Free The Birds by Tarjei Vesaas

the bag of candy clutched in his hand. The sun was still shining intensely, as it always did before a storm.
    Just behind him a car hooted angrily and he flung himself into the side of the road like a bundle of rags. The car must have braked hard and as it went gliding past, someone said through the open window: “Don’t walk in the middle of the road, you damned fool!”
    It was an angry and frightened voice. Mattis saw a pair of angry eyes looking at him out the window. A complete stranger.
    “You’re lucky,” said the shaken voice in the window. “You could easily have been knocked flat, with your head in the clouds.” Then the window was wound up, and aiming a blast of poisonous exhaust at Mattis, the car sped away.
    Swallowing great gulps of the exhaust Mattis staggered on, keeping close to the side of the road. He realized the man would have said exactly the same to anybody. He had shouted in fear. He was a traveler, and had no idea who he was talking to. Mattis told himself this over and over again, and as he did so he suddenly realized that he was protected from hundreds of millions of people whoknew absolutely nothing about him. It was a though a friendly haze lay between them and him. It was a comforting thought: countless numbers of people had no idea he was a simpleton.
    But now he was running to beat the thunderstorm. He had seen many kinds of thunderstorms. Some came on all of a sudden, others took their time and rumbled a good while before getting dangerous. Others stayed in the distance the whole time, they were heading somewhere else. There were no fixed rules. The clouds today were only coming over slowly. Mattis felt almost sure he’d get home in time.
    The child who had called to him earlier was nowhere to be seen. But the three of them in the field were still digging away.
    Will she wave?
    No.
    She must be tired.
    But I won’t think about it, there’s going to be a thunderstorm soon, and you mustn’t think about that sort of thing then. I don’t even feel like thinking about it. That’s the way it is with thunder.
    All of a sudden he bumped into a man he vaguely knew. At least, he used to talk to him when they met, and he felt quite at ease with him. The man raised his hand, as if Mattis were a bus he wanted to stop.
    “Wait a moment! You’re in a bit of a hurry, aren’t you, Mattis?”
    “Well, you can see the storm, can’t you?” said Mattis gravely.
    “What storm?”
    “There’s going to be a thunderstorm very soon, can’t you see? And home’s the best place then.”
    The man seemed to know how Mattis felt about thunder. He looked up at the clouds: “I don’t think you need to worry. Those aren’t thunderclouds, they’re already thinning out, look!”
    Mattis shook his head and refused to believe it. It had probably only been said to comfort him. A terrific thunderstorm, that’s what the cyclist in the shop had said, and that was no doubt nearer the truth.
    “What did I say? Look there, Mattis!”
    Just as they stood there the clouds lifted and a patch of blue sky appeared over the edge of the mountains. The whole threat of thunder was gone, they were no longer stormclouds. There was glorious blue sky just underneath.
    “There you are,” said the man, “it’s only light cloud, and that means fine weather; it’s melting away altogether now.”
    Mattis drew a long sigh of relief.
    “Like a piece of candy?” he said, full of gratitude.
    And the man went on his way, sucking the yellow candy.
    Mattis returned to his usual walking pace. But it was so late in the day that it was no good looking for work now, he decided. He was not entirely happy at the prospect of having to return home to Hege and give an account of his attempts to get work. No sooner wasthe threat of thunder gone than he was faced with his old, familiar, nagging conscience.
    He was by the path leading down to their little house. The withered treetops rose into the air. He never even looked at them.
    No, he