The Cross

* *

Something happened to him that winter. An experience that changed his life. We had known eachother for a long time. One day he asked me, silencly, to drav a cross. He had found a place.

My answer did not come at once. A yes become something more. I would draw, build and sett up the cross myself; to gain a personal dignity. He accepted.

It took us the spring and a part of the summer before we was ready to rise the cross. It felt strange to travel across the country with parts of a cross on the car. A local fisherman took us out the fjord. We talked about the weather. The boat cuted the silence sea.

Caerefoully we unloaded the boat, a godbye, and the fisherman with his boat left us alone on the small island. That same evening he washed the cross i the clear sea. To sleep underneath the blue sky gives a conferm of the safety of the earth.

*

The work took us ten days. The sea and the wind was not cooperative. We drilled holes in the hard rock and filled them with dynamite. Yellow-red tounges of fire blowed up the nigth.

Part by part the cross rised. An final push - steel adainst rock - then silence. The cross was rised.

*

I do not easily say godby to a cross. It's the cross that says godby to me.

Per Olaf Fjeld

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Source: Byggekunst nr. 4/1994
Web operator: Øyvind Sæter - oes@stud.unit.no
Last modified: Mon Jan 16 15:44:11 1995