[Subsection]

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.