For reasons I cannot accurately describe, I could not bear to be left behind on the ground, and so it was with a frenzy of determination that I tried to repeat Evan’s acrobatics and make a similar climb to the height of the fruit tree. I discovered, however, that I was encumbered by the skirts of my dress, which were weighing me down and would not permit me to grab hold of the tree limbs with my legs in a shimmying fashion, such as I had just witnessed Evan performing. It was, then, with a gesture of irritation and perhaps anger at my sex, that I stripped myself of my frock, along that most travelled of public roads into Laurvig, stripped myself down to my underclothes, which consisted of a sleeveless woolen vest and a pair of unadorned homespun bloomers, and thus was able in a matter of minutes to join my brother at the top of the tree, which gave a long view of the coastline, and which, when I had reached Evan, filled me with a sense of freedom and accomplishment that was not often repeated in my girlhood. I remember that he smiled at me and said, “Well done,” and that shortly after I had reached Evan’s perch, I leaned forward in my careless ebullience to see north along the Laurvigsfjord, and, in doing so, lost my balance and nearly fell out of the tree, and almost certainly would have done had not Evan grabbed hold of my wrist and righted me. And I recall that he did not remove his hand, but rather stayed with me in that position, his hand upon my wrist, for a few minutes more, as we could not bear to disturb that sensation of peace and completeness that had come over us, and so it happened that we were both late for school on that day and were chastised by having to remain after school for five days in a row, a detention neither of us minded or complained about as I think we both felt the stricture to be pale reprimand for the thrilling loveliness of the crime. Of course, we had been fortunate that all the time we had been in the tree no farmer had come along the road and seen my frock in the dirt, a shocking sight in itself, and which doubtless would have resulted in our capture and quite likely a more severe punishment of a different nature.
At school, Evan was well liked, but though he did join in the games, he did not take extra pains to become popular in the manner of some boys of the town. He was not a boy, or ever a man, who was filled with anger or resentments as some are, and if a wrong was done to him, he needed only to correct it, not exact a punishment for the crime. (Though I am sorry to say that Evan was eventually to learn, as were we all, that there was no righting of the ultimate wrong that was done to him.) In this way, I do not think I have measured up to him in character, for I have often felt myself in the sway of intense emotions that are sinful in their origin, including those of anger and hatred.
Evan was always substantially taller than myself, and for a time was the tallest boy in the Laurvig school. Although he had slightly crooked teeth in the front, he developed a handsome face that I believe resembled our father’s, though, of course, I never saw my father as a younger man, and by the time I was old enough for such impressions to register, my father’s cheeks were sunken and there were many wrinkles on his face, this as a consequence of the weathering that occurred at sea and was a feature of most fishermen of that time.
When our schooling was finished for the year, we often had the long days together, and this was the very greatest of joys, for the light stayed with us until nearly midnight in the midsummer.
I see us now as if I were looking upon my own self. In the woods, just west of where our home was situated, there was a little-visited and strange geographic phenomenon known as Hakon’s Inlet, a pool of seawater that was nearly black as a consequence of both its extraordinary depth and of the sheer black rock that formed the edges of the pool and rose straight up to a height of thirty feet on all sides, so that this pool was, with the exception of a narrow fissure through which seawater