[Subsection]

"What's on your mind, Per?" asked Jens up at the gravel pits.

"What do you mean?"

"Never mind. I was only asking."

Per wondered whether people noticed any outward sign of all he thought about. Why did people ask things like that? They pecked with their questions dryly and tiringly like a woodpecker drumming into a hollow aspen.

What do you want, Per?

He had not told anyone that he did not want to stay at Bufast when he grew up. All the same they asked as if they knew something. They could just shut up.

The haying season arrived, bringing hard work and warm weather. Per mowed, raked, trod down the loads. If he and Ivar were alone in the field, he would try to keep up with him in the swath. Ivar would laugh and leave Per far behind in an instant.

"No, you're not going to chase me away yet," said Ivar.

In the evenings Per was often dead tired. He would sit in a corner, too tired to read. There sat Father, there Ivar. Mother and Aunt Anne could not rest until the last dishes were washed and the cows milked; then they fell quiet on their chairs in the corners. Tired: it was the haying season. The door stood open and great gusts of summer came in: the smell of drying hay, the buzzing of dung beetles, the tiny whine of gnats. They sat limp and blind, for the haying   [p. 107]   was no joke. Only Åsmund was noisy; he was not tired enough.

Did Father over there know he was sitting wishing for something else? Just something else. Yes, he must know.

Over in the corner where Mother was sitting, a book fell to the floor. Mother's tired, he thought vaguely.

"---Per!" said a voice, and a kind hand gripped his shoulder. He tore his eyes open and looked into Auntie's. Auntie smelled of hay when she came so close, and of cows and milk, but mostly of hay.

He had fallen asleep.

"There are only the two of us left," said Auntie. "You've been sitting asleep."

There was no one in the kitchen besides themselves. He suddenly felt he wanted to tell Auntie something.

"You must go to bed," she said, and went up to her room. There was a slight creaking up above, then silence. Auntie was asleep.

He went outside. His body was full of memories from the haying that day, from treading down the loads as fast as he could, from treading and pressing it down in the barn while Father tipped in the load of hay. The barn had been hot from the sun-warmed hay and filled with dust from the dried grass and flowers. You sneezed and sweated in there. Now the barn lay dim, sending a fragrance of hay out through the vents. Farther off the barley field glimmered; it was not yet ready for cutting but was yellowing fast. From the barn came the childish bleating of a calf.

Per stood there watching and listening. It was as if he were left alone at Bufast. All the others were asleep.

This is my farm, he thought.

He went indoors to bed. It was not dark, but dusky and peaceful. Åsmund was hot to lie next to, as Botolv had been before him. There was a gnat in the kitchen, singing its tiny song.

Per lay reliving the haying. Many things were mixed up in it; he was sleepy, and the haying was confused with his   [p. 108]   sleep and with Aunt Anne. There are only the two of us left, said Auntie. Milk in warm jets. Hay. New-mown hay breathing its fragrance through all the vents on all the farms at this moment. Fragrance of cows, of big warm animals---and again the fertile spurt of milk into buckets with a frosting of foam. . . .

Per confused it all with his image of Auntie.

Auntie has not been killed. It must not be possible to kill her.

What? A thought chilled him, cutting across all that was good and reassuring: Father's lying awake, staring out at nothing, knowing I want to leave.