Mysteries

by Knut Hamsun

  Pause. The silence was only broken by Kamma’s sobs and the clatter of knives and forks in the dining room. She continued to cry, and to wipe her face with her handkerchief under the veil.

  “He’s so terribly helpless, you see,” she went on, “he doesn’t know how to give as good as he gets. Sometimes he bangs the table and tells me to go to blazes; yes, he rails at me, says I’m ruining him, and behaves worse than a boor. But the next moment he’s again brokenhearted and can’t brace himself to let me go. What shall I do, seeing what a weakling he is? I put off leaving him from day to day, though I’m anything but happy.... But don’t be sorry for me; just you dare show me your insolent pity! At any rate, he’s better than most and has given me more happiness than anyone else, more than you. And I love him all the same, I want you to know. I didn’t come here to slander him. When I see him again after getting home, I’ll go down on my knees and ask his forgiveness for what I just said about him. I certainly will!”

  “Dear Kamma, be a little reasonable!” Nagel said. “Let me help you, do you hear! I dare say you need it. Won’t you let me? It’s mean of you to refuse me when I can do it as easily as now, and would very much like to.”

  With that he took out his wallet.

  “Didn’t I say no! Can’t you hear, man!” she sang out furiously.

  “What, then, do you want?” he said, dismayed.

  She sat down on her chair and stopped crying. She appeared to regret her anger.

  “Listen, Simonsen—allow me to call you Simonsen one more time, and if you promise not to be angry I would like to ask you something. What is the big idea of settling down in a place like this, why in the world did you do it? Is it really so strange that people say you are mad? I can’t even remember the name of this town unless I stop to think, it’s that small, and here you are, putting on an act and astonishing the inhabitants with your quaint ideas! Couldn’t a man like you think of something better to do? ... Well, it’s none of my business, I’m just asking by force of—. Oh, but what do you think I should do about my chest? I feel as though it’s bursting! Don’t you think I must see the doctor again? But how, in God’s name, can I go see the doctor when I don’t have a penny to pay him with?”

  “But I’ve said I’m more than willing to loan you the money! After all, you can pay it back sometime.”

  “Oh, it doesn’t really matter whether I see the doctor or not,” she went on like a headstrong child. “Who would mourn me if I died?” ... But suddenly she came round, making as if she thought it over, and said, “On second thought, why shouldn’t I accept your money? Why not now just as well as before? After all, I’m not so filthy rich that I should for that reason—. But time and again you have offered it to me, on purpose, at a moment when I was exasperated, so that you knew beforehand I would refuse it. You have, all right! You’ve had it exactly figured out, simply to save your money, although you’re flush with it right now; don’t you think I’ve noticed that? And even though you’re making your offer again, one more time, you’re doing it to humiliate me and to gloat over the fact that I’m finally forced to accept it. But it can’t be helped, I’ll accept it anyway and with gratitude. I wish to God I didn’t need you! But just so you know, that’s not why I came here today; it was not for the sake of the money, believe me or not. I can’t believe you’re so common as to think that.... But how much can you spare, Simonsen? Dear me, you mustn’t take it so hard, I beg you, and you must believe I’m sincere—”

  “How much do you need?”

  “Oh, what I need! ... Good Lord, I won’t miss the steamer, will I? ... I may need a lot, but—maybe several hundred kroner, but—”

  “Look, you shouldn’t feel the least bit humiliated by accepting this money; if you were agreeable you could earn it. You could do me a very great favor, if I might ask you—”

  “If you might ask me!” she cried, beside herself with joy at this way out. “Heavens, how you can talk! What favor? What favor, Simonsen? I’m game for anything! Oh, my dearest boy!”

  “You still have three quarters of an hour before the steamer leaves—”

  “Yes. And what am I to do?”

  “You are to look up a lady and do an errand for me.”

  “A lady?”

  “She lives down by the docks, in a small one-story house. There are no curtains on the windows, but usually she has a few white flowers on the windowsills. The lady’s name is Martha Gude, Miss Gude.”

  “But is it her—Isn’t it rather Mrs. Stenersen—?”

  “Come, you’re on the wrong track, Miss Gude must be going on forty. But she has a chair, an old armchair, which I’ve decided to acquire, and for that I need your help.... Now, put your money away and I’ll explain it all to you.”

  It was beginning to grow dark; the hotel guests were leaving the dining room, making an awful din, while Nagel was still carefully explaining everything concerning the old armchair. She would have to proceed with caution, grand gestures were no good. Kamma became more and more eager to get going, this questionable mission sent her into raptures; she laughed aloud and kept asking if she shouldn’t appear in disguise, wear glasses at least. Didn’t he once have a red hat? She could wear that—

  “No, no, you mustn’t use any tricks. You are simply to make a bid on the chair, drive the price up; you can go as high as two hundred kroner, well, two hundred and twenty kroner. And don’t worry, you won’t be stuck with it; you won’t get it.”

  “Lord, what heaps of money! Why wouldn’t I get it for two hundred and twenty kroner?”

  “Because I have a prior claim on it.”

  “But suppose she takes me at my word?”

  “She won’t take you at your word. Now go.”

  At the very last moment she asked him again for a comb and expressed a concern that her dress might have gotten crumpled. “I really can’t stand the idea of your going to see that Mrs. Stenersen so often,” she said, shamming.3 “I just can’t stand it, I’ll be inconsolable.” She again checked whether her money had been safely stowed away. “How sweet of you to give me all that money!” she exclaimed. And with a quick movement she lifted her veil and kissed him on the lips, right smack on the lips. But still completely wrapped up in her strange errand to Martha Gude, she asked, “How can I let you know that everything has gone well? I can have the captain blow the whistle, if you like, blow it four or five times, wouldn’t that do? There you see, I’m not that dumb. Trust me! That’s the least I can do for you, after you have—. Listen, it was not because of the money that I came here today, believe me! Well, let me thank you again! So long, so long!”

  Once more she checked on the money.

  Half an hour later Nagel did, in fact, hear a steam whistle blow five brief blasts.

  XIII

  A COUPLE OF DAYS went by.

  Nagel stayed at the hotel, wandering about with a gloomy air and looking harassed and suffering; his eyes had in the course of these two days become quite lusterless. He never spoke to anyone, not even to people in the hotel. He had a rag tied around one hand; one night when he had been out until the early morning as usual, he returned with one hand inside his handkerchief. He said the two wounds he had were caused by his tripping over a discarded harrow left on the dock.

  On Thursday morning it rained, and the unpleasant weather made him still more depressed. However, after reading the papers in bed and enjoying an animated scene in the French Chamber of Deputies, he suddenly snapped his fingers and jumped out of bed. Why the hell should he mope! The world was big, rich, merry, the world was beautiful, you bet your life it was!

  Before he was fully dressed, he rang and informed Sara that he intended to have some visitors in the evening, six or seven who could whoop it up a bit in this vale of tears, merry souls: Dr. Stenersen; Mr. Hansen, the lawyer; the teacher, and so on.

  He promptly sent out invitations. Miniman answered that he would come; Mr. Reinert, the deputy, was also invited but stayed away. By five o’clock they were all gathe
red in Nagel’s room. Since it was still raining and the skies were dark, the lamp was lighted and the blinds drawn.

  And so the bacchanal began, a carouse and a priceless infernal hubbub that gave the little town something to talk about for several days to come....

  As soon as Miniman entered the room, Nagel went up to him and apologized for having talked so much nonsense the last time they met. He took Miniman’s hand and shook it heartily; he also introduced him to Øien, the young student, who was the only one that didn’t know him. Miniman whispered a thank-you for the new trousers; now he was new from top to toe.1

  “You still don’t have a vest, do you?”

  “No, but that’s not necessary. I’m no lord, I assure you I don’t need a vest.”

  Dr. Stenersen had broken his glasses and was now wearing a pince-nez without a cord, which was constantly slipping off.

  “Say what you will,” he said, “we’re certainly living in a time of liberation. Just look at the election. And compare it to the previous election.”

  Everyone was drinking steadily; the teacher was already speaking in monosyllables, and that was an unfailing sign. Hansen, the lawyer, who had doubtless had a few drinks before he came, began as usual to contradict the doctor and make a nuisance of himself.

  For his part, Hansen was a socialist, rather advanced, if he might say so. He wasn’t very pleased with the election. What sort of liberation did it represent, could anyone tell him that? Oh, go to hell! A nice time of liberation they were having! Wasn’t even a man like Gladstone waging a wretched war against Parnell on moral grounds, on ridiculously beefy moral grounds? Oh, go to hell!

  “How can you talk such damn nonsense?” the doctor yelled instantly. “Mustn’t there be morality in things?” If people heard there was no morality in things, how many would dare rise to the bait? You had to trick and fool people to make them progress, and you constantly had to honor morality. The doctor strongly supported Parnell, but if Gladstone found him to be impossible, it was only fair to assume that he knew what he was doing. Of course, he would make an exception of Mr. Nagel, his honorable host, who couldn’t even forgive Gladstone his clear conscience. “Ha-ha-ha, good Lord! ... By the way, Mr. Nagel, you aren’t very fond of Tolstoy either, are you? I was told by Miss Kielland that you also had some scruples about recognizing him.”

  Nagel, who was talking to Øien, quickly turned and replied, “I don’t recall having spoken to Miss Kielland about Tolstoy. I recognize him as a great writer and as a philosophical fool....”2 But after a moment he added, “We have to feel free to express ourselves rather broadly this evening, if it suits us, don’t you think? After all, there are only men present, and we are in a bachelor’s quarters. Shall we agree on that? The way I feel right now, I could show my teeth and growl.”

  “Please yourself!”3 the doctor replied, offended. “Tolstoy a fool!”

  “Yes, yes, let’s express our opinions,” the teacher shouted all of a sudden. He had just reached the critical stage of his inebriation and would henceforth stick at nothing. “Go the whole hog, Doctor, or we’ll throw you out. Everyone has his own opinion; Stocker, for instance, is a blessed villain. I shall prove it—prove it!”

  Everyone laughed at this, and it was a little while before they could again talk about Tolstoy. He was a great writer and a great mind.

  Nagel suddenly flushed. “A great mind he is not. His mind is, both in its kind and quality, as flatly common as it can possibly be, and4 his teaching isn’t a hairsbreadth deeper than the hallucinations of the Salvation Army. A Russian without his noble birth, without that old aristocratic name, without Tolstoy’s million rubles in ready cash, would hardly have become so famous by teaching a few peasants to patch a pair of boots.... But5 come, let’s rather be merry awhile. Skoal, Mr. Grøgaard!”

  At brief intervals, Nagel took the opportunity of clinking glasses with Miniman; in effect, he paid great attention to him all evening. He again reverted to the nonsensical tales he had spun when they last saw each other and asked Miniman to forget about them.

  “As for me, I won’t be astounded by anything coming from you,” the doctor said. He drew himself up.

  “Occasionally I have an inclination to contradict,” Nagel continued, “and this evening I’m particularly bent on doing so. It’s partly due to a couple of unpleasant experiences that hit me rather hard the day before yesterday, partly to this dismal weather which I simply cannot stand. You, Dr. Stenersen, surely know something about that and will pardon me.6 ... To speak about Tolstoy: I do not find his mind to be any deeper than, say, that of General Booth. They are both preachers, not thinkers but preachers. They sell existing products, popularize ready-made ideas, vulgarizing them for the masses at bargain prices and causing commotion in the world. But if you’re going to sell, you must do so at a profit. Tolstoy sells with staggering losses. Two friends once made a bet: one of them staked a shilling he would shoot a nut out of the other’s hand at twenty paces without hurting the hand. All right, he fired, missed badly, blew his whole hand to bits, and with flying colors. The other groaned and cried with his last strength, ‘You lost the bet, hand over the shilling!’ He got the money. Heh-heh, hand over the shilling, he said! ... God help me, how Tolstoy sweats over drying up people’s sources of life, of wild and joyful life, drying them up and making the world fat with love of God and everyman. It fills my heart with shame.7 It may sound impertinent to say that a count makes an agronomist feel deeply ashamed, but he does.... I would never have mentioned it if Tolstoy were a youth who had to overcome temptation, put up a fight, in order to preach virtue and live immaculately. But the man is old, after all, his fountains of life run dry, without a trace remaining of human affections. Well—you might say—that has no bearing on his teaching! Oh yes, it does have a bearing on his teaching! Only someone who has become slow and watertight with old age, satiated and hardened with pleasure, will go to a youth and say, Renounce! And the youth gives it a try; thinking it over, he recognizes it’s correct according to Scripture. And yet the youth renounces nothing, but sins royally for forty years. Such is the course of nature! But when the forty years are up and the young man has himself become old, he saddles his lily-white filly and rides off, holding the banner of the cross high in his bony hand and trumpeting youthful renunciation ad nauseam, while the world listens with grave attention. Heh-heh-heh-heh, it’s an ever-recurring comedy! I find Tolstoy amusing, I’m delighted that the old man can still do so much good; he will eventually enter into the joy of the Lord! The only trouble is that he’s merely repeating what so many old men have done before him and so many old men will do after him.8 Yes, that’s the trouble.”

  “Let me just remind you—to say no more—that Tolstoy has shown himself a true friend of the needy and forsaken; shouldn’t that be considered at all? Show me a blue blood in this country who has looked after the humbler members of the community the way he has. It is a rather arrogant view, I think, to class Tolstoy’s teaching, simply because it’s not followed, with that of fools.”9

  “Bravo, Doctor!” the teacher roared again, his face scarlet. “Bravo! But say it more bitterly, say it gruffly. Everyone has his own opinion. An arrogant view, verily an arrogant view on your part! I shall prove it—”

  “Skoal!” Nagel said. “Let’s not forget what we’re here for.10 Do you really mean to say, Doctor, that giving away a ten-ruble note when one has a cool million left is worth admiring? I can’t understand the way you, and everybody else, regard this matter; I must be differently made. For the life of me, I cannot see how anybody—least of all a wealthy man—deserves to be admired for giving a bit of alms.”

  “That’s good!” the lawyer remarked teasingly. “I’m a socialist, and that’s my position.”

  But this annoyed the doctor and, turning to Nagel, he exclaimed, “If I may ask, do you really know that much about how many alms Tolstoy has handed out in the course of time, and how big they’ve been? There must be a limit to what one can say, even
at a bachelor party.”

  “And for Tolstoy,” Nagel replied, “the situation was this: there must be a certain limit to how much to give away! For which reason he let his wife take the blame for not giving away more! Heh-heh-heh, well, we’ll skip that.... But look: does one really give away a krone because one is kind, because one intends to do a kind and moral deed? How naive this view appears to me! There are some people who cannot help giving. Why? Because they experience a real psychological pleasure in doing so. They don’t do it with an eye to their own advantage, they do it on the quiet; they detest doing it openly because that would take away some of the satisfaction. They do it in secret, with quick trembling hands, their breast rocked by a spiritual well-being which they do not themselves understand. Suddenly they are overcome by an impulse to give something away; it manifests itself as a sensation in their breasts, a mysterious momentary desire that springs up in them and floods their eyes with tears. They don’t give out of kindness, but from an urge, for the sake of their personal well-being; some people are like that! One speaks of generous people with admiration; as I’ve said, I must be differently made from the rest of you: I don’t admire generous people. No, I don’t. Who the hell wouldn’t rather give than receive! May I ask if there exists a human being on earth who wouldn’t rather relieve destitution than be destitute? To use you as an example, Doctor: Not long ago you gave your oarsman five kroner. I overheard it by chance. Now then, why did you give away those five kroner? Surely not to perform a deed pleasing to God, which probably didn’t occur to you then; maybe the man didn’t even need the money very badly, but you gave it to him all the same. At that moment, I suspect, you simply yielded to a certain happy impulse to relinquish something and give pleasure to someone else.... To me, it seems unspeakably shabby to make a fuss over charity. You’re walking along the street one day, the weather is so and so and you see such and such people, all of which builds up a certain mood in you. Suddenly you catch sight of a face, a child’s face, a beggar’s face—let’s say a beggar’s face—which makes you tremble. A strange sensation vibrates through your soul, and you stamp your foot and come to a halt. This face has struck an exceptionally sensitive chord in you, and you lure the beggar into an entranceway and press a ten-krone bill into his hand. If you give me away by as much as a word, I’ll kill you! you whisper, and you fairly grind your teeth and shed tears of anger saying it. That’s how important it is to you to remain undiscovered. And this can happen repeatedly, day after day, so that often you end up in the worst kind of scrape yourself, without a penny in your pocket.... These traits are not my own, of course; but I do know a man, another man—well, for that matter, I know two men who are thus constituted.... No, you give because you have to give, and that’s that! However, I’ll make an exception as far as misers are concerned. Misers and blatantly stingy people make real sacrifices when they give something away, there can be no doubt about that. And so I say that such people are more worthy of respect, for the one øre they bring themselves to spare, than a man like you, or him or me, who squanders a krone for the pleasure of it. Tell Tolstoy from me that I don’t give a stiver for all his nauseating show of kindness—not until he gives away all he owns, and not even then.... By the way, I apologize if I have given offense to anybody. Have another cigar, Mr. Grøgaard. Skoal, Doctor!”