Growth of the Soil (Translated by Sverre Lyngstad 2007) by Knut Hamsun

Author:Knut Hamsun [Hamsun, Knut]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature
ISBN: 9781440619601
Publisher: Penguin Books; Penguin Group
Published: 1917-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

I

Sellanrå is no longer a desolate place, there are seven people living there, all told. But in the short period the haying was going on, there also came a few strangers, people who wanted to see the mowing machine. Brede was the first, of course, but Aksel Strøm came, too, as well as the neighbors farther down, all the way to the village. And from the other side of the mountain came Oline. She was imperishable.

This time, too, Oline brought news from her own parish, she never turned up empty: old Sivert’s accounts had now been gone through, and there was no fortune left after him. Nothing!

Here Oline pressed her lips together and looked from one to the other. Well, didn’t a sigh pass through the room? Wouldn’t the roof fall down? Eleseus was the first to smile: “How about it, aren’t you named after Uncle Sivert?” he asks softly. “Yes. But I made you a present of everything he left behind,” Little Sivert replies just as softly. “How much was it?”—“Between five and ten thousand.”—“Dollars?” Eleseus suddenly cried, mimicking Sivert.

Oline apparently didn’t feel it was the right moment for a joke, she herself had been so badly cheated; and yet, even at Uncle Sivert’s coffin she had summoned all her stubborn strength and shed tears. Eleseus himself knew best what he had written, of course: so and so much for Oline, a prop for her old age—what had become of the prop? Broken over a knee.

Poor Oline, she could just as well have inherited something, it would have been the only golden gleam in her life! She had not been pampered. Practiced in evil, oh yes, used to fighting her way with tricks and petty deceits from day to day, strong only thanks to scandal-mongering, making her tongue feared, oh yes. But nothing could now have made her worse, a legacy least of all. She had worked all her life, had borne children and taught them her own few tricks, begged for them, maybe also stolen for them, but had kept them alive—a mother in straitened circumstances. Her ability was no poorer than that of other politicians; she worked for herself and her family, suited her speech to the moment and came through, gaining a cheese to bring home by one tack, a handful of wool by another; she too could live and die in reliance on insincere quick-wittedness. Ah, Oline—maybe old Sivert had remembered her for a moment as young, as pretty and rosy-cheeked, but now she is old and misshapen, a picture of ruination; she should have been dead. Where is she to be buried? There is no family burial plot, she will be dumped into a graveyard with nothing but strange, unfamiliar bones, that’s where she will end up. Oline, born and dead. Once she was young. A legacy left to her now, when she is about to sign off? Well, a single golden gleam, and a bondwoman’s hands would have folded for a moment.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.