Read "Independent People" by Halldor Laxness online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
THAT was on a Sunday.
It had been raining for some time before Bjartur found her, still sleeping by the brook. She was lying there wet to the skin, with her cheek on the bank and one arm under her. One truss of hay lay crosswise in the stream, the pack-saddle, girths snapped, lay broken to pieces on the gravel, and the horse was grazing in the home-field. The woman looked about her with anguish-stricken eyes, like one whom some buffoon has waked up from death, and listened with aching spine to the sarcasms of her husband. Then, while he was busy covering the hay with turf as a temporary protection from the rain, she dragged herself into the house and, too dazed to heat up some coffee, went off to sleep once more.