Independent People by Halldor Laxness

BUT in the mornings, when he rose before the first birds, he never had the heart to wake her, she slept so naturally. He would look round at her as he was dressing and say to himself: "She is young, like a flower; " and he would forgive her for many things. Yet he always wondered that she, who lay there sleeping so innocently, should have loved other men, and should have been unwilling to confess, she who had always been so reserved and so unlikely to respond to any advances. He had often said: There is a girl who keeps herself to herself, and the men at a distance; I will marry that girl and buy myself a farm. " And now that he had married her and bought his farm, it turned out that she had loved other men, and no one had known anything about it. When she was asleep she was happy, but when she woke up he saw the disenchantment in her eyes, and therefore he let her sleep on. They spoke little and hardly dared look at each other; it was as if they had been married for twenty-five years, they did not know each other. He would go round the corner of the croft and cross himself to the east through force of habit, unthinkingly. And Tida would come leaping down from the wall, where she slept on the turf sill of the western window. Every morning she fawned upon him with protestations of friendship as fervid as if they were meeting after a fortnight's parting. She would trace great circles in the grass around him and, barking all the time, would race off to the outskirts of the home-field and sneeze and rub her muzzle in the grass. Then she would follow him out to the mowing.

Dawn was very near, the breeze fresh with morning, the lake clear as a mirror. There, on an islet, a pair of swans were nesting, and crested duck and golden-eyes swam there in little companies, but the mallards and the harlequins preferred the deeper pools of the river and built on its banks; sometimes the crofter could not help stopping for a moment to appraise the royal plumage of the drakes. A few redshanks would fly over from the east when they sighted him, bearing him their elaborate morning greeting. There were also some terns nesting by the lake; in their eyes life is a worm. Here and there on the grassy stretches round the lake bean-geese could be seen moving two and two, their long necks showing against the sky. Birds are happier than men, it is their wings that make all the difference; "grey-goose mother, lend me thy wings. " The only plaintive cry was the loon's, a dismal songbird. Bjartur of Summerhouses gripped the handle of the scythe and started mowing.