5/9/2023 0 Comments De vogels by Tarjei Vesaas![]() ![]() As far as the locals are concerned Mattis is ‘simple’, and yet that strikes me as short-sighted. ![]() Certainly, Hege treats him like a child, looking after him, telling him what to do, and often humouring him in his strange preoccupations and mental flights of fancy. ![]() ![]() While Mattis is an adult, he appears to have the mental age, and physical capacity, of someone much younger. In The Birds, acclaimed Norwegian author, and one time Nobel candidate, Tarjei Vesaas tells the story of Mattis and his long-suffering sister Hege. There are, of course, a lot of horrible things that can happen to a human being, but it strikes me that the loss of mental agility, and being aware of this loss, at least some of the time, must be a particularly potent kind of misery. He had obviously picked up on my irritation, and I felt ashamed, as, I suspected, he did too, but for different reasons. But then, a moment or two later, I realised that he was offering me this information as an excuse, as an explanation. ‘I’ve had three strokes,’ he said, and I nodded, thinking this was merely an example of the strange compulsion people have to inform others of their problems or ailments. He was easily confused often repeated himself and stuttered terribly. The other day I was talking to a man who, impolitely, one might call ‘slow,’ and I felt myself getting annoyed and losing patience. ![]()
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