“Do you remember,” she said in between her sobs, “that man who once visited us while we were at Skog? The one who knew the old ballads? Do you remember the one about a dead man who had come back from the land of torment and told his son the legend of what he had seen? He said that a great clamor was heard from the depths of Hell, and unfaithful wives ground up earth for their husbands’ food. Bloody were the stones that they turned, bloody hung their hearts from their breasts…”
Lavrans said nothing. “For all these years I have thought of those words,” said Ragnfrid. “Each day I felt as if my heart were bleeding, for I felt as if I were grinding up earth for your food.”
Lavrans didn’t know why he answered the way he did. His chest felt empty and hollow, like a man whose heart and lungs had been ripped out through his back. But he placed his hand, heavy and weary, on his wife’s head and said, “Earth has to be ground up, my Ragnfrid, before the food can grow.”
When she tried to take his hand to kiss it, he pulled it abruptly away. Then he looked down at his wife, took her hand, placed it on his knee, and leaned his cold, rigid face against it. And in this manner they sat there together, without moving and without speaking another word.