by Knut Hamsun
Nagel drank afresh, two big glasses. Again, Miniman didn’t reply. His initial childish glee was obviously gone, and he seemed to listen to his host’s talk only out of politeness. He still refused to drink anything.
“You became surprisingly quiet all of a sudden,” Nagel said. “It’s quite absurd, but do you know, at this moment you look as if you felt smitten by something, struck by a word, an insinuation. Yes, can you believe it, smitten by something! Didn’t I see you give a little start just now? No? Well, then I was mistaken. Have you ever wondered how a secret forger would feel if some day a detective put his hand on his shoulder and looked him straight in the eye without a word? ... But what can I do with you, you’re getting more and more gloomy and taciturn. I feel jittery today and keep worrying you to death, but I must talk, I always do when I’m drunk. You mustn’t leave, though, because then I would have to chat for an hour with Sara, the chambermaid, and that might not be proper, to say nothing of its being boring. Will you permit me to tell you about a little incident? My story is of no importance, but maybe it will amuse you, at the same time as it should demonstrate my aptitude for understanding people, heh-heh-heh. In fact, you will learn that if there ever was someone who couldn’t see through people, that one was me. Maybe this piece of information will cheer you up. In short, I once went to London—as a matter of fact, it was three years ago, no more—and there I made the acquaintance of an enchanting young lady, the daughter of a man I had some business with. I got to know the lady rather well, we were together every day for three weeks and became good friends. One afternoon she decided to show me London, and off we went, visited museums, art collections, magnificent buildings and parks, and by the time we started on our way home it was evening. Meanwhile nature had begun to assert its claim and, frankly speaking, I found myself in a certain quandary, which surely can happen after a whole afternoon’s walk. What was I to do? I couldn’t slip away, and I didn’t want to ask permission to make a detour. In short, I let myself go then and there, I simply brush aside my scruples and let myself go, and naturally get sopping wet, down to my shoes. But what the hell was I to do, tell me that! Fortunately, I was wearing an enormously long cloak, with which I hoped to conceal my plight. Now, by chance we had to pass a pastry shop in a brightly illuminated street, and here, by this pastry shop, my lady stops, God help me, and asks me to get her something to eat. Well, that would seem to be a reasonable request, we had been walking around for half a day and were dog-tired. And yet I had to excuse myself. She looks at me, thinking, I suppose, that it was mean of me to refuse her, and asks the reason why. You see, I then say, the reason is such and such, I have no money, I don’t have a penny on me, not a single penny! Well, that was a valid reason, there was no denying it, and, as it happened, the lady didn’t have any money on her either, not a penny. And so, there we stand, eyeing one another and laughing at our predicament. But then she hits on a way out. Casting a glance up at some houses, she says, ‘Wait a minute! Stay here a moment, I have a friend in that house, on the second floor, she can get us some money!’ And with that my lady rushes off. She was gone for several minutes, and all that time I was suffering the worst torments imaginable. What on earth was I to do when she came back with the money? I just couldn’t enter that pastry shop, with that terribly bright light and all those ladies and gentlemen! I would be thrown out at once and find myself in an even worse pickle. I had to clench my teeth and ask her to do me the favor of going in by herself, and I would wait for her. After another few minutes my lady returned. She was very pleased, well, downright delighted, while saying only that her friend hadn’t been home, which was just as well, all things considered; she could easily hold out another few minutes, it would take a mere quarter of an hour at most before she could sit down for supper in her own house. She also apologized for having kept me waiting. I was as happy as could be, though I was the one who was soaked to the skin and suffered hardship during the walk. But now comes the best part—well, perhaps you’ve already guessed? Yes, I positively believe you’ve already guessed the conclusion, but I’ll tell you anyway. Only this year, in 1891, did it dawn on me what a dumb ox I’d really been. Considering the whole episode afresh, I discovered the most profound significance in one trifle after another : the lady didn’t walk up any stairs, she hadn’t been on the second floor anywhere. Thinking back over it, I can recall she opened a connecting door to the backyard and slipped through it, and I suspect she returned from the backyard by the very same door, slipping quietly through. What does that prove? Nothing, of course. But wasn’t it curious, though, that she didn’t go up to the second floor but rather into the backyard? Heh-heh-heh, you understand this perfectly well, I see, but I didn’t catch on until 1891, three years later. You don’t harbor a suspicion, do you, that I contrived the whole thing in advance, dragged out the walk as long as possible to press the lady to the utmost? In particular, that I couldn’t tear myself away from a petrified cave hyena in a museum but went back to it three times, all the while keeping an eye on the young lady so that she couldn’t possibly slip out into some backyard? Of course, you don’t have any such suspicion, do you? I won’t deny that a man might be so perverse that he would prefer to suffer, even wet himself from the waist down, rather than forgo the mysterious satisfaction of seeing a lovely young lady writhe in agony. But, as I’ve said, it dawned on me only this year, three years after the incident took place. Heh-heh-heh, well, what do you think?”9
Pause. Nagel drank and continued. “Now, you may ask what this story has to do with you and me and the bachelor party. To be sure, my good friend, it has nothing whatever to do with it. But I decided to tell it to you anyway, to show my stupidity concerning the human soul. Alas, the human soul! For instance, what do you make of the fact that, the other morning, I catch myself—catch me, Johan Nilsen Nagel—walking in front of Consul Andresen’s house up there on the hill, wondering how high, or how low, the ceiling might be in his living room? What do you make of it? But here again we have—if I may so express it—the human soul. No trifle is irrelevant to it, everything is meaningful.... How would you feel, say, if one night, coming home late from some meeting or expedition having to do with your lawful business, you suddenly bump into a man who stands at a street corner watching you, turning his head to keep you in sight as you pass, all the while simply staring at you without a word? Suppose, further, that the man is dressed in black and that all you can see of him are his face and eyes. Well, what of it? Ah, who can fathom what takes place in the human soul! ... You join a company some evening, let’s say there are twelve of you, and the thirteenth—it may be a female telegraph operator, a poor law school graduate, an office clerk, or a steamship captain, in short, a person of no importance whatever—sits in a corner without taking part in the conversation, or making any other kind of noise; and yet, this thirteenth person does have a value, not only per se but also as a factor in the group. Just because he’s wearing this or that garb, because he remains so silent, because he looks around at the other guests with a rather stupid, inane expression, and because his role on the whole is to be so insignificant—just because of that, he helps to define the character of the group. Just because he says nothing, he has a negative effect and produces a faint, pervasive note of gloom in the room, which causes the other guests to speak just so loud and not louder. Am I not right? In this way, that person can literally become the most powerful member of the group. As I’ve said, I’m not a good judge of people, and yet I often find it amusing to notice the tremendous value trifles can sometimes have. Thus, I once witnessed how a total stranger, a poor engineer who absolutely refused to open his mouth ... But that’s another story and has nothing to do with this one, except insofar as they have both passed through my brain and left their traces. However, to pursue the matter in hand, who knows whether your silence this evening hasn’t given my words their special tone—with all due respect to my excessive intoxication—whether the expression of your face at this moment, that half wary, h
alf innocent look in your eyes, doesn’t stimulate me to speak precisely the way I do! It’s quite natural. You listen to what I say—what a drunk man says—and somehow or other you feel smitten now and then, to employ a word I’ve already used; I feel tempted to go even further and throw another dozen words in your face. I refer to this simply as an example of the value of trifles. Don’t disregard trifles, my dear friend! Trifles have an enormous value, for Christ’s sake—. Come in!”
It was Sara who knocked, announcing that supper was ready. Miniman got up at once. Nagel was now visibly intoxicated and couldn’t even speak clearly any longer; besides, he was constantly contradicting himself and talking more and more nonsense. His preoccupied look and the swollen veins in his temples showed that his mind was grappling with many thoughts.
“Well,” he said, “I’m not surprised that you would like to take this opportunity to leave, after all the chatter you’ve had to put up with this evening. Still, there are several other things I would’ve liked to hear your opinion of; for instance, you never answered my question about what, in your heart of hearts, you think of Miss Kielland. To me, she is a most rare and unattainable being, full of loveliness, pure and white as the driven snow—try to imagine a really pure, deep snow, like silk. That’s how I think of her. If I gave you a different impression by what I said earlier, it’s erroneous.... So let me drink my last glass with yau. Skaal! ... But just now something occurred to me. If you have the patience to listen to me for another minute or two, I would be very much obliged to you, indeed. The fact is—come a little closer, the walls of this building are very thin10—well, the fact is I’m hopelessly in love with Miss Kielland. There, I’ve said it! These poor, cold words don’t say much, but God in heaven knows how madly I love her and how much I suffer because of her. Well, that’s another matter—I love, I suffer, that’s all right, it’s beside the point. So! But I hope you will treat my candor with all the discretion it deserves, do you promise me that? Thank you, my dear friend! But, you say, how can I be in love with her when I called her a big flirt a little while ago? In the first place, one can easily love a flirt, why not? But I won’t dwell on that. There is, however, something else. How was it now—did you acknowledge that you were a good judge of people or not? If you were, you see, you would also be able to judge the truth of what I’m going to say: I cannot possibly mean that Miss Kielland is, indeed, a flirt. I don’t mean that seriously. On the contrary, she’s extremely natural—what do you think, for instance, of her unrestrained laughter, seeing that her teeth aren’t even perfectly white! And yet I can do my best to spread the perception that Miss Kielland is a flirt, that doesn’t bother me. And I don’t do it to harm her or take revenge on her, but to keep myself afloat; I do it out of self-love, because she is unattainable for me, because she mocks all my efforts to make her love me, because she is engaged and already bound—she’s lost, quite lost to me. Now, with your permission, this is another aberration of the human soul. I could walk up to her in the street and tell her in dead earnest in front of several people, ostensibly just to express my disdain and do her harm—I could look at her and say, How do you do, miss! May I congratulate you on your clean shift! Can you believe it! But, yes, I could say that. What I then would do—whether I would run home and sob into my handkerchief or take one or two drops from the little bottle I carry in my vest pocket—that I’ll pass over. In the same vein, I could walk into the church one Sunday while her father, Pastor Kielland, was preaching the word of God, stroll up the aisle, stop in front of Miss Kielland and say out loud, Will you permit me to feel your puff? Well, what do you think? By ‘puff’ I wouldn’t have anything particular in mind, it would just be a word to make her blush. Please, let me feel your puff, I would say. And afterward I might throw myself at her feet and implore her to make me blissfully happy by spitting on me.... Now you’re getting scared in earnest; well, I must admit I’m indulging in rather blasphemous talk, the more so as I’m talking about a parson’s daughter to a parson’s son. Forgive me, my friend, it’s not out of malice, not out of sheer malice, but because I’m drunk as a coot.... Listen, I once knew a young man who stole a gas lamp, sold it to a junk dealer and blew the money going on a spree. It’s true, by Jove! In fact, he was an acquaintance of mine, a relation of the late Pastor Hærem. But what does this have to do with my relationship to Miss Kielland? Again, you’re quite right! You don’t say anything, but I can see your tongue is itching to say it, and it’s a quite correct remark. But as far as Miss Kielland is concerned, she’s altogether lost to me, and I don’t regret it for her sake, but for mine. You, standing there cold sober and seeing through people, will also understand if, some day, I simply started a rumor in town that Miss Kielland had sat on my knee, that I’d met her three nights in a row at a certain place in the woods, and that later she had accepted gifts from me. You would understand, wouldn’t you? Sure, because you are a damn good judge of people, my friend, you are indeed, it’s no use quibbling.... Has it ever happened to you to be walking along the street some day, lost in your own innocent thoughts, and before you know it having everybody stare at you, looking you up and down? It is a most embarrassing situation to find yourself in. Ashamed, you brush yourself front and back, you steal a glance down at your clothes to see if your fly happens to be open, and you are so full of misgivings that you even take off your hat to check if the price tag might still be on it, though the hat is old. It’s to no avail; you find nothing wrong with your clothes, and you must patiently put up with having every tailor’s apprentice and every lieutenant stare at you as much as they like.... But if that would be an infernal torment, what, my good friend, do you say to being summoned to a hearing? ... Now you gave a start again. You didn’t? My word, it definitely looked as if you gave a little start.... Well, then, to be summoned to a hearing, to be confronted by the wiliest devil of a police officer and cross-examined in open court, only to be brought back to the starting point by a dozen different secret paths—oh, what exquisite pleasure for someone who has nothing to do with the whole thing and just sits there listening! You’ll grant me that, won’t you? ... I wonder if there isn’t a glass of wine left, if I squeeze the bottle—.”
He tossed off what was left of the wine and went on talking.
“By the way, I apologize for constantly changing the subject. Partly, I suppose, all these sudden jumps in my thinking are due to my being roaring drunk, but partly also to a general fault of mine. The fact is, I’m only a simple agronomist, a student from a cow-dung academy; I’m a thinker who never learned how to think. Well, let’s not go into these special matters; they are of no interest to you, and to me they are downright repugnant, since I’m already aware of my situation. You know, when I sit here alone thinking about different things, taking a long, hard look at myself, it often gets to a point—well, it often happens that I call myself Rochefort in a loud voice, tap my noodle and call myself Rochefort! What will you say if I tell you that I once ordered a seal with a hedgehog on it? ... That reminds me of a man I knew at one time as a decent and quite ordinary and respectable student of philology at a German university. The man became a degenerate—two years sufficed to make him both a drunkard and a novelist. If he met strangers and was asked who he was, in the end he merely replied that he was a fact. ‘I’m a fact!’ he said, pursing his lips in sheer arrogance. Oh well, this is of no interest to you.... You mentioned a man, a thinker, who had never learned how to think. Or was it I who brought that up? I’m sorry; you see, I’m dead drunk. But that’s all right, don’t worry. However, I would very much like to explain to you this matter of the thinker who couldn’t think. If I understood you correctly, you wanted to attack the man. Oh yes, I definitely had that impression, you spoke in a scornful tone of voice; but the man you mentioned deserves to be seen more or less in perspective. First of all, he was a big fool. No, no, that I won’t take back, he was a fool. He always wore a long red tie and smiled out of pure vanity. In fact, he was so vain that time and again he would be
buried in a book when someone came to see him, though he never read anything. Also, he never wore any socks, just so he could afford a rose in his buttonhole. That’s the way he was. But best of all, he had a number of portraits, the portraits of some modest but nice-looking artisan’s daughters, on which he had inscribed grand, high-sounding names to give the impression that he had such and such genteel acquaintances. On one of the pictures he had written, in clear letters, ‘Miss Stang,’ to make you believe she was related to the prime minister, though the girl’s name might be Lie or Haug, at the most. Heh-heh-heh, what can one say to such conceit? He imagined that people were occupying themselves with him, slandering him. ‘People are slandering me!’ he said. Heh-heh-heh, do you really believe that anyone would take the trouble to slander him? Then one day he walked into a jewelry store smoking two cigars! Two cigars! He had one in his hand, the other in his mouth, and both were lighted. Maybe he didn’t know he was sporting two cigars at once, and being a thinker who hadn’t learned how to think, he didn’t ask any questions—”
