by Knut Hamsun
Nagel quickly closed the album and looked out at the room with an almost frightened expression. Was he shamming, or was he sincere? Speaking softly, he replied that he might have been mistaken in a few details, but it wasn’t on purpose, and he hadn’t made up the story, it had really happened.
“Oh, please, I didn’t mean to suggest that you’d made it up,” she replied with a laugh. “But can you remember what you answered when I said it was so lovely? That only once before had you heard anything more beautiful, and that was in a dream.”
Oh yes, he remembered; he nodded.
“So, won’t you tell us that dream, too? Oh, please! You tell things so differently. We all beg you.”
But this time he refused. Offering many excuses, he said it was a mere trifle, a dream without beginning or end, a whiff of an idea during sleep. It couldn’t even be put into words; everyone knew those vague, fleeting sensations one could only feel like a flash, gone in an instant. Anyone could understand how stupid the whole thing was by the fact that the dream took place in a white silver wood—
“All right, a silver wood. And then?”
“No.” He shook his head.
He would gladly do anything in the world for her, oh yes, she was free to test him. But he couldn’t tell that dream, she must believe him.
“All right, then something else. We beg you, all of us.”
He wasn’t up to it, not tonight.16 Sorry.
Then a few indifferent words were spoken, a couple of childish questions and answers, sheer nonsense. Dagny said, “So, you would do anything in the world for Miss Andresen? What exactly would you do?”
They laughed at this whim, as did Dagny herself. After a moment’s hesitation Nagel said, “For you I could do something really bad.”
“Something bad for me, then. Let’s hear. A murder, for instance?”
“Oh yes. I could kill an Eskimo and skin him to make a letter case for you.”
“You see! How about Miss Andresen, what could you do for her? Something frightfully good?”
“Perhaps I could, I don’t know. By the way, the thing about the Eskimo I’ve got from somewhere else. Don’t imagine it’s my own idea.”
Pause.
“You’re all very kind, wonderful people,” he went on. “You always want me to put myself forward, do my bit of chatter ahead of everybody else. Just because I’m a stranger.”17
The teacher stole a glance at his watch.
“Let me remind you,” said the hostess, “you won’t be allowed to leave until my husband gets back. Strictly forbidden. Do anything you like, but you can’t leave.”
Then coffee arrived, and the company grew livelier immediately. The lawyer, who had been arguing with the student about something, jumped up, light as a feather for all his corpulence, and clapped his hands in rapture; even the student rubbed his fingers, went over to the piano and struck a few chords.
“Aha,” cried the hostess, “how could we forget that you play the piano. Now go on. Yes, you must!”
And, sure enough, the student would be glad to play. He didn’t know much, but if they didn’t mind hearing some Chopin, or maybe a Lanner waltz...
Nagel applauded the music enthusiastically and said to Dagny,18 “Listening to that kind of music, wouldn’t you like to be at some distance from it, in an adjoining room, say, holding hands with your beloved without speaking? I don’t know, but I’ve always imagined it would be so lovely.”
She gave him a scrutinizing look. Did he mean this nonsense? His face betrayed no irony, and so she fell in with his banal tone:19 “Yes. But you wouldn’t want too much light, would you? And the chairs should preferably be rather low and soft. But outside it had to be rainy and dark.”
She was exceptionally attractive this evening. Those dark eyes in the fair-complexioned face left a strong impression. Though her teeth were not perfectly white, she often laughed, even at utter trifles; her lips were red and full, so you noticed them immediately. But perhaps the most remarkable thing about her was that tinge of red which invariably colored her cheeks every time she spoke and then quickly vanished.
“Oh, the teacher has disappeared again!” Mrs. Stenersen cries. “Of course, of course! That’s just like him, it’s impossible to keep an eye on that man. I hope at least that you, Mr. Reinert, will say good night before you leave.”
The teacher had gone out by the rear entrance; he had sneaked off quietly as always, tired after his intoxication, pale and exhausted from lack of sleep, and had not returned. At this piece of news, Nagel’s face suddenly changed. He was struck by the thought that he might be venturesome and offer to walk Dagny through the woods in the teacher’s place. What’s more, he asked her at once, without delay, beseeching her with his eyes and his bowed head, and ending with, “And I’ll be so good!”
She laughed and replied, “Well, thank you, as long as you promise me that.”
From now on he just waited for the doctor to be back so he could get going. At the prospect of this walk through the woods he became more vivacious, chatted with the guests about everything under the sun, making them all laugh, and was extremely amiable. He was so delighted, so filled with happiness, that he even promised to inspect Mrs. Stenersen’s garden and, in his capacity of a semi-expert, to examine the quality of the soil in the garden’s lower corner with the sick red currant bushes. He would get the better of the lice, all right, even if he had to read an incantation over them, exorcising them.
Did he know magic, too?
He dabbled in all sorts of things. For example, as they could see, he was wearing a ring, an ordinary iron ring with, however, the most miraculous powers. Would anybody think so from the looks of it? But if he should lose that ring some evening at ten o’clock, say, he would have to retrieve it by midnight, or he was in for trouble. It had been given him by a hoary old Greek, a storekeeper in Piraeus. Well, he had done the man a favor in return, and presented him with a tin of tobacco to boot, for the ring.
But did he really believe in it?
A little, sure. Truly! It had cured him once.
A dog could be heard barking in the direction of the seashore. Mrs. Stenersen looked at the clock—it was the doctor, all right, she recognized the dog. How nice! It was twelve o’clock, and he was already back! She rang for more coffee.
“That ring is so remarkable, is it? And you firmly believe in it, Mr. Nagel?”
“Quite firmly.” Or rather, he had good reasons not to be altogether skeptical of it. Anyway, what difference did it make what one believed in, as long as, in one’s heart, one considered one thing to be just as good as the next? The ring had cured him of nervousness and made him steady and strong.
Mrs. Stenersen had a good long laugh, but then began to protest vehemently. She just couldn’t stand that kind of cynical talk—sorry, but she called it cynical talk—and she felt certain that Mr. Nagel didn’t really mean what he said. When you heard educated people say such things, what could be expected of the ordinary joes? Where would we end up? Then even doctors might as well shut up shop.
Nagel defended himself. Sure, one thing was just about as good as any other. It was the patient’s will, his faith and disposition, everything depended on. Still, doctors didn’t have to shut up shop, they had their congregation after all, their faithful; they had the educated people, and the educated people were cured with medicines, while the heretics, the ordinary joes, were cured with iron rings, burned human bones and graveyard dirt. Weren’t there instances where patients got better by drinking ordinary water, as long as they were made to believe that it was a sophisticated remedy? And look at the experience gained from cases of morphine addiction! It was when he met with such strange happenings that the non-doctrinaire individual could say, “I’ll be damned!” and proclaim his independence as regards belief in medical science. However, he didn’t mean to leave the impression that he claimed to understand these matters, he was no expert and lacked the knowledge. Besides, when all was said and done, he was in s
uch high spirits at the moment that he didn’t want to spoil anyone else’s. Mrs. Stenersen must really forgive him, they all must.
He kept looking at his watch and was already buttoning up his jacket.
In the midst of this conversation the doctor turned up. Nervous and gloomy, he said good evening with forced gaiety and thanked his guests for having stayed. Oh well, there was nothing to be done about the teacher, peace be with him, but otherwise the party was complete. Alas, life in this world was a perpetual struggle!
Then he began talking about the visit, as he was in the habit of doing. His sour mien was due to the fact that his patients had let him down; they had behaved like idiots and jackasses, and he could wish they were thrown in jail. Try to imagine the sort of place he had just come from! The wife ill, the wife’s father ill, the wife’s son ill—and the whole house was stinking! And yet, the rest of the family were healthy and rosy-cheeked, the small fry as fit as could be. It was incomprehensible, fabulous; he just couldn’t understand it: There lay the old man, the wife’s father, with a cut this big! They had sent for a woman who used household remedies, and she had stopped the bleeding, to be sure; but what had she stopped it with? Revolting, criminal; it was unspeakable, it smelled, you could choke on it, ugh! Besides, gangrene would set in at the first opportunity! God only knows what would have happened if he hadn’t turned up this evening! Why, they should strengthen the law against quacks, you bet they should, and put it into the hands of those people.... Well, the bleeding had been stopped. But then there was the son, a grown-up fellow, a tall s. o. b. who had caught a rash in his face. “I had given him the ointments before and expressly said: this yellow ointment for one—one—hour, and this white ointment, the zinc ointment, the rest of the time. What does he do? Takes the wrong ointment, naturally, applies the white one for an hour and the yellow one, which burns and draws like hell, he uses round the clock. He keeps this up for two weeks. But—and this is the most remarkable thing of all—the fellow recovered, recovered despite his stupidity; he became well! A bull, an ox, who gets well regardless, using anything he damn well pleases! He presented himself to me tonight with cheeks and chops without as much as a wrinkle. Just luck, a pure fluke! He could have ruined his face for ever so long, but do you think that made him blink? ... Then there is the boy’s mother, the mistress of the house. She’s sick, debilitated, weak, dizzy, nervous, with poor appetite and a buzzing in her ears. ‘Take a bath!’ I say. ‘Take a bath and wash yourself, get some water on your body, damn it! Roast a calf and get some meat on your bones, push open the windows and get some fresh air, don’t stay wet, go outside, throw away that book, Johann Arendt, burn it!’ and so on. ‘But above all, bathe and shower and bathe again, otherwise my medicine won’t do you any good.’ Well, she couldn’t afford the calf, which may have been true enough, but she bathes, she bathes and gets rid of some dirt, till she can’t take it anymore; she’s freezing cold, her teeth chatter from all that cleanliness, and so she says goodbye to the water! She simply couldn’t stand being clean any longer! What then! Well, she gets hold of a chain, an antirheumatic chain, a Volta cross or whatever it’s called, and hangs it around her neck. I ask if I may see the thing: a zinc disk, a rag, a couple of hooks, a couple of smallish hooks, that’s all. ‘What the hell are you using this for?’ I say. Oh, it had helped some, it had really helped her; it had soothed her headaches and given her back some warmth. Oh yes, those hooks and that zinc disk had made her better! What can you do with such people? I could spit on a stick and give it her, and it would do her just as much good. But try to tell her that! ‘Put that thing away,’ I say, ‘or I won’t do anything for you, I won’t touch you.’ And what do you think she does? She holds on to her zinc disk and lets me go! Hee-hee-hee, she lets me go! Good God! No, one shouldn’t be a physician, one should be a medicine man....”
The doctor sits down to his coffee in great agitation. His wife exchanges glances with Nagel and says, laughing, “Mr. Nagel would’ve done exactly the same as that woman. We were discussing the matter just before you came. Mr. Nagel doesn’t believe in your science.”
“So, Mr. Nagel doesn’t?” the doctor remarks curtly. “Well, Mr. Nagel can do as he likes in that regard.”
Annoyed and offended, filled with anger at these bad patients who had ignored his orders, the doctor drank his coffee in silence. He was indignant that everyone was watching him. “Dream up something, get a move on,” he said. But after the coffee he cheered up again, chatted with Dagny awhile, and made fun of his oarsman, the man who had taken him to his patients. Then he reverted to his troubles as a physician and lost his temper afresh. He still found it impossible to forget that mistake with the ointments; it was all just coarseness and superstition and idiocy and nothing else. All in all, the ignorance among the common people was atrocious.
“But the man got well, after all!”
The doctor could have dug his teeth into Dagny when she said this. He straightened up. The man got well, sure, and so what? That didn’t preclude the existence of scandalous stupidity out there among the common people. The man got well, all right; but what if he had burned up his chops? Did she mean to defend his bovine stupidity?
This ignominious run-in with a peasant lout who had acted in the teeth of his instructions and still been cured, irritated the doctor more than anything else and made his otherwise gentle eyes look perfectly furious behind his glasses. He had been taken in by the wiliest fluke, set aside in favor of a zinc disk, and only after a stiff toddy on top of the coffee was he able to forget about it. Then he suddenly said, “Jetta, look, I gave the man who picked me up five kroner, just so you know. Ha-ha-ha, I’ve never seen such a fellow; the whole seat of his pants was gone, but what strength there was in him, and what nonchalance! A helluva guy! He sang all the way rowing out. He was sure as sin he could reach the sky with a fishing rod if he stood on top of Mount Etje. ‘You would have to stand on tiptoe, then,’ I said. That he didn’t understand; he took it seriously and swore he could stand on tiptoe as well as anybody. Ha-ha-ha, would you believe it! But he certainly was amusing.”
Finally Miss Andresen got up to leave, whereupon everybody else did the same. When Nagel said good night, he thanked his hosts so warmly, so sincerely, that the doctor, who had been slightly cross with him the last quarter of an hour, was quite disarmed. “Come back soon! Say, have you got a cigar? Do light a cigar, will you.” And the doctor forced him to come in for a fresh cigar.
Meanwhile Dagny had put on her wraps and was waiting on the steps.
VIII
White nights
IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL NIGHT.
The two or three people who were still to be seen in the streets looked radiantly happy; in the cemetery a man was still trundling a wheelbarrow, singing softly. Otherwise, everything was so quiet that nothing could be heard except this song. From the elevation by the doctor’s house, the town looked like a weird, splayed giant insect, a fabulous creature that had thrown itself flat on its belly, extending arms and horns and feelers in all directions; only here and there did it move a joint or withdraw a claw—such as down by the seaside, where a tiny steam yawl glided soundlessly along the bay, leaving a furrow in the black water.
The smoke from Nagel’s cigar rose in blue swirls. Already taking in the fragrance of the grass and the woods, he was seized with a keen sense of contentment, a special, intense joy that made his eyes water and nearly took his breath away. He was walking beside Dagny, who hadn’t yet spoken. After passing the cemetery, he had uttered a few words of praise for the Stenersens, but she hadn’t answered. By now the stillness and beauty of the night had intoxicated him so profoundly, imbued him with such ardor, that his breath quickened and his eyes grew dim. Oh, how lovely these white nights were! “Just look at those hills over there, how clear they are!” he said in a loud voice. “I’m so happy, Miss Kielland, I must ask you kindly to bear with me; tonight, you know, I could do something foolish from sheer happiness.1 Do you see these pine trees, a
nd the stones and tussocks and clusters of juniper? In this nocturnal light, they look like people sitting there. And the night is clear and cool; it doesn’t oppress us with mysterious forebodings, and no secret dangers are brewing anywhere. Or are they? Now, don’t be annoyed with me, you mustn’t! I feel as though angels were passing through my soul, singing a song. Do I frighten you?”
She had stopped, that’s why he asked whether he frightened her. She looked at him with her blue eyes and smiled, then became serious again and said, “I’ve been wondering what sort of person you are.”
She said this while continuing to stand still and looking at him. During the entire walk she spoke in a clear, tremulous voice, as if she were scared and glad at the same time.
Then the following conversation started up between them, a conversation that, no matter how slowly they walked, went on until they were at the other end of the forest, jumping from one thing to another, from mood to mood, with all the emotional restlessness they were both feeling.
“You’ve been thinking about me? Really? But I’ve probably thought much, much more about you. I already knew about you when I arrived, I overheard your name aboard the steamer; I happened to hear it by chance as I was listening to a conversation. And I went ashore here on June 12. June 12—”
“On June 12 of all days, you don’t say!”
“Yes. Flags were flying all over town, and I thought it was such a delightful little town, that’s why I stepped ashore here. And soon I heard more about you.”
She smiled and asked, “Well, I suppose you heard it from Miniman?”
“No. I heard that you were loved by everybody, by the whole town, and that you were admired by all.” ... Suddenly Nagel came to think of Karlsen, the theologian, who had taken his own life for her sake.2