Victoria: A Love Story

by Knut Hamsun

  “But why didn’t she accept me when things were going well? I had the prospects of a demigod.”

  “Well, she wanted to wait until you were brought low. God knows.”

  “But I was not brought low. Never. I kept my pride and turned her down. What do you say to that?”

  Johannes didn’t answer.

  “But perhaps you’re right,” the old tutor said. “By God and all his angels, you’re right in what you’re saying,” he exclaimed, suddenly animated, and took another drink. “In the end she took an old captain; she nurses him, cuts up his meat for him, and wears the pants in the house. A captain of artillery.”

  Johannes looked up. Victoria sat with her glass in her hand, staring in his direction. She raised her glass high in the air. He felt a jolt go through him, and he too picked up his glass. His hand was shaking.

  Then, bursting into laughter, she called aloud to his neighbor; it was the tutor’s name she called.

  Humiliated, Johannes put down his glass, giving a perplexed, empty smile. Everybody had had their eyes on him.

  The old tutor was moved to tears by this friendly attention from his pupil. He quickly emptied his glass.

  “And here I am, an old man now,” he continued, “here I am, walking the earth alone and unknown. That became my lot. No one knows what I’ve got in me, but no one has heard me grumble. By the way, are you familiar with the turtledove? Isn’t it the turtledove, with its great penchant for mourning, that muddies the clear, bright spring water before drinking?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No, indeed. It is, though. And I do the same. I didn’t get the one I was supposed to have; still, my life is anything but lacking in pleasures. But I muddy them up. I always muddy them up. Then the disappointment can’t get the better of me afterward. Look at Victoria there. She just drank a toast with me. I used to be her tutor, now she’s getting married and I’m happy for her; it makes me feel a truly personal happiness, as if she were my own daughter. Some day, perhaps, I’ll tutor her children. Yes, life still offers quite a few pleasures, it certainly does. But what you said about compassion and women and buckling under—the more I think about it, the more I think you are right. God knows you are. . . . Excuse me a moment.”

  He rose, picked up his glass and went up to Victoria. He was already a bit unsteady on his legs and walked with a marked stoop.

  There were some more speeches; the Lieutenant spoke, the neighboring landowner raised his glass to the fair sex, to the lady of the house. Suddenly the gentleman with the diamond studs rose and mentioned Johannes’ name. He had received permission for what he was doing: he wished to salute the young poet on behalf of youth. His words, spoken in a spirit of pure friendship, were offered as a well-meant thank-you from his contemporaries, full of recognition and admiration.

  Johannes could barely believe his own ears. “Is he giving a speech for me?” he whispered to the tutor.

  “Yes,” the tutor replied. “He forestalled me. I was going to do it myself; Victoria asked me to already this afternoon.”

  “Who asked you, did you say?”

  The tutor stared at him. “Nobody,” he answered.

  During the speech all eyes turned toward Johannes; even the host nodded to him, and the chamberlain’s wife put on her pince-nez and gazed at him. When the speech was over, they all drank to him.

  “Now you must return the favor,” the tutor said. “He was giving that speech for you. It ought to have fallen to an older member of the profession. Besides, I didn’t at all agree with him. Not at all.”

  Johannes cast a glance along the table toward Victoria. It was she who had made the gentleman with the diamond studs speak; why had she done it? At first she had approached someone else, she had harbored the thought already early in the day. Why? Now she sat looking down, with a facial expression that betrayed nothing.

  Suddenly his eyes become misted with a deep and intense emotion; he could have thrown himself at her feet and thanked her, yes, thanked her. He would do so later, after dinner.

  Camilla was talking right and left, her face all smiles. She was contented, her seventeen years had brought her nothing but pure joy. She nodded repeatedly to Johannes and made signs to him to stand up.

  He stood up.

  He spoke briefly, his voice deep and trembling with emotion: The festivity with which the family was celebrating a happy event had also brought him, though a complete outsider, out of his obscurity. He wished to thank the person who had originally come up with this amiable idea, as well as the one who had said so many agreeable things about him. Nor could he omit expressing his appreciation for the kindness with which the entire company had listened to his—the outsider’s—praises. The one and only claim he had to be present on this occasion was that he happened to be the son of the Castle’s neighbor in the woods—

  “Yes!” Victoria suddenly cried, her eyes blazing.

  Everyone turned to look at her. Her cheeks were flushed and her breast heaving. Johannes paused. An embarrassing silence ensued.

  “Victoria!” her father said, astonished.

  “Go on!” she cried. “That is your only claim, but go on talking!” Then her eyes suddenly went dead, she began smiling helplessly and shaking her head. Afterward she turned to her father and said, “I only meant to exaggerate. After all, he stands there exaggerating himself. I didn’t mean to interrupt. . . .”

  Johannes listened to this explanation and found a way out; his heart was beating audibly. He noticed that the hostess was looking at Victoria with tears in her eyes and with infinite forbearance.

  Yes, he said, he had exaggerated; Miss Victoria was right. She had kindly reminded him that he was not only the neighbor’s son but also the Castle children’s playmate from early on, and it was to this latter circumstance that he owed his presence here now. He thanked her, she was right. He belonged to this place; the Castle woods were once his entire world, and behind them, in the blue distance, was the unknown—fairyland. But in those days he would often be asked by Ditlef and Victoria to come along on an excursion or to play a game—these were the great experiences of his childhood. After thinking it over, he had to admit that those times had meant more to him than anyone knew, and if it was true—as had just been said—that what he wrote occasionally sparkled, it was because his memories of that time fired him; it was a reflection of the happiness his two friends had given him in his childhood. Therefore they too had a large share in what he accomplished. And so, to the general good wishes on the occasion of the engagement, he would like to add his personal thanks to both of the Castle children for those good childhood years, when neither time nor circumstance had come between them, for that brief, happy summer’s day. . . .

  A speech, a regular attempt at a speech. It was not especially amusing, but it didn’t go too badly either; the company drank, went on with dinner and resumed their conversation. Ditlef remarked dryly to his mother, “I never knew it was really me who wrote his books. Eh?”

  But the lady of the house didn’t laugh. She drank with her children and said, “Thank him, yes, thank him. It’s very understandable, seeing how alone he was as a child. . . . Victoria, what are you doing?”

  “I want to send the maid with this spray of lilac to thank him. Can’t I do that?”

  “No,” said the Lieutenant.

  After dinner the company dispersed to the different rooms, onto the large balcony and even into the garden. Johannes went down to the ground floor and entered a room facing the garden. There were people there already, a couple of smoking gentlemen, the landowner and another man, who were discussing their host’s finances in an undertone. His property was neglected, overgrown, the fences down, the forests thinned out; it was rumored that he even had difficulty paying the surprisingly high insurance on the buildings and the furniture.

  “How much is it all insured for?”

  The landowner named the figure, a strikingly high one.

  Come to that, they had never been s
paring with money at the Castle; there the figures were always large ones. Consider, for example, the cost of a dinner like this! But now everything was said to be empty, even the lady’s famous jewel case, and so the son-in-law’s money was needed to restore their former splendor.

  “How much is he worth, I wonder.”

  “Phew, there’s no knowing how much.”

  Johannes got up and went out into the garden. The lilacs were in bloom, the scent of primula and narcissus, of jasmine and lily of the valley, wafted toward him. He found a corner by the wall and sat down on a stone, hidden from the world by shrubbery. He was exhausted by the emotional agitation, dead tired, his reason clouded; he thought of getting up and going home but kept sitting there, dull and listless. Then he hears a murmur of voices on the gravel path, someone is coming, he recognizes Victoria’s voice. He holds his breath, and in another moment the Lieutenant’s uniform also gleams through the foliage. The betrothed are taking a stroll together.

  “It seems to me there’s something wrong here,” he says. “You listen to what he says, you sit there paying attention to his speech, and then you let out a yell. What did it really mean?”

  She stops and stands tall before him. “Do you want to know?” she says.

  “Yes.”

  She’s silent.

  “If it didn’t mean anything, it doesn’t matter,” he goes on. “Then you don’t have to tell me.”

  She eases up again. “It didn’t mean anything,” she says.

  They resume their walk. The Lieutenant nervously twitches his epaulets and says loudly, “He’d better watch out. Otherwise an officer’s hand might cuff his ears for him.”

  They took the path to the pavilion.

  Johannes kept sitting on the stone for a while, dull and tormented as before. Everything was beginning to affect him with indifference. The Lieutenant had become suspicious of him, and his fiancée explained herself forthwith. She said what had to be said, assuaged the officer’s heart and walked on with him. And the starlings were chattering in the branches above their heads. Well and good. God grant them a long life. . . . He had made a speech for her at dinner and torn his heart out; it had cost him dearly to correct and cover up her impertinent interruption, and she hadn’t even thanked him. She had picked up her glass and taken a draft. Skoal! Look at me, see how prettily I drink. . . . By the way, you must watch a woman from the side when she drinks. Let her drink from a cup, a glass, anything whatever, but watch her from the side. She puts on such an act, it’s simply awful. Pursing her lips, she dips only their outermost rim in the drink, and she gets desperate if you observe her hand as she does so. Altogether, don’t look at a woman’s hand. She can’t stand it, she surrenders. She immediately starts pulling her hand back, posing it more and more exquisitely solely to hide a wrinkle, a crooked finger, or a less than perfectly shaped nail. Finally she can’t bear it any longer and, quite beside herself, asks, What are you looking at? . . . One day she had kissed him, once upon a time, one summer. It was so long ago, God knows if it was even true. How was it, weren’t they sitting on a bench? They talked together for a long time, and when they left he came so close to her that he touched her arm. Then, in front of an entrance, she kissed him. I love you! she said. . . . By now they had walked past, perhaps they were sitting in the pavilion. The Lieutenant would give him a smack on the ear, he said. He heard it quite clearly, he wasn’t asleep; but he didn’t get up and step forward either. An officer’s hand, he said. Oh well, it didn’t matter. . . .

  He got up from the stone and followed them to the pavilion. It was empty. By the veranda of the main building Camilla was calling to him: coffee was being served in the garden room, so please! He went with her. There they sat, the engaged couple; there were also several others in the room. He got his coffee, withdrew, and found himself a seat.

  Camilla began talking to him. Her complexion was so fair, her gaze so open; he couldn’t resist her and joined in, answering her questions and laughing. Where had he been? In the garden? That wasn’t true, she had looked in the garden and not found him. He had certainly not been in the garden.

  “Victoria,” she says, “was he in the garden?”

  “I didn’t see him,” Victoria says.

  The Lieutenant darts a furious glance at her, and to warn his fiancée he asks the landowner in a needlessly loud voice, “Did you say I could come and hunt woodcocks with you?”

  “Certainly,” the landowner answers, “you’re welcome.”

  The Lieutenant looks at Victoria. She is silent and sits as before, doing nothing to stop him from going on this woodcock hunt at the landowner’s. His face clouds over more and more, he strokes his mustache with nervous gestures.

  Camilla asks Victoria another question.

  At this moment the Lieutenant jumps up and says to the landowner, “Good, I’ll come with you this evening, right away.”

  With that he leaves the room.

  The landowner and a few others follow him.

  A brief pause ensues.

  Suddenly the door opens and the Lieutenant reenters. He’s in a state of extreme agitation.

  “Have you forgotten something?” Victoria asks, getting up.

  He makes some hopping steps by the door, as if unable to stand still, and walks straight up to Johannes, whom he sort of jabs with his hand in passing. Then he runs back to the door and continues hopping about.

  “Look out, man, you poked me in the eye,” Johannes said, with a hollow laugh.

  “You’re mistaken,” the Lieutenant replied. “I gave you a box on the ear. You understand? Understand?”

  Johannes took out his handkerchief, wiped his eye and said, “You don’t mean that. You must know I can fold you up and put you in my pocket.”

  Saying so, he stood up.

  The Lieutenant hastened to open the door and left the room. “I mean it!” he screamed over his shoulder. “I mean it, you oaf!”

  Then he closed the door with a bang.

  Johannes sat down again.

  Victoria had stopped in the middle of the room. She was gazing at him, white as a sheet.

  “Did he punch you?” Camilla asked in utter amazement.

  “By accident. He hit me in the eye. Would you like to have a look?”

  “God, it’s all red, there’s blood. No, don’t rub it, let me bathe it with some water. Your hanky is so coarse, here, take it back, I’ll use my own. Who would believe it, straight in the eye!”

  Victoria also held out her handkerchief. She didn’t say anything. Then she walked slowly up to the glass door, where she remained with her back to the room, looking out. She was tearing her handkerchief into tiny shreds. A few minutes later she opened the door and left the garden room, quietly and without a word.

  IX

  Camilla came walking over to the mill, cheerful and straightforward. She was alone. She walked right into the small front room and said with a chuckle, “Pardon me for not knocking. There is such a roar from the river that I didn’t think it would do any good.” Looking around, she exclaimed, “Oh, what a delightful place! Just delightful! Where’s Johannes? I know Johannes. How is his eye doing?”

  She was offered a chair and sat down.

  Johannes was sent for at the mill. His eye was inflamed and black and blue.

  “I’ve come of my own accord,” Camilla said as he approached. “I just felt like coming. You must continue to apply cold compresses to your eye.”

  “There’s no need,” he replied. “But bless you, what brings you here? Would you like to see the mill? Thank you for coming!” He put his arm around his mother, brought her forward and said, “This is my mother.”

  They went down to the mill. The old miller doffed his cap, made a deep bow and said something. Camilla couldn’t hear him, but she smiled and said at random, “Thank you, thank you. Yes, I would very much like to see it.”

  The noise frightened her and she held Johannes’ hand, glancing up at the two men with large, listening eyes in c
ase they should say something. She looked just like a deaf person. The many wheels and contraptions in the mill filled her with wonder; she laughed, squeezed Johannes’ hand in her eagerness, and pointed in every direction. The mill was stopped and started again so she could see how it worked.

  Camilla kept speaking absurdly loud for quite a while after leaving the mill, as if the din were still echoing in her ears.

  Johannes walked her back to the Castle.

  “That he dared to poke you in the eye! Can you understand it? Then, of course, he slipped away immediately, going hunting with the landowner. It was a terribly unpleasant thing to have happened. Victoria didn’t sleep all night, she told me.”

  “Then she can sleep tonight,” he replied. “When do you think you’ll be going home?”

  “Tomorrow. When are you coming to town?”

  “In the fall. May I see you this afternoon?”

  “Certainly. Oh, how thrilling!” she cried. “You told me about a cave of yours, you have to show it to me.”

  “I’ll come and get you,” he said.

  On his way home he sat for a long time on a rock, pondering. A warm, happy thought had occurred to him.

  In the afternoon he went over to the Castle, stopped outside and asked for Camilla. While he was waiting, Victoria appeared at a second-floor window for a moment; she stared down at him, turned, and disappeared into the room.

  Camilla came and he took her to the quarry and the cave. He was in an exceptionally peaceful and happy state of mind; the young girl diverted him, her cheerful, light-hearted words fluttered around him like small benedictions. Today the good spirits were hovering near. . . .

  “Camilla, I recall your giving me a dagger once. It had a silver sheath. I put it away in a box with some other things because I had no use for it.”

  “So, you had no use for it, what then?”

  “Well, you see, I’ve lost it.”

  “Oh, how unfortunate. But perhaps I can get you another one like it somewhere. I’ll try.”