by Knut Hamsun
“I really have to go,” Miniman finally said in a soft voice.
Nagel rose instantly.
“You have to go?” he said. “You’re really going to leave me? Well, I guess the story is too long, if the man is to be seen in perspective. All right, let it wait until some other time. So you definitely want to leave, do you? Well, many thanks for a very pleasant evening! Do you hear? I can hardly believe that I got so drunk. How do I look? Take your thumb, put it under a magnifying glass and look; what a sight, eh? Oh, I understand your expression, you are an enormously clever man, Mr. Grøgaard, and it’s a treat to observe your eyes, they’re so innocent. Have another cigar before you go. When will you come to see me again? By Jove, I just remembered, you must come to my bachelor party, do you hear! Not a hair of your head shall be hurt.... You see, it will only be a cozy little evening party, a cigar, a drink, conversation, and nine times nine cheers for the Father-land, for Dr. Stenersen’s benefit—all right? It will work out fine, you’ll see. And you’ll get those trousers we’ve talked about, hell yes. But on the usual condition, of course. Thank you for your patience this evening. Let me shake your hand! Have another cigar, man.... Listen, one more word: isn’t there something you would like to ask of me? Because if there is, then ... Well, as you wish. Good night, good night.”
XI
THEN CAME JUNE 29. It was a Monday.
A couple of unusual things happened that day; there even appeared a stranger in town, a veiled lady who disappeared again after a two hours’ stay, following a visit at the hotel.
Early that morning Johan Nagel had been happily humming and whistling in his room. As he dressed, he kept whistling merry tunes as if he were extremely elated by something. All the previous day he’d been silent and quiet, after his big bender with Miniman Saturday night. He had paced the floor with long steps and drunk heaps of water. When he left the hotel Monday morning he was still humming and looked extremely contented; in a rush of exuberant joy he even accosted a woman standing at the foot of the steps and gave her a few pennies.
“Can you tell me where I could borrow a violin?” he asked. “Do you know whether anyone in town plays the violin?”
“No, I don’t,” the woman replied, surprised.
She didn’t know, but in his joy he gave her a few pennies anyway and hurried off. He had seen Dagny Kielland with her red parasol coming out of a shop and went straight after her. She was alone. He made a deep bow and spoke to her. She immediately turned scarlet as usual, and tried to hide it by tipping her parasol.
At first they spoke about their latest walk through the woods. She had been rather careless, despite everything; she had, in fact, caught a cold, although the weather was so warm, and still wasn’t quite well. She said this simply and sincerely, as if confiding in an old acquaintance.
“But you don’t regret it, do you?” he said, coming straight to the point.
“No,” she replied, looking surprised, “no, I don’t regret it. What makes you think that? It was an enjoyable night, I thought, though God knows I was scared stiff when you told me about that Jack-o’-Lantern. I’ve even dreamed about him. A terrible dream!”
They talked about Jack-o’-Lantern for a while. Nagel liked to chat today; he confessed that he, too, would have absurd attacks of dumb fear of one thing or another. Thus, he often couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs without turning around at every step to see if someone might be following him. What was it? Ah, what it was! Something mysterious, something eerie which our miserable “omniscient” science was too square and too crude to grasp, a breath of some invisible power, an influence from the blind forces of life.
“You know something,” he said, “at this moment I feel like turning off this street into another one, because these houses you see, these guard stones on the left-hand side, and those three pear trees in the judge’s garden—it all instills a feeling of antipathy, filling me with a dull pain. When I’m alone, I never come by this street; I give it a wide berth, even if it takes me out of my way. So what would you call that?”
Dagny laughed. “I don’t know. Dr. Stenersen would call it nerves and superstition, I suppose.”
“Quite right, that’s what he would call it! Ah, what conceit, what stupidity! You come to a strange town one evening, let’s say this town, why not? The following day you walk about the streets to have a first look at the place. During your stroll you develop a certain obscure aversion for certain streets, certain buildings, while feeling attracted, made happy and delighted, by other streets. Nerves? But now I’ll assume that you have nerves of steel, that you don’t even know what it is to be nervous. Let’s go on! You still walk the streets, you meet hundreds of people and pass them by indifferently. But suddenly—as you come down to the docks and stop outside a poor little one-story house without curtains, but with white flowers in the window—a man comes toward you who somehow impresses you immediately. There is nothing unusual about him other than the fact that he’s poorly dressed and walks with a slight stoop; it’s the first time you’ve ever come across him, and you have a bizarre intuition that the man’s name is Johannes. Johannes, just so. Why, exactly, do you feel that his name is Johannes? That you cannot explain to yourself, but you can read it in his eyes, tell by his gestures, hear it in the sound of his footsteps; and it’s not because you have ever met someone else who looked like him and whose name was Johannes, no, it’s not because of that. For you never met anyone the man reminds you of. But there you are with your wonderment and your mysterious feeling, unable to explain any of it.”
“Have you met such a person here in town?”
“No, no,” he hastened to reply, “I just presuppose it—the town, the one-story house and the man, I presuppose them all. But it’s queer, isn’t it? ... And there are other mysterious things happening: You come to a strange town and enter a strange house, let’s say a hotel, one you’ve never been to before. All at once you have the distinct feeling that at one time, many years ago maybe, there was a pharmacy in this house. What gives you that idea? There are no indications of it, no one ever told you, there’s no smell of medicine, none, no marks on the walls from shelves and no track on the floor left by a counter. And yet you know in your heart that so and so many years ago there was a pharmacy in that house! You’re not mistaken, you are momentarily filled with a mysterious intimate knowledge that reveals hidden things to you. Perhaps it has never happened to you?”
“I haven’t thought about this before. But now that you mention it, I believe it has happened to me, too. At any rate, I’m often afraid of the dark, frightened for no reason. But maybe that’s something else.”
“God only knows what is one thing and what something else! There are so many things between heaven and earth, mysterious, delightful, unparalleled things, truly unexplainable presentiments, dumb terrors that make you tremble with uneasiness. Imagine that you hear someone prowling along the walls on a dark night. You’re wide awake, sitting at the table smoking a pipe, but your senses are off guard. Your head is full of plans you’re grappling with, and you are extremely anxious to master these plans to the last detail. Then you suddenly hear, quite distinctly, someone prowling along the walls outside, following the paneling, or even in your room, over by the stove, where you can see a shadow on the fire wall. You remove the lampshade to have more light and walk up to the stove. As you stand before the shadow, you see a person unknown to you, a man of average height with a black-and-white woolen scarf around his neck and with completely blue lips. He looks like the jack of clubs in a Norwegian deck of cards. I shall assume that you are more curious than scared, so you press the fellow hard, hoping to sweep him away with a glance; but he doesn’t budge, though you are so close to him you can see him blink, making you realize he’s just as alive as yourself. Then you try a humorous approach, and you say, though you’ve never seen him before, ‘Your name wouldn’t by any chance be Homan, would it, Bernt Homan?’ you say. And when he doesn’t answer, you decide to call him Homan a
nd say, ‘Why the hell shouldn’t you be a Bernt Homan?’ And then you sneer at him. But he still doesn’t budge, and you are at your wits’ end what to do with him. Then you back away a step, jab at him with your pipe stem and say, ‘Bah!’ But he doesn’t crack a smile. Well, that does it! Annoyed, you give the man a regular poke. But although he appears to be someplace nearby, your poke doesn’t bother him in the least. Far from falling down, he puts both hands in his pockets, deep into his pockets, shrugs his shoulders and assumes an air as if to say, ‘So what?’ That’s how little he was bothered by that poke you gave him. ‘So what!’ you reply furiously, giving him another poke in the pit of his stomach. At this moment you experience the following: after the last poke the man begins to evaporate; you watch, with your own eyes, as he’s gradually blotted out, becoming more and more blurred, until at last there is nothing left of him but his stomach, whereupon that too disappears. But all along he kept his hands in his pockets, looking at you with that same defiant expression, which seemed to say, ‘So what?’ ”
Again Dagny laughed. “Oh, what quaint adventures you have! Well, so what? What happens afterward, in the end?”
“Why, when you sit down at the table again to get on with your plans, you discover that you’ve cracked your knuckles on the fire wall.... But this is what I wanted to say: Tell your acquaintances about it the next day and they’ll know what to say. ‘You were asleep,’ they’ll say. Heh-heh-heh, oh sure, you were asleep, although God and all his angels know that you were not asleep. It’s simply crude and sophomoric to call it sleep when, in fact, you were standing by the stove wide-awake, smoking a pipe while talking to a man. Then comes the physician. He’s an excellent physician, representing science with pinched lips and superciliousness. ‘That,’ he says, ‘that’s nothing but nerves,’ he says. Oh God, what a farce! Sure is. ‘This, you know, is a clear case of nerves,’ he says. To the physician’s brain, it’s a thing of such and such dimensions, so many inches high and so many inches wide, something you can take in your fist—a good, thick case of nerves. And so he notes down iron and quinine on a slip of paper and cures you right off. That’s the way it’s done! But what a squarehead, what peasant logic—to intrude with his dimensions and his quinine in an area where not even the finest and wisest minds have been able to come up with an explanation.”1
“You’re losing a button,” she said.
“I’m losing a button?”
With a smile, she pointed at one of the buttons in his jacket, hanging precariously by a thread.
“Why not remove it altogether? It’ll come off fairly soon.”2
Humoring her, he pulled a knife out of his pocket and snipped the button off. As he took the knife out, some change and a medal on a sadly abused ribbon fell out of his pocket. He quickly bent down and picked up the articles as she stood watching. Then she said, “A medal, is it? But how can you treat it like that, look at the ribbon! What sort of medal is it?”
“It’s a lifesaving medal.... Well, don’t get the idea that it was in my pocket due to any merit on my part. It’s just humbug.”
She looked at him. His face was perfectly calm, his eyes candid, as if lying never entered his head. She was holding the medal in her hand.
“Starting again, aren’t you?3 If you didn’t earn it, how come you hang on to a thing like that, even wear it maybe?”
“I bought it!” he cried, laughing. “It’s mine, my property, I own it, just as I own my penknife, my jacket button. So why should I throw it away?”
“But how could you buy a medal?” she said.
“Sure, it’s humbug, I don’t deny it; ah, the sort of things one does oftentimes! On one occasion I wore it on my breast for a whole day, showing it off; I was even toasted for it, heh-heh-heh. One kind of humbug is as good as any other, don’t you think?”
“The name is scratched out,” she said.
His expression suddenly changed as he put out his hand for the medal.
“Is the name scratched out? That isn’t possible, let me see. It has only suffered from lying in my pocket. I’ve had it there together with my coins, that’s all.”
Dagny gave him a suspicious look. Then he snaps his fingers of a sudden and exclaims, “How thoughtless I can be! The name is scratched out, you’re right, how could I have forgotten it! Heh-heh-heh, I scratched it out myself, quite so. It wasn’t my name, after all, that was inscribed on it, but the owner’s, the name of the rescuer. I whittled it out as soon as I’d got hold of it. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right away, I didn’t mean to tell a lie. You see, I was thinking about something else: how come you suddenly became so nervous about that jacket button which was about to come off? What if it had come off? Was it supposed to be your answer to what I was saying about nervousness and science?”
Pause.
“I must say you’re always extremely candid with me,” she remarked, without answering his question. “I have no idea what it’s supposed to be for. Your views are rather unusual; a moment ago you would have me suppose that, in reality, everything is just humbug, nothing is noble, pure, great. Is that what you think? Does it make no difference whether one buys oneself a medal for so and so many kroner, or one earns it by some exploit?”
He didn’t answer. She continued, slowly and earnestly, “I cannot figure you out. Sometimes when I hear you talk I ask myself if you can be quite sane. Forgive my saying so! You make me a little more uneasy every time we meet, a little more shaken still; you confuse my ideas about everything, no matter what you talk about, turning things topsy-turvy for me. How can this be? I’ve never met anyone who contradicts all my innermost feelings as you do. Tell me, how much of what you say do you really mean? What is your deepest conviction?”
She had asked her question in such earnest, so warmly, that he was taken aback by it.
“If I had a god,” he then said, “a god I regarded as truly high and holy, I would swear by that god that I sincerely mean everything I’ve said to you, absolutely everything, and that I have the best intentions even when I confuse you. You said the last time we talked that I represented a contradiction to the views of everyone else.4 Well, that’s true; I admit I am a living contradiction, and I don’t myself understand why. I simply cannot grasp why everyone else doesn’t share my view of things. That’s how plain and transparent all problems seem to me, and that’s how luminously clear my vision of the underlying truth behind them is. This is my deepest conviction, Miss Kielland. If only I could make you believe me, now and always.”
“Now and always—no, that I will not promise.”
“It’s so infinitely important to me,” he said.
By now they had entered the forest. They were walking so close to each other that their sleeves often touched, and the air was so calm that they could speak quite softly and still be heard. Now and then a bird twittered.
Suddenly he stopped short, making her stop as well.
“How I’ve longed for you these last few days!” he said. “No, no, don’t get frightened. What I’m going to say is next to nothing, and it won’t gain me anything; I’m under no illusion, none at all, as far as that goes. Besides, maybe you won’t even understand me, with that awkward beginning and my slips of the tongue, saying what I didn’t mean to say....”
When he fell silent she said, “How strange you are today!”
With that she wanted to move on.
But again he stopped her. “Dear Miss Kielland, wait a moment! You must bear with me today! I’m afraid to talk, I fear you may interrupt me and say, ‘Go away!’ And yet I have thought this over during many wakeful hours.”
Looking at him with growing surprise, she asked, “Where is this taking us?”
“Where it’s taking us? Will you let me tell you in plain words? It takes us to where—to where I love you, Miss Kielland. Well, I really don’t see why you should be so astonished; I’m made of flesh and blood, I met you and fell in love with you. That’s not so very strange, is it? It’s quite another matter that p
erhaps I shouldn’t have confessed it to you.”
“No, you shouldn’t.”
“It goes to show how far one can be driven. I have even slandered you, out of love for you. I’ve called you a flirt and tried to drag you down, just to console myself and make up for my loss, because I knew you were unattainable. This is the fifth time we’ve met; I did, after all, wait until the fifth time before giving myself away, though I could’ve done so the first time. Besides, it’s my birthday today, I’m twenty-nine years old, and I’ve been singing and feeling happy ever since I opened my eyes this morning. I thought—well, it’s ridiculous, of course, to dream up such tomfooleries, but I thought to myself, If you meet her today and make a clean breast of it, it may not hurt that, on top of everything, it is your birthday. If you let her know that, perhaps she will be more willing to forgive you, on account of the day it is. You’re smiling? Sure, it’s ridiculous, I know; but there’s no help for it. I offer you my tribute just like everyone else.”
“What a pity, then, that this should have happened to you today,” she said. “You’ve been unlucky with your birthday this year. That’s all I can say about that.”
“Yes, of course.... God, what power you have! I can well understand how a man might be driven to any extremity for your sake. Even now, as you uttered those last words, which weren’t so pleasant after all, even now your voice was like a song. I felt as though my heart were bursting into flower. How strange! Do you know, I’ve wandered about in front of your home at night, trying to catch a glimpse of you at a window; I’ve been on my knees here in the woods praying to God for you, although I don’t believe in God very much. Do you see that aspen over there? I’m going to stop right here, because I’ve knelt under that aspen night after night, beside myself with despair, foolish and lost, simply because I couldn’t get you out of my mind. From here I’ve said good night to you every evening, I’ve lain here asking the wind and the stars to bring you my greeting, and I believe you must’ve felt it in your sleep.”5