“He gulps down water during fasts just as eagerly as always, but your father doesn’t speak to the ale bowls with the same heartiness he used to show in the past,” said Borgar. No one could understand the man—it was unthinkable that Lavrans might have some secret sin to repent. As far as people could tell, he had lived as Christian a life as any child of Adam, apart from the saints.
Deep inside Kristin’s heart, a foreboding began to stir about why her father was always striving so hard to come closer to God. But she didn’t dare think about it too much.
She didn’t want to acknowledge how changed her father was. It wasn’t that he had aged excessively: he was still slim, with an erect and noble bearing. His hair was quite gray now, but it wasn’t overly noticeable, since he had always been so fair. And yet . . . Kristin’s memory was haunted by the image of the young and radiantly handsome man—the fresh roundness of his cheeks in the narrow face, the pure blush of his skin under the sheen of tan, and the crimson fullness of his lips with the deep corners. Now his muscular body had withered to bone and sinew, his face was brown and sharp, as if carved out of wood, and his cheeks were flat and gaunt, with a knot of muscle at the corners of his mouth. Well, he was no longer a young man—and yet he wasn’t very old, either.
He had always been quiet, sober-minded, and pensive, and Kristin knew that even in childhood he had obeyed the Christian commandments with particular zeal. He loved the holy mass and prayers spoken in Latin, and he regarded the church as the place where he felt the most joy. But everyone had sensed a daring courage and zest for life flowing calmly in this quiet man’s soul. Now it seemed as if something had ebbed out of him.
Since she had come home, she hadn’t seen him drunk except on one occasion—an evening during the wedding celebration at Formo. Then he had staggered a bit and slurred his words, but he hadn’t been especially merry. She thought back to her childhood, to the banquets and great ale drinking on feast days, when her father would roar with laughter and slap his thighs at every jest—offering to fight or wrestle with any man renowned for his physical strength, trying out horses, and leaping into dance, but laughing most at himself when he was unsteady on his feet, and lavishly handing out gifts, brimming over with good will and kindness toward everyone. She understood that her father needed this sort of exhilaration from time to time, amidst the constant work, the strict fasts he kept, and the sedate home life with his own people, who saw him as their best friend and supporter.
She also saw that her husband never had this need to get drunk because he put so few restrictions on himself, no matter how sober he might be. He regularly gave in to his impulses, without brooding over right or wrong or what was considered good and proper behavior for sensible people. Erlend was the most moderate man she had ever met when it came to strong liquor. He drank in order to quench his thirst and for the sake of camaraderie, but otherwise he didn’t particularly care for it.
Lavrans Bj?rgulfs?n had now lost his old sense of enjoyment for the ale bowls. He no longer had that craving inside him that needed to be released through revelry. It had never occurred to him before to drown his sorrows in drunkenness, and it didn’t occur to him now—he had always thought that a man ought to bring his joy to the drinking table.
He had turned elsewhere with his sorrows. There was an image that had always hovered dimly in his daughter’s memory: Lavrans on the night when the church burned down. He stood beside the crucifix he had rescued, holding on to the cross and supporting himself with it. And without thinking it through, Kristin had the feeling that what had changed Lavrans was partly his fear for the future of herself and her children with the husband she had chosen, along with the awareness of his own powerlessness.
This knowledge secretly gnawed at her heart. And she had returned home to J?rundgaard, worn out by the tumult of the previous winter and by her own rashness in accepting Erlend’s nonchalance. She knew he was wasteful and always would be, and he had no idea how to manage his properties, which were slowly but constantly diminishing under his control. She had been able to get him to agree to a few things which she and Sira Eiliv had advised, but she didn’t have the heart to speak to him about such matters time and again. And it was tempting simply to be happy with him now. She was tired of arguing and fighting with everything both outside and inside her own soul. But she was also the kind of person who was made anxious and weary by such heedless behavior.
Here at home she had expected to rediscover the peace from her childhood, under the protection of her father.