Mysteries

by Knut Hamsun

  “As I lie there leaning on my elbow, I hold out my hand to them, and some sit down on it; they look like a trembling seven-pointed star on my hand. But when I bend forward and look into their eyes, I see that their eyes are blind. I release the seven blind ones and catch seven others, and they too are blind. Alas, they were all blind—the whole tower was full of blind angels singing.

  “Realizing this almost took my breath away, I couldn’t move; a sad lament glided through my soul for the sake of those blind eyes.

  “A minute went by. Lying there listening, I hear a heavy, hollow stroke somewhere far away; the sound is so clear, it’s uncanny, followed by a long rumble: it was the town clock striking the hour again. It struck one o’clock.

  “All at once the song of the angels ceased. I saw them get into formation and fly away, swarming up to the ceiling, pushing to be off. They were like an oblique wall of sheer light, and they all looked at me as they left. The last one turned to give me yet another look with his blind eyes before he disappeared.

  “That is the last thing I remember, the one angel who turned to look at me, although he was blind. Then everything went dark. I fell back on the bed and slept....

  “When I awoke it was broad daylight. I was still alone in the vault. My clothes were lying on the floor in front of me. I brushed them with my hand, they were still a little wet; but I put them on anyway. Then the door opens and the girl from the night before reappears.

  “She comes straight up to me, and I say, ‘Where do you come from? Where were you last night?’

  “‘Up there,’ she replies, pointing to the roof of the tower.

  “‘Didn’t you sleep?’

  “‘No, I didn’t sleep. I kept watch.’

  “‘But didn’t you hear music last night?’ I asked. ‘I heard a music too wonderful for words.’

  “‘Oh yes, that was me playing and singing,’ she replied.

  “‘Was it you? Tell me, child, was it you?’

  “‘It was.’

  “She gave me her hand and said, ‘Come now, I’ll walk you part of the way.’

  “And so we walked out of the tower and into the forest, hand in hand. The sun shone on her golden hair, and her black eyes were ravishing. I took her in my arms and kissed her twice on the forehead, and then I fell on my knees before her. With trembling hands she undid a black ribbon she was wearing and tied it around my wrist; but she cried as she did so, overcome by emotion. ‘Why are you crying?’ I asked. ‘Forgive me if I’ve done something to hurt you!’

  “But she merely replied, ‘Can you see the town?’

  “‘No,’ I replied, ‘I can’t. Can you?’

  “‘Stand up and let’s go on,’ she said. She again led me onward. Stopping once more, I pressed her to my breast and said, ‘How dearly you make me love you, how you fill me with happiness!’

  “I could feel her trembling in my arms, but still she said, ‘I must turn back now. You can see the town, can’t you?’

  “‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘You can, too, I suppose?’

  “‘No,’ she replied.

  “‘Why not?’ I asked.

  “Withdrawing from me, she gazed at me with her large eyes, and before she left she made a deep bow to me for goodbye. When she had walked a few steps away, she turned to look at me once more.

  “Then I saw that her eyes, too, were blind....

  “At this point there comes a period of twelve hours which I can’t give any account of, they are beyond recall. I have no idea what happened to them. I’ve pounded my head and said, ‘It’s a matter of twelve hours, they have to be in here somewhere, they’re simply hiding and I must find them.’ But I haven’t found them....

  “Again it’s evening, a dark, mild fall evening. I’m sitting in my room with a book in my hand. I look down at my legs, they’re still a little wet; I look at my wrist, and it has a bit of black ribbon tied around it. It’s all quite true.

  “I ring for the maid and ask her if there is a tower in the vicinity, someplace over in the forest, a black octagonal tower. The maid nods and says, ‘Yes, there is a tower.’—‘And does anyone live there?’—‘Yes, a man is living there, but he’s sick, he’s possessed; they call him Jack-o’-Lantern. And Jack-o‘-Lantern has a daughter, who also lives in the tower; there’s no one else living there.’—‘Very well; good night.’

  “And so I go to bed.

  “Early the next morning I make my way into the woods. I follow the same path and see the same trees, and I also find the tower. Approaching the gate, I see a sight that takes my breath away: on the ground lies the blind girl, crushed in a fall, dead, all smashed up. There she lies, her mouth wide open, the sun shining on her reddish hair. On the edge of the roof, a shred of her dress is still fluttering, having been caught there; and on the gravel path below walks the little man, her father, his eyes on the body. His breast is shaken by spasms and he howls aloud; he can’t think of anything to do but hover around the body, staring at it and howling. When he caught sight of me, I trembled before those uncanny eyes and fled back to town, terrified. I never saw him again....

  “That was my fairy-tale adventure.”

  A long silence followed. Dagny walked exceedingly slow, looking down at the road. Finally she said, “God, what a strange adventure!”

  Then there was another silence, which Nagel tried to break a couple of times with a remark about the profound peace in the forest.9 “Can you smell the fragrance of the forest right here? Please, let’s sit down a moment!”

  She sat down, still quiet, still pensive, and he sat down facing her.10

  He felt duty bound to cheer her up with his chatter again. It wasn’t really a sad fairy tale, but rather a merry one. Pooh! Whereas in India—in India the fairy tales were something altogether different; they took your breath away and chilled you to the bone with horror. There were two kinds of Indian fairy tales: the preternaturally glorious ones about diamond caves, princes from the mountains, alluring beauties from the sea, spirits of the earth and air, pearl palaces, castles west of the moon,11 flying horses, forests of gold and silver. Others showed a preference for describing the mysterious, things grand and singular and miraculous. On the whole, no one could match the Orientals’ ability to hatch colossal delusions, feverish products of bridling brains. From the very beginning, their lives were lived in a fairy-tale world, and they spoke just as easily about the wild fairy palaces beyond the mountains as about the dumb giant in the sky, the great power that putters about up there in space munching on stars. It was all due to the fact that those people lived under a different sun and ate fruit instead of beef.12 ”But haven’t we got excellent fairy tales of our own?” Dagny asked.

  “Wonderful ones. Only of a different sort.” We had no idea of a sun that could shine and burn excessively. Our legends about the hulder, the wood nymph, stuck to the ground, stayed underground in fact; they were the products of a13 fantasy wearing skin trousers, hatched on dark winter nights in log cabins with smoke vents in the roof. Had she ever read the fairy tales in Thousand and One Nights? The fairy tales from Gudbrandsdal with their peasant-saturated poetry and pedestrian fantasy—they belonged to us, they were our spirit. Our fairy tales didn’t make us shudder, they were good-humored and droll, they made us laugh. Our hero was not a splendid prince, but a wily parish clerk.14 I beg your pardon? Well, the Nordland fairy tales—but weren’t they just the same?15 What had we managed to make of the mysterious, rough beauty of the ocean? The Nordland sloop alone would be a fabled boat, a phantom ship, to the Oriental. Had she ever seen one of those sloops? No? It looked as if it were sexed, as if it were a large she-animal, its belly bulging with young and its rear quite flat, as if it could sit down. Its nose points skyward like a horn that could draw down the four winds.... “No, we live too far north.16 Well, this is in all modesty intended only as an agronomist’s opinion of a geographical phenomenon.”17

  She must have grown tired of all his chatter, for there was a hint of mockery in her blue
eyes as she asked, “What time is it?”

  “What time?” he said absentmindedly. “It’s a few minutes past one. The night is still young, time is nil.”

  Pause.

  “What’s your opinion of Tolstoy?” she asked.

  “I don’t care for him,” he replied at once, jumping at the bait. “I do like Anna Karenina and War and Peace and—”

  Then she asked, smiling, “And what’s your opinion of universal peace?”

  That was quite a rap. His expression changed, he was bewildered. “What do you mean? ... Oh, I’ve been boring you to death, haven’t I?”

  “It just occurred to me, I assure you,” she said hurriedly, turning red. “You mustn’t take it amiss. The fact is, we’re getting up a bazaar, an evening entertainment for the benefit of the National Defense. It was only this that flashed through my mind just then.”

  Pause. Suddenly he looks up at her with beaming eyes.

  “I’m happy this evening, you see, and so I’ve probably been jabbering too much.18 I’m happy because of everything, first and foremost because I’m walking here with you;19 but I’m also happy because this night seems the most beautiful I’ve ever known. I can’t explain it. It’s as if I were part of this forest or this field, a branch on a pine tree or a rock, yes, a rock, why not, but a rock imbued with all this delicate fragrance and peace that surround us. Look yonder, it’s getting light; there is a silver streak in the sky.”

  They both looked in the direction of the white streak.

  “I, too, am happy tonight,” she said.20

  She said this without being obliged to, of her own free will, spontaneously, as if it were a pleasure to say it.21 A close look at her face gave Nagel fresh grist for his mill. Nervously, impulsively, he began to expatiate on Midsummer Night, how the forest swayed and soughed, swayed and soughed, how the breaking day yonder was effecting a change in him, bringing other forces to ascendancy in his heart. Grundtvig sings: “As children of light we feel that now the night is over!” But, instead of talking too much, maybe he could show her a little trick with a straw and a twig, whereby the straw proved stronger than the twig. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for her.... “Look, let me just point to the smallest thing that makes an impression on me, that solitary juniper cluster over there. It positively bends toward us, and it looks kindly. And the spider stretches its webs from one pine to another; they look like an interesting piece of Chinese work, like suns spun from water. You’re not cold, are you? I’m convinced that we’re surrounded by ardent elfin maidens right now, laughing and dancing, but if you’re cold I’ll make a fire.... Something just occurred to me: wasn’t Karlsen found somewhere around here?”

  Was this payment for the rap she had given him? He looked capable of just about anything.22

  She started up with a look of displeasure and replied, “Please, let him be. How could you!”

  “I’m sorry,” he hastened to say, backing off. “It’s just that people are saying he was so sweet on you, and I can’t blame him for that—”

  “Sweet on me?23 Aren’t they also saying that he killed himself because of me, with my penknife? Oh, let’s go.”

  She got up. She had spoken in a rather mournful tone, without embarrassment or dissimulation. He was utterly astonished. Though aware that she had driven one of her admirers to his death, she made nothing much of it; she neither treated it as a joke nor exploited it to her own advantage, but spoke about it only as a deplorable incident and let it go at that.24 Her long blond back curls fell over the collar of her dress, and her cheeks had a warm, fresh glow, with a dim patina of nocturnal dew. She swung her high hips slightly when she walked.

  They had come out of the forest into a light open space. A dog barked, and Nagel said, “There we have the parsonage already. How charming it looks—those large white buildings with the garden, the kennel and the flagpole in the middle of the thick forest. Don’t you think, Miss Kielland, that you’ll be homesick for this place when you leave some day, I mean, when you get married? Well, it depends on where you’ll be, of course.”

  “I haven’t thought about that yet,” she replied. And she added, “I’ll worry about that when the time comes.”

  “You’ll rejoice when the time comes!” he said.

  Pause. She seemed to be pondering his words.25

  “Look,” she said, “you mustn’t be surprised that I’m going for a walk so late at night; I trust you won’t. We do it all the time. You see, we’re just peasants around here, children of nature. The teacher and I have often walked this road till daybreak, talking.”

  “The teacher? He strikes me as a person of very few words.”

  “Yes, I must admit I did most of the talking; that is, I asked questions and he answered them.... What will you do when you get back to the hotel?”

  “Do?” Nagel replied. “When I get back? I’ll go to bed and sleep till—well, till about noon, sleep like a log, like the dead, without waking up once and without dreaming. What will you do?”

  “But don’t you think? Don’t you lie awake for quite a while thinking about different things? Do you really fall asleep right away?”

  “Instantly. Don’t you?”

  “Listen, a bird is singing already. Why, it must be later than you said; may I look at your watch? Good Lord, it’s three o‘clock, almost four! Why did you say a moment ago that it was only one o’clock?”

  “Forgive me!” he replied.

  She looked at him, without a hint of displeasure, incidentally, and said, “You didn’t have to fool me, I would’ve stayed out this late anyway, that’s the honest truth. I hope you won’t read more into it than you should. I don’t have many diversions, and I accept with open arms the few I can find. That’s the way I’ve conducted myself since we came here, and I don’t think it has scandalized anyone. Well, I can’t know that, of course, but it doesn’t really matter. Papa, at any rate, hasn’t said anything, and he’s the one I go by. Come, let’s walk a little farther.”

  They went past the parsonage, into the woods on the other side. The birds were singing, and the white streak of daylight in the east was growing wider and wider. The conversation tapered off somewhat and concerned indifferent things.

  Then they turned and walked in the direction of the parsonage gate.26

  “Here I am, doggie!” she said to the dog, who was tugging at his leash. “Thanks for walking me home, Mr. Nagel; it has been a terrific evening.27 Now I’ll have something to tell my fiancé when I write him. I’ll say that you are the sort of man who disagrees with everybody about everything, and he’ll be dumbfounded. I can see him poring over the letter, unable to make head or tail of it. You see, he’s so awfully kind, heaven knows he’s good! He won’t contradict anybody. It’s too bad you won’t meet him while you’re here. Good night.”

  “Good night, good night,” Nagel answered, following her with his eyes until she had disappeared into the house.

  Nagel took off his cap and carried it in his hand through the forest. He was extremely preoccupied; he stopped several times to look up from the road, and stared straight ahead for a moment before walking on with short, slow steps.28 What a voice she had, what a voice! Whoever had heard anything like it, a voice quivering with song!

  IX

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, around noon.

  Nagel had just arisen and gone out without having breakfast. He was already far downtown, lured on by the glorious weather and the lively activity at the quayside. Suddenly he turned to a man and inquired about the judge’s office. The man told him where it was, and Nagel went straight over there.

  He knocked and stepped in, passed a couple of gentlemen who were writing at their desks, and walked up to Mr. Reinert, the deputy, with whom he asked to talk in private—it wouldn’t take long. Mr. Reinert rose rather reluctantly and took him to an adjoining room.

  Once there Nagel said, “I beg your pardon for reverting to this matter once again—you know, that business concerning Miniman. I hereby offer yo
u my most profound apology.”

  “I consider that affair to be over and done with after your apology in the presence of an entire company on Midsummer Eve.”

  “Well, that’s all very nice,” Nagel said. “But I’m not quite satisfied with that arrangement, sir. That is, I’m satisfied for my own part, but not as far as Miniman is concerned. I sincerely wish you would realize that Miniman must also be offered amends, and that it’s up to you to help him get them.”

  “Are you saying I should go and apologize to that idiot for a few pranks, is that what you mean to say? Wouldn’t you do better to mind your own business, instead of—”

  “Sure, sure, we’ve heard that before! But to get back to the matter in hand: You tore up Miniman’s coat and promised to replace it with a new one, remember?”

  “Now, let me tell you something. You’re standing in a government office jabbering about a private affair which doesn’t even concern you. This is my turf. You don’t have to go back through the office, you can get to the street by this door as well.”

  And the deputy opened a little door.

  “Thank you.1 But seriously, you ought to send Miniman that new coat you promised him without delay. He needs it, you know, and he took you at your word.”

  Mr. Reinert flung the door wide open and said, “Please!”

  “Miniman took you for an honest man,” Nagel went on, “and you shouldn’t swindle him.”

  But now the deputy opened the door to the office as well and called to the two gentlemen in there. Nagel therefore tipped his cap and left immediately. He didn’t say another word.

  How badly this business had turned out! It would have been much better if he had left things as they were. Nagel went back to the hotel, had breakfast, read the papers and played with Jakobsen, the puppy.