Free The Boat in the Evening by Tarjei Vesaas Page B

appears to be dead, does not even start. He lies still where he has drifted against the shelf of rock.
    The bird comes back and drops heavily, alighting on his breast and folding its wings. The drifter starts and notices it. He writhes and shrieks, an ordinary human shriek.
    The shriek is piercing. The bird, which is a quiet night bird, rises quickly and noiselessly. It had made a mistake.
    The sudden movement fills the drifter’s mouth with water. The shock passes like a ray through his paralysed body. He thrashes about him with the one arm, as if the bird were still there. He strikes his hand against something, and seizes it. It is a tree-root. A tree at the outermost edge of the shore where the water has washed away the soil. He has run aground on stones and roots.
    His hands dig into the roots of their own accord. Both hands. He is lying on solid ground and can scrabble like this without thinking. A reminder goes through his brain about holding fast, about pulling. He is able to do it because of the sudden stimulation. He can drag himself a little way out of the everlasting water. His feet are still lying in it, that doesn’t matter. There he lies. He is seized with a great fit of trembling.
    The twilight deepens, very slowly; he can see objects around him, but is not sure what they are. He can see with his eyes. He moves and says something. He sees the water and trembles. Water? he wonders. His thoughts are still paralysed.
    He thinks he sees the bird approaching in the twilight and barks a loud, scared yell of terror at it.
    Something answers him.
    Promptly an answer comes from some way off, the frightened baying of a dog once more, excited and aggressive baying, as if at something unlawful.
    The man hesitates. He cannot produce a sound.
    The dog goes on barking.
    If he had wanted to answer he could not have got it in, for the dog is exciting himself more and more. He must be at the other end of the beach now. The drifter lies still, rocking in this rhythmical sound without attempting to join in.
    A fresh series of unrelated pictures. It seems as if channels of light are passing through him, regardless of the late evening and the twilight. Curious channels of light. He cannot link them with anything. Impossible to understand when you are dead almost all over.
    The dog continues with its warnings. In the drifter they turn into visions that he destroys at once. Then the dog stops. What does this mean?
    Another sound from the shore.
    â€˜Hoy!’ calls someone, even louder than the dog.
    â€˜Hoy! Hi!’ he calls.
    What is happening? Everything comes to a standstill—and then seems to go up in the air. The human call clangs in his ears. His paralysed thought sequences shiver with tension. His excitement flares up, and he replies like thunder, so it seems to him, as best he can, ‘Wow wow!’
    He cannot find anything to say except the dog’s cry. It was not what he had meant, but what he was able, to say. What he had meant to say had suddenly become far too perplexing and far too much to be shouted.
    He paws at it with stiff fingers, with clenched fists in a web delicate as hair. Impossible, it falls to pieces.
    He listens, lying on his back. He has drawn his feet up. His hands cling convulsively to the root.
    Something is happening over there. No more calling. Something is happening.
    He can hear it; something is approaching him. He hears growling and a few quiet barks, and some quiet splashes that awaken a memory. He cannot reach it.
    Then he sees it in the semi-darkness. All of a sudden a boat appears. It is approaching from land, it is alongside at once.
    The drifter sees it, but he has seen so much this afternoon. He sees this new vision approach, large and strange. He twists towards it.
    â€˜Be quiet, will you?’ someone in the boat says to someone else.
    â€˜Hi there, what’s the matter?’ comes again from the boat. Someone is standing up in the boat speaking to him.
    The