Look Back on Happiness | Page 4

mind if I cut myself some pine twigs to sit on?"
He went out to cut off some soft pine, and we had to move Madame's straw to make room for the man inside the hut. Then we lay on our twigs, burning resin and talking.
He was still there in the afternoon, still lying down as though to postpone the time of his leaving. When it began to grow dark, he went to the low doorway and looked out at the weather. Then, turning his head back, he asked:
"Do you think there'll be snow tonight?"
"You ask me questions and I ask you questions," I said, "but it looks like snow; the smoke is blowing down."
It made him uneasy to think it might snow, and he said he had better leave that night. Suddenly he flew into a rage. For as I lay there, I stretched, so that my hand accidentally touched his sack again.
"You leave me alone!" he shouted, tearing the sack from my grasp. "Don't you touch that sack, or I'll show you!"
I replied that I had meant nothing by it, and had no intention of stealing anything from him.
"Stealing, eh! What of it? I'm not afraid of you, and don't you go thinking I am! Look, here's what I've got in the bag," said the man, and began to rummage in it and to show me the contents: three pairs of new mittens, some sort of thick cloth for garments, a bag of barley, a side of bacon, sixteen rolls of tobacco, and a few large lumps of sugar candy. In the bottom of the bag was perhaps half a bushel of coffee beans.
No doubt it was all from the general stores, with the exception of a heap of broken crisp-bread, which might have been stolen elsewhere.
"So you've got crisp-bread after all," I said.
"If you knew anything about it, you wouldn't talk like that," the man replied. "When I'm crossing the fjeld on foot, walking and walking, don't I need food to put in my belly? It's blasphemy to listen to you!"
Neatly and carefully he put everything back into the sack, each article in its turn. He took pains to build up the rolls of tobacco round the bacon, to protect the cloth from grease stains.
"You might buy this cloth from me," he said. "I'll let you have it cheap. It's duffle. It only gets in my way."
"How much do you want for it?" I asked.
"There's enough for a whole suit of clothes, maybe more," he said to himself as he spread it out.
I said to the man:
"Truly you come here into the forest bringing with you life and the world and intellectual values and news. Let us talk a little. Tell me something: are you afraid your footprints will be visible tomorrow if there's fresh snow tonight?"
"That's my business. I've crossed the field before and I know many paths," he muttered. "I'll let you have the cloth for a few crowns."
I shook my head, so the man again neatly folded the cloth and put it back in the bag exactly as though it belonged to him.
"I'll cut it up into material for trousers; then the pieces won't be so large, and I'll be able to sell it."
"You'd better leave enough for a whole suit in one piece," I said, "and cut up the rest for trousers."
"You think so? Yes, maybe you're right."
We calculated how much would be necessary for a grown man's suit, and took down the string from which the letters hung to measure our own clothes, so as to be sure to get the measurements right. Then we cut into the edge of the cloth, and tore it across. In addition to one complete suit, there was enough left for two good-sized pairs of trousers.
Then the man offered to sell me other things out of his sack, and I bought some coffee and a few rolls of tobacco. He put the money away in a leather purse, and I saw how empty the purse was, and the circumstantial and poverty-stricken fashion in which he put the money away, afterward feeling the outside of his pocket.
"You haven't been able to sell me much," I said, "but I don't need any more than that."
"Business is business," said he. "I don't complain."
It was quite decent of him.
While he was making ready to depart and clearing his bed of pine needles out of the way, I thought pityingly of his sordid little theft. Stealing because he was needy--a side of bacon and a length of cloth which he was trying to sell in the forest! Theft has indeed ceased to be a matter of great moment. This is because legal punishment for misdemeanors of all kinds has also ceased to be of great moment. It is only a dull, human