The Snake Pit by Sigrid Undset

Author:Sigrid Undset
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307773074
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-12-08T05:00:00+00:00

10

AUTUMN came early that year. Bad weather set in about Michaelmas, and then it rained and blew, day in, day out, except when the gale was so high that the clouds could not let go their rain. This weather lasted for seven weeks.

At Hestviken the water rose above the quays. One night the sea carried away the piles under the farthest shed: when the men came down in the grey dawn, they saw the old house lying with its back wall, which faced the rock, leaning forward, and the front wall, toward the fiord, sunk half under water. It rocked in the heavy seas like a moored boat, and every time the wreck was lifted by a wave and sank again, the water poured out between the timbers, but most of all through a hatch under the gable. It looked like a drunken man hanging round-shouldered over the side of a boat and spewing, thought Anki.

With axes, boathooks, and ropes the men now had to try to cut the wrecked shed adrift and warp it out of the way; otherwise it was likely to be flung in against the quay and the shed in which Olav stored all the salt he had dried during the summer, and his fish—of this there was not much, for the autumn fishing had failed. In the course of this work Olav bruised his right arm badly.

He paid little heed to it while he was toiling in the spray and the storm, which was so violent that at times the men had to lie flat and crawl along the rocks. But at dusk, as they walked up to the manor, he felt his arm aching and it hurt when he touched it. As he was shutting the house door a gust of wind blew it inr carrying Olav off his feet; his bad arm was given a violent wrench as the man stumbled over the threshold and fell at full length on the floor of the anteroom. He had to call for help to be rid of his soaking sea-clothes, and Torhild bound up his arm in a sling.

It was unbearable in the hall that evening; the room was chock-full of smoke, for it was impossible to open door or louver in this wind. Eyes smarted and chests were racked; and when the men’s wet clothes began to steam on the crossbeams, the air was soon so thick that it could be cut with a knife.

Ingunn lay in the little closet with both the children—there was less smoke, but it was so cold that they had to creep under the bedclothes. The men went out as soon as they had supped. Olav threw some skins and cushions on the floor by the hearth and lay down there, to be below the smoke.

His arm was now swollen. His face was burning from the weather and his head and body were hot and cold by turns. Feverish and light-headed, he heard the storm as a multiplicity of

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