Mysteries

by Knut Hamsun

  Sure, he hadn’t the least doubt that he would eventually persuade an angel of the Lord to do this for him....

  Again the church bell strikes the hour. Half absent, he counts the four strokes and thinks no more of it. He had to be patient. Then he folded his hands and prayed to be allowed to die quickly, within the next few minutes; that way he might be able to reach Dagny before she awoke. If he did, he would offer thanks and praise to everything and everybody; it was a great favor, and he had only this one fervent wish....

  He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  He slept for three hours. When he awoke the sun was shining down at him, and the whole forest was filled with a loud murmur of chirping birds. He sat up and looked about him; suddenly he remembered all he had done during the night. The bottle was still lying beside him, and he recalled how fervently he had prayed to God at the end, asking to be allowed to die real soon. And here he was, still alive! Once again some evil circumstance he’d not foreseen had crossed his path! Completely at sea, he thought it all through to no avail, being aware of only one thing: that thus far he was not dead!

  He got up, took the bottle and walked a few steps. Why did he always come up against obstacles whenever he honestly tried to do something? What was wrong with the poison? It was genuine Prussic acid, a doctor had confirmed it was enough, more than enough; also, the parson’s dog had dropped stone dead after a mere taste of it. And it was the very same vial, it had been half full, that he remembered having seen with his own eyes before he emptied it. The vial had never been in anyone else’s hands either; he always carried it in his vest pocket. What were these insidious powers shadowing him everywhere?

  Like a flash it hits him that the vial had been in strange hands, after all. Coming to a halt, he instinctively snaps his fingers. Hm, it was obvious: Miniman had had it in his possession for a whole night. He had given Miniman his vest at the bachelor party in the hotel; the vial, his watch, and some papers were left in the pockets. Early the following morning Miniman had returned the articles. Oh, that old foolish cripple, once again he had been there with his crafty goodness! How clever, what an artful trick!

  Nagel clenched his teeth with indignation. What had he said that night in his room? Hadn’t he explicitly stated that he didn’t have the courage to use the poison on himself? And yet, that utterly rotten, hypocritical freak of a dwarf had been sitting on the chair next to him, secretly doubting his words! What a wretch, a real mole! He had gone straight home and emptied the vial, had perhaps even rinsed it thoroughly and then filled it half full with water. And after this noble deed he had gone to bed and slept soundly!

  Nagel began walking toward town. Being fairly rested, he thought things over bitterly and clearly. The events of the night had humiliated him and made him seem ridiculous in his own eyes. To think that he had actually scented almonds in this water, felt his tongue shrivel up from it, and sensed death inside him because of it! And this mouthful of perfectly ordinary christening water from the well had made him rave and jump sky-high over stock and stone! Angry and blushing with shame, he stopped and let out a wild scream; but the next moment he looked about him, afraid someone might have heard him, and broke into a song to cover it up.

  As he walked on, his mood was softened by the bright, warm morning and the unceasing birdsong in the air. A cart came driving toward him; the boy driver says hello, Nagel does likewise, and a trailing dog wags his tail and looks him straight in the eye.... But why hadn’t he managed to die last night, fairly and squarely? He still grieved over it. He had laid himself to rest feeling quite satisfied to have reached the end; he was filled with a gentle happiness until he closed his eyes and fell asleep. By this time Dagny was up, maybe she had already gone out, and he hadn’t been able to do anything nice for her. He couldn’t have felt more ignominiously taken in! Miniman had added one more kindness to the many others his heart overflowed with, he had done him a favor and saved his life—the very same favor he himself had once done a stranger, an unfortunate who didn’t want to land in Hamburg. It was on that occasion he had earned his lifesaving medal, heh-heh, earned his lifesaving medal! Oh sure, you save people, you don’t hesitate to do a good deed sometimes, you go straight ahead and save people from death!

  Feeling positively sheepish, he sneaked up to his room in the hotel and sat down. There everything was clean and cozy; the windows had been shined and newly ironed curtains hung. On the table was a bouquet of wildflowers in water. He had never seen any flowers there before, the surprise threw him into a state of happy wonderment and made him rub his hands. What a stroke of luck on such a morning! What a charming idea on the part of a poor chambermaid! A good person, that Sara! Yes, it really was a delightful morning. Even the faces down in the marketplace looked happy; the plasterer sat at his table quietly smoking his clay pipe, though he didn’t sell a pennyworth. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing, after all, that those wild plans of his last night had come to nothing! He thought with horror of the fear he had experienced as he was rushing about in search of water; he still trembled at the thought of it, and sitting safely in his chair in this pleasant bright room with the sun shining in, he had at that moment a wonderful feeling of having been delivered from evil. But as a last resort, there was still a good, unerring expedient left which he hadn’t tried! You might not succeed the first time—you didn’t die, you stood up again; but there was, for example, a little reliable six-shooter you could get from any old arms dealer whenever it was needed. The account was not settled yet....

  Sara knocked on the door. She had heard he had come in and wanted to let him know that breakfast was served. As she was about to leave, he called her back and asked if the flowers were from her.

  Yes, they were from her, nothing worth mentioning.

  Still he took her hand.

  “Where have you been all night?” she asked, smiling. “You weren’t home at all, were you?”

  “Look,” he said, “this thing with the flowers was really a charming gesture on your part; you also shined the windows and gave me fresh curtains last night. I cannot tell you how much pleasure you have given me by this, I wish you every happiness in return for it.” Suddenly he experiences one of those crazy moments in which he becomes sheer mood, nothing but unpredictable whims, and says, “Listen, I had a fur coat with me when I came to this hotel. God only knows what has become of it, but I definitely had a fur coat with me, and I’m going to give it to you. Oh yes, I’m doing it to show my gratitude, my mind is made up, the coat is yours.”

  Sara burst into a loud, hearty laugh. What was she to do with a fur coat?

  Well, he saw her point, but that was her business; all she had to do was to accept it, give him the pleasure of accepting it.... Her cheerful laughter made him laugh as well, and he began bantering with her: Heavens, what beautiful shoulders she had! But would she believe it, one day he’d seen a little more of her than she realized. Well, it happened in the dining room, she was standing on a table washing the ceiling when he saw her through the crack in the door; her skirt was tucked up, he saw a foot, part of a leg—in fact, he had seen a good dozen inches of lovely leg. Heh-heh-heh. But however that might be, before nightfall, in a few hours, he would present her with a bracelet; she could take his word for it. Besides, she mustn’t forget that the fur coat was hers....

  The crazy man, had he gone completely out of his mind? Sara laughed, but she was getting half frightened by his many strange ideas. The day before yesterday he had given a woman much more money than she had coming to her when she brought him his laundry; today he wanted to give away his fur coat. They were also saying all sorts of things about him in town.

  XX

  SURE, HE WAS CRAZY, completely crazy. He had to be, for Sara offered him coffee, milk, tea, offered him beer, offered him everything she could think of, and yet he got up from the breakfast table soon after he had sat down, leaving the food untouched. He had suddenly remembered that Martha used to bring her eggs to the market just at this ti
me; maybe she had returned by now. What a wonderful stroke of luck it would be if he could see her again, today of all days! He goes back to his room and positions himself by the window.

  All of Market Square is before him, but he sees no Martha. He waits half an hour, an hour, keeping a sharp lookout for every corner, but to no avail. At length he concentrates his attention on a scene by the steps of the post office which has attracted many interested spectators: surrounded by a circle of people, in the middle of the sanded street, he sees Miniman jumping up and down, dancing. He has no coat on and has also taken off his shoes; he dances away and keeps wiping the sweat off his face, and when he stops he collects his pennies from the spectators. Sure enough, Miniman had resumed his old activity, he had started dancing again.

  Nagel waits until he stops and people have dispersed before sending for him. And Miniman appears, respectful as ever, with bowed head and downcast eyes.

  “I have a letter for you,” Nagel says. He gives him the letter, pushing it deep into his coat pocket, and starts talking to him. “You’ve put me in a very awkward position, my friend; you’ve fooled me, led me by the nose with a cunning I can’t help admiring, even though it has caused me great chagrin. Do you have a few moments? You’ll recall that I once promised you an explanation of something. All right, I’ll give you that explanation, I find that the moment has come. By the way, may I first ask you: have you heard that people in town are talking about me, saying I’m mad? Let me reassure you: I’m not mad, as you can see for yourself. Right? I admit I’ve been a bit confused lately, quite a few things have happened to me and not all of them pleasant; fate would have it that way. But now I’m quite well again, there’s nothing wrong with me. I ask you to bear this in mind.... I suppose it’s no use offering you anything to drink?”

  No, Miniman didn’t want anything.

  “Well, I knew that.... To come to the point, I’m full of mistrust toward you, Grøgaard. Maybe you understand what I’m referring to. You’ve cheated me so atrociously that I’ll no longer try to put the best face on it. You’ve simply hoodwinked me in a very important matter, out of pure altruism on your part, out of the kindness of your heart, if you will, but still you’ve done it. You once had this little bottle in your hands, right?”

  Miniman squints up at the bottle but doesn’t answer.

  “There was poison in it; it’s been emptied and filled half full with water. Last night there was only water in it.”

  Miniman still says nothing.

  “Well, actually, no evil deed has been committed. In fact, the perpetrator did it with a pure heart, to forestall evil. But it was you who did it.”

  Pause.

  “You did it, right?”

  “Yes,” Miniman answers at last.

  “Yes. And seen with your eyes it was the right thing to do, but seen with mine it appears quite different. Why did you do it?”

  “I thought you might perhaps want to—”

  Pause.

  “Ah, there you see! But you were mistaken, Grøgaard, your kind heart led you astray. Didn’t I say expressly that night when you walked off with the poison that I would never have the courage to take it myself?”

  “But I still feared you might do it. And now you have done it.”

  “I have? What are you saying? Heh-heh, you’ve fooled yourself, my good man. It’s quite true I emptied the bottle last night, but take note: I didn’t taste a drop of its contents.”

  Miniman looks at him in surprise.

  “There you see, you’re laughing on the wrong side of your mouth! One takes a walk in the course of the night, one gets down to the quayside, runs across a cat writhing in the most terrible agony as it drags itself along the whole length of the pier. One stops and takes a good look at it; there’s something stuck in its throat, it’s a fish hook, and it coughs and squirms and can get it neither up nor down; but blood is streaming from its mouth. All right, one grabs the cat and tries to do something about that fish hook, but because of the pain the cat can’t keep still, rolls over on its back, makes a furious upward jab with its claws and gashes one’s cheek in a trice, much as, say, you can see my cheek has been gashed. But now the cat is on the verge of choking, and its throat is still bleeding. What should one do about it? While one ponders this, the church bell strikes two, so it’s too late to get any outside help; it’s two o’clock in the morning. Then one suddenly remembers the wonderful vial of poison in one’s vest pocket; wanting to put the animal out of its misery, one empties the vial into its throat. The animal suspects it’s swallowing something terribly dangerous, clinches up and, staring around with perplexed eyes, jumps sky-high—it breaks away and jumps sky-high, then continues to wriggle its way along the pier. How could that be? Well, you see, there was only water in the vial, it couldn’t kill, it could only add to its misery. The cat still has the hook in its throat and is bleeding and gasping for breath. Sooner or later it will bleed to death, or it will choke in some corner, mutely and horribly, alone.”

  “It was done with the best intentions,” Miniman says.

  “Of course! Everything you do is sincere and well-intentioned. One simply cannot catch you deviating from that, and in a way your noble, honorable trickery with my poison is nothing new for you. Take, for instance, your dancing in Market Square a moment ago. I was standing here by the window watching you. I’m not going to reproach you for it, I just want to ask you something: why had you taken off your shoes? You are wearing shoes now, after all, so why had you taken them off when you danced?”

  “So I wouldn’t wear them out.”

  “Just what I expected! I knew that would be your answer, that’s why I asked you. You are a walking image of immaculate purity, the most irreproachable soul in town. Everything about you is kind and unselfish, you’re without blemish or flaws. I tried to test you once, offering to pay you to assume the paternity of a strange child. Although you were poor and might need the money very badly, you promptly turned down the offer. Your soul revolted at the mere thought of such a shady deal, and I could get nowhere with you, though I offered you two hundred kroner. Had I known what I know now, I wouldn’t have insulted you so grossly. I didn’t yet have a clear impression of you, whereas now I know that vis-à-vis you one must at once spur one’s steed and rein him in. Well, that’s all right! But let’s go on with what we were talking about.... The fact that you take your shoes off and dance barefoot, without calling attention to yourself, without heeding the pain or complaining, just shows one of your character traits. You don’t whine, you don’t say, for instance: Look, I’m taking my shoes off so I won’t wear them out, I just have to, I’m so poor! No, you work, if I may say so, in silence. It’s a consistent principle of yours never to beg anything from anybody; you get all you want anyway, without opening your mouth. You are absolutely irreproachable, vis-à-vis other people as well as yourself, in your own consciousness. I place on record this character trait of yours and move on; you mustn’t be impatient, I’ll get to the explanation eventually.... You once said something about Miss Gude which I’ve often pondered; you said that she might not be quite so unapproachable at that, if one went about it in a nice way; at any rate, you had gotten quite far with her—”

  “Oh but—”

  “You see, I remember. It was the evening when the two of us were sitting here drinking together; that is, I was doing the drinking and you were looking on. You said that Martha—yes, you called her simply Martha, and you also said that she always called you Johannes, I’m telling the truth. She does call you Johannes, isn’t that so? I definitely remember your telling me that! All right. But you also said that Martha had gone so far as to allow you all kinds of liberties with her, and what’s more, you made a most disgusting gesture with your finger as you said it—”

  Miniman jumps up, red in the face, and interrupts in a loud voice, “That I never said! I never said that!”

  “You didn’t? What? You really didn’t say it? What if I called Sara and asked her to testify th
at she was in the next room during our conversation and heard every word through these thin walls? Well, I never! But anyway, your denial has knocked the bottom out of it. I would’ve liked to pump you a little more about this, it interests me, and I’ve often thought about it; but since you deny having said it, well. By the way, please sit down again, don’t leave head over heels as you did last time. Besides, the door is locked, I’ve locked it.”

  Nagel lights a cigar, and as he lights it he suddenly checks himself.

  “Oh, but dear me!” he says, “good heavens, what a mistake I’m making! Mr. Grøgaard, please forgive me; you’re right, you didn’t say that! Forget it, my friend, it was someone else who said it, not you, I remember it now; I heard it a couple of weeks ago. How could I think for a moment that you would compromise a lady—and above all compromise yourself—in such a way! I don’t understand how it could have occurred to me, I must be pretty mad, after all.... But look: I acknowledge it when I’ve made a mistake and apologize at once, so I can’t be mad, can I? And if, for all that, my talk is a bit disorganized, a bit wild, you mustn’t think it’s done on purpose; I’m not trying to turn your head with talk, you mustn’t think that. In any case, since you scarcely utter a word, that would be pretty impossible. No, the fact of the matter is I talk in this odd, unpremeditated way because that’s how I feel at the moment, no other reason. Pardon this digression. You’re getting impatient, anxious to hear that explanation, aren’t you?”

  Miniman remains silent. Nagel rises and begins to walk nervously back and forth between the window and the door. Suddenly he stops and says, sick and tired of it all, “I really can’t be bothered to play games with you any longer, I’ll tell you my honest opinion! Sure enough, I have been talking confusingly to you, and until this moment I’ve been doing so on purpose, to get something out of you. I’ve been feeling my way, using every possible tack, but it’s all no use and I’m getting tired of it. All right, I’ll give you that explanation, Grøgaard! I believe in my heart that you are a secret scoundrel. A secret scoundrel.”