Free Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun

as if there'd never be enough."
    When Isak is gone, the two womenfolk get on nicely together for a while; they sit for hours talking of this and that. In the evening, Oline must go out and see how their live stock has grown: cows, a bull, two calves, and a swarm of sheep and goats. "I don't know where it'll ever end," says Oline, with her eyes turned heavenwards.
    And Oline stays the night.
    Next morning she goes off again. Once more she has a bundle of something with her. Isak is working in the quarry, and she goes another way round, so that he shall not see.
    Two hours later, Oline comes back again, steps into the house, and asks at once: "Where is Isak?"
    Inger is washing up. Oline should have passed by the quarry where Isak was at work, and the children with him; Inger at once guesses something wrong.
    "Isak? What d'you want with him?"
    "Want with him?--why, nothing. Only I didn't see him to say good-bye."
    Silence. Oline sits down on a bench without being asked, drops down as if her legs refuse to carry her. Her manner is intended to show that something serious is the matter; she is overcome.
    Inger can control herself no longer. Her face is all terror and fury
as she says:
    "I saw what you sent me by Os-Anders. Ay, 'twas a nice thing to send!"
    "Why ... what...?"
    "That hare."
    "What do you mean?" asks Oline in a strangely gentle voice.
    "Ah, don't deny it!" cries Inger, her eyes wild. "I'll break your face in with this ladle here--see that!"
    Struck her? Ay, she did so. Oline took the first blow without falling, and only cried out: "Mind what you're doing, woman! I know what I know about you and your doings!" Inger strikes again, gets Oline down to the floor, falls on her there, and thrusts her knees into her.
    "D'you mean to murder me?" asks Oline. The terrible woman with the hare-lip was kneeling on her, a great strong creature armed with a huge wooden ladle, heavy as a club. Oline was bruised already, and bleeding, but still sullenly refusing to cry out. "So you're trying to murder me too !"
    "Ay, kill you," says Inger, striking again. "There! I'll see you dead before I've done with you." She was certain of it now. Oline knew her secret; nothing mattered now. "I'll spoil your beastly face."
    "Beastly face?" gasps Oline. "Huh! Look to your own. With the Lord His
mark on it!"
    Oline is hard, and will not give in; Inger is forced to give over the blows that are exhausting her own strength. But she threatens still--glares into the other's eyes and swears she has not finished with her yet. "There's more to come, ay, more, more. Wait till I get a knife. I'll show you!"
    She gets on her feet again, and moves as if to look for a knife, a table knife. But now her fury is past its worst, and she falls back on curses and abuse. Oline heaves herself up to the bench again, her face all blue and yellow, swollen and bleeding; she wipes the hair from her forehead, straightens her kerchief, and spits; her mouth too is bruised and swollen.
    "You devil!" she says.
    "You've been nosing about in the woods!" cries Inger. "That's what you've been doing. You've found that little bit of a grave there. Better if you'd dug one for yourself the same time."
    "Ay, you wait," says Oline, her eyes glowing revengefully. "I'll say no more--but you wait--there'll be no fine two-roomed house for you, with musical clocks and all."
    "You can't take it from me, anyway!"
    "Ay, you wait. You'll see what Oline can do."
    And so they keep on. Oline does not curse, and hardly raises her voice; there is something almost gentle in her cold cruelty, but she is bitterly dangerous. "Where's that bundle? I left it in the woods. But you shall have it back--I'll not own your wool."
    "Ho, you think I've stolen it, maybe."
    "Ah, you know best what you've done."
    So back and forth again about the wool. Inger offers to show the very sheep it was cut from. Oline asks quietly, smoothly: "Ay, but who knows where you got the first sheep to start with?"
    Inger names the place