I steadied my hands on the table and looked across at him, but his face did not seem to hang at the right angle, and I wondered if it was he who smiled so stupidly or myself reflected in the glass opposite.
‘You sit quiet awhile,’ he said, ‘or d’you want me to take you home?’
There was not any need to laugh at me like that, I thought.
‘Here, I’m not drunk,’ I said.
‘That’s fine,’ he said.
‘You think because I’ve lived all my bloody life buried in England I don’t know anything,’ I went on. I supposed it was my voice talking loudly, but was not sure. It did not seem to matter whose it was.
‘Never mind about all that,’ said Jake.
The silly idiot was treating me like a child.
‘I bloody well do mind,’ I said. ‘What sort of fun d’you think I’m getting out of this? You sit there, grinning at me, with your big face. I know a hell of a lot, I do. Listen here, my father’s a damned old scoundrel, isn’t he? I’ve told you about him, haven’t I? He’s just a damned old scoundrel who thinks because he can write a whole lot of rotten poetry, he can tell me what to do.’
‘Shut up, Dick,’ said Jake. ‘If you don’t sit quiet I’ll take you out of here.’
‘I’ll go when I bloody well choose, and not before. You can’t tell me what to do any more than my father. And he does write damned rotten poetry. I could write better than him if I wanted to. Do you say I can’t write, Jake?’
‘I don’t mind, Dick, tell me about it another time.’
‘I showed my father what I’d written. I chucked it down on the desk in front of him. “Read that,” I said, and he took hold of it in his hands. He didn’t know what was coming, and he read it out loud, Jake. I tell you I can bloody well write if I want to. I don’t care what my father thinks; my poem was all about wanting to sleep with a woman and the feeling you get.’
‘Yes, Dick, I know.’
‘My father didn’t understand a word; he’s about seventy; what should he care, Jake, he’s a damned old scoundrel, isn’t he? Listen, I wrote another poem, too.’
‘Shut up.’
‘I won’t shut up, why should I? I want to talk about women and things, you don’t ever want to. You’re just damned sexless, that’s what you are. Here, you think I’m drunk, don’t you, you think I’m drunk?’
‘So you are, Dick.’
‘No, I’m not. Listen, I want to go to all sorts of places and do things; I want to be famous one day, Jake. I’ll know a hell of a lot then. Listen, I want to go to Mexico or somewhere, and drive cattle, and make a whole packet of money and then come back to Europe and bust it all in Paris on women. Here, you think I’m mad, don’t you?’
‘No, Dick, only young.’
‘That’s a damned offensive remark, anyway. I’m not young. Listen, I’m going to write a book one day.’
‘Of course you are.’
‘Here, this isn’t much of a place; what sort of a town do they think Oslo is; it’s a bloody dull town, isn’t it, Jake? No girls, nothing; come on, let’s start a fight; let’s get knocking people about; I’m going to hit the red thing off that girl’s hat, here - I wish the boys were in this crowd; come on, let’s start something.’
I remember getting up, but there did not seem to be any floor and the door was zigzagging away in the corner. I could not get the feel of my feet at all.
‘Here, let go my arm,’ I said to Jake.
‘Steady, Dick,’ he said.
I was not sure whether I wanted to cry or to burst out laughing.
‘Come on, fight,’ I shouted; ‘let’s start a bloody good row.’
A whole crowd of people got up and began knocking in to me.
‘Walk straight, you damn fool,’ said Jake.
The door crashed into my face, hurting like hell.
Everyone was being unfair, it wasn’t my fault. I sat down on the pavement outside holding on to the kerb. When I shut my eyes it felt as though somebody were swinging me upside down by my heels.
‘Here, I’m going to be sick,’ I said. And it seemed to me that life was not such a grand thing after all.
6
We got a train and went to Fagerness in the mountains. It was only the start of them there, but right away in the distance they stretched to the sky, covered in forest, with white falls born from the snow on the summits, crashing down into the valleys below.
At Fagerness there were wooded hills, and farms for breeding silver foxes, and a shallow silent lake surrounded by narrow beaches where nobody ever went.
Jake stayed in the village, talking to some fellow about getting hold of horses, and I found a track through a wood, full of fern and broken stone, and climbed high up somewhere surrounded by the close trees, never coming out into the light. It began to rain, and there seemed something of terror in the silence of this place, with no other sound but the steady falling of rain in the trees, and the drip-dripping of it on the leaves, till I started to run, some instinct taking me downward all the time, and I wondered what should happen if I caught my foot in a root of a tree or in the loose earth, and fell to the ground with a twisted ankle, helpless and alone. I knew how I should lie there with the rain upon my face, and listen to the patter of it on the rustling leaves above me, and no darkness would come to shroud the trees and bring a relaxation of my wakened senses, for in this land night was no more than a continuation of the fading day, and the forest would seem to stand more coldly aloof at midnight than before, strange, with an unnatural clarity scornful of shadows. So I ran away from the silence, and breaking from the belt of trees I came once more with relief sweeping upon me and a glance back over my shoulder, to the village of Fagerness with Jake standing in the middle of the road looking to right and left, wondering where I had been.
‘Where have you come from?’ he said.
‘Out in those woods,’ I told him. ‘It’s terrible the feeling you get there, that you’re not wanted. I hate being alone, Jake.’
‘What d’you go for?’
‘Oh! just to see. I’d try anything once.’
‘I’ve got horses, Dick.’
‘Listen - I’ll make a fool of myself riding.’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
‘How did you pay for ’em?’
‘Got ’em cheap. The fellow had a squint, he didn’t know much.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Over the mountains to the fjords.’
‘We shan’t ever get there.’
‘Sure we will.’
‘I’ll get the horrors, Jake, in these hills. They’re too big for me.’
‘You won’t be alone.’
‘There’s something queer about this country - I don’t know. The silence, and never getting dark, and all those trees above you that you can’t touch.’
‘I like it,’ he said.
‘You’re different to me, Jake. If I wasn’t here you’d ride off by yourself with a smile on your face, and get lost on a mountain, and you wouldn’t care.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What’ll we do about food?’
‘Get it as we go.’
‘There aren’t any towns.’
‘There’ll be villages scattered, and huts, Dick.’
‘We’ll have to sleep somewhere.’
‘We’ll be all right.’
‘It’ll seem funny, won’t it, right away in the hills and no sound or anything?’
‘You won’t be scared.’
‘I’m a damn fool, aren’t I, Jake?’
‘No.’
‘There’s part of me wants this more than anything in the world, and another part feels like running away, and being in a street somewhere full of traffic, tired on a hot pavement, waiting in a queue of sweating people to catch a bus. . . .’
‘Never mind about that.’
‘I wish I was different.’
‘You’re all right.’
‘I wish I knew how to keep up with gran
d things and not just stick to the rotten.’
‘You’re like a sheet of blank paper, Dick, waiting for impressions. ’
‘Being with you is fine.’
‘That’s good.’
‘I wish I could write like my father.’
‘You could if you wanted.’
‘No, I couldn’t, Jake. I’m only an ordinary fellow without any guts.’
‘You don’t train yourself. You don’t know about discipline. There’s a whole lot of you that you’re too lazy to bring out.’
‘That’s it, laziness,’ I said.
‘You ought to take a pull on yourself.’
‘Maybe I will, later, but there’s plenty of time. I want to get fun out of things now.’
‘You’ll go on and forget, till it’s too late.’
‘I don’t know, I don’t see it matters. I can only be young once.’
‘Everybody says that.You’ll find it’s over without anything to show for it.’
‘There’ll be moments like this to show for it, Jake, and being on the ship, and taking my trick at the wheel, and hanging round Oslo, and knowing you.’
‘That won’t be enough.’
‘I’ll have lived a whole lot.’
‘Only in little things, Dick.’
‘This is big enough, anyway.’
‘There won’t always be this.’
‘You won’t chuck me, Jake?’
‘No.’
‘I’d be a mess without you hanging around.’
‘You ought to stand by yourself.’
‘I can’t cope.’
‘We’ll make an early start tomorrow, Dick, and strike off on that road to the left. We’ll get right away over on those hills.’
‘That’ll be grand.’
‘There’s a white stream somewhere we can follow.’
‘Yes.’
‘How do you feel now, Dick?’
‘I feel fine.’
We did not talk any more after this. We went inside the little hotel to our rooms, and I was asleep very soon.
I felt as if I had been born again when I got out into the mountains. There was something tremendous in the way they took a hold on me, making me feel sick at myself for anything I had done. I did not know where I was, the first few days of that journey. I looked about me dazed and half-conscious, leaving my horse to pick his own way after Jake, who was always a little ahead; and Jake would turn round on his saddle ever and again with a smile on his lips and a call to me ‘You all right?’ nor would I answer save for a nod of my head.
At first the mountains did not seem to get any nearer; we could see them away beyond the rolling hills stretching their rugged shoulders, line upon line, one peak for ever higher than the other, snow-capped under a white sky.
It was frightening, this great distance. I felt the summits were unattainable, nobody had ever leant his cheek against the rough surface of the rock, and listened to the boiling cataract of foam that fell like the crashing of thunder down on to the forested slopes.
There would be no hands to touch, no voices to break upon the silence of these places, and the snow would be untrodden.
Where we rode in the valleys there were forests rising away from us on either side, fir trees I suppose they were, and growing massed together there was every possible coloured green amongst them, vivid startled patches toning with the soft and the pale, while below and above were the silver greens, and the sombre, darkly clustered like a carpet of shadows. They stretched from us tier upon tier, immeasurable and bewildering, losing themselves finally in the crags of mountains.
Way up above, lost in the heights, where there was no pathway, and no movement of a living thing, the untrodden snow became frozen and crystallized, and when a breath of warmer air blew upon this the falls were born in a thundering cascade of water, striking a high ledge of rock and running into the valleys, singing over the stones, twisting and turning as they fell, a white stream of rushing melted snow.
Wherever we went these streams were with us, a torrent of sound like a song in our ears. The mountain snows were white, the streams were white, and the sky, and white was the light that bathed us when evening came, making the forest pale ghosts with shadowed fingers, and us strange things of clarity till the dawn.
The sun beat down on us all the day, and we rode carelessly, our shoulders bent and our knees slack, scarce touching a rein, the horses drooping too, twitching their ears at the sun.
At midday or sooner we baited them awhile, and as they nosed amongst the short grass or the stones, we lay with our faces in our hands, sleeping sometimes, the heat upon our backs, and then turned and stretched ourselves, looking away to the forests and the mountains beyond, and smiled, saying a word or two, and reached for a cigarette.
Often we slept thus during the heat of the day, and rode on again at evening, for there was no darkness to bewilder us and the way was clear.
Jake had his map before him on the saddle, but it mattered little how we should go or where we should end.
As the road crept onward, climbing higher, and the green valleys sloped away from us, the mountains began to close in upon us and the sound now of the cascades falling upon the rocks was an everlasting crescendo of sound, while the sky seemed nearer to us, like a white hand on the face of the mountains, and we shivered in spite of the sun, because of the stark purity of the air.
Now I was here I was no longer fearful of the majesty of beauty or the solitude, my mood of dumb wonder and silent terror at their approach had given way to something sublime and almost terrific. I felt as though I had risen above myself, leaving the old self in the valleys below, and with this shaking off of mediocrity had been re-born with a new strength and a new understanding. Jake would not be so far away from me now; we might ride together as companions. He would always be ahead, of course, and I retaining my measure of humility, would follow his lead. Up in the mountains Jake seemed even grander than before. It was as if this was his own element, the snow, the air, and the white skies.
He belonged here, having a supreme instinctive knowledge of these things, whilst I was only learning, and keeping in the track of his footprints, my eyes watching for a reflection of what he should see.
The thrill of the daily life aboard the barque Hedwig, the vigorous toil, the fight against wind and sea, the weary hardships, all these seemed far from me now, for we had embarked upon a longer journey where the mind travelled beyond the body riding on its horse, and there was no monotony of work to break upon a train of thought.
It was like existing indefinitely in a land of dreams, clearer than reality where the spirit wandered of its own free will, untrammelled by desire and discontent. Jake and I had entered into a strange intimacy, when silence meant more to us than words. We knew that we were happy without going into an explanation of what we felt.We rode side by side like two pilgrims to no shrine. We had no prayers, but every moment was something to be worshipped, and our gods were the things we looked upon, the mountains, and the cold air.
Somewhere there was a little withered boy with a dusty mind who, stifling in the atmosphere of his father, wrote shabby pornographic poems crouched in a lonely room full of shadows, but he was not here in the silent hills amongst the singing falls and the untrodden snow.
Maybe, Jake too looked down from his heights on the face of a prisoner, barred from the light of the sun, who sat tortured by the thought of a life lain waste that might have been as splendid as the one that followed on.
I did not want ever to go down into the world again. I wished I were a writer, I wished I knew how to write down on paper the beauty of things. My father, having seen nothing of all this, would sit alone in the library before his open desk, and from his pen little thoughts would run forming themselves into words, becoming in one stroke, in one flash, living images of strange loveliness grouped like a string of pictures without names.
Whilst I, groping in the darkness, could only wonder and worship, with the mountains rising up
before me, their shoulders stretched above a bank of cloud, their frozen faces lifted in dumb expectation to a white intangible sky.
And below the green forests clustered, the spreading branches turning away from the hard rock surface like reluctant fingers.
I would describe the silence of a frozen lake, and the sudden sound of a foaming cataract of water splashing its way down into a forest stream. I would make some melody of music, linking the echoes of falls in a valley with the song of the stream, and mingling with this a gold pattern of lost sunlight on a trembling leaf.
I would paint the still air, and the other mountains that I could not reach, and the white light at midnight, and the shiver before dawn.
I would draw with a shadowed pencil the figures of two men, their horses motionless, standing on the sloping ground of a rough track watching the sun go down behind a blue mountain, and when it was gone there were patches of pink and silver like fingerprints in the untouched snow.
And the first man had a face that might have been carven out of stone, with the scar that ran down his left cheek as a crevice in a rock. He belonged here, to the colours of the setting sun, to the ridge of the mountains never climbed, and to the frozen air.
I wished I had some gift of explanation, but in my mind there is this picture burnt with strokes of fire, treasured and unforgettable, of Jake astride his horse, the reins hanging loose on the horse’s neck, while he sat with his arms folded and his head turned to that suggestion of pale light upon a mountain where the sun had been. And below us the soft snow crinkled and melted, and the white rushing streams fell into the valleys.
We had climbed the highest point of our journey, and we stayed here transfigured, saying never a word, Jake happier than he had ever been and out of my reach for ever.
If we could have stayed there perhaps a breath of ice could have been blown upon us, and we would have stood crystallized into eternity, the smiles frozen on our lips, the moment never changing and the beauty of a thought remaining with us everlasting.
It would have been good to die in such a way, with Jake by my side, and no fear in my heart. It seemed strange that life must go on without our need for it. I wanted to cry out to Jake to stay, to linger here only a little longer, away from the world, so that we could carry a greater memory of it which would not forsake us, but he waved his hand to me as a signal and I knew it was the end. We turned then and went down the stony track into the forests below.