He let Arvid put his ear next to his own and listen. But Arvid couldn’t hear anything, not a sound. It was inexplicable: Robert heard a sound which did not exist.
He awoke in the middle of the night. His left ear throbbed and ached intensely, and the noise inside had increased, and sounded by now like the roar of a storm. And his heartbeats were felt in his ear like the piercing of a pointed knife. He lay there on his bed and turned and twisted in agony. Something must have broken inside to cause the throbbing. He counted his heartbeats: the knife’s edge cut and cut and cut in his ear; it felt like the sting in a fresh, open, sensitive wound. The stings did not cease, the ache did not abate. He counted and waited and hoped, but it did not diminish. He was alone in the whole world with his pain and he did not know what to do about it. He began to moan; he didn’t cry but he groaned quietly and at intervals. He folded his hands and prayed to God. He realized that the earache was in punishment for his laziness in the ditch, and he prayed for forgiveness. If God granted absolution He would also remove the earache. He had been a disloyal servant and he also remembered now that he had lately omitted reading “A Servant’s Prayer.” Tonight he recited it again in deep remorse: “Teach me to be faithful, humble, and devoted to my temporal lords. . Let me also find good and Christian masters who do not neglect or mistreat a poor servant, but keep me in love and patience. . ”
After the prayer he lay in darkness and waited. But the ache did not leave him, it throbbed and throbbed and he felt the sting of the knife edge in his sensitive ear a hundred times each minute. God would not remove the ache, he fought his pain alone, and he was helpless and could do nothing to alleviate it. Deep inside his ear in a roaring storm his pain lived on.
He arose and lit the stable lantern. Arvid woke and wondered sleepily what had happened.
“I’ve a bad earache.”
“The hell you have!”
“What shall I do?” Robert moaned pitifully.
The elder farmhand sat up in his bed and scratched his straggly hair. He cogitated.
The best remedy for earache was mother’s milk, he said. But where would they get hold of a suckling woman who had some milk left in her breasts this time of night? The mistress had never even had a child; she was a dried-up woman. And the maids were virgins with unopened breasts.
But Arvid rose and brought forth his brännvin keg. “We’ll try with brännvin on a wool wad.”
He searched for a while in his servant chest and found some sheep’s wool which he soaked in brännvin and put into his friend’s aching ear.
“It will smart at first, but not for long.”
The brännvin-soaked wool wad did smart so intensely that Robert almost pulled it out; he held his hands closed, cramplike, so as not to shriek. And after a moment the throbbing pain abated, as Arvid had said it would. No enjoyment can be greater than diminishing pain. He understood now that God had sent Arvid to help him; luckily there had been some brännvin left in the keg. Soon he glided into sleep, but some pain remained, mingling with his dreams: his left ear was filled with stinging wasps, a whole swarm of them, and they crowded each other inside and stung, only stung. And his ear swelled up and became one big sensitive boil where all the wasps’ stingers remained and hurt.
The pain in the ear was almost gone when Robert awakened the following morning, and within the next few days it disappeared altogether, but a thick, yellowish, malodorous fluid ran from his ear: it was the pain coming out. Something did remain inside, however: the strange sound which no one else could hear.
Yes, the buzzing and humming was still there; sometimes he heard it more loudly, sometimes lower, but he was always aware of it, inside the ear. It did not pain him, but he became tired and disheartened at hearing it follow him night and day. He put a bandage over his ear, he held his hand against it, he stuck a piece of wool into it, but the sound remained; nothing could silence it.
One night as he lay there and listened to his own ear he realized what this strange sound meant which existed for him only: he was listening to the rumbling of a great water, it was the roar and din of the sea itself; it was the voice of the sea in his ear, calling him, and him alone: he was chosen. The ocean called him, urged him, and the hum in his ear became a word, a word which always followed him, through night and day, calling: Come!
Not yet could he come; all gates on the road still remained closed.
— 2—
One Sunday morning Robert appeared unexpected at his parents’ home in Korpamoen. He had not been to see them since he began his service, and Nils and Märta were pleased. Last spring when he threw his clothes into the brook and rode to the mill instead of going to Nybacken the boy had become the laughingstock of the neighborhood, but since they had not seen him the whole summer they would not mention that now. Märta thought he was thin and his cheekbones sharp, but when she asked him how he fared with Aron he gave no reply.
Robert stayed home the whole Sunday, and when, after supper, he still remained in his chair, Nils wondered if he shouldn’t go back to his place of service before bedtime. The boy answered he had come home without his master’s permission; he would never again go back to Nybacken.
Nils and Märta exchanged perplexed glances. Nils said: “When one has received earnest money, one must stay to the end of the year.”
Robert said that if they wished to send him back to Nybacken they must first bind him hand and foot and tie him onto a wagon like a beast on its way to slaughter.
The parents did not know what to do; the son remained on his chair and said nothing more.
The mother called Karl Oskar: his brother refused to return to service of his own will.
“Did you leave Aron without permission?” asked Karl Oskar.
Robert removed his jacket and showed his bare back. Broad red streaks extended from one side to the other; the skin was broken and it had been bleeding.
Märta let out a cry: “You’ve been flogged, poor child!”
“Who has beaten you?” asked his brother.
Robert told the story. Yesterday he was bringing home a wagonload of rutabagas and had to pass a narrow gate; there was a curve in the road just before he reached the gate, the mare was hard to hold and didn’t obey the rein quickly enough, the wagon hit the gatepost and broke its shaft; he couldn’t help it, he had held the reins as firmly as he could. But Aron had grabbed a fence stake and hit him many times across his back. The stake had protruding knots which tore into his flesh. His back had ached the whole night, and in the morning he had left for home without letting anyone know. Not long ago, too, Aron had given him so hard a box on his ear that it still rang and buzzed. He would never again return to Nybacken.
Karl Oskar inspected the red streaks on his brother’s back. “You needn’t return. No one in our family need accept flogging. We are as good as Aron.”
“Do you think Aron will release him without trouble?” wondered the mother.
“He can do as he pleases. The boy does not go back.”
But Nils was worried. If Robert left service without permission, Aron would have the right to send the sheriff after him, and according to the servant law Robert would then lose half his pay and must defray Aron’s expenses. Wouldn’t it be better to settle amicably?
“I’ll go and speak to him,” Karl Oskar said firmly. But it didn’t sound as if he were thinking of reconciliation.
Robert regretted he had not returned home earlier and confided in his elder brother. Märta brought out some pork bile and covered her son’s wounds with it.