THE NORWEGIAN BIBLE
a short story by Ilona Kutas to my grandfather
The discovery of the marvellous world of languages is the great experience of my life. The motivation for this sprang from family roots. My maternal grandfather, a theological professor, had mastered eighteen languages. Language and religion were very important for him. He was not able to teach me German, Hebrew, Polish or English because I was only five when he died. I only feel somewhere in my genes that I should follow in his footsteps.
As a member of a librarian delegation I spent a week in Oslo. After the rich and interesting daily programmes I always ran back to my hotel room to spend the lonely evenings in the company of my new friend, an EnglishNorwegian bilingual Bible. I had found it on the night table on the first day when I entered the hotel room, my home for a week.
Perhaps it is common in the hotel rooms of Christian countries to have a Bible at the guests disposal. I experienced this custom for the first time in my life there in Oslo. Finding that Bible brought to mind remembrances of my childhood as well. As a daughter of a protestant minister, living at the parsonage until the age of sixteen, I used to go to church and read the Bible. During the next thirty years of my life, however, I had not even held a Bible in my hand.
A great game began. I read the English column of the page, compared it with the Norwegian column and, with the help of my past knowledge about the Bible, I began to understand the text and the Norwegian words of mixed English and German origins at the same time.
Day by day the Bible and I became closer and closer friends. I began to fear my impending separation from it.
On the sixth day I felt a great desire to continue the game at home as well. I decided therefore to steal the Bible.
I packed it into my bag on the last evening after reading it. But after I switched off the lamp I could not fall asleep. In the darkness I watched the closed bag with my friend in it. A battle raged in my head.
This battle raised the following questions:
> How could I reconcile being the daughter of a minister and a thief at the same time?
> Moreover it was written in this Bible in two beautiful languages: "Thou shalt not steal!"?
> What would my grandfather say if he knew that his granddaughter had stolen a Bible?
I think you can imagine the end of the story!
In the morning I took the Bible out of my bag, placed it back on the night table and, with bag in hand and a great calmness in my heart, I left the room.
………….
I completed my work with a Hungarian translation later on when I decided to send my short story as a Christmas card to my friends. Though some of them spoke no English, I hoped they would be happy to get the small bilingual book.
After writing the short story in November, our next task was to analyse our own literary work. The first page of my self analysis as follows: