through dry, hot sand and fields of thistles.