by Knut Hamsun
“Sara.”
“Sara. And one more thing: Could I have a bite to eat? So, your name is Sara, is it? Tell me,” he resumed, “was there a pharmacy in this building at one time?”
Surprised, Sara replied, “Yes. But that was several years ago.”
“Several years ago, you say? Anyway, it struck me the moment I entered the hall; I couldn’t tell by the smell, but I had a feeling of it all the same. Oh well.”
When he came down for dinner, he sat through the whole meal without uttering a word. His fellow passengers from the steamer the evening before, the two gentlemen sitting at the end of the table, made signs to one another as he came in, even joking quite openly about yesterday’s mishap without his seeming to hear them. He ate rapidly, shook his head at dessert, and abruptly left the table by sliding backward off his stool. He immediately lighted a cigar and disappeared down the street.
He wasn’t seen again until long past midnight, returning shortly before the clock struck three. Where had he been? It became apparent later that he had gone back to the neighboring town, walking to and fro the whole long distance he had traveled by carriage in the morning. He must have had some very urgent business. When Sara opened the door to him he was wet with perspiration, but he smiled repeatedly at the maid and was in excellent spirits.
“Good heavens, what a lovely neck you have, girl!” he said. “Did any mail arrive for me while I was away? For Nagel, that is, Johan Nagel? Oh dear, three telegrams! Say, do me the favor to take away that picture on the wall, will you? So I won’t have it staring me in the face. It would be so tiresome to lie in bed looking at it all the time. Napoleon III, you see, didn’t have such a green beard. Thank you!”
When Sara had left, Nagel came to a halt in the middle of the room. Standing perfectly still, he stared quite absently at a particular spot on the wall, and except that his head fell more and more to one side, he didn’t move. This went on for a long time.
Below medium height, he had a swarthy face with curiously dark eyes and a sensitive, effeminate mouth. On one finger he wore a plain ring of lead or iron. He was very broad-shouldered and might be twenty-eight or, at most, thirty years old. His hair was turning gray at the temples.
He awoke from his thoughts with an abrupt start, so abrupt that it could have been feigned, as if he had contemplated making this start for a long time, though he was alone in the room. Then he took some keys, some loose change, and a kind of lifesaving medal on a sadly abused ribbon out of his trouser pocket and put them on the table by his bed. Next, he stuck his wallet under the pillow and fetched his watch and a vial from his vest pocket, a little medicine bottle labeled “Poison.” He held the watch in his hand a moment before putting it aside, but returned the vial to his pocket at once. Then he removed his ring and washed, brushing his hair back with his fingers; he didn’t once look in the mirror.
He had already gone to bed when he suddenly missed his ring, which had been left on the washstand, and as though he couldn’t be without that wretched iron ring, he got up and put it on again. Finally he opened the three telegrams, but even before he had finished reading the first one he burst into a brief, quiet chuckle. He lay there all alone laughing to himself; his teeth were exceptionally fine. Then his face grew serious again, and a moment later he tossed the telegrams aside with the utmost indifference. And yet they seemed to concern a matter of great importance; it was an offer of sixty-two thousand kroner for a landed property, the entire sum to be paid in cash if the sale came about immediately. They were brief, dry business telegrams with nothing ridiculous about them, but they were unsigned. A few minutes later Nagel had fallen asleep. The two candles on the table, which he had forgotten to put out, illuminated his chest and his clean-shaven face, and cast an unwavering light on the telegrams lying wide-open on the table....
The following morning Johan Nagel sent to the post office for his mail; there were some newspapers, including a couple of foreign ones, but no letter. He placed his violin case on a chair in the middle of the room, as if wishing to show it off; but he didn’t open it, leaving the instrument untouched.
In the course of the morning he did nothing except write a few letters and pace the floor of his room reading a book. He did buy a pair of gloves in a shop, and when he visited the marketplace a little later, he paid ten kroner for a small carrot-colored puppy, which he at once gave to the hotel keeper. To everybody’s amusement, he had baptized the puppy Jakobsen, regardless of the fact that it was a female.
And so he did nothing the whole day. He had no business to take care of in the town, visited no offices, and paid no calls, not knowing a soul. The people in the hotel were rather surprised by his marked indifference to nearly everything, even his own affairs. Thus, the three telegrams were still lying on the table in his room, open to everyone; he hadn’t touched them since the evening they arrived. He also failed to answer direct questions at times. Twice the hotel keeper had tried to get out of him who he was and what had brought him to the town, but he had brushed the matter aside both times.1 Another peculiar trait of his became evident in the course of the day: although he didn’t know a soul in the place and hadn’t made contact with anybody, he had nonetheless stopped in front of one of the young ladies in town at the entrance to the churchyard—had stopped to look at her and bowed very deeply without a word of explanation. The lady in question had blushed all over her face. Afterward the impudent fellow had strolled right down the highway, as far as the parsonage and beyond, which he also did, incidentally, on the following days. He would return so late from his rambles that it was after closing time, and they constantly had to open the door for him at the hotel.
Then, just as Nagel came out of his room the third morning, he was accosted by the hotel keeper, who greeted him and said a few amiable words. They went out on the veranda and sat down. The hotel keeper took it into his head to ask him about the shipment of a crate of fresh fish: “How should I send that crate you see there, can you tell me?”
Nagel looked at the crate, smiled, and shook his head. “Oh, I haven’t the least idea about that sort of thing,” he replied.
“You haven’t, eh? I thought perhaps you had traveled a bit and seen things here and there, how they do it in other places.”
“Oh no, I haven’t traveled much.”
Pause.
“Hm, maybe it’s rather with—well, with other things that you have occupied yourself. You’re a businessman perhaps?”
“No, I’m not a businessman.”
“So you’re not here on business then?”
No answer. Nagel lighted a cigar and puffed slowly, looking into vacancy. The hotel keeper observed him from the side. “Won’t you play for us some day? I see you have brought your violin,” he tried again.
Nagel replied nonchalantly, “Oh no, I’m through with that.”
He soon got up without further ado and left. A moment later he came back and said, “Oh, about the bill, I just had an idea; you can give it to me whenever you like. It doesn’t matter to me when I pay up.”
“Thanks,” the hotel keeper replied, “there’s no hurry. If you stay for any length of time, we’ll have to charge you somewhat less, of course. I don’t know, but do you plan to be with us for some time?”
Nagel suddenly became animated and replied at once; for no apparent reason, his face even showed a faint blush.
“Yes, I may very well decide to stay for some time,” he said. “It all depends. By the way, perhaps I haven’t told you: I’m an agronomist, a farmer. I’ve just returned from a trip, and I may settle down here for a while. But perhaps I even forgot to ... My name is Nagel, Johan Nilsen Nagel.”
With that he shook the hotel keeper’s hand very heartily, apologizing for not having introduced himself sooner. His face didn’t betray the least trace of irony.
“It just occurred to me that we might be able to offer you a better, quieter room,” the hotel keeper said. “You’re next to the stairs now, and that’s not always pl
easant.”
“Thank you, but that’s not necessary, the room is excellent, I’m quite satisfied with it. Besides, I can see all of Market Square from my windows, and that’s very interesting, of course.”2
After a moment the hotel keeper went on, “So you’re taking a holiday now for a while? Then you’ll be around until well into the summer, at any rate?”
“Two or three months, perhaps even longer, I can’t say exactly,” Nagel answered. “It all depends. I’ll have to wait and see.”
At that moment a man walked by, bowing to the hotel keeper in passing. He was an insignificant-looking man, small of stature and very poorly dressed; he had such difficulty walking that you couldn’t help noticing, and yet he managed to move along pretty fast. Though he made a very deep bow, the hotel keeper didn’t tip his hat. Nagel, on the other hand, doffed his velvet cap.
The hotel keeper turned to him and said, “That’s someone we call Miniman. He’s a bit daft, but I feel sorry for him; he’s a very kindhearted fellow.”
Nothing further was said about Miniman.
“I read something,” Nagel suddenly says, “I read something in the papers a few days ago about a man who was found dead in the woods someplace around here. What sort of a man was he? A certain Karlsen, I believe. Was he someone from this town?”
“Yes,” the hotel keeper replies, “he was the son of a local bloodletter; you can see her house from here, that red roof out there. He was only home for the holidays, and then he quit this life while he was at it. But it’s a great pity, he was a gifted boy and soon to be ordained. Hm, it’s hard to know what to say about it, but it’s certainly a bit suspicious; for since both arteries were severed, it could hardly have been an accident, could it? And now they have found the knife too, a small penknife with a white handle; the police found it late last night. Apparently there was a love affair behind it.”
“Oh, indeed! But can there really be any doubt that he took his own life?”
“One hopes for the best—well, you know, there are those who believe he may have carried the knife in his hand and stumbled so awkwardly that he hurt himself in two places at once. Ha-ha, that seems very unlikely to me, very unlikely indeed. But he will definitely be buried in consecrated ground. No, he probably didn’t stumble, I’m afraid!”
“You say they found the knife only last night. But wasn’t the knife lying next to him?”
“No, it was lying several paces off. After using it, he threw it away, into the woods; it was found quite by chance.”
“Really. But what reason could he have had for throwing the knife away, since he was lying there with open cuts? It would be clear to everyone, wouldn’t it, that he must have used a knife?”
“Ah, God knows what he may have had in mind; but, as I said, there was probably a love affair behind it all. It’s quite unheard of; the more I think about it, the worse it looks to me.”
“Why do you think a love affair was behind it?”
“For several reasons. However, it’s hard to know what to say about it.”
“But couldn’t he simply have fallen, by accident? He was lying in such an awkward position; wasn’t he lying on his stomach with his face in a puddle?”
“Yes, and he had made an awful mess of himself. But that doesn’t make any difference, he may have meant something by that too. He may have wanted to hide the death agony in his face that way. Who knows?”
“Did he leave a note?”
“Supposedly he was writing something on a piece of paper; anyway, he would often be seen on the road writing things. And now they imagine he may have been using the knife to sharpen his pencil or something, when he took a tumble and cut open, first, one wrist at the artery and, next, the other wrist at the artery, all in the same fall. Ha-ha-ha! But he did leave a note, sure enough; he was holding a small piece of paper in his hand, and on that paper were these words, ‘May your steel be as sharp as your final no!’ ”
“What drivel.3 Was the knife dull?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Why didn’t he sharpen it first?”
“It wasn’t his knife.”
“Whose knife was it, then?”
The hotel keeper hesitates a moment before he says, “It was Miss Kielland’s knife.”
“Was it Miss Kielland’s knife?” Nagel asks. And a moment later, “Well, and who is Miss Kielland?”
“Dagny Kielland. She is the parson’s daughter.”
“I see. How strange! Whoever heard the likes! The young man was that crazy about her, was he?”
“He must’ve been, sure. Anyway, they’re all crazy about her, he wasn’t the only one.”
Nagel became lost in thought and said nothing further. Then the hotel keeper breaks the silence and remarks, “Well, I’ve been telling you these things in confidence and I beg you to—”
“Righto,” Nagel replies. “You may rest easy on that score.”
When Nagel went down to breakfast a little later, the hotel keeper was already in the kitchen relating that, at last, he had had a regular chat with the man in yellow in Number 7. “He’s an agronomist,” the hotel keeper said, “and he’s come from abroad. He says he’ll be here for several months. God only knows what sort of man he is.”
II
THAT SAME DAY, in the evening, Nagel happened to come across Miniman all of a sudden. An endless and tedious conversation took place between them, a conversation that lasted well over three hours.
It all went as follows, from beginning to end:
Johan Nagel was sitting in the hotel café with a newspaper in his hand when Miniman came in. There were also some other people sitting around the tables, including a stout peasant woman with a black-and-red knitted kerchief over her shoulders. They all seemed to know Miniman; he bowed politely right and left as he came in, but was received with loud yells and laughter. The peasant woman even got up and wanted to dance with him.
“Not today, not today,” he says to the woman evasively, and with that he walks straight up to the hotel keeper and addresses him, cap in hand: “I’ve brought the coal up to the kitchen; I suppose that will be all for today?”
“Yes,” the hotel keeper replies, “what else should there be?”
“No,” Miniman says, quietly withdrawing.
He was exceptionally ugly. He had calm blue eyes, but horrible protruding front teeth and an extremely twisted gait because of a physical defect. His hair was quite gray; his beard on the other hand was darker, but so sparse that his skin showed through everywhere. The man had once been a sailor, but was now living with a relative who had a small coal business by the quayside. He hardly ever raised his eyes from the floor when he spoke to somebody.
They called to him from one of the tables; a gentleman in a gray summer suit eagerly beckoned to him, showing him a bottle of beer.
“Come and have a glass of mother’s milk. Besides, I’d like to see what you look like without a beard,” he says.
Respectfully, cap still in hand and with bent back, Miniman approaches the table. As he passed Nagel he gave him a special bow and moved his lips slightly. He takes his stand before the gentleman in gray and whispers, “Not so loud, Your Honor, I beg you. There are strangers present, as you can see.”
“But good heavens,” the deputy judge says, “I only wanted to offer you a glass of beer. And here you come and scold me for talking too loud.”
“No, you misunderstand me, and I beg your pardon. But since there are strangers present, I’d rather not start with those old tricks again. And I can’t drink beer, not now.”
“Oh, you can’t? So you can’t drink beer?”
“No, but thank you, not now.”
“So, you thank me, but not now? When will you thank me then? Ha-ha-ha, a fine parson’s son you are! Just look at the way you express yourself.”
“Oh, you misunderstand me; well, never mind.”
“There, there, no nonsense. What’s the matter with you?”
The deputy pulls Miniman
onto a chair, and Miniman sits there for a moment but gets up again.
“No, leave me alone,” he says, “I can’t stand drink; nowadays I can stand it even less than I used to, God knows why. I get drunk before I know it and become all confused.”
The deputy rises, looks intently at Miniman, pushes a glass into his hand and says, “Drink.”
Pause. Miniman looks up, brushes his hair off his forehead and remains silent.
“All right, I’ll do as you wish, but just a few drops,” he says. “Only a little, to have the honor of drinking a toast with you!”
“Drink up!” shouts the deputy, having to turn away so as not to burst out laughing.
“No, not quite, not quite. Why should I drink up when I dislike it? Well, don’t take offense and knit your brows on that account; anyway, since you insist, I’ll do it this once. I just hope it won’t go to my head. It’s ridiculous, but I can take so little. Skoal!”
“To the last drop!” the deputy shouts again, “bottoms up! There now, that’s right. And now we’ll sit down and make some faces. First, you can grind your teeth a little, and then I’ll snip off your beard and make you ten years younger. But first you’ll grind your teeth, all right?”
“No, I won’t, not in front of these people I don’t know. You mustn’t insist, I really won’t do it,” Miniman answers, wanting to leave. “Besides, I don’t have time,” he says.
“Don’t have time? That’s too bad. Ha-ha, that’s really too bad. Not even time?”
“No, not right now.”
“Now listen: suppose I told you I’ve long been thinking of getting you a new coat, to replace the one you’re wearing right now—. Anyway, let me see; sure, it’s completely rotten, look! It comes unstuck at the touch of a finger.” And the deputy finds a little hole into which he bores his finger. “It gives way, it doesn’t hold the least bit—look at this, hey, look!”