Free The Birds by Tarjei Vesaas Page B

Always on the go. Mattis would very much have liked to share with her the things he was thinking and feeling at the moment, but Hege was blind, unable to see them.
    “Wait, Hege, there is a lot just now.”
    “Well, be quick then,” she said.
    “How little you know about things.”
    He said it in a friendly way and half afraid; after all he was talking to one of the clever ones.
    “Yes, so you say,” Hege replied.
    “Streaks hither and thither,” he said.
    “And while you’re asleep,” he said.
    “Every single night,” he said, rounding the whole thing off.
    She looked at him as at a grown-up now, and then said something: “You’re lucky, seeing things the way you do. I don’t, I can tell you.”
    She had stopped now, wasn’t simply rushing off to her eight-petaled roses. Today once again she had heard a tone in his voice that made her pause.
    “How do you see things, then?” he asked, forgetting himself.
    Spoiled the moment completely. She gave a start, even though she was really to blame.
    But inwardly Mattis was bursting with song: him and the woodcock. He felt an urge to walk through the little wood, right underneath the invisible streaks in the sky. That was his path, a path full of joy. He wasn’t disappointed this time, either. After a little while he had to stop.
    You are you, a voice inside him seemed to be saying, at least that was what it sounded like to him.
    It was said in the language of birds. Said in their writing.
    He was standing by a dried-up patch of bog right underneath the woodcock’s path. Standing looking spellbound. Reading a message or whatever it was that had been left there for him.
    In the smooth brown surface of the marshy soil were the faint imprints of a bird’s feet. A number of tiny, deep round holes had been dug up as well. The woodcock had been there. The deep holes had been made by the woodcock’s beak which it thrust down into the ground to dig up morsels of food, or sometimes just to prick out messages.
    Mattis bent down and read what was written. Looked at the graceful dancing footprints. That’s how fine and graceful the bird is, he thought. That’s how gracefully my bird walks over the marshy ground when he’s tired of the air.
    You are you, that was what was written.
    What a greeting to receive!
    He found a twig and pricked an answer in an empty space on the brown surface. He didn’t use ordinary letters; it was meant for the woodcock, so he wrote in the same way as the birds.
    The woodcock’s bound to notice it next time he’s here. I’m the only one who comes here and the only one who writes.
    It was a quiet, well-hidden spot. Impossible to imagine a better meeting place. Tall trees stood round the little patch of bog, and the sunshine found its way into a small clearing, falling thickly and warmly onto the marshy ground and drying it up so that graceful, shy creatures could dance upon it.
    Ought he to settle down here for the rest of the day and the evening, and wait for the bird to come and perhaps land right beside him?
    It was tempting, but he pushed the idea firmly aside. He didn’t dare. After all, the bird might get frightened – and something might be spoiled that mustn’t be spoiled for anything in the world.
    There was a greeting here now. That would have to do.
    Tomorrow he would come back and see how the woodcock had got on with reading it. He went home whistling to himself, but said nothing – Hege was closed to things like this.

15
    OFF HE WENT the next day full of excitement, and he wasn’t disappointed. Not far away from his own writing the beak had pricked out a new message.
    Mattis had expected this, but it had such an effect on him that he had to sit down on a stone.
    Something really had been started between them.
    And what did the bird say, in its wonderful language?
    Mattis was in no doubt. It was about great friendship. Prick, prick, prick. Eternal friendship, that was what it meant.
    He brought out the twig and solemnly