The Snake Pit (35 page)

At other times, when he heard the boy roistering among the house-carls, laughing as if he had already forgotten his grief at his mother’s death, it seemed to Olav that Eirik was now the chief of his burdens; it was the boy above all who stood in the way, made it difficult for him to break through all that kept him from winning peace and relief for the sickness of his soul.

He noticed that he was drifting farther and farther away from the resolution he had made on the night before Ingunn’s death. But he did not know whether he was being drawn back into the old slough against his will, or whether he had taken flight of himself, because after all he dared not come forward, when it came to the point.

One night Olav got up and went across to the house where Liv, the maid, lay with his daughter. With great trouble he succeeded in shaking her awake.

The girl lay huddled under the bedclothes, blinking with her little screwed-up pig’s eyes, at once afraid and expectant, at the master who stood by her bed with a candle in his hand. Under his shaggy, unkempt, grizzling hair his face was furrowed and pale as ashes, the firm edge of his chin lost in a fog of stubble; he had nothing on but his linen beneath the long, black cloak, and his feet were thrust bare into his shoes.

Olav looked down at her and guessed that the maid must think he had come to let her share the fate of Torhild Björnsdatter without more ado—she had already moved as though to make room for him by her side. He gave a short, harsh laugh.

“Cecilia,” he said—“I was dreaming so of her. There is nothing wrong with Cecilia?”

The girl turned aside the coverlet so that he could see the child. She lay asleep in the bend of her foster-mother’s arm, with her little pink face well buried, half concealed by her own shining, silky curls.

Without more words Olav put down the candle, bent over, and lifted up his daughter. He wrapped her well in the folds of his cloak, blew out the light, and went out with his child.

Coming into the great room, he dropped his cloak on the floor, kicked off his shoes, and crept into bed with his daughter, who was still fast asleep against his chest.

At first all he felt was that sleep was just as far from him as before. But it was good to hold this tiny young creature in his arms. Her baby hair was soft as silk under his chin, with a sweet, fresh smell of sleep, and her little breath played over his chest and throat, warm and dewy. Silky of skin, her body was firm and plump and strong; the little knees that bored their way into her father’s body were quite round. Olav allowed himself the luxury of loving his child as a miser indulges himself by taking out his hoard and handling it.

But by degrees the little maid acted like a hot stone. The warmth of the sleeping infant penetrated the father, soothed the throbbing, aching unrest in his heart; it flowed through his whole body and resolved its strain into a sweet, soft tiredness. He felt slumber settling down upon him, a blessing worth he knew not what. With his chin buried in Cecilia’s soft, curly hair he sank into a deep sleep.

He was awakened by her howling wildly and furiously. The little maid was sitting up, half on his chest, roaring, as she rubbed her eyes with two small fists. On the inside of the bed Eirik sat up in surprise. Then he leaned over his father’s chest, coaxing and trying to quiet his little sister.

Olav did not know what time of night it might be—the smoke-vent was closed; the little charcoal lamp standing on the edge of the hearth was still burning—it must be very early.

When her father took hold of the little one, she raged more violently than ever, hitting about with her little round fists and shrieking at the top of her voice. Then she swung round, threw herself upon her father, and tried to bite him, but could not get a proper hold of his thin cheek. Eirik was laughing boisterously.

Then she took to nipping Olav’s worn eyelids between two of her nails—she pulled them out and pinched them, and this gave her so much amusement that she kept quiet—stopped screaming for a while as she punished her father all she could. After that she looked helplessly about her.

“Liv—where Liv?” she wailed loudly. “Bringlum!” she said in a tone of command.

That was her name for food, Eirik interpreted. Olav got out of bed, went into the closet, and returned with a thick slice of the best cheese, a bannock, and a cup of half-frozen milk.

While he revived the fire on the hearth, holding the cup of milk he was going to warm, Cecilia sat up, stared angrily at the strange man with her deep-blue kitten’s eyes, and threw bits of bread at him. She gobbled up the slice of cheese till nothing was left but the crust. “Bringlum,” she said as she threw the last of the cheese on the floor.

Olav went to fetch more food for his daughter. She ate all she was given, and when there was no more, she screamed again that she wanted to go to Liv.

When the milk was warm enough, Olav gave it to his daughter. She drank it to the last drop and then would not let go the cup, but hammered on the edge of the bed with it. It was a fine cup, made from a root, very delicately turned, so Olav took it from her. Cecilia caught hold of his hair with both hands and pulled it; then she got her claws into his face and scratched all down her father’s cheeks with her sharp little nails. She clawed him to her heart’s content—Eirik tumbled all over the bed in fits of laughter. He knew his sister better than her father did and could witness that Cecilia was the most spiteful little monster: “She has drawn blood from you, Father!”

Olav fetched more food, all the dainties he could find, but Cecilia seemed satisfied now; she refused all he offered her. She scarcely seemed to have the makings of a nun, this daughter of his.

Finally he had to let Eirik take the ill-tempered brat and carry her back to her foster-mother.

Then one night Olav awoke in black darkness—the charcoal lamp had gone out. He had slept—for the first time since Ingunn died he had had a deep, sound sleep. His gratitude made him strangely gentle and meek, for he felt born anew and healed of a long sickness, so good was it to wake without feeling tired.

He closed his eyes again, for the darkness was so dense that it seemed to press against them.—Then it dawned upon him that he had dreamed too, while he slept. He tried to put together the
fragments of his dream—he had dreamed of Ingunn the whole time, and of sunshine—the glow of it still lingered in him.

He had dreamed that he and she were standing together in the little glen where the beck ran, due north of the houses at Fretta-stein. The ground still looked pale and bare with the withered, flattened grass of the year before, but here and there along the bank of the stream some glossy leaves, reddish brown and dark green, shot up among the dead grass. They were just by the white rock that filled the whole bed of the stream, so that the water swept over it and round the sides in a little cataract, swirling and gurgling in the pool below. They stood watching the bits of bark that floated round in the whirlpool. She was dressed in her old red gown—they were not yet grown up, he thought.

Throughout the whole dream he seemed to have been walking with Ingunn by the side of their beck. Olav thought they stood together under a great fir in the middle of the steep scree; this was farther down, where the stream ran at the bottom of a narrow ravine; great fallen rocks choked up the little river-bed, and on the rough slopes on both sides grew monk’s-hood, lilies of the valley, and wild raspberries so thick that one could not see where to plant one’s foot among the stones which gave way and rattled down. She was afraid of something, put out both hands to him with a little moan—and he felt oppressed himself. Above their heads he saw the narrow strip of sky over the glen—the clouds were gathering and threatening thunder.

Once they had been right down on the beach, where the stream runs out into Lake Mjösen. He saw the curve of the bay, strewed with sharp, dark-grey rocks under the cliff. The lake was dark and flecked with foam farther out. Ingunn and he had come there to borrow a boat, it seemed.

It must have been that journey long ago to Hamar that came back to him, he thought—his memories were confused and transposed, as they always are in dreams. But his dream had held the sweetness of their fresh young days, so that the savour of it still lingered in his mind.

In another way it was as though he had gone through his whole life with Ingunn again in his dream.

However that might be, he must have slept a whole night to have dreamed all this. It must soon be morning.

He stole out of bed in the darkness, found some clothes and put them on. He would go out and see how far the night was spent.

As he stepped out on the stone before the door, he saw the back of the Horse with its mane of trees at the highest point—it stood out black against the starry sky. Between the houses the yard was dark, but there was a faint light on the edge of the crags that closed the view toward the fiord, like moonlight on ice. Olav wondered—could it be possible?—the moon set before midnight now. But over the forest along Kverndal there was a faint uncertain glimmer of low, slanting moonbeams.

He could hardly believe it—that he had been so mistaken in the time. Hesitating, he slowly made his way westward through the yard and to the lookout rock. It was glazed and slippery to climb.

The half-moon touched the tree-tops on the other side—yellow at its setting. Under the dim, oblique beams the whole surface of the frozen earth was made rugged by the faint light and the pale shadows that scored it. The glazed surface of the rock beneath him still gleamed dimly. He saw that he had not slept more than three hours.

Again that light of the moon lying low over the brow of a hill made Olav think of the far-off night when he fled the country, an outlawed man. The sudden memory plunged him into an endless, weary despondency.

He thought upon his dream—it was so infinitely long since they had walked together along the beck, by the hillside path, down to the village. She was dead, it was only three weeks since—but so long ago.

He felt a clutching at his throat; the tears collected under his smarting eyelids as he stood gazing into the distance, where the moon was now but as a spark behind the forest. He wished he could have wept his fill now—he had not wept when she died, nor since. But the two or three times he had wept since he grew up, he had not been able to stop—furiously as he had striven to master himself, the fits of weeping had come again and again without its being in his power to hinder them. But tonight, when he wished he could weep on out here alone, without a soul to see him, it came to nothing but this strangling pain in his throat and a few solitary tears that flowed at long intervals and turned cold as ice as they slowly ran down his face.

When spring came—he thought he would go away somewhere
when spring came, the idea had just struck him. He could not face the summer at Hestviken.

The moon was quite gone, the light faded away over the distant forest. Olav turned and went back to the house.

As he was about to lie down he felt in the darkness that Eirik had stretched himself across the bed, taking up all the room between the wall and the outer board. All at once a disinclination to take hold of the boy came over him—whether it was that he shrank from disturbing his rest or felt he could not have him as a bedfellow tonight.

The south bed stood empty, since the bedclothes had been carried out and the straw burned on which she had died.

Olav went to the door of the closet and pushed it open—he was met by an icy air and a peculiar stale and frozen smell of cheese and salt fish; they kept food in the closet in winter and shut it up to make the outer room warmer; but the bed was always made up, in case they might have guests to lodge for the night.

Olav stood for a moment with his hand on the old doorpost. His fingers felt the carving that covered its surface—the snakes wreathed about the figure of Gunnar.

Then he went in—butting against tubs and barrels, till he found the bed. He crept into it and lay down—closed his eyes upon the darkness and gave himself up to face the night and sleeplessness.

Sigrid Undset is a major figure in early twentieth-century literature. A Norwegian born in Denmark in 1881, she worked with the Norwegian underground during the Second World War, fled to Sweden in 1940, and later came to the United States. She is the author of many works of fiction as well as several books for young readers and a number of nonfiction titles. Her novels encompass a variety of settings and time periods, ranging from medieval romances such as the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy—generally considered to be her masterwork—and The Master of Hestviken tetralogy to modern novels such as
The Winding Road, Ida Elisabeth
, and
The Faithful Wife
. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928. Sigrid Undset died in 1949.

The Master of Hestviken Series
The Axe
The Snake Pit
In the Wilderness
The Son Avenger

Kristin Lavransdatter Trilogy
Kristin Lavransdatter: The Wreath
Kristin Lavransdatter: The Wife
Kristin Lavransdatter: The Cross

The Kristin Lavransdatter Series

The acknowledged masterpiece of the Nobel Prize–winning Norwegian novelist Sigrid Undset,
Kristin Lavransdatter
has never been out of print in this country since its first publication in 1927. Its story of a woman’s life in fourteenth-century Norway has kept its hold on generations of readers, and the heroine, Kristin—beautiful, strong-willed, and passionate—stands with the world’s great literary figures.

THE BRIDAL WREATH
Volume I

Volume I,
The Bridal Wreath
, describes young Kristin’s stormy romance with the dashing Erlend Nikulaussön, a young man perhaps overly fond of women, of whom her father strongly disapproves.