Next day, just as a raw mist descends on mountain and forest, I reach the Lapp's house. I enter. But though I meet with nothing but kindness, a Lapp hut contains little that is interesting. There are spoons and knives of bone on the peat wall, and a small paraffin lamp hangs from the roof. The Lapp himself is a dull nonentity who can neither tell fortunes nor conjure. His daughter has gone across the field; she has learned to read, but not to write, at the village school. The two old people, husband and wife, are fools. The whole family share a sort of animal dumbness; if I ask them a question, I may or may not get half a reply: "Mm-no, mm-yes." I am not a Lapp, and so they distrust me.
All the afternoon the mist lay white on the forest. I slept a while. In the evening, the sky was clear again, and there were a few degrees of frost. I left the hut. The moon stood full and silent above the earth.
Heigh-ho--what untuned strings!
But where are the birds all gone away,
and what kind of place is this?
Here where I stand nothing moves or stirs,
in this world that is dead, no event occurs;
I stand in a silvermine.
My eyes sweep round, but I sorely miss
a homely, well-known outline.
And so he came to a silver wood--
thus ran an ancient tale.
Here rests a song of shimmering fire
as though it were sung by a starry choir.
And swift in my youth, I leap
to bind fast the troll, the cunning male,
and awaken a maid from her sleep.
Today I smile at childish tales,
old age has made me wise.
Once proudly in prodigal youth I trod,
now by age my foot is heavily shod;
yet my heart--my heart would fly.
I am driven by fire and bound by ice,
no rest nor repose have I.
A shuddering chill falls on the night,
like a cloud from the lungs in the cold.
There passed a great gust through the silver lace
of the woods, like a lion's royal pace
on paws that are soundless and still.
It may be a god on his evening stroll.
The roots of the forest thrill.
When I returned to the hut, the daughter had also returned home, and sat eating after her long march. Olga the Lapp, tiny and queer, conceived in a snowdrift, in the course of a greeting. "Boris!" they said and fell on their noses.
She had bought red and blue pieces of cloth at the draper's shop in the village, and no sooner had she finished eating than she pushed the cups and plates away and began to embroider her Sunday jacket with pretty strips of the cloth. All the while she never spoke a word, because a stranger was in the room.
"You know me, Olga, don't you?"