Hunger

by Knut Hamsun

  When I got as far as Palace Hill I overtook and passed two ladies. As I walked by I brushed the sleeve of one of them; I looked up—she had a full, somewhat pale face. Suddenly she blushes and becomes wonderfully beautiful, I don’t know why, maybe from a word she’s heard spoken by a passerby, maybe only because of some silent thought of her own. Or could it be because I had touched her arm? Her high bosom heaves visibly several times, and she presses her hand firmly around the handle of her parasol. What was the matter with her?

  I stopped and let her get ahead of me again—I couldn’t continue on just then, it all seemed so strange. I was in an irritable mood, annoyed with myself because of the mishap with the pencil and highly stimulated by all the food I had put away on an empty stomach. All at once my thoughts, by a fanciful whim, take an odd direction—I’m seized by a strange desire to frighten this lady, to follow her and hurt her in some way. I overtake her once more and walk past her, then abruptly turn around and meet her face to face to observe her. As I stand there looking her straight in the eye, a name I’d never heard before pops into my head, a name with a nervous, gliding sound: Ylajali. Once she is close enough to me, I straighten up and say urgently, “Miss, you’re losing your book.”

  I could hear the sound of my heartbeat as I said it.

  “My book?” she asks her companion. And she walks on.

  My malice increased and I followed the lady. I was at that moment fully conscious of playing a mad prank, without being able to do anything about it; my confused state was running away with me, giving me the craziest ideas, which I obeyed one after the other. No matter how much I kept telling myself that I was behaving like an idiot, it was no use; I made the stupidest faces behind the lady’s back and coughed furiously several times as I walked past her. Strolling on thus at a slow pace, always with a few steps’ lead, I could feel her eyes on my back and instinctively ducked with shame at having pestered her. Gradually I began to have an odd sensation of being far away, in some other place; I vaguely felt that it wasn’t I who was walking there on the flagstones with bowed head.

  A few minutes later the lady has reached Pascha’s Bookstore. I’m already standing at the first window, and as she walks by I step out and say again, “Miss, you’re losing your book.”

  “What book?” she asks, scared. “Can you understand what book he’s talking about?”

  She stops. I gloat cruelly over her confusion, the bewilderment in her eyes gives me a thrill. Her thoughts cannot fathom my little desperate remark; she has no book at all with her, not a single page of a book, and yet she searches her pockets, looks repeatedly at her hands, turns her head to examine the street behind her, and racks her sensitive little brain to the utmost to find out what sort of book I am talking about. Her color comes and goes, her face changes from one expression to another, and her breath is audible; even the buttons on her dress seem to stare at me, like a row of terrified eyes.

  “Don’t mind him,” her companion says, pulling her by the arm; “he’s drunk. Can’t you see the man is drunk!”

  However estranged I was from myself in that moment, so completely at the mercy of invisible influences, nothing that was taking place around me escaped my perception. A big brown dog ran across the street, toward the Students’ Promenade and down to the amusement park; it had a narrow collar of German silver. Farther up the street a window was opened on the second floor and a maid, her sleeves rolled up, leaned out and began to clean the panes on the outside. Nothing escaped my attention, I was lucid and self-possessed; everything rushed in upon me with a brilliant dis tinctness, as if an intense light had suddenly sprung up around me. The ladies before me had each a bluebird’s wing in their hats and a plaid silk band around their necks. It occurred to me that they were sisters.

  Turning aside, they stopped at Cisler’s Music Store and talked. I stopped also. Then they both started back, going the same way they had come, passed me once again, turned the corner at University Street and went straight up to St. Olaf Place. All the while I followed as hard upon their heels as I dared. They turned around once, giving me a half-scared, half-curious glance; I didn’t perceive any resentment in their looks nor any knitted brows. This patience with my harassment made me feel very ashamed, and I lowered my eyes. I didn’t want to pester them anymore—I would follow them with my eyes out of sheer gratitude, not lose sight of them until they entered somewhere and disappeared.

  In front of number 2, a big four-story building, they turned once more and then went in. I leaned against a lamppost near the fountain and listened for their footsteps on the stairs; they died away on the second floor. I step out from under the lamp and look up at the building. Then something odd happens—high up some curtains stir, a moment later a window is opened, a head pops out, and two queer-looking eyes are fixed on me. “Ylajali,” I said under my breath, feeling myself turning red. Why didn’t she call for help? Why didn’t she push one of those flowerpots over on my head or send someone down to chase me away? We stand looking each other straight in the face without moving; a minute goes by; thoughts dart back and forth between the window and the street, but not a word is spoken. She turns around—I feel a jolt, a light shock, go through me; I see a shoulder turning, a back disappearing into the room. This unhurried stepping away from the window, the inflection of that movement of her shoulder, was like a nod to me; my blood perceived this subtle greeting and I felt wonderfully happy all at once. Then I turned around and walked down the street.

  Not daring to look back, I didn’t know if she had come to the window again; as I pondered this question I grew more and more uneasy and nervous. In all likelihood she was at this moment closely following every movement of mine, and it was absolutely unbearable to know that you were being scrutinized like that from behind. I pulled myself together as best I could and walked on; my legs began twitching and my walk became unsteady just because I purposely tried to make it graceful. In order to seem calm and indifferent I waved my arms absurdly, spat at the ground and cocked my nose in the air, but it was no use. I constantly felt those pursuing eyes on my neck and a chill went through my body. At last I took refuge in a side street, from which I set off for Pilestrædet Lane to get hold of my pencil.

  I didn’t have any trouble retrieving it. The man brought me the vest himself and invited me to go through all the pockets while I was at it. I did find a couple of pawn tickets, which I pocketed, and thanked the friendly man for his courtesy. I liked him more and more, and it became very important to me at that moment to make a good impression on him. I started walking toward the door but turned back to the counter again as if I had forgotten something; I felt I owed him an explanation, a bit of information, and began humming to catch his attention. Then I took the pencil into my hand and held it up.

  It would never occur to me, I said, to come such a long way for just any pencil; but with this one it was a different matter, there was a special reason. However insignificant it might look, this stump of a pencil had simply made me what I was in this world, had put me in my right place in life, so to speak. . . .

  I didn’t say any more. The man came right up to the counter.

  “Is that so?” he said, looking curiously at me.

  With this pencil, I continued coolly, I had written my monograph about philosophical cognition in three volumes. Hadn’t he heard of it?

  And the man thought that, sure enough, he had heard the name, the title.

  Well, I said, that one was by me, you bet! So he shouldn’t be at all surprised that I wanted to get this tiny stub of a pencil back; it was far too precious to me, it seemed almost like a little person. Anyway, I was sincerely grateful to him for his kindness and would remember him for it—oh yes, I would really remember him for it; a word was a word, that was the kind of person I was, and he deserved it. Goodbye.

  I probably walked to the door with the bearing of someone having the power to make a high appointment. The respectable pawnbroker bowed twice to me as I withdrew, and I turned once mor
e to say goodbye.

  On the stairs I met a woman carrying a traveling bag in her hand. She timidly pressed closer to the wall to make room for me since I was giving myself such airs, and I instinctively put my hand in my pocket for something to give her. When I didn’t find anything I felt embarrassed and ducked my head as I passed her. Shortly afterward I heard her, too, knocking at the door of the shop—the door had a steel-wire grill on it, and I immediately recognized the jingling sound it made when touched by human knuckles.

  The sun was in the south, it was about twelve. The city was beginning to get on its feet; with strolling time approaching, bowing and laughing people were surging up and down Karl Johan Street. I pressed my elbows against my sides to make myself small and slipped unnoticed past some acquaintances who had stationed themselves at a corner by the University to watch the passersby. I wandered up Palace Hill and became lost in thought.

  These people that I met—how lightly and merrily they bobbed their bright faces, dancing their way through life as though it were a ballroom! There was no sign of grief in a single eye that I saw, no burden on any shoulder, not even a cloudy thought maybe, or a little secret suffering, in any of those happy hearts. While I, who walked there right beside these people, young and freshly blown, had already forgotten the very look of happiness! Coddling myself with this thought, I found that a terrible injustice had been done to me. Why had these last few months been so exceedingly rough on me? I couldn’t recognize my cheerful disposition anymore, and I had the weirdest troubles wherever I turned. I couldn’t sit down on a bench by myself or set foot anywhere without being attacked by small, trivial incidents, miserable trifles that forced their way among my ideas and scattered my powers to the four winds. A dog streaking past, a yellow rose in a gentleman’s buttonhole, could start my thoughts vibrating and occupy me for a long time. What was the matter with me? Had the Lord’s finger pointed at me? But why exactly me? Why not just as well at some person in South America, for that matter? When I pondered this, it became more and more incomprehensible to me why precisely I should have been chosen as a guinea pig for a caprice of divine grace. To skip a whole world in order to get to me—that was a rather odd way of doing things; there was, after all, both Pascha the second-hand book dealer and Hennechen the steamship agent.

  I wandered about debating this matter, unable to get it out of my mind; I discovered the weightiest objections to the Lord’s arbitrariness in letting me suffer for everybody else’s sake. Even after I had found a bench and sat down, this question continued to occupy me, hindering me from thinking about anything else. From that day in May when my adversities had begun I could clearly perceive a gradually increasing weakness, I seemed to have become too feeble to steer or guide myself where I wanted to go; a swarm of tiny vermin had forced its way inside me and hollowed me out. What if God simply intended to annihilate me? I stood up and paced back and forth in front of my bench.

  My whole being was at this moment filled with the utmost anguish; even my arms ached, and I could barely endure carrying them in the usual way. I also felt a marked discomfort from my recent big meal. Glutted and irritated, I walked to and fro without looking up; the people who came and went around me glided by like flickering shadows. Finally my bench was taken by a couple of gentlemen who lighted their cigars and chatted loudly; I became angry and meant to speak to them, but turned around and went all the way to the other end of the park, where I found another bench for myself. I sat down.

  The thought of God began to occupy me again. It seemed to me quite inexcusable for him to meddle every time I applied for a job and thus upset everything, since all I was asking for was my daily bread. I had noticed distinctly that every time I went hungry for quite a long time it was as though my brain trickled quietly out of my head, leaving me empty. My head grew light and absent, I could no longer feel its weight on my shoulders, and I had the impression that my eyes showed a too wide stare when I looked at somebody.

  As I sat there on the bench pondering all this, I felt increasingly bitter toward God for his continual oppressions. If he meant to draw me closer to himself and make me better by torturing me and casting adversity my way, he was slightly mistaken, that I could vouch for. And nearly crying with defiance, I looked up toward heaven and told him so once and for all, inwardly.

  Fragments of my childhood teachings came back to me, the cadences of the Bible rang in my ears, and I spoke softly to myself, cocking my head sarcastically. Wherefore did I take thought what I should eat, what I should drink, and wherewithal I should clothe this wretched bag of worms called my earthly body? Had not my heavenly Father provided for me as he had for the sparrows of the air, and had he not shown me the grace of pointing at his humble servant? God had stuck his finger down into the network of my nerves and gently, quite casually, brought a little confusion among the threads. And God had withdrawn his finger and behold!—there were fibers and delicate filaments on his finger from the threads of my nerves. And there was a gaping hole after his finger, which was God’s finger, and wounds in my brain from the track of his finger. But where God had touched me with the finger of his hand he let me be and touched me no more, and allowed no evil to befall me. He let me go in peace, and he let me go with that gaping hole. And no evil shall befall me from God, who is the Lord through all eternity. . . .

  Gusts of music are borne on the wind toward me from the Students’ Promenade. So it must be past two. I got out my paper and things to try and write something, and as I did so my book of shaving coupons fell out of my pocket. I opened it and counted the pages—there were six coupons left. Thank God! I burst out; I could still get myself a shave for several weeks and look good! My spirits rose immediately because of this little possession that I still had left; I smoothed the coupons out carefully and put the book away in my pocket.

  But write—no, I couldn’t do it. After a few lines nothing more occurred to me; my thoughts were elsewhere and I couldn’t pull myself together to make any definite effort. I was acted on and distracted by everything around me, all that I saw gave me new impressions. Flies and gnats stuck to the paper and disturbed me; I blew on them to make them go away, then blew harder and harder, but it was no use. The little pests lean back and make themselves heavy, putting up such a struggle that their thin legs bend. They just cannot be made to budge. Having found something to latch on to, they brace their heels against a comma or an unevenness in the paper and stand stock-still until they find it convenient to go away.

  Those little monsters continued to occupy me for quite a while, and I crossed my legs and took my time observing them. All at once a couple of loud, piercing clarinet notes reached me from the Students’ Promenade, giving my thoughts a fresh impetus. Discouraged at not being able to prepare my article, I stuck the papers in my pocket again and leaned back on the bench. At this moment my head is so clear that I can think the most subtle thoughts without tiring. As I lie there in this position, letting my eyes wander down my breast and legs, I notice the twitching motion made by my foot at each beat of my pulse. I sit up halfway and look down at my feet, and at this moment I experience a fantastic, alien state I’d never felt before; a delicate, mysterious thrill spreads through my nerves, as though they were flooded by surges of light. When I looked at my shoes, it was as though I had met a good friend or got back a torn-off part of me: a feeling of recognition trembles through all my senses, tears spring to my eyes, and I perceive my shoes as a softly murmuring tune coming toward me. Weakness! I said harshly to myself, and I clenched my fists and said: Weakness. I mocked myself for these ridiculous feelings, made fun of myself quite consciously; I spoke very sternly and reasonably, and I fiercely squeezed my eyes shut to get rid of my tears. Then I begin, as though I’d never seen my shoes before, to study their appearance, their mimicry when I move my feet, their shape and the worn uppers, and I discover that their wrinkles and their white seams give them an expression, lend them a physiognomy. Something of my own nature had entered into these shoes—th
ey affected me like a breath upon my being, a living, breathing part of me. . . .

  I sat there indulging my fancy with these perceptions for quite a while, perhaps a whole hour. A little old man came up and occupied the other end of my bench; as he sat down he drew a heavy sigh after his walk and said, “Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay me!”

  As soon as I heard his voice, it was as though a wind swept through my head. I let shoes remain shoes, and it now seemed to me that the confused state of mind I had just experienced belonged to a time long past, perhaps a year or two ago, and was slowly getting erased from my memory. I set about observing the old fellow.

  What concern was he of mine, this little man? None, none at all! Except that he was holding a newspaper in his hand, an old issue with the ad page up front in which something seemed to be wrapped up. I became curious and couldn’t take my eyes off that paper; I had the insane idea that it might be an unusual newspaper, in a class by itself; my curiosity increased and I began to move back and forth on the bench. It might contain documents, dangerous records stolen from some archive! The thought of some secret treaty, a plot, hovered before me.