Independent People by Halldor Laxness

SOON the dusk falls. The boy no longer feels sure of himself after the day's song and story, no longer dare leave his legs dangling over the edge of the bed, but huddling up because of the world's hidden powers, knits without venturing on the slightest movement. His grandmother and his sister stand with their backs to him, piously attentive to the ritual of their cooking. The brushwood is spitting sullenly, filling the room with a dense smoke that makes his throat smart; it is in this smoke that there dwells the poetry of day, with all its furious gales, its ravines and its spectres per nostra krimina. Though the quarrelsome voices of the elder brothers may occasionally be heard from the outskirts, they afford him no relief, and in these oppressive surroundings the stitches become more and more netlike; his left index finger has long been dead from sticking straight up in the air. In the dusk the room's dimensions seem to increase still further; no earthly power can bridge them now. Remotest of all is his mother. Even her heart seems to have disappeared irrevocably in the plumbless depths of this fog which is instinct with the poetry of life, the poetry of death.

Supper was tense with exertion and a frozen silence. One or two of them stole a glance at Bjartur, then at each other. Asta Sollilja scarcely touched her food. Presently they had all had their fill of salt coalfish, the potatoes were finished, no one wanted any more of this morning's porridge. Asta Sollilja began to clear the table; she had an amazing squint. The elder brothers said something nasty in a whisper, and the mother said: "Parlings," also in a whisper. The old woman took her needles down from the shelf, and from the middle of her story spoke these words aloud: "Moo now, moo now, my Bukolla, if you are alive at all."