Look Back on Happiness | Page 4

down the saw and the ax from their hooks to
inspect them, he put them back again where he had found them. When
he examined the letters, trying perhaps to read the addresses, he did not
let them go carelessly, leaving them to swing back and forth, but held
the string so that it hung motionless. I had no reason to complain about
him.
He had his midday meal with me, and when he had eaten, he said:
"Do you 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