Mysteries

by Knut Hamsun

“Leave me alone! For God’s sake, what have I ever done to you? And leave my coat alone, too!”

  “But good Lord, I promise to get you another coat tomorrow, I promise it in the presence of—let me see: one, two, four, seven—yes, seven people. What’s the matter with you this evening? You put on airs and act rude, wanting to trample us all underfoot. Oh yes, you do. Just because I touched your coat.”

  “I beg your pardon, I didn’t mean to be rude. You know I would do you any favor whatsoever, but ...”

  “All right, then do me the favor of sitting down.”

  Miniman brushes his gray hair from his forehead and sits down.

  “Good. And now, do me the favor of grinding your teeth a little.”

  “No, that I won’t do.”

  “You won’t, eh? Yes or no?”

  “Good God, what harm did I ever do you? Can’t you just leave me alone? Why should I, of all people, be the laughingstock of everybody? That stranger over there is looking in our direction, I see; he’s keeping an eye on us and I dare say he’s laughing, too. Things never change; the very first day you came here as a deputy judge, Dr. Stenersen jumped on me and taught you right away to make fun of me, and now you’re teaching the gentleman over there to do the same. They learn it by turn, one after the other.”

  “There, there now, yes or no?”

  “No, I tell you!” Miniman screams, jumping up from his chair. But as if afraid he’d been too overbearing,1 he sits down again and adds, “I can’t even grind my teeth, you must believe me.”

  “You can’t? Ha-ha, surely you can. You’re a whiz at grinding your teeth.”

  “Upon my word, I can’t!”

  “Ha-ha-ha! You’ve done it before, after all.”

  “Yes, but then I was drunk. I don’t remember, my head was spinning. I was sick for two days afterward.”

  “Right,” says the deputy. “You were drunk at the time, I admit that. Anyway, why are you blabbering about this in front of all these people? You wouldn’t catch me doing anything like that.”2

  At this point the hotel keeper left the café. Miniman is silent; the deputy looks at him and says, “Well, what do you say? Don’t forget that coat.”

  “I’m not forgetting it,” Miniman replies. “But I won‘t, and I can’t, drink any more, now you know.”

  “You will and you can, both! Did you hear what I said? You will and you can, I said. Even if I have to pour it down your throat....” At these words the deputy rises with Miniman’s glass in his hand. “Now, open your mouth!”

  “No, by God in heaven, I won’t drink any more beer,” cries Miniman, pale with emotion. “No power on earth can make me do it! I’m sorry, but it makes me sick, you have no idea what it’s like. Don’t hurt me so, I sincerely beg you. I’d rather—rather grind my teeth a little without any beer.”

  “Well, that’s another matter; damn it, yes, that’s quite another matter, if you’ll do it without beer.”

  “Yes, I’d rather do it without the beer.”

  At last Miniman grinds his terrible teeth, amid the loud laughter of the bystanders. Nagel is ostensibly still reading his paper, sitting quietly in his place by the window.

  “Louder, louder!” cries the deputy. “Grind them more loudly, or we can’t hear you.”

  Miniman sits stiffly upright, holding on to his chair with both hands as if afraid of falling off, grinding his teeth to make his head quiver. Everybody laughs, the peasant woman laughs so hard that she has to wipe her eyes; not knowing what to do for laughter, she witlessly spits twice on the floor in sheer delight.

  “God save me from the likes of you!” she squeals, quite overcome. “Oh, that deputy!”3

  “There! I can’t grind them any louder,” Miniman says, “I really can’t, as God is my witness. Believe me, I can’t anymore.”

  “All right, take a rest for a moment and then start over. But you have to grind your teeth. Then we’ll snip off your beard. But taste your beer, will you; yes, you must. Here, it’s ready for you.”

  Miniman shakes his head in silence. The deputy takes out his wallet and puts a twenty-five øre piece on the table. Then he says, “By the way, you usually do it for ten, but I won’t begrudge you twenty-five. I’m raising your wages. There!”

  “Please, don’t torture me anymore, I won’t do it.”

  “You won’t do it? You refuse?”

  “God in heaven, won’t you ever stop and leave me alone! I’m not going to humor you anymore for the sake of that coat, I’m a human being, after all. What do you want with me?”

  “Now let me tell you something. As you can see, I’m flicking this bit of cigar ash into your glass, right? And I take this ordinary match here and that trifle of a match there and drop them into the same glass as you watch. There! And now I guarantee you that you will drink your glass to the dregs, despite everything. Yes, you will.”

  Miniman jumped up. Visibly trembling, his gray hair again falling over his eyes, he looked the deputy squarely in the face. This went on for several seconds.

  “No, that’s too much, that’s too much!” the peasant woman cries out. “Don’t do it! Ha-ha-ha! Lord help me, the way you go on!”

  “So you won’t? You refuse?” asks the deputy. He, too, gets up and remains standing.

  Miniman made an effort to speak, but couldn’t utter a word. Everybody was looking at him.

  Then, suddenly, Nagel rises from his table by the window, puts his paper down and walks across the room. He takes his time and makes no noise, and yet he attracts everybody’s attention. Stopping beside Miniman, he puts his hand on his shoulder and says in a loud, clear voice, “If you pick up your glass and throw it in the face of that cub over there, I’ll give you ten kroner in cash and save you from all possible consequences.” He pointed straight at the deputy’s face and repeated: “I mean that cub there.”

  Suddenly there was dead silence. Terror-stricken, Miniman looked from one to the other and said, “But—oh, but—?” He got no further, but repeated his words in a trembling voice again and again, as if asking a question. Nobody else said anything. Bewildered, the deputy backed off a step and found his chair; he had turned white as a sheet and could say nothing, like the rest. He was all agape.

  “I repeat,” Nagel went on, in a loud, deliberate voice, “that I’ll give you ten kroner if you throw your glass into that cub’s face. I’m holding the money right here, in my hand. You shouldn’t worry about the consequences.” And, in fact, Nagel did hold out a ten-krone bill so Miniman could see it.

  But Miniman behaved very strangely. He immediately slipped away to a corner of the café, running with short, crooked steps, and sat down there without answering. His head bowed, he looked furtively in every direction, repeatedly pulling up his knees as if terrified.

  Then the door opened and the hotel keeper came back in. He began puttering with his own things by the counter and paid no attention to what was going on around him. Only when the deputy jumped up and raised both his arms with a furious, nearly voiceless yell in front of Nagel, did he notice and ask, “What on earth—?”

  But nobody answered. The deputy gave a couple of wild blows, but each time ran up against Nagel’s fists. He was getting nowhere. Goaded on by his bad luck, he foolishly beat the air as if trying to fight off the world, until he finally lurched sideways toward the tables, tumbled against a stool and fell to his knees. He breathed heavily, and his whole figure was altered beyond recognition by rage; what’s more, he had numbed his arms knocking against that pair of sharp fists shooting up wherever he gave a blow. At this point pandemonium broke loose in the café; the peasant woman and her party fled toward the exits, while the rest yelled in chorus and tried to intervene. Finally the deputy gets on his legs again and walks up to Nagel, stops and screams, his hands extended straight in front of him—screams in ludicrous despair at not finding the right words, “You confounded—you damn dude—oh, go to hell!”

  Nagel looked at him and smiled, walked over to the table, pic
ked up the deputy’s hat and handed it to him with a bow. The deputy snatched his hat and, in his rage, was about to fling it back, but thought better of it and slammed it on his head. Then he turned on his heel and left the room. There were two big dents in his hat as he left, giving him a comical appearance.

  Now the hotel keeper pushed forward and demanded an explanation. Turning to Nagel, he grabbed his arm and said, “What’s going on here? What’s the meaning of all this?”

  “Oh, please, don’t grab me by the arm,” Nagel answered, “I won’t run away. Besides, nothing is going on here; I insulted the man who just left and he tried to defend himself. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? Everything is all right.”

  But the hotel keeper was irate and stamped his feet. “No ruckus here!” he cried, “no ruckus! If you want to have a brawl, go out into the street, in here I just won’t have it. Have the people gone out of their minds?”

  “That’s well and good!” a couple of the guests cut in, “but we saw the whole thing!” And with people’s inclination to agree with the victor of the moment, they unconditionally side with Nagel. They explained it all to the hotel keeper.

  Nagel himself shrugged his shoulders and walked over to Miniman. Without any preliminaries, he asked the little gray-haired fool, “What’s the relationship between you and that deputy, since he can treat you that way?”

  “Oh, forget it!” Miniman replies. “There’s no relationship at all between us, he’s a stranger to me. I only danced for him once in Market Square, for ten øre. Anyway, he always makes fun of me.”

  “So you dance for people and charge a fee for it?”

  “Yes, now and then. But it doesn’t happen very often, only when I need the money and can’t get my hands on ten øre any other way.”

  “And what do you use the money for?”

  “I need money for many things. In the first place, I’m a stupid man; I’m not very smart and it isn’t easy for me. When I was a sailor and supported myself, things were better in every way; but then I was injured—I fell from the rigging and ruptured myself, and since then I’ve had a hard time managing. I get my board and whatever else I need from my uncle, I also live with him, quite comfortably—in fact, we have plenty of everything, because my uncle makes his living as a coal dealer. But I do make a small contribution toward my support, especially now in the summertime when we sell hardly any coal. This is as true as I’m sitting here telling you. There are some days when ten øre comes in handy, I always buy something for the money and take it home. But as far as the deputy is concerned, he enjoys seeing me dance simply because I have a hernia and can’t dance properly.”

  “So your uncle goes along with your dancing for pay like that in Market Square?”

  “No, no, not at all, you mustn’t think that. He often says, ‘Away with that clown money!’ Yes, he often calls it clown money when I bring him my ten øre, and he scolds me because people make a laughingstock of me.”

  “Well, this was the first thing. How about the second?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “How about the second.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “You said that, in the first place, you were a stupid man. Well, what comes next, in the second place?”

  “Oh, if I said so, I apologize.”

  “So you’re just stupid?”

  “I sincerely beg your pardon!”

  “Was your father a parson?”

  “Yes, my father was a parson.”

  Pause.

  “Listen,” Nagel says, “if you have nothing else to do, let’s go to my place for a while, up to my room, would you like that? Do you smoke? Good! This way, please, I live upstairs. I’ll be very grateful for your visit.”

  To everyone’s great surprise, Nagel and Miniman went up to the second floor, where they spent the whole evening together.

  III

  MINIMAN FOUND A CHAIR for himself and lighted a cigar.

  “You don’t drink, do you?” Nagel asked.

  “No, I don’t drink much, it makes me confused, and before long I see double,” his visitor replied.

  “Have you ever had champagne? Yes, of course you have?”

  “Yes, many years ago, at my parents’ silver wedding; then I drank champagne.”

  “Did it taste good?”

  “Yes, I remember it tasted very good.”

  Nagel rang and got some champagne.

  As they sip at their glasses while smoking, Nagel suddenly says, looking intently at Miniman, “Tell me—well, it’s only a question and maybe you will find it ridiculous; but could you, for a certain sum, assume paternity for a child whose father you were not? Just an idea that crossed my mind.”

  Miniman gazed at him with wide-open eyes and remained silent.

  “For a modest sum, fifty kroner, or let’s say up to a couple of hundred kroner?” Nagel asks. “The exact amount doesn’t really matter.”

  Miniman shakes his head and is silent for a long time.

  “No,” he then replies.

  “You couldn’t? I would pay the amount in cash.”

  “It makes no difference. No, I couldn’t do it, I can’t be of any service to you in this.”

  “Why not, exactly?”

  “Don’t ask me, let me be. I’m a human being.”

  “Well, maybe I asked for too much. Why should you do anyone a favor like that? But I would like to ask you one more question: Are you willing to—could you, for five kroner, go around town with a newspaper or a paper bag fastened to your back, starting from the hotel and walking by way of Market Square and the quays—could you do that? For five kroner?”

  Miniman bows his head in shame and repeats mechanically, “Five kroner.” That was all he answered.

  “Oh well, ten kroner if you like; let’s say ten kroner. So you could do it for ten, could you?”

  Miniman brushes his hair from his forehead. “I can’t understand why all those who come here know in advance that I am a laughingstock to everybody,” he says.

  “As you see, I can hand you the money right away,” Nagel goes on. “It’s all up to you.”

  Miniman glues his eyes to the bill, stares helplessly at the money for a moment, licking his chops for it, and exclaims, “Yes, I—”

  “Pardon me!” Nagel says quickly. “Pardon me for interrupting you,” he says again to prevent the other one from talking. “What’s your name? I don’t know—I don’t think you told me what your name is.”

  “My name is Grøgaard.”

  “Grøgaard. Are you related to the Grøgaard who was a member of the Constitutional Assembly?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “What were we talking about? Grøgaard, indeed? Well, in that case you obviously wouldn’t want to earn these ten kroner that way, would you?”

  “No,” Miniman whispers, vacillating.

  “Now, listen to me,” Nagel says, speaking very slowly. “I’ll gladly give you this ten-krone bill because you didn’t want to do what I proposed to you. And, besides that, I’ll let you have another ten-krone bill if you’ll give me the pleasure of accepting it. Don’t jump up; this small good turn doesn’t bother me, I’ve got lots of money right now, quite a lot of money, it won’t cause me any financial difficulty.” Having taken out the money, Nagel added, “It’s a great pleasure to do this for you. There you are!”

  Miniman is speechless, his good fortune is turning his head and he begins to fight back his tears. He blinks his eyes and swallows. Nagel says, “You must be around forty?”

  “Forty-three, I’m past forty-three.”

  “Now, put the money in your pocket. You’re most welcome! —What’s the name of that deputy we talked to in the café?”

  “That I don’t know, we simply call him the deputy. He’s a deputy in the judge’s office.”

  “Oh well, it’s of no importance. Tell me—”

  “Pardon me!” Miniman can’t hold back any longer, he’s overwhelmed and absolutely wants to explai
n himself, though he stammers like a child. “I beg your pardon, please forgive me!” he says. And for a long time he can’t utter another word.

  “What did you want to say?”

  “Thank you, thank you sincerely from a sincere ...”

  Pause.

  “That’s all done with.”

  “No, wait a moment!” Miniman cried. “Pardon me, but it’s not done with. You thought I didn’t want to do it, that it was obstinacy on my part and that I enjoyed putting up a fight; but as sure as there’s a God—. How can we say it’s done with if you may even have gotten the impression that I had my eyes solely on the reward and wouldn’t do it for five kroner?1 It was only this I wanted to say.”

  “Very good. A man with your name and breeding can’t allow himself to play such foolish pranks, of course. I was just thinking—well, you obviously know this town inside out, do you not? You see, I mean to stay here for a while, to settle down here for several months this summer, in fact. What do you think of that? Are you from here?”

  “Yes, this is where I was born. My father was a parson here, and I’ve lived here for the last thirteen years, since I became an invalid.”

  “Do you deliver coal to people?”

  “Yes, I take coal around to the houses in town. It doesn’t bother me, if that’s why you’re asking. I’m used to it, and it doesn’t do me any harm as long as I’m careful on the stairs. But last winter I fell, and it got so bad I had to use a stick for quite a while.”

  “You did, indeed? How did that happen?”

  “Well, it was on the steps of the bank, they were a bit icy. I’m coming up with a rather heavy sack. About halfway, I see Consul Andresen coming down high up. I want to turn around and go back down so the Consul can get by. He didn’t tell me to, it just came naturally and I would’ve done it regardless. But at that very moment I was unlucky enough to slip on the step and fall. I landed on my right shoulder.2 ‘How are you doing?’ the Consul asks, ‘you didn’t scream, so you haven’t hurt yourself, have you?’ ‘No,’ I reply, ‘I guess I was lucky.’ But less than five minutes later I fainted twice in a row; besides, my abdomen swelled up because of my old ailment. By the way, the Consul remembered me generously afterward, though he was in no way to blame.”