Authors: Tarjei Vesaas,Elizabeth Rokkan
It must be soon now.
What will be soon?
Siss felt nervous down in the second valley. She knew what the outcome of this would be, that there was no way of avoiding it – and she wanted to be in this web in which she was entangled, she remembered.
She told herself nervously what was happening: I’m going back to the others.
In this valley, too, there was a brook to be jumped. They shot over it. They were in no mood for delays and hurried up the slope once more – to the spot where they could see their goal again and closer.
They had intended to go solemnly but were in such a hurry that they half ran up the last part, as if compelled to get there in time before the ice palace collapsed. A nervous running.
Now they could hear the roar of the waterfall, not loudly below the crest of the hill but as if it were rounding the crest and coming down to meet them.
Up on the hilltop they could see the whitening palace clearly, still some distance away, but enormous. It did not belong to this world but still stood there for an unbearably long while, towering in front of Siss.
They were watchful towards Siss. The sight affected them all. The girl who was the leader came over to her and asked in a low voice, ‘Do you want to turn back?’
They must all have been convinced that Siss was afraid of it. Here was the question for the second time.
‘No, why?’
‘Don’t know – you looked a bit odd.’
‘You’re imagining it. Don’t you all want to go there?’
‘It’s
your
trip, the whole thing, you know that.’
‘Yes.’ Siss had to admit that it was so.
‘So we don’t mind if you want to turn back here. You really did look as if you’d rather.’
‘No, it wasn’t that, I’m telling you.’
Siss looked helplessly at the firm, clear-headed leader who knew nothing about the memories she had of the ice palace.
‘All right, as long as you want to.’ The girl turned to the
others and said they would go straight to the waterfall and picnic there.
Down into the third valley. No one ran on ahead. Still the solemnity was not dispelled.
The ground was rough, with thickets and clumps of trees, down in the third valley. They could not help becoming separated as they picked their way forward. The usual brook, brimful of water, was here, with pools and small heads of froth.
Siss found herself alone behind a thicket – and at once someone came alongside. It was the boy who had led the way, now no longer at the head of the procession. She looked into his eyes and saw that they were brighter than usual. She asked hastily, ‘What do you want?’
‘I don’t quite know,’ he said.
She felt his eyes on her all the time. He said, ‘No one can see us here.’
Siss replied, ‘No, no one in the whole world.’
‘Let’s jump across the brook,’ he said.
He took her hand and they jumped across the brook together. It was strange, and then it was over. He held her little finger for a few paces after the jump. That was strange, too; he noticed that the finger dug itself into his hand slightly. The finger did so of its own accord.
They let go quickly and hurried around the thicket in order to join the others.
They were at the foot of the palace, and it was enormous: the pale white mass of ice and the waterfall in spate. A cold, raw wind was blowing off the falls. The group went as close to it as they could. Their clothes rapidly turned the colour of
grey silk from the spray. The spray rose up from the middle of the palace and rained down again. The air vibrated.
Their mouths opened in speech, but nobody could hear a word, only see mouths opening eagerly. It was too wet and altogether too overpowering. They retreated to a point where they could talk.
A ring around Siss. They had brought her all the way there, and they had done it successfully – they all stood wearing this expression. They were themselves impressed, by the enormous mass and by the circumstances that had brought them there.
Siss was thinking compulsively about the men who had stood there. A dirge had been sung in the roar. It had grown and altered with the passage of time: now she remembered clearly that they had sung.
It was gone now. Was it in vain? No, no, it wasn’t in vain; it will never be forgotten by those who stood here that night.
But the ice palace will soon be destroyed, and then it will look just as before, only the savage waterfall that concerns no one, that fills the air and shakes the earth and will never come to an end.
Everything will go on as before, Siss.
Somebody pulled at her arm – as she stood smarting with thoughts from which she could not free herself.
‘Siss, don’t you want to come and eat?’
‘I’m coming.’
She awoke and saw a ring of friendly faces. They had all shown that they wanted her. And now they put aside solemnity.
In a while they were racing up the steep slope in the spray to climb to the top of the ice. On the slope they could see how the palace gripped the earth banks with huge claws of
ice around the stones, into hollows and around trees. Even so, the waterfall would be strong enough to tear it loose. The wearing-down process was under way and must have reached its climax by now, but was invisible: a tug-of-war impossible to picture was taking place all the time.
Up on the top the ice was the same as anywhere else: white and pitted by the sun, not one transparent spot.
‘Can we go out on it, do you think?’ called someone above the din.
Siss started and remembered what she had reasoned out as she lay in bed.
‘We mustn’t. It’s dangerous,’ she said, but nobody heard her in the roar of the falls.
‘Yes, of course we can!’ shouted the boy who had led the way and sprang out on it before Siss’s very eyes.
They all stormed out. Siss was there, too, before she realized what she was doing. As soon as she set foot on it she felt the quivering in the huge block.
‘Can’t you feel it?’ she shouted as loudly as she could.
They heard nothing. They were all shouting just as loudly. All was noise.
‘Hooray!’ screamed someone, a shout so unfettered that they might have been standing on the severed ice palace, sailing with it downwards in the seething spume. ‘Hooray.’
Their eyes shone strangely. They crawled about on the top, among the domes, in the grooves. They were a
little
cautious, not entirely blind to the danger, knowing they would never have been allowed to do this if any grown-ups had been with them. Siss no longer warned them; she was enjoying it herself, her eyes shining, too. And then came the crack.
Bang! it exploded beneath them, in the foundations: an
explosion or a blow or whatever it resembled. It might have been a hammer blow on a clock that needed one in order to strike. But it
was
a crack, a crack with destruction in the sound. In the impossible tension in which it stood, the ice palace had split apart somewhere. It was the first warning of death.
Loud above the din of the falls.
All of them out on the top turned white and made for dry ground on two legs or all fours, whichever was easiest. They had no desire to ride away with the ice when destruction overtook it; they wanted to live.
No, no! thought Siss, too, as she saved herself. But it was as close as could be to what she had imagined during the night.
Once safe on the ground, they stopped to see whether its destruction would be completed. It was not. Nothing more happened. The ice stood. There had only been the one
bang!
from inside, and then silence. The river came pouring mass upon mass of new water from above, but the palace withstood the pressure.
Somewhat shaken, they climbed down the banks of the waterfall again, over-courageous, too, since it had gone so well. Now they had something to talk about later. They were not ready to go. The ice palace still held them. Their eyes still glittered.
They glittered towards Siss, too, but she could not meet them. The wild mood from on top had passed. Couldn’t they see that it was impossible to stay here? No, they couldn’t, they had no reason to do so. For them it was an adventure.
Did they read her expression, and were they disappointed with her? But they ought to have seen how impossible it was to stay here. The eternal roar of the waterfall filled the
heavens and the earth, but still they could not fill one empty space. The others did not know this. They saw the adventure, and their eyes glittered with it.
She stood up after a while and said, ‘I can’t stay here.’
Nobody asked her why.
The leader-girl came over and asked, ‘Are you going?’
‘No. Only a little way, just over there, to get away from it.’
‘All right, we’ll all come in a minute.’
Siss walked away slowly between the trees, where the way would lead back for them all.
No, I shan’t go away from them now.
I’ve gone
to
them now.
She walked in among the trees and bushes and sat down on a stone. The wood was leafless, and the slender trees were visible, stem upon stem, for a great distance. Siss sat beneath a steep slope, so that the roar of the falls was deadened, but the air still seemed to vibrate with it. Wild and unceasing. Unceasingly new, unceasingly moving on.
She thought of the consideration the others had shown her that day. When they catch up with me I must try to be different. How?
She sat on the stone and thought over the matter for a long time, waiting to hear the great crash behind her, telling her that now it was happening. It did not come; only the even roar churned on.
In any case it’s over.
Everything is over here. It has to be.
Today I really shall break my promise.
It’s because of Auntie that I’m doing it, that I can manage to do it. I still don’t know whether I ought.
But I shall.
Thank you, Auntie.
I shall write to Auntie when I find out where she is.
She was not left sitting alone for long. The group did not come, but a dry twig cracked against the soft floor of the wood – and two fine lines passed through her: it was the girl and that boy. Both of them were coming.
The burden fell away. She got to her feet, her face a little flushed. There they were, both of them.
No one can witness the fall of the ice palace. It takes place at night, after all the children are in bed.
No one is involved deeply enough to be present. A blast of noiseless chaos may cause the air to vibrate in distant bedrooms, but no one wakes up to ask: What is it?
No one knows.
Now the palace, with all its secrets, goes into the water-fall. There is a violent struggle, and then it has gone.
A wild commotion in the empty, half-light, half-cold spring night. A crash out towards nothing, from the inner-most holds that have worn loose. The dead ice palace takes on an echoing tone in its last hour, when it releases its hold and must go. There is a clangour in its struggle; it seems to be saying: It is dark within.
It is shattered by the pressure of the water and pitches forward into the white froth from the falls. The huge blocks of ice strike one another and dash themselves into smaller pieces, making it easier still for the water to seize them. It dams itself up, breaches the dam again and tumbles downwards between the rocky banks of the broad channel, floating away and quickly disappearing around a bend. The whole palace has vanished from the face of the earth.
Up on land there are slashes and scars in the river banks, upturned stones, uprooted trees, and supple twigs that have only been stripped of their bark.
The blocks of ice tumble away pell-mell towards the lower
lake and are spread out across it before anyone has woken up or seen anything. There the shattered ice will float, its edges sticking up out of the surface of the water, float, and melt, and cease to be.
The Birds
The Boat in the Evening
The Bridges
The House in the Dark
Spring Night
PETER OWEN PUBLISHERS
81 Ridge Road, London N8 9NP
Peter Owen books are distributed in the USA and Canada by Independent Publishers Group/Trafalgar Square 814 North Franklin Street, Chicago, IL 60610, USA
Translated from the Norwegian
Is-slottet
English translation first published 1966 Peter Owen Modern Classics edition 2005, 2009 This Peter Owen Modern Classics ebook edition 2013
© Gyldendal Norsk Forlag A/S 1963
English translation © Peter Owen and Elizabeth Rokkan 1966, 1993
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publishers.
PAPERBACK ISBN 978-0-7206-1329-2
EPUB ISBN 978-0-7206-1376-6
KINDLE ISBN 978-0-7206-1375-9
PDF ISBN 978-0-7206-1374-2
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Inquisitive?
Independent?
Love great writing?
If you have enjoyed this book, visit our website, where you’ll find a wealth of top-quality, ground-breaking and iconoclastic literature and non-fiction
Independent publishers since 1951
James Agee • Bella Akhmadulina • Tariq Ali • Kenneth Allsop • Alfred Andersch Guillaume Apollinaire • Machado de Assis • Miguel Angel Asturias • Duke of Bedford Oliver Bernard • Thomas Blackburn • Jane Bowles • Paul Bowles • Richard Bradford Ilse, Countess von Bredow • Lenny Bruce • Finn Carling • Blaise Cendrars • Marc Chagall Giorgio de Chirico • Uno Chiyo • Hugo Claus • Jean Cocteau • Albert Cohen Colette • Ithell Colquhoun • Richard Corson • Benedetto Croce • Margaret Crosland e.e. cummings • Stig Dalager • Salvador Dalí • Osamu Dazai • Anita Desai Charles Dickens • Bernard Diederich • Fabián Dobles • William Donaldson Autran Dourado • Yuri Druzhnikov • Lawrence Durrell • Isabelle Eberhardt Sergei Eisenstein • Shusaku Endo • Erté • Knut Faldbakken • Ida Fink Wolfgang George Fischer • Nicholas Freeling • Philip Freund • Dennis Friedman Carlo Emilio Gadda • Rhea Galanaki • Salvador Garmendia • Michel Gauquelin André Gide • Natalia Ginzburg • Jean Giono • Geoffrey Gorer • William Goyen Julien Gracq • Sue Grafton • Robert Graves • Angela Green • Julien Green George Grosz • Barbara Hardy • H.D. • Rayner Heppenstall • David Herbert Gustaw Herling • Hermann Hesse • Shere Hite • Stewart Home • Abdullah Hussein King Hussein of Jordan • Ruth Inglis • Grace Ingoldby • Yasushi Inoue Hans Henny Jahnn • Karl Jaspers • Takeshi Kaiko • Jaan Kaplinski • Anna Kavan Yasunuri Kawabata • Nikos Kazantzakis • Orhan Kemal • Christer Kihlman James Kirkup • Paul Klee • James Laughlin • Patricia Laurent • Violette Leduc Lee Seung-U • Vernon Lee • József Lengyel • Robert Liddell • Francisco García Lorca Moura Lympany • Dacia Maraini • Marcel Marceau • André Maurois Henri Michaux • Henry Miller • Miranda Miller • Marga Minco • Yukio Mishima Quim Monzó • Margaret Morris • Angus Wolfe Murray • Atle Næss • Gérard de Nerval Anaïs Nin • Yoko Ono • Uri Orlev • Wendy Owen • Arto Paasilinna • Marco Pallis Oscar Parland • Boris Pasternak • Cesare Pavese • Milorad Pavic • Octavio Paz Mervyn Peake • Carlos Pedretti • Dame Margery Perham • Graciliano Ramos Jeremy Reed • Rodrigo Rey Rosa • Joseph Roth • Ken Russell • Marquis de Sade Cora Sandel • George Santayana • May Sarton • Jean-Paul Sartre Ferdinand de Saussure • Gerald Scarfe • Albert Schweitzer • George Bernard Shaw Isaac Bashevis Singer • Patwant Singh • Edith Sitwell • Suzanne St Albans • Stevie Smith C.P. Snow • Bengt Söderbergh • Vladimir Soloukhin • Natsume Soseki • Muriel Spark Gertrude Stein • Bram Stoker • August Strindberg • Rabindranath Tagore Tambimuttu • Elisabeth Russell Taylor • Emma Tennant • Anne Tibble • Roland Topor Miloš Urban • Anne Valery • Peter Vansittart • José J. Veiga • Tarjei Vesaas Noel Virtue • Max Weber • Edith Wharton • William Carlos Williams • Phyllis Willmott G. Peter Winnington • Monique Wittig • A.B. Yehoshua • Marguerite Young Fakhar Zaman • Alexander Zinoviev • Emile Zola