Independent People by Halldor Laxness

SOON the lowlands were free of snow, and the ewes were beginning to feed to some purpose on the grass in the marshes. At meal-times, when Father and the boys came in from work, there was their food laid all ready for them on the table. But where was Asta Sollilja? She was down at the brook washing stockings and suchlike, or seeing to the clothes hanging out on the line, or kneading bread down in the entrance; she was very seldom seen in the loft when anyone else was in the loft, and at night she went to bed after all the others had gone to bed; if she washed herself at all these days, no one ever saw her doing it. Once she was in bed, she would draw the coverlet over her head and lie as still as a mouse. She had developed suddenly a habit of hanging her head, as if she wished to hide her face. Long lashes drooped over eyes that looked at no one in particular. If her father addressed her she would answer with a monosyllable, then slip away as soon as possible. He had grown used to seeing her look at him questioningly, with wide, guileless eyes, and he had replied with silence; now it was he that looked at her questioningly, she who replied with silence.

It was possibly no great novelty though no one on the croft knew quite what anyone else was thinking, and it is possible that such a mode is all for the best. One might be inclined to believe that on a croft everyone's soul would be cast in the same mould, but this is far from the truth, for nowhere are there souls more varied in nature than on a little croft. The two brothers, for example-when had they ever understood one another? -Gvendur, who longed for the fulfilment of reality in a definite place, Nonni, who longed for the solution of dreams in some remote indeterminate distance. Sunshine and thawing snow, the ice in the gully melting, the waterfall in flood-the little boy gazed enchanted out into the spring, and a breeze came away from the south and blew the waterfall back over the mountain, get on with your work and stop glowering into space, said the elder brother. They were busy in the enclosure spreading manure. This waterfall in the gully and its wind from the south, a whole human soul could find its symbol in one small peculiarity of nature and could mould itself upon it; he had discussed it with his mother and she had understood and told him a dream. Now there was no one to understand, but he lived on this dream; and on her wishes. He walked alone whenever he could. In his breast there dwelt a lyrical sadness, a strange sorrowful longing; when he was tending the sheep he sang part-songs that he had never heard. Yes, there was such a wonderful instrument in his breast; and though he could not yet play upon it himself, he toyed with its strings and listened to this note or that note early in the spring, sometimes trembling, often with tears in his eyes, and his eyes were deep and sorrowful and pure as a rill, and like silver deep, deep at the bottom of a rill, silver in a rill.