by Knut Hamsun
Good Lord, how those fat round zeros make the numbers big!
Anyway, that’s the end of that. To hell with the zeros! You eventually get tired of humbug and can’t bother to touch it anymore. You take to the woods and lie down under the open sky; it has wider spaces, more room for the stranger and for the flying birds.... And you find yourself a lair in some wet spot, lie down on your stomach on the damp boggy ground and positively revel in getting badly soaked. And you bury your head in reed grass and spongy leaves, and crawling insects and worms and soft little lizards creep up your clothes and into your face, looking at you with their silky green eyes, while from all around comes the calm,5 silent soughing of the woods and the air, and while the Lord sits on high staring down at you as though you were the most fixed of all his idées fixes. Ho-ho, you begin to warm up, experiencing a rare, strange infernal glee the like of which you have never felt before; you do every wild thing imaginable, confound right and wrong, turn the world topsy-turvy and feel delighted by it, as though it were a meritorious deed. Why not? You are subject to peculiar influences and give in to them, letting yourself be carried away by desire and by a hardened joy. Everything you used to sneer at, you now feel an inordinate need to exalt and praise to the skies: you gloat over seeing your way to fight a royal battle for universal peace, you might want to appoint a commission for improving the footwear of mail carriers, you put in a good word for Pontus Wikner and vindicate the cosmos and God in general. To hell with the true interconnectedness of all things, it doesn’t concern you anymore; you let out a roar at it and let things take their course. Ho-ho and hooray, the sun shines on the brae! That’s right, you let yourself go, tune your harp and sing psalms and p-songs that defy all description!
At the same time you let your inmost being drift, given over to the worst gibberish. Let it drift, let it drift, it’s so pleasant to give in without a struggle. And why put up a struggle? Heh-heh, shouldn’t a stopped wanderer be allowed to spend his last moments as he sees fit? Yes or no? Period. And you arrange matters as you see fit.
There is something you could do, though: you could bring your influence to bear in favor of the Home Mission, Japanese art, the Hallingdal Railroad, anything whatever, as long as you bring your influence to bear in favor of something, help something get started. It dawns on you that a man like J. Hansen, the respectable tailor from whom you once may have bought a coat for Miniman—that this man has enormous merits as a citizen and a human being; you begin by venerating him and end up loving him. Why do you love him? From inclination, from spite, from hardened joy, because you are affected by and give in to certain peculiar influences. You whisper your admiration in his ear, you sincerely wish him lots of cattle and sheep and goats, and as you leave him, God help me, you slip your lifesaving medal into his hand. Why shouldn’t you, once you have begun to give in to those peculiar influences? What’s more, you even regret that you may at one time have spoken disrespectfully of Ola Upnorth, elected Storting representative. Only now do you leave yourself at the mercy of the sweetest madness—ho-ho, how you let yourself go:
Look at what Ola Upnorth has accomplished in the Storting for Ryfylke County and for the kingdom! Little by little you begin to appreciate his faithful, honest labor, and your heart melts. Your kindness runs away with you, you cry and sob with compassion for him and swear in your heart to make twofold, even threefold, amends. The thought of this graybeard from the struggling, suffering folk, this man in the modest shaggy coat, spurs you to such a wild, blissful desire to do good deeds that it makes you bawl. To make amends to Ola you malign everybody else, the whole world, take pleasure in despoiling everyone else for his benefit, and search for the most extravagant, glorious words to extol him. You actually say that Ola has done most of the things that have been done in this world, that he has written the only treatise on spectral analysis which is worth reading, that in the year 1719 he single-handedly turned up America’s prairies, that he invented the telegraph, and that, to top it off, he has been on Saturn and talked to God five times. You know very well that Ola hasn’t done all this, but in your desperate kindness you say nonetheless that he has done it, he has done it, and you shed hot tears and swear, viciously damning yourself to the worst torments of hell, that it’s precisely Ola and no one else who has done it. Why? Out of kindness, to make reparation to Ola many times over! And you burst out singing to give him a huge reparation; indeed, you sing a bawdy, blasphemous song to the effect that it was Ola who created the world and put the sun and the stars in their orbits, and will maintain it all from now on, adding a slew of horrible curses to vouch for its truth. In short, you allow your mind to abandon itself to the most singular, most charming excesses of kindheartedness, to the point of the most subtle whoring around with oaths and outrageousness. And every time you’ve come up with something truly unheard-of to say, you pull your knees up under you and chuckle with glee over the happy amends Ola will finally get. Sure, Ola shall have it all, Ola deserves it because you once spoke disrespectfully of him and now regret it.
Pause.
How was it, didn’t I once tell a stale joke about a body that—well, that died—wait a moment, it was a young girl; she died thanking God for the loan of her body, which she had never used. Stop, it was Mina Meek, I remember it now and feel ashamed from head to foot. How often we talk through our hats, saying things we later regret and groan with shame at—oh, the shame of it makes us stop in our tracks and let out a scream! True, Miniman was the only one who knew about it, but I’m ashamed of it on my own account. Not to mention an even more disgraceful blunder I once made that I’ll never forget, having to do with an Eskimo and a letter case. Ugh, go away; good God, it’s enough to make you sink into the ground! ... Quiet, keep your wits about you, the hell with scruples! “Behold the congregations saved by the cross that Jesus bore, gathered from all the nations in glory for evermore, in heavenly glory for evermore.” Do you get me? Oh God, how boring it all is, Gawd how boring it all is....
On entering the woods, Nagel threw himself down on the first patch of heather he saw and covered his head with his hands. What a turmoil in his brain, what a swarm of impossible thoughts! After a while he fell asleep. It was no more than four hours since he’d gotten out of bed, and yet he fell asleep, dead tired and exhausted.
When he awoke it was evening. Looking about him, he saw the sun going down behind the steam mill at Indviken Cove, and the small birds darting from tree to tree and singing. His head was quite clear—no more confused thoughts, no bitterness, he was completely calm. He leaned against a tree and thought for a moment. Should he do it now? Why not sooner rather than later? No, he had several things to take care of first: write a letter to his sister, leave a small memento in an envelope for Martha; he couldn’t die tonight. He hadn’t paid his hotel bill either, and he would like to remember Miniman, too, with ...
He headed back to the hotel, going dead slow. But tomorrow night it would be done, around midnight, without any fuss, quickly and to the point, quickly and to the point!
At three o’clock in the morning he was still standing by the window of his room looking out on Market Square.
XIX
AROUND TWELVE O’CLOCK the following night Nagel finally left the hotel. He had made no preparations, though he had written to his sister and put some money in an envelope for Martha; his bags, his violin case, and the old chair he had bought stood in their usual place, and some books were lying around on the table. And he still hadn’t paid his bill; he had completely forgotten about it. Just before he left the hotel, he asked Sara to dust the windows before he came back, and Sara had promised to do so, though it was the middle of the night. Then he carefully washed his face and hands and left the room.
He was calm all along, almost listless. Goodness, why play it up and make a fuss about it! A year sooner or later didn’t make any difference; besides, he had been thinking about it for a long time. And now he was sick and tired of all his disappointments, his many failed hopes,
of the humbug everywhere, the subtle daily deceit on the part of everyone. Again he happened to think of Miniman, whom he had also remembered with an envelope with something inside, though his suspicion of the poor decrepit dwarf never left him. He thought of Mrs. Stenersen who, sick and asthmatic, cheated on her husband right to his face without batting an eye; of Kamma, that money-grubbing little tart who stretched her false arms out for him wherever he went and was constantly rummaging in his pockets for more, always more. East and west, at home and abroad, he had found people to be the same; everything was vulgar and sham and disgracefully perfidious, from the bum who wore his healthy arm in a sling to the blue sky overflowing with ozone. And he himself, was he any better? No, no, he was no better himself! But now he was really at the end.
He walked by way of the docks to have yet another look at the ships, and on passing the last pier he suddenly removed the iron ring from his finger and tossed it into the sea. He saw it hit the water way out. There! At the last moment, one did at least make a small attempt to rid oneself of humbug!
He came to a halt at Martha Gude’s little house and peeked through the windows for the last time. Everything was as usual in there, quiet and still, and nobody was to be seen.
“Goodbye!” he said.
And he went on.
Without himself being aware of it, he bent his steps toward the parsonage. He only realized how far he had come when he made out the yard, looking like a clearing in the forest. He stopped. Where was he going? What was he doing on these paths? A last look at the two windows on the second floor, a vain hope of seeing a face that never appeared? No, never—he wouldn’t go there! To be sure, he had been minded to do so all along, but he just wouldn’t! He stood there a moment longer, looking wistfully at the parsonage yard—he wavered, a prayer going through him....
“Goodbye!” he said again.
Then he turned abruptly and took a side road that led deeper into the forest.
Now he simply had to follow his nose and settle in any old place. Above all, no calculation and no sentimentality; look what Karlsen had come up with in his ridiculous despair! As if this trifling matter was worth making so much fuss about! ... Noticing that one of his shoelaces is undone, he stops, puts his foot on a tussock and ties it. A moment later he sits down.
He had sat down without thinking, without being aware of it. He looked about him: big pines, big pines everywhere, here and there a cluster of juniper, the ground covered with heather. Good, good!
He takes out his wallet, where he’s keeping the letters to Martha and Miniman. Dagny’s handkerchief is in a separate pocket, wrapped in paper; he takes it out, kisses it again and again, kneels and goes on kissing it, and then slowly tears it to shreds. This occupies him for a long time; it gets to be one, one-thirty, and he’s still tearing and tearing at these tiny little shreds. In the end he has made the handkerchief completely unrecognizable, hardly anything but threads is left. He gets up and puts it under a stone, hiding it very carefully so that nobody can find it, and sits down again. Well, was there anything else? He tries to remember, but can’t think of anything. Then he winds his watch, as he used to do every night before going to bed.
He peers about him, it’s rather dark in the forest; he cannot see anything suspicious. He listens, holds his breath and listens; there isn’t a sound, the birds are silent, the night is mild and dead. He puts his fingers into his vest pocket and takes out the little bottle.
The bottle has a glass stopper, and over the stopper is a triple paper cap tied on with blue pharmacist’s string. He unties the string and pulls out the stopper. Clear as water, with a faint scent of almonds! He holds the bottle up to his eyes—it’s half full. Right then he hears a sound far away, a couple of plangent strokes; it was the church bell striking two in town. He whispers, “The bell has tolled!” And he quickly raises the vial to his lips and empties it.
The first few moments he still sat upright, his eyes closed, the empty vial in one hand and the stopper in the other. The whole thing had gone so briskly that he hadn’t quite kept up with it. Now, afterward, his thoughts gradually began to crowd in on him, he opened his eyes and looked about him in a daze. These trees, this sky, this earth—all this he would now never see again. How strange! The poison was already sneaking about inside him, seeping through the fine tissues, making its blue way into his veins; in a moment he would go into convulsions, and a little later he would be dead and stiff.
He has a distinctly bitter taste in his mouth and feels his tongue crumpling up more and more. He makes absurd gestures with his arms to see how far he has already died, begins to count the trees around him, gets as far as ten and gives up. Why, was he going to die, really die tonight? No, oh no! No, not tonight, eh? How strange!
Yes, he was going to die, he clearly felt the acid doing something to his insides. No, why now, why at once? Good grief, it mustn’t happen just yet, must it? How his eyes were growing dim already! What a soughing was sweeping through the forest, though there wasn’t a breath of wind! And why were red clouds beginning to drift above the treetops? ... Ah, not just now, not just now! No, do you hear, no! What shall I do? I don’t want to! God in heaven, what shall I do?
And suddenly all sorts of thoughts crowd in on him with overwhelming force. He wasn’t ready yet, there were a thousand things to be done first, and his brain flares and sparkles with all that remained to be done. He still hasn’t paid his hotel bill, he’d forgotten about it; heavens, yes, it was just an oversight, and he would put it right again! Oh, he must be spared overnight—mercy, an hour’s mercy, a little more than an hour! Great God, there was also a letter he had forgotten to write, another letter, a couple of lines to a man in Finland; it concerned his sister, her whole estate! ... So conscious was he in the midst of his desperation, and with such marvelous intensity was his brain working, that he even thought of his newspaper subscriptions. O-o-h, he hadn’t canceled his subscriptions either, the papers would be arriving continually; they would never stop, filling up his room from floor to ceiling. What should he do? And now he was practically half dead!
He tears up the heather with both hands, turns over on his stomach and tries to bring up the poison by sticking his finger down his throat, but to no avail. No, he didn’t want to die, not tonight, not tomorrow either; he would never want to die, he wanted to live, yes, to still see the sun for an eternity. He would simply refuse to keep this bit of poison down, he had to get it up before it killed him—up, up, come hell or high water!
Frantic with terror he jumps to his feet and begins to stagger about the woods looking for water. He calls “Water! Water!” so that it echoes far away. He raves on for several minutes, running around in all directions, bumping into trees, doing high jumps over juniper patches and groaning loudly. He doesn’t find any water. Finally he stumbles and falls on his face, his hands scrabble the heather-covered ground as he falls, and he feels a slight pain in one cheek. He tries to move, to rise, but the fall has dazed him and he sinks back again; he feels more and more faint and doesn’t rise.
Well, so be it, there was no getting out of it! Oh good Lord, then he would have to die after all! If he’d had the strength to find water somewhere, perhaps he would’ve been saved! Oh, what a bad end he would come to, regardless how sweet he’d once imagined it. He was going to die of poison under the open sky! But why wasn’t he stiff already? He could still move his fingers and raise his eyelids; strange how it dragged on and on!
He feels his face, it’s cold and bathed in sweat. Having fallen forward, with his head turned downhill, he just lies there, making no fuss about it. Every limb of his body is still quivering; he has a cut on one cheek and calmly lets it bleed. How it dragged on and on! He lies there patiently, waiting. Again he hears the church bell strike the hour, it strikes three. He starts: could he have had the poison in him for a whole hour without being dead? He raises himself on his elbow and looks at his watch; yes, it was three o’clock. What a long time it was taking!
&nbs
p; Well, if he must, maybe he had better die now, despite everything! And suddenly, as he came to think of Dagny, how he would sing for her every Sunday morning and do her many kindnesses, he felt resigned to his fate and got tears in his eyes. Mawkishly, to the accompaniment of prayers and silent tears, he began to focus his thoughts on all the things he would do for Dagny. Oh, how he would protect her, keeping all evil away from her! Perhaps he would be able to fly to her and be near her already tomorrow—good God, if only he could do it by tomorrow and have her wake up truly radiant! It was mean of him not to want to die a moment ago, when he could make her happy that way; in fact, he regretted it and asked her forgiveness. He couldn’t understand what he had been thinking of. But now she could depend on him, he yearned to come sailing into her room and stand before her bed. In a few hours, maybe within the hour, he would be there, oh yes, he would be there. And he would surely get an angel of the Lord to do it for him if he couldn’t do it himself; he would promise him lots of nice things in return. He would say: I’m not white, but you can do it, you’re white; in return you can do with me whatever you like. You’re staring at me because I’m black, aren’t you? Certainly I’m black, is that anything to stare at? And I’ll gladly promise to stay black for a long, long time yet if you’ll do me the favor I ask of you. I can stay black for an extra million years, and much blacker than I’m now, if you insist, and, if you like, we can add another million years for every Sunday you sing for her. Believe me, I’ll dream up any number of things to offer you in return, not sparing any trouble, if you’ll just listen to me! You won’t be flying alone, I’ll come with you, I’ll carry you and do the flying for both of us; I’ll do it with pleasure and without staining you, black as I am. I’ll take care of everything, all you have to do is rest. God knows, perhaps I might even have a present I could give you; maybe you would find some use for it. I’ll keep it in mind in case anybody should give me something; perhaps I might be lucky and earn lots of things for you, one never knows....