by Knut Hamsun
There was nothing else I could do, I had to vacate the room. And so this precious moment, too, was spoiled! I met the new arrival on the stairs, a young man with big blue anchors traced on the backs of his hands. Behind him came a stevedore with a sea chest on his shoulder. The stranger was evidently a sailor, hence just a casual overnight guest; he would hardly occupy my room for any length of time. Perhaps, too, I would be lucky tomorrow, when the man was gone, and get one of my good moments again. All I needed now was a five-minute inspiration, and my work about the fire would be finished. So I’d better put up with my lot.
I hadn’t been inside the family’s apartment before, that one room in which they were all staying night and day—husband, wife, the wife’s father, and four children. The maid lived in the kitchen, where she also slept at night. I approached the door very reluctantly and knocked. Nobody answered, but I could hear talk inside.
The husband didn’t say a word when I entered, didn’t even answer my greeting; he merely gave me an indifferent glance as if I didn’t concern him. Anyway, he was playing cards with a person I had seen down at the docks, a porter who answered to the name “Pane o’Glass.” An infant lay prattling to itself over in the bed, and the old man, the landlady’s father, sat hunched up on a settle bed, his head bent over his hands as though he had a pain in his chest or stomach. His hair was nearly white, and in his hunched-up position he looked like a humped insect pricking up its ears for something.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve come to ask for a place to stay down here tonight,” I said to the husband.
“Did my wife say so?” he asked.
“Yes. A new man has moved into my room.”
To this the husband made no reply; he addressed himself to his cards again.
This man would sit like that day after day, playing cards with anyone who happened to drop in, playing for nothing, just to kill time and have something in his hands while it lasted. Beyond that he did nothing, stirring no more than his lazy limbs felt inclined to, while his wife trudged up and down the stairs, bustled about everywhere, and saw to the business of getting patrons for the house. She had also made contacts with dockers and porters, whom she paid a certain fee for every new lodger they brought her, and she often gave these dockers shelter for the night. This time it was “Pane o’Glass” who had brought the new guest.
Two of the children came in, a pair of small girls with thin freckled, sluttish faces; they were quite wretchedly clad. Shortly afterward the landlady came in too. I asked her where she wanted to put me up for the night, and she answered curtly that I could sleep here, together with the others, or on the sofa bed in the hall, just as I pleased. As she was giving me this answer, she walked around the room, busying herself with various things which she put in order, and she didn’t even look at me.
My heart sank at her answer; I stood by the door trying to look small, even pretending I was perfectly happy to trade rooms with someone else for the night. I put on a friendly face on purpose, so as not to provoke her and perhaps get thrown out of the house altogether. I said, “Oh well, I’ll manage somehow,” and was silent.
She was still scurrying around the room.
“While I think of it, I must tell you that I simply can’t afford to let people have board and room on credit,” she said. “I have told you that before, remember.”
“But, please, it’s only a matter of a couple of days, till my article gets finished,” I answered. “Then I’ll gladly give you an extra five-krone bill, yes, very gladly.”
But she obviously had no faith in my article, I could see that. And I couldn’t start acting proud and quit the house only because of a slight insult. I knew what awaited me if I marched off.2
A few days went by.
I was still staying downstairs with the family, since it was too cold in the hall where there was no stove; and at night I slept on the floor in the family room. The stranger was still living in my room and didn’t seem minded to move out very soon. Anyway, around noon the landlady came in and said that the sailor had paid up for a whole month in advance. Incidentally, he was going to take his mate’s examination before leaving, that was why he was staying in town. Hearing this, I understood that my room was now lost to me for good.
I went out into the hall and sat down; if I should be lucky enough to get anything written, it would have to be here, in the stillness, despite everything. I was no longer occupied with my allegory; I had a new idea, a really splendid plan: I was going to compose a one-act drama, “The Sign of the Cross,” on a subject from the Middle Ages. In particular, the central character was fully worked out in my mind—a gorgeous fanatical whore who had sinned in the temple, not out of weakness or lust, but from a hatred of heaven, had sinned at the very foot of the altar, with the altar cloth under her head, simply from a voluptuous contempt of heaven.
I became more and more obsessed by this character as the hours went by. She stood vividly alive before my eyes at last, exactly the way I wanted to portray her. Her body was to be misshapen and repulsive: tall, very skinny and rather dark, with long legs that showed through her skirts at every step she took. She would also have big, protruding ears. In short, she would not be easy on the eyes, barely tolerable to look at. What interested me about her was her wonderful shamelessness, the desperate excess of premeditated sin that she had committed. I was really too much taken up with her; my brain was downright swollen with this queer monstrosity of a human being. I worked for two whole hours at a stretch on my play.
When I had done about ten pages, or perhaps twelve, often with great difficulty, at times with long intervals during which I wrote to no avail and had to tear up my sheets, I was tired, quite numb with cold and weariness, and I got up and went out into the street. For the last half hour I had also been disturbed by the bawling of children coming from the family room, so I couldn’t have written any more just then anyway. I therefore took a long walk along the Drammen Road and stayed away till the evening, all the while pondering how I should continue my play. Before I got home that day, the following had happened to me:
I was standing outside a shoemaker’s shop at the bottom of Karl Johan Street, just short of Jærnbanetorvet Square. God knows why I had stopped outside this particular shoe-maker’s shop. I kept looking in through the window from where I stood, though I wasn’t thinking I needed a pair of shoes just then; my thoughts were far away, in other parts of the world. A flock of people talking together walked past behind my back, and I heard nothing of what was said. Then a loud voice says, “Good evening.”
It was the “Maiden” who greeted me.
“Good evening,” I answered, absently. Actually, I looked at the “Maiden” a moment before recognizing him.
“Well, how are you doing?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m fine . . . as usual.”
“Come, tell me,” he said, “are you still at Christie’s?”
“Christie’s?”
“I seem to remember you told me once that you were bookkeeper at Christie’s, the merchant?”
“Ah, yes. No, that’s over. It was impossible to work with that man; it came to a halt by itself fairly soon.”
“Why?”
“Oh, I happened to make a slip of the pen one day, and so—”
“Meaning forgery?”
“Forgery?” There stood the “Maiden” asking me point-blank if I had committed forgery. He even put his question quickly and interestedly. I looked at him, felt deeply insulted and didn’t answer.
“Good heavens, man, that could happen to the best of us,” he said, to comfort me. He still believed that I had committed forgery.
“What is it that, good heavens, can happen to the best of us?” I asked. “Committing forgery? Listen, my friend, do you really believe I could have done such a dastardly thing? I?”
“But dear me, I thought you said quite clearly . . .”3
I tossed my head, turned away from the “Maiden” and looked down the street. My eyes fell upon a red dress
that was approaching us, a woman walking with a man. If I hadn’t been having exactly this conversation with the “Maiden,” I wouldn’t have been hurt by his crude suspicion, and if I hadn’t made precisely this toss of my head and turned away offended, that red dress might have passed me by without my noticing. What business was it of mine anyway? Even if it were the dress of Miss Nagel, the lady-in-waiting, what concern was it of mine?
The “Maiden” was talking, trying to make up for his mistake. I didn’t pay any attention to him, my eyes were all the time riveted on this red dress coming on up the street. A flutter went through my breast, a delicate, gliding stab. I whispered inwardly, without moving my lips, Ylajali!
Now the “Maiden” too turned around, discovered the pair, the lady and the gentleman, bowed to them and followed them with his eyes. I didn’t bow, or perhaps I did. The red dress glided up Karl Johan Street and disappeared.
“Who was the one with her?” the “Maiden” asked.
“The ‘Duke.’ Didn’t you see? The ‘Duke,’ so-called. Did you know the lady?”
“Yes, just barely. Didn’t you?”
“No,” I answered.
“It seemed to me you made such a deep bow.”
“Did I?”
“Ha, didn’t you, though!” the “Maiden” said. “How odd! And she looked only at you, all along.”
“Where do you know her from?” I asked.
He didn’t really know her. It dated back to an evening last fall. It was late, they had been out together, three merry souls, had just left the Grand Café when they met this person walking alone near Cammermeyer’s and talked to her. She had brushed them off at first, but one of the merry souls, a man who feared neither fire nor water, asked her point-blank if he could walk her home. As God was his witness, he wouldn’t touch a hair on her head, as the saying goes, only walk her to her door to make certain she got home safely, otherwise he wouldn’t have a moment’s rest all night. He talked endlessly as they walked on, had one wild idea after another, called himself Waldemar Atterdag and passed himself off as a photographer. At last she couldn’t help laughing at this merry soul, who had refused to be impressed by her coldness, and the upshot was that he went with her.
“Well, what came of it?” I asked with bated breath.
“Came of it? Ah, forget it. She’s a lady.”
We were silent a moment, both the “Maiden” and I.
“That was the ‘Duke,’ was it? I’ll be damned! So that’s what he looks like!” He then said, pensively. “But if she keeps company with that man, I won’t answer for her.”
I was still silent. Yes, the “Duke” would walk off with her, of course! Well and good! What business was it of mine? I didn’t give a hang about her, or about all her charms, not a hang! And I tried to comfort myself by thinking the worst possible things about her, took downright pleasure in rolling her in the mud. The only thing that annoyed me was that I had taken my hat off to the pair—if, indeed, I had done so. Why should I take my hat off to such people? I no longer cared for her, not at all; she wasn’t the least attractive anymore, she had lost her good looks—holy smoke, how she had faded! It might very well be she had looked only at me; it wouldn’t surprise me, perhaps remorse was beginning to gnaw at her. But that was no reason why I had to go down on my knees and bow to her like a fool, especially since she had faded so suspiciously lately. The “Duke” was quite welcome to keep her, much good might she do him! A day might come when I would take it into my head to walk proudly past her, without even glancing in her direction. I might venture to do this even if she looked hard at me, and was wearing a blood-red dress to boot! I might do it, all right. Ha-ha, what a triumph that would be! If I knew myself at all, I would be able to finish my play in the course of the night, and within a week I would have brought the young lady to her knees. With her charms and all, heh-heh, with all her charms. . . .
“Goodbye,” I said curtly.
But the “Maiden” held me back. He asked, “So what are you doing these days?”
“Doing? I’m writing, of course. What else should I be doing? That’s how I make my living, after all. At the moment I’m working on a great drama, ‘The Sign of the Cross,’ with a theme from the Middle Ages.”
“I’ll be damned!” the “Maiden” said, sincerely. “Well, if you can bring it off—”
“I have no great worries on that score,” I answered. “In a week or so I expect you will all have heard from me.”
Having said this, I left.
When I got home I went at once to my landlady and asked for a lamp. It was very important to me to have this lamp; I wouldn’t go to bed tonight, my play was churning in my head, and I firmly hoped I could write a good portion of it before morning. I presented my request to the matron very humbly, noticing that she made a sour face because I came into the living room again. I had almost finished a remarkable play, I said, only a couple of scenes were missing; and I hinted that it might be presented in some theater or other before I knew it. If she would just do me this great favor, then . . .
But the matron didn’t have a lamp. She thought for a moment, but couldn’t remember having a lamp anywhere. If I cared to wait until twelve o’clock, maybe I could have the kitchen lamp. Why didn’t I buy myself a candle?
I was silent. I didn’t have ten øre to buy a candle, and she probably knew that. Needless to say, I would come to grief again! The maid, as it happened, was downstairs with us; she was simply sitting in the living room and was not in the kitchen, so the lamp up there wasn’t even lighted. I stood considering all this but said no more.
Suddenly the maid says to me, “I thought I saw you leaving the Palace a little while ago. Did you go to a dinner party there?” Then she laughed aloud at her own joke.
I sat down and took out my papers, thinking I would try and do something here for the time being, right where I sat. I held the papers on my knees, staring continually at the floor so as not to be distracted by anything; but it wasn’t any use, nothing was, I couldn’t budge. The landlady’s two little girls came in and raised a rumpus with the cat, a queer sick cat with hardly any hair on it. When they blew into its eyes, they watered, and the water trickled down its nose. The landlord and a couple of other individuals sat at the table playing cent et un. Only the wife was busy as usual, sewing something. She saw quite well that I couldn’t write anything in the midst of this confusion, but she didn’t bother herself with me anymore; she had even smiled when the maid asked if I had been to a dinner party. The whole house had become hostile to me; it was as though I needed only the ignominy of having to turn over my room to someone else to be treated like an outright intruder. Even the maid, that little flat-chested, brown-eyed slut with bangs, made fun of me, when I got my sandwiches in the evening. She was constantly asking where I used to take my dinner, since she had never seen me picking my teeth outside the Grand Hotel. It was obvious that she knew all about my miserable plight and took pleasure in showing me she did.
Suddenly absorbed by all this, I cannot find a single line of dialogue for my play. I try again and again but in vain; my head begins to buzz eerily and in the end I give up. I stick the papers in my pocket and look up. The maid is sitting right in front of me and I look at her, look at that narrow back and those drooping shoulders, which weren’t even quite grown-up yet. What business did she have to pitch into me? Even supposing I had come out of the Palace, so what? Could it have harmed her? She had laughed saucily at me these last few days whenever I had the bad luck to stumble on the stairs or get caught on a nail, tearing my coat. And only yesterday she had gathered up my drafts, which I had thrown aside in the hall—she had stolen those scrapped fragments of my play and read them aloud in the family room, making fun of them in front of everybody just to amuse herself at my expense. I had never molested her and couldn’t remember ever having asked her for a favor. On the contrary, I made up my own bed on the floor in the evening, so as not to give her any trouble with it. She made fun of me also bec
ause my hair was falling out. It was floating around in the washbasin in the morning, and she made merry over it. My shoes were in quite bad shape by now, especially the one that had been run over by the baker’s van, and she also made jokes about them. “God bless you and your shoes!” she would say; “look at them, they’re as big as dog houses!” She was right about my shoes being worn-down, but I just couldn’t get myself another pair at the moment.
As I sat there recalling all this, wondering about the maid’s blatant malice, the little girls had begun to tease the old graybeard over in the bed. They were both hopping around him, totally absorbed by their activities. They had each found a straw and were poking at his ears with it. I watched this awhile without meddling. The old man didn’t lift a finger to defend himself; he just looked at his tormentors with furious eyes each time they made a stab at him, and shook his head to free himself only when the straws were stuck in his ears.
I became more and more exasperated by this sight and couldn’t take my eyes off it. The father looked up from his cards and laughed at the small fry; he also called the attention of his partners to what was going on. Why didn’t the old fellow budge? Why didn’t he push the children away with his arms? I took a step toward the bed.
“Leave them alone! Leave them alone! He’s paralyzed,” the landlord cried.
For fear of being turned out as night was coming on, positively afraid of arousing the man’s displeasure by interfering with these goings-on, I stepped back to my old place without a word and kept quiet. Why should I risk my lodging and my sandwiches by sticking my nose into the family’s squabbles? No tomfooleries now, for the sake of a half-dead graybeard! I stood there feeling deliciously hard, like flint.
The little scamps didn’t stop their harassment. Annoyed that the old man wouldn’t hold his head still, they also stabbed at his eyes and nostrils. He stared at them with a steely glint in his eyes, saying not a word and being unable to move his arms. Suddenly he lifted the upper part of his body and spat into the face of one of the little girls; he lifted himself once more and aimed a jet at the other, but missed. Then I saw the landlord throw his cards down on the table and rush over to the bed. He was red in the face and yelled, “You old swine! Spitting the children in the eye, are you!”