The Birds Read Free Page A

farm or in the fields, or in the forest. There was always something which upset things for him so that he couldn’t finish the job. And after that they didn’t ask him to work there anymore. The clever ones, the ones who owned things and had jobs to offer, they looked right through him.
    And so he had to return to Hege empty-handed. She was used to it by now and just accepted it. But she went on struggling in order to keep him. Wonder what she really thought about it after all.
    Be tough tomorrow. Face it bravely, go over to the farms and ask for a job.
    “I can’t go on like this forever,” he said in a fierce tone into the empty air. “I must get some work, Hege’s gone gray.”
    He began to realize: It’s me who’s made Hege go gray.
    Gradually the whole truth of the matter dawned on him. He felt very ashamed of himself.

5
    IT GREW LATE. Much later than Mattis generally stayed up. All the same he didn’t feel like going to bed, and went on strolling around outside. When something was eating you, it was even worse lying in bed, twisting and turning.
    Perhaps Hege isn’t asleep either. She went into her room early just to avoid me.
    “And it’s not much fun knowing that,” he said in a loud voice, so loud that she could possibly have heard it in her room.
    He felt very depressed.
    A sudden thought made him start: You mustn’t leave me! He gasped, turned toward the room where Hege lay. Whatever happens to you or me you mustn’t leave me.
    This was by no means a new thought, but it felt new each time, and just as painful. And each time he had to dismiss it as nonsense, Hege had never as much as breathed a word about leaving him. Why should he torment himself like this?
    The vision would not leave him. He saw Hege walking away, farther and farther. She was carrying all her belongings in a little parcel under her arm.
    Are you leaving?
    Yes, Mattis.
    This is very sad, Hege.
    Yes, Mattis.
    Then she began walking again.
    She wasn’t listening to him anymore, she grew smaller and smaller, until eventually she was only a tiny black dot – and there she remained. Couldn’t disappear altogether in this sad charade.
    Just at this moment came the great event.
    He was deep in thought, with visions of Hege walking away, sitting in his usual place on the steps looking across the lake to the hills in the west. The lake was black now, and the hills deep and dark. A fine summer twilight everywhere, in the sky and on earth. Mattis was by no means blind to things like that.
    Their cottage stood in a marshy little hollow that rose from the lake. Birches and aspens were dotted among the conifers. A little brook ran down through the hollow. Sometimes Mattis thought it was more beautiful here than any other place he had seen – of the few places he knew.
    Perhaps this was what he felt now, too – he was certainly lost in contemplation and let the twilight grow deeper and deeper, in so far as you could call it twilight and not just something unspeakably gentle.
    At that moment the unexpected happened.
    This side of the wind it is still, he had just been thinking, as he stared toward the two aspens and the evening sky. Something wasfiltering through the treetops, it was so clear he felt he could see it. No wind, just something filtering through – and on this side it was so still that not a leaf on the other aspen trembled.
    But suddenly came a tiny little sound! A strange cry. And at the same time he could just make out quick flapping wings in the air above him. Then came more faint calls in a helpless bird language.
    It went straight across the house.
    But it went straight through Mattis as well. A wordless excitement arose inside him; he sat there wide-awake and confused:
    Was it supernatural?
    No anything but, and yet—
    It was a woodcock that had flapped over the house. And the woodcock didn’t do that sort of thing by chance, not at this time of the day. A flight had begun over his house!
    When had it started?
    Because