Free The Boat in the Evening by Tarjei Vesaas

time and has always received its just reward.
    *
    The drifter sails with his motley retinue through the landscape. It is his own countryside and at the same time one that is completely unknown to him. They are his shore and his birds, his face in the wall, his cry in the call.
    His own riddles wall him in, as he himself was a riddle on the paths on land.
    His own sorrow is there too. Sorrow that neither he nor anyone else can explain.
    *
    Gradually the knowledge of what it is he is journeying away from awakens in him. The mirrors search along the shores and find it whether it is there or not. Sometimes the journey takes him close to the banks and in other places farther out, but the mirrors find it. They have many shapes and many errands. They flash and force their way through, reaching their goal in spite of obstacles and layers of slime. They cut right through it all. They may not cease to be a part of him.
    Things may be dancing on the banks, but theirs is no dance of joy. The drifter cannot grasp it, since only a part of him is alive, seeing to it that his nose is kept out of the warm summer water instead of letting the water snuff him out, as it would prefer to do.
    Now the known is unknown. Those he knows are not with him today, he pretends. He says nothing about having fled from them.
    Nor does the drifter realize that he is moving so slowly, that only the precious time is passing. He mutters about aeons of time like a simpleton.
    It was my cry, he thinks with incredulity. He is not uttering any cries, yet it is I who am crying, he tells himself.
    He examines the mouths in the wall as he says so—and of course it is his cry. He can draw breath, he is not dying.
    He seems to have no body, he cannot yet use his arms in order to swim. But he has with him the large retinue on the earth, in the air and in the water, and senses it along with the wind and shadows and muted cries that are found on the long waterways.
    There are more and more of them. They come because of the pull of the journey. They are released from their old ways and join in before they are aware of it. It is a mighty pull, and offers no comfort, digging them up, prying them loose and forcing them into it.
    Creatures large and small, but not a single human being.
    The innocent drifter in the lead has gradually become a mere pretext.
    *
    A new element.
    The living bark of a dog explodes from behind the trees on the shore. Loud and giving warning, with the correct silence afterwards. Then a whole series of signals from the hidden dog.
    A house? Not a house to be seen. That is his first thought. It was a shocking sound. There is nobody in sight. The watchdog keeps himself hidden.
    The dog’s bark is echoed back from the hillside opposite. This must encourage him, for he goes on barking. Sounds are hurled past each other and split in two—meaningless, but unspeakably joyous among all that is here already.
    The man in the water lets it rain down over him. He is lying in the middle of the din and feels curves and stripes forming in his skull during the ten-fold howling of the dog. None of his own cries have been heard. This is the cry. A growl starts up in his throat, in the slime and the taste of the water, and he startles himself when he opens his mouth wide and howls more horribly than he realizes: ‘Wowwow wow!’
    There is a sudden silence on the shore. Then a frightened bark. What the man said must have sounded dreadful to the dog’s ears; he only manages to squirt out a sound from between his teeth.
    The current gives the drifter a little nudge. The way south is open.
    The drifter is inflamed by all his bewildering visions.
    What is this? The first contact after having been at the bottom in the slime.
    â€˜Wow wow!’ he hollers. A language he has only just learnt.
    The hillsides reply.
    Then the dog goes wild, with terror, joy or insult. He forgets to stay hidden, leaps out on to an isolated rock on the shore and barks at the