The Boat in the Evening Read Free Page B

cannot for the life of him manage to wash the wound in this doubtful manner. He regains his power of movement and is already getting to his feet.
    Once on his feet he sees unjust anger flushing in the face before him. With slight ceremony he is pushed aside, his own cheeks burning with shame.
    Not a word.
    It is a double defeat.
    Nothing for it but to fumble with his stiff, snow-sodden clothes again.
    The horse droops his head and appears to have noticed nothing, as he keeps his leg raised, a helpless creature together with helpless man, dumb for thousands of years with man.
    *
    Not a word.
    The stern man with his secret, gentle dream, what about him?
    He tears off his jacket, tears off his shirt, jerkily, with angry gestures. The defeat seems to have turned into anger. He rips his shirt with a screech of the cloth, winds it around the wounded limb and knots it together. Not a word the whole time. He must try to keep the cold snow out of the open wound, and it is a long way home. A long way in the loose snow; it has not had time to harden in the gully. Home to see to the horse as quick as they can.
    Three of them equally silent, on the way home.
    The dirty wound bleeds in their consciences, whether with reason or not.
    The big boy bears the hurt. He will remember this to the end of his life.
    No, the horse bears the hurt, but there is a difference. His smart is pure and honest.
    What will the man remember? The child knows nothing about that. He does not know anything about him for certain. But he was dreaming over his shovel; that is all he knows.
    *
    The snow starts to fall again. The mist thickens.
    And the ring of animals?
    At this moment the whole ring of animals vanishes. They cannot be kept back. No use calling them. They will not be conjured up again.
    The big boy bears the hurt instead, a shapeless burden, but one that will settle for good.
    The horse bears the burning hurt.
    Without a sound, like the others.
    I am with man,
    and no other than man.
    I am with man
    all the day long.
    I am the horse,
    and this is my song.

2
    In the Marshes and on the Earth
    A huge, bare marsh.
    What am I doing here, out of doors so early?
    I shall go. To see. Just to see.
    Here too.
    Early morning on a big marsh. I go in perplexity, to search for something important. Why should anyone do that? For reasons that seem decisive to oneself. But reasons that one does not wish to examine too closely.
    There is no need to ask: Do I really see this? This is obviously a black marsh early in spring before it has turned green, and early in the morning when the air is full of the taste of ice. The snow was lying here only recently.
    It feels as if there is black earth with icy snow patches inside oneself on a morning like this. That is why one goes out wandering.
    It feels like that when something is wrong. Nothing you can point to, but wrong all the same.
    Lurch out of a house. Lurch your way out to a marsh.
    I am too young.
    Everything is so marvellously wrong. It’s so horribly exciting.
    Then you have arrived at the marshes.
    Chilly and early. The moss barely escaped being stiffened with frost last night.
    *
    Black, naked and wide. Late spring. There can’t be much use in walking here either when you have lost your footing. You can at any rate pretend it is so, and lose your footing for an instant, no longer. You must go and find something while you are in the void, and when you see a marsh as wide and as bare as this one, which you watched as it hid itself in the spring night yesterday evening, you have to walk out on it the next morning as soon as it is daylight.
    Mist has been resting on the marsh during the night. Now it is dissolving into restless skeins. Many of them have moved away, others are still lying about lazily—the remnants of the events of the night, a cold, raw spring night, with its awakening life.
    The light comes earlier each morning. There are clear, strict laws of life in such a marsh. One must go out on it.