Hunger

by Knut Hamsun

  I had once again been sitting in one of the cemeteries working on an article for one of the papers. While I was busy with this it got to be ten o’clock, darkness came on, and the gate was going to be closed. I was hungry, very hungry; those ten kroner, I’m sorry to say, were gone all too quickly. It was now two, nearly three, days since I had eaten anything and I felt weak, slightly fatigued from moving my pencil. I had a half-pocketknife and a bunch of keys in my pocket, but not a penny.

  When the cemetery gate closed I should have gone straight home, but from an instinctive fear of my completely dark and empty room—an abandoned tinsmith’s shop where I had finally been allowed to stay for the time being—I shambled on, wandering aimlessly past the city jail, all the way down to the harbor and over to a bench on Jærnbane Pier, where I sat down.

  At that moment not a single sad thought entered my mind; I forgot my privation and felt soothed by the sight of the harbor, which lay there lovely and peaceful in the semi-darkness. By force of habit I wanted to give myself the treat of skimming through the piece I had just written, which seemed to my aching brain the best thing I had ever done. I pulled the manuscript out of my pocket, held it up close in order to see, and browsed through one page after another. In the end I got tired and put the papers back in my pocket. Everything was still; the sea stretched away like blue mother-of-pearl, and small birds flew silently by from one place to another. A policeman is patrolling his beat some distance off, otherwise there is not a soul to be seen and the entire harbor is quiet.

  I count my money again: a half-pocketknife, a bunch of keys, but not a penny. Suddenly I dip into my pocket and pull out my papers once more. It was a mechanical action, an unconscious twitch of the nerves. I picked a white, blank page and—God only knows where I got the idea from—made a cornet, closed it carefully to make it look full and threw it along the pavement, far out. It was carried yet a bit farther by the wind, then lay still.

  By this time hunger had begun to attack me. I sat eyeing this white cornet, which looked as though swollen with shiny silver coins, and worked myself up to believing that it really did contain something. I kept cajoling myself, aloud, into guessing the amount—if I guessed correctly it was mine! I imagined the nice little ten-øre coins at the bottom and the fat, milled krone pieces on top—a whole cornet chock-full of money! My eyes popping, I sat there staring at it, bracing myself to go and steal it.

  Then I hear the officer cough. What put it into my head to do exactly the same? I get up from the bench and cough, repeating the cough three times to catch his ear. How he would pounce on that cornet when he came! I sat there rejoicing over this trick, rubbing my hands with delight and rapping out grand curses at random. Wouldn’t he end up laughing on the wrong side of his mouth though, the dog! Wouldn’t he just sink into the bottomless pit and fry in hell for this dirty trick! I was drunk with starvation, my hunger had made me intoxicated.

  A few minutes later the policeman comes along, rapping his iron heels on the paving stones and peering on all sides. He takes his time, having the whole night before him; he doesn’t see the cornet, not until he’s quite close to it. Then he stops and gazes at it. It looks so white and precious lying there, perhaps a tidy little sum, eh? A tidy little sum of silver coins? . . . He picks it up. Hmm! It’s light, very light. Maybe an expensive plume, hat trim. . . . He opens it carefully with his big hands and peeps inside. I laughed, laughed and slapped my knees, laughed like a madman. And not a sound emerged from my throat; my laughter was feverish and silent, with the intensity of tears. . . .

  Then there is again the clitterclatter on the cobblestones, and the officer takes a turn along the pier. I sat there with tears in my eyes, gasping for breath, quite beside myself with feverish merriment. I began to talk aloud, told myself the story of the cornet, aped the poor policeman’s movements, peeped into the hollow of my hand and repeated over and over to myself: He coughed when he threw it away! He coughed when he threw it away! I added new words, with titillating supplements, changed the whole sentence and made it more pointed: He coughed once—huh-huh!

  I spent myself in variations on these words, and it got to be late evening before my merriment ceased. Then a drowsy calm came over me, a pleasant fatigue which I did nothing to resist. The darkness had become thicker now, and a light breeze ruffled the mother-of-pearl of the sea. The ships whose masts I saw outlined against the sky looked, with their black hulls, like silent monsters that were raising their hackles and lying in wait for me. I suffered no pain, my hunger had taken the edge off; instead I felt pleasantly empty, untouched by everything around me and happy to be unseen by all. I put my legs up on the bench and leaned back, the best way to feel the true well-being of seclusion. There wasn’t a cloud in my mind, nor did I feel any discomfort, and I hadn’t a single unfulfilled desire or craving as far as my thought could reach. I lay with open eyes in a state of utter absence from myself and felt deliciously out of it.

  So far not a sound disturbed me; the soft darkness had hidden the whole world from my sight and buried me in sheer quietude—only the desolate, muted voice of stillness whispers monotonously in my ear. The dark monsters out there would suck me up when night came on, and they would carry me far across the sea and through strange lands where no humans lived. They would bring me to Princess Ylajali’s castle, where an undreamed-of splendor awaited me, exceeding that of all others. And she herself will be sitting in a sparkling hall where all is of amethyst, on a throne of yellow roses, and she will hold out her hand to me when I enter, greet me and bid me welcome as I approach and kneel down: Welcome, my knight, to me and my land! I’ve waited twenty summers for you and summoned you on every white night; and when you grieved I wept in this room, and when you slept I breathed lovely dreams into you. . . . And the fair one takes my hand and pulls me along, leads me through long corridors where big crowds of people shout hurrahs, through bright gardens where three hundred young damsels are playing games and laughing, and into another hall where all is of brilliant emerald. Here the sun shines, beguiling choral music floats through the galleries and corridors, and waves of fragrance waft toward me. I hold her hand in mine and feel the wild beauty of enchantment race through my blood; I put my arm around her and she whispers, Not here, come further still! And we enter the red hall where all is of rubies, a foaming splendor in which I swoon. Then I feel her arms around me, she breathes upon my face and whispers, Welcome, my love! Kiss me! Again . . . again . . .

  From my bench I see stars before my eyes, and my thoughts are swept up into a hurricane of light. . . .

  I had fallen asleep where I lay and was awakened by the policeman. There I was, mercilessly called back to life and my misery. My first feeling was a stupid amazement at finding myself out in the open, but this was soon replaced by a bitter despondency; I was on the verge of crying with grief at still being alive. It had rained while I slept, my clothes were soaking wet, and I felt a raw chill in my limbs. The darkness had become even thicker, I could barely make out the officer’s features in front of me.

  “Stand up now, will you!” he said.

  I got up immediately; if he had ordered me to lie down again, I would also have obeyed. I was very depressed and quite weak, and besides I started almost instantly to feel the pangs of hunger again.

  “Wait a minute, you dummy!” the officer called after me. “You’re walking off without your hat. There, now go on!”

  “It seemed to me, too, there was something—something I had forgotten,” I stammered absent-mindedly. “Thanks. Good night.”

  And I shambled off.

  If only one had a piece of bread! One of those delicious little loaves of rye bread that you could munch on as you walked the streets. And I kept picturing to myself just the sort of rye bread it would have been good to have. I was bitterly hungry, wished myself dead and gone, grew sentimental and cried. There would never be an end to my misery! Then, suddenly, I stopped in the street, stamped my feet on the cobblestones and swore aloud. What was it
he had called me? Dummy? I’d show that policeman what it meant to call me a dummy! With that I turned around and rushed back. I felt flaming hot with anger. Some way down the street I stumbled and fell, but I took no notice, jumped up again and ran on. On reaching Jærnbanetorvet Square, however, I was so tired that I didn’t feel up to going all the way to the pier; besides, my anger had cooled off during the run. Finally I stopped to catch my breath. Who gave a hoot what such a policeman had said?—Sure, but I wasn’t going to swallow everything!—True enough! I interrupted myself, but he didn’t know any better. I found this excuse to be satisfactory; I repeated to myself that he didn’t know any better. And so I turned around once more.

  God, the sort of ideas you get! I thought angrily; imagine running around like a madman on sopping-wet streets in the dark of night! My hunger pains were excruciating and didn’t leave me for a moment. I swallowed my saliva again and again to take the edge off, and it seemed to help. I hadn’t had enough to eat for many, many weeks before this thing came up, and my strength had diminished considerably lately. When I had been lucky enough to get my hands on a five-krone bill by some maneuver or other, the money generally didn’t last me long enough for my health to be fully restored before a new hunger spell descended upon me. My back and shoulders had borne the brunt of it; I could stop that gnawing pain in my chest for a moment by coughing hard or by walking extremely bent over, but there was nothing I could do for my back and shoulders. Anyway, why did my prospects simply refuse to brighten up? Didn’t I have the same right to life as anyone else, such as Pascha the second-hand bookdealer, or Hennechen the steamship agent? Didn’t I have the shoulders of a giant and two stout arms for work, and hadn’t I even applied for a job as wood-cutter on Møller Street to earn my daily bread? Was I lazy? Hadn’t I applied for work and listened to lectures and written newspaper articles and read and plugged away like crazy day and night? And hadn’t I lived like a miser, eaten bread and milk when I had plenty, bread when I had little, and gone hungry when I had nothing? Did I live in a hotel, did I have a suite on the ground floor? I lived in a godforsaken loft, a tinsmith’s shop abandoned by everybody and his brother last winter because it snowed in there. So I couldn’t make head or tail of the whole situation.

  I was thinking about all this as I walked along, and there wasn’t as much as a spark of malice, envy or bitterness in my thoughts.

  I stopped outside a paint store and looked in through the window; I tried to read the labels on a couple of tin cans, but it was too dark. Annoyed with myself for this new whim and stirred up and angry because I couldn’t find out what was in those cans, I knocked once on the window and walked on. Seeing a police officer up the street, I quickened my pace, went right up to him and said, without a shadow of a pretext, “It’s ten o’clock.”

  “No, it’s two,” he answered, surprised.

  “No, it’s ten,” I said. “It’s ten o’clock.” And groaning with anger, I took another couple of steps forward, clenched my fist and said, “Listen, you know what—it’s ten o’clock.”

  He pondered awhile, giving me the once-over and staring at me in bewilderment. At last he said, rather quietly, “It’s time for you to go home in any case, isn’t it? Would you like me to come with you?”

  I was disarmed by this show of friendliness; I felt the tears coming and hastened to answer, “No, thanks! I have only been to a café and it got a bit late. Thank you very much all the same.”

  He touched his helmet for goodbye as I left. His friendliness had overwhelmed me, and I cried because I didn’t have five kroner to give him. I stopped and followed him with my eyes as he slowly walked away, clapped my hand to my forehead and cried more and more desperately the farther he got. I reviled myself for my poverty, shouted epithets at myself, invented insulting names, priceless treasures of coarse abusive language that I heaped on myself. I kept this up until I was nearly home. When I got to the gate I discovered I had lost my keys.

  Of course, I said bitterly to myself, why shouldn’t I lose my keys? Here I am, living in a house where there is a stable downstairs and a tinsmith’s shop upstairs; the gate is locked at night, and no one—no one—can open it, so why shouldn’t I lose my keys? I was wet as a drowned rat, a bit hungry, just a wee bit hungry, and ridiculously tired in the knees, just a little—so why shouldn’t I lose them? For that matter, why couldn’t the whole house have been moved out to Aker township when I got home and wanted to go in? . . . And I laughed to myself, hardened by hunger and exhaustion.

  I heard the horses stomping their feet in the stable and could see my window upstairs, but I couldn’t open the gate and get in. And so, tired and bitter at heart, I decided to go back to the pier and look for my keys.

  It had started to rain again and I could already feel the water soaking through on my shoulders. At the jail I suddenly had a bright idea: I would ask the police to open their gate. I turned to an officer at once and begged him earnestly to come and let me in, if he could.

  Yeah, sure, if he could! But he couldn’t, he didn’t have a key. The police keys weren’t here, they were in the Detective Department.

  What was I to do then?

  Well, I had better go to a hotel and turn in.

  But I really couldn’t go to a hotel and turn in, I didn’t have any money. I had been out, in a café, he would surely understand . . .

  We stood a little while on the steps of the jail. He considered and pondered and looked me up and down. Just beyond us the rain was pouring.

  “Then you’d better go to the officer on duty and report yourself as homeless,” he said.

  As homeless! I hadn’t thought of that. That was a damn good idea! I thanked the policeman on the spot for this excellent suggestion. All there was to it was to go in and say that I was homeless?

  Yes, that was all! . . .

  “Name?” the officer on duty asked.

  “Tangen—Andreas Tangen.”

  I don’t know why I lied. My thoughts fluttered about in disarray and gave me more fanciful notions than I could handle. I hit upon this far-fetched name on the spur of the moment and tossed it out without any ulterior motive. I lied unnecessarily.

  “Occupation?”

  Now he was forcing me to the wall. Hmm! I thought first of turning myself into a tinsmith but didn’t dare; I had given myself a name not borne by each and every tinsmith, and besides I was wearing glasses. Then it came into my head to be foolhardy—I took a step forward and said, firmly and solemnly, “Journalist.”

  The officer on duty gave a start before writing it down, and I stood before the counter with the lofty air of a homeless cabinet minister. It didn’t arouse any suspicion; the officer could understand quite well why I had hesitated with my answer. Had anyone heard the like, a journalist in jail, without a roof over his head!

  “With which paper, Mr. Tangen?”

  “With Morgenbladet,” I said. “I’m afraid I’ve been out a bit late this evening—”

  “Well, we won’t mention that,” he broke in, adding with a smile, “When youth steps out, you know . . . We understand!” Turning to an officer he said, as he rose and bowed politely to me, “Show that gentleman up to the reserved section. Good night.”

  I felt the chills running down my spine at my boldness, and I clenched my hands as I followed him, to hang tough.1 “The gas light will be on for ten minutes,” the officer said from the doorway.

  “And then it goes out?”

  “Then it goes out.”

  I sat down on the bed and heard the key being turned. The bright cell looked friendly; I felt safely indoors and listened with pleasure to the rain outside. How could I wish for anything better than such an excellent cell! My feeling of contentment grew; sitting on the bed, hat in hand and my eyes fixed upon the gas jet on the wall, I started to mull over the high points of my first involvement with the police. This was the first time, and how I had fooled them! Journalist Tangen, beg your pardon? And then Morgenbladet! I had really struck home with Morgenb
ladet! We won’t mention that, eh? Sat at the Prime Minister’s in gala till two o’clock, forgot my gate key and a billfold with several thousands at home! Show that gentleman up to the reserved section. . . .

  All of a sudden the gas goes out, so strangely all of a sudden, without diminishing, without dwindling; I sit in utter darkness, unable to see my own hand or the white walls around me—nothing. I had no choice but to go to bed. I got undressed.

  But I wasn’t sleepy and couldn’t fall asleep. I lay awhile looking into the darkness, a thick massive darkness without end that I wasn’t able to fathom. My thoughts couldn’t grasp it. It struck me as excessively dark and I felt its presence as oppressive. I closed my eyes, began to sing in an undertone, and tossed back and forth in the bunk to distract myself, but it was no use. The darkness had taken possession of my thoughts and didn’t leave me alone for a moment. What if I myself were to be dissolved into darkness, made one with it? I sit up in bed and flail my arms.

  My nervous state had gotten out of hand, and however hard I tried to fight it, it was no use. A prey to the quirkiest fantasies, there I sat shushing myself, humming lullabies, perspiring with the effort to calm myself down. I stared out into the darkness—and never in my born days had I seen such a darkness. There was no doubt that here I found myself before a special kind of darkness, a desperate element which no one had previously been aware of. The most ludicrous ideas filled my mind, and every little thing frightened me. I am greatly absorbed by the tiny hole in the wall by my bed, a nail hole I come across, a mark in the masonry. I feel it, blow into it, and try to guess its depth. That was no innocent hole, not by any means; it was a very intricate and mysterious hole that I had to beware of. Obsessed by the thought of this hole, quite beside myself with curiosity and fear, I finally had to get out of bed and find my half-pocketknife to measure its depth, so I could assure myself that it didn’t go all the way into the next cell.

  I lay back to try and fall asleep, but in reality to fight the darkness once more. The rain had stopped outside and I couldn’t hear a sound. I kept listening for footsteps in the street for a while, and I didn’t rest easy until I had heard a pedestrian go by, a policeman judging by the sound. Suddenly I snap my fingers several times and laugh. What the hell was this! Ha! I imagined I had found a new word. I sit up in bed and say, It doesn’t exist in the language, I have invented it—Kuboå. It does have letters like a word—sweet Jesus, man, you have invented a word. . . . Kuboå . . . of great grammatical importance.