Look Back on Happiness by Knut Hamsun

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At their first jubilee, they left life behind and began a vegetating
existence; once one is fifty, the seventies begin. And the irons were no
longer red-hot; there were no irons. But by heaven, how stubbornly
Simplicity insisted the irons were there, insisted that they were red.

"See the irons!" Simplicity said. "See how red they are!"

As though it mattered that death can be kept off for another twenty years
from one who has already begun to perish! I have no use for such a way of
thinking; but you have, no doubt, you with your cheerful mediocrity and
school education. A one-armed man can still walk; a one-legged man can lie
down. Has the forest taught you nothing, then? What have I learned in the
forest? _That young trees grow there_.

In my footsteps walks youth, youth that is shamelessly, barbarously
scorned, merely because it is young, scorned by stupidity and
degeneration. I have seen this for many years. I know nothing more
despicable than your school education and your school-education standards.
Whether you have a catechism or a compass by which to guide your life is
all the same; come here, my friend, and I will give you a compass made of
my latest iron.

IX

A tourist arrived at the farm: the first tourist. And the master of the
house himself went with him across the fjeld, and as for Solem, why, he,
too, went with him so that he might know the way for later tourists. We
found the fat, short, and thin-haired stranger standing in the yard, an
elderly, well-to-do man who walked for the sake of his health and the last
twenty years of his life. Josephine, the dear girl, made her feet a breeze
beneath her skirts, and got him into the living room, with its piano and
its earthenware bowls with beaded edges. When he was leaving, he brought
out his small change, which Josephine received in her gray, young-girl's
fingers. On the other side of the fjeld, Solem was given two crowns for
acting as guide, and that was good pay. All went so well that the master
himself was content.

"Now they'll be coming," he said. "If only they would leave us in peace,"
he added.

By this he meant he regretted the good, carefree days that he and his
household had enjoyed till now; but in a few weeks a motor road would be
opened in the neighboring valley, and then it was a question whether the
tourist traffic might not be deflected there. His wife and Josephine were
a little afraid it would be; but he himself had held as long as possible
to the opinion that all their regular visitors who had come again year
after year would remain faithful. No matter how many roads and motor cars
they might have in other places, they could not get the peaks of the Tore
range anywhere but here.

The master of the house had felt so confident that once more he had much
timber lying by the wall of the barn, ready to be built into new cottages,
with six new guestrooms, a great hall with reindeer horns and log chairs,
and a bathroom. But what was the matter with him today; was he beginning
to doubt? "If only they would leave us in peace," he said.

A week later Mrs. Brede arrived with her children; she had a cottage to
herself, as in previous summers. So she must be rich and fashionable, this
Mrs. Brede, since she had a cottage to herself. She was a charming lady,
and her little daughters were well-grown, handsome children. They curtsied
to me, making me feel, I don't know why, as though they were giving me
flowers. A strange feeling.

Then came Miss Torsen and Mrs. Molie, who were both to stay for the
summer. They were followed by Schoolmaster Staur, who would stay a week.
Later came two schoolmistresses, the Misses Johnsen and Palm, and still
later Associate Schoolmaster Hoey and several others--tradesmen, telephone
operators, a few people from Bergen, one or two Danes. There were many of
us at table now, and the talk was lively. When Schoolmaster Staur was
asked if he wanted more soup, he replied: "No, thank you; I require no
more!" and then rolled his eyes at us to show that this was the correct
thing to say. Between meals we made up small parties, going this way and
that on the sides of the fjeld and in the woods. But of transient guests
there were few or none at all, and it was really on these that the house
would earn well--on rooms for a night, on single meals, on cups of coffee.
Josephine seemed to be worrying lately, and her young fingers grew more
greedy as they counted silver coins.

Lean brook trout, goat's-meat stew, and tinned foods. Some of the guests
were dissatisfied people who spoke of leaving; others praised both the
food and the wild mountain scenery. Schoolmistress Torsen wanted to leave.
She was tall and handsome and wore a red hat on her dark hair; but there
were no suitable young men here, and in the long run it was a bore to
waste her holidays so completely. Tradesman Batt, who had been in both
Africa and America, was the only possibility, for even the Bergensians
amounted to nothing.

"Where's Miss Torsen?" Batt would ask us.

"Here I am; I'm coming," the lady answered.

They did not care for walks up the fjeld, but preferred to go to the woods
together, where they talked for hours. But Tradesman Batt did not amount
to much either; he was short and freckled, and talked of nothing but money
and trade. Besides, he had only a small shop in the town, and dealt in
tobacco and fruit. No, he did not amount to much.

One day, during a long spell of rain, I sat talking with Miss Torsen. She
was an extraordinary girl, ordinarily proud and reserved, but sometimes
talkative, lively, and perhaps a little inconsiderate, too. We sat in the
living room, with people coming and going continually, but she did not let
that disturb her, and talked in high, clear tones; in her eagerness she
sometimes clasped her hands, and then dragged them apart again. After we
had been sitting there for some time, Tradesman Batt came in, listened to
her for a moment, and then said:

"I'm going out now, Miss Torsen; are you coming?"

She swept him once with her eyes from head to foot; then she turned away
and went on talking, looking very proud and determined as she did so. No
doubt she had many good qualities; she was twenty-seven, she said, and
sick and tired of a teacher's life.

But why had she ever entered on such a life in the first place?

"Oh, just doing what everybody else did," she replied. "The girls next
door were also going to walk the road of scholarship; to study languages,
as they called it, study grammar; it all sounded so fine. We were going to
be independent and earn a lot of money. That's what I thought! Have a
home, however small, that was quite my own. How we slogged away all
through school! Some of the girls had money, but those of us who were poor
couldn't dress like them, and we hadn't well-kept hands like theirs. And
so we came to avoid all work at home for the sake of our hands.

"And we played up to the boys at school, too. We thought them such fine
gentlemen; one of them had a riding horse, bit of a fool, of course, but
he was a millionaire's son and awfully decent, gave us banknotes--me,
anyhow--and he kissed me many times. His name was Flaten; his father was a
merchant. Of course, he being so handsome and dashing, we wanted to be
nice to him too. I should have done anything he asked; I used to pray to
God for him.

"I'm sure I wasn't the only one who wanted to be smart and pretty. That
was how we passed the time. Washing and cooking and mending fell to the
lot of my mother and sisters; we students wouldn't do anything but sit
round being very learned and getting seraphic hands. We were quite mad, as
I don't mind admitting. It was in the course of those years that we
acquired all the distorted ideas we've been burdened with since; we grew
dull with school wisdom, anaemic, unbalanced: sometimes terribly unhappy
about our sad lot, sometimes hysterically happy, and pluming ourselves on
our examinations and our importance. We were the pride of the family.

"And of course we were independent. We got jobs in offices, at forty
_kroner_ a month. Because now there was no longer anything in the
least extraordinary about us students--we were no rarity, there were
hundreds of us--forty _kroner_ was the most they gave us. Thirty went
to Father and Mother for our keep, and ten for ourselves. It wasn't
enough. We had to have pretty clothes for the office, and we were young,
we liked to walk out; but everything was too dear for us, we went into
debt, and some of us got engaged to poor devils like ourselves. The narrow
school life during our years of development did more than hurt our
intelligence; we wanted to show spirit, too, and not recoil before any
experience, so some of us went to the bad, others married--and with such
antecedents, of course, there was first-rate mismanagement in the home;
others disappeared to America. But probably all of them are still boasting
their languages and their examinations. It's all they have left--not
happiness or health or innocence, but their matriculation. Good God!"

"But surely some of you have become schoolmistresses with good salaries?"

"Good salaries! Anyhow, first we had to start studying all over again. As
though Father and Mother and brothers and sisters hadn't sacrificed enough
for our sakes already! There was cramming again for long periods, and then
we began life in the schoolroom--to give to others the same unnatural
upbringing we had had ourselves. Oh, yes, ours was a noble vocation; it
was almost like being missionaries. But now if you'll excuse me, I'd like
to talk about something besides this exalted position. Anything else you
please."

Tradesman Batt opened the door and said:

"Are you coming, Miss Torsen? It's stopped raining now."

"Oh, leave me alone," she replied.

Tradesman Batt withdrew.

"Why do you turn him away like that?" I asked.

"Because ... well, the weather is bad," she said, looking out of the
window. "Besides, he's such a fool. And he takes such liberties."

How sure of herself she looked, and how right she seemed!

Poor Miss Torsen! True or not, the news gradually spread that Miss Torsen
had recently lost her post at the school, where indulgence had been
exercised for a long time toward her eccentric methods of teaching.

So that was it.

But certainly what she had told me was nonetheless true.

X

The news has leaked out that the master of the homestead here owes a huge
debt, and that because he needs cash he has sold new, valuable plots of
land to his cotters. I am finding out many things now. Mrs. Brede with the
handsome, well-modeled head knows something about everything, for her many
summers at the farm have given her knowledge. When she talks about
conditions here, she need not grope for words.

The master has taken a large mortgage.

No one would believe that all is not well here; the many new buildings and
flagpoles, the curtains at the windows and the red-painted well house--all
give an impression of great prosperity. The rooms, too, make a good
impression. I shall not speak of the piano, but here are pictures on the
walls and photographs of the farm seen from all angles; good newspapers
are kept and there is a selection of novels on the tables; though guests
sometimes take books away with them, the books are never missed. Or take a
thing like this: you get your bill on a handsomely printed paper, with a
picture at the top of the farm and the Tore range in the background. In
short, no one would doubt for a moment that there is a fortune here. And
why not, after twenty years as a kind of resort for tourists and
pensioners?

Nevertheless, the truth is that this homestead with all its interior and
exterior furnishings costs more than the business is worth. Manufacturer
Brede, too, has put money into it, and that is why Mrs. Brede comes here
every year with her children, to get their dividends in board and lodging.

No wonder she has a house to herself; after all, it's her own house.

"It was a good place in the old days," says Mrs. Brede. "Travelers stopped
here and had a meal and a bed for the night; it cost nothing to run the
place then. But the tourist traffic has forced him to make improvements
and enlargements. You have to keep pace with development, and be as good
as other such places in the country; they're all competing. And probably
the master here is not the right man to carry on such an irregular and
capricious business; he has learned to like idleness too much, and lets
the farm take care of itself. But the two cotters are hard-working
fellows. They're nephews of his, and bit by bit they're buying the farm
from him and cultivating it. My husband often says it will end with the
cotters or their children buying this whole place of his, Paul's."

"How can the cotters get power to do that?"

"They work hard; they're peasants. They started in the forest with three
or four goats each, first one of them, then the other one, working down in
the village and coming home with food and money, and all the time clearing
their own ground. The goats grew more numerous, a cow was added, they
bought more virgin land, and they acquired still more livestock. They
sowed grain and planted potatoes and cultivated pasture land; the owner
here buys root vegetables from his cotters; he hasn't time to toil with
such things himself; there's a great deal of work in it. Oh, no, they
don't sow anything but green fodder for the stock here; Paul says it's not
worth-while. And in a way he's right. He's tried hiring enough men to run
the farm too, but it won't work. It's just in the spring season that the
tourists start coming, and then the men are constantly being interrupted
in their work on the farm to pilot tourists across the fjeld, or to do
this or that for the guests. And this goes on all through the short summer
months; for several years, they haven't even found the time to spread all
their manure. But the worst time is really the autumn, when the tourists
are all rushing to get home again, and it's quite impossible to do the
harvesting undisturbed. It's almost become a custom here now, my husband
says, for the cotters to get half the harvest of the farm's outlying
fields."

On my wondering at Mrs. Brede's knowledge of farming, she told me with a
shake of the head that she herself knew very little about it, and had all
her information from her husband. The fact was that every time these
cotters wanted to buy a fresh piece of land from Paul, her husband had to
give his consent. This was because of the mortgage, and this, too, was how
they had learned of these matters. Manufacturer Brede, as a matter of
fact, was most anxious to be released from his undertaking, but this was
by no means easy. It was with great apprehensions that he now regarded the
new automobile route.

Mrs. Brede was full of a maternal gentleness; she played with her little
girls, and seemed to enjoy an admirable balance of mind. One day, for
example, a goat came home with one of its hind legs broken, and all the
guests hurried out with brandy and lanolin and bandages for the wound; but
Mrs. Brede remained quietly where she was, experienced, wise, and a little
surprised at all the excitement.

"All you can do with such a goat," she said, "is to slaughter it."

The lady, I understood, must have married early, for her two little girls
were twelve and ten. Her husband seemed to deal in important business, for
he spent a large part of the year in Iceland, and traveled a good deal
elsewhere as well. This, too, the lady bore quietly. And yet she was still
young and handsome, a little plump, perhaps, for her height, but with a
lovely, unwrinkled skin. She was quite unlike Miss Torsen, the only other
good-looking lady at the farm; Miss Torsen was tall and dark.

But perhaps Mrs. Brede was not always so calm as she seemed. One evening
when she went down to the men's hut and asked Solem to do her a service, I
saw that her face was strange and covered with blushes. Would Solem come
to her room and repair a window-blind that had fallen down? It was late in
the evening, and the lady seemed to have been in bed already, and to have
risen again. Solem did not appear very willing. Suddenly their eyes met,
and clung for a moment. Yes, certainly, of course he would come....

What an iron face he had, and what a rogue he was!

Mrs. Brede departed.

But a moment later she returned to say that she had changed her mind.
Never mind, thank you, she would fix the blind in position herself.

XI

An occasional tourist came or went, Solem accompanied him across the
fjeld, and he was gone. But where were all the foreigners this year?
Bennett's and Cook's conducted tours, the hordes that would "do" the
mountain peaks of Norway--where were they?

At last two solitary Englishmen turned up. They were middle-aged, unshaven
and ill-groomed altogether, two engineers or something of that sort, but
quite as speechless and uncivil as the grandest of the traveling British
clowns. "Guide! Guide!" they called. "You the guide?" Nothing about them
was any different from what we had grown to expect; these two traveled
brainlessly and solemnly to the mountain tops, were in a hurry, had a
purpose, behaved as though they were running to catch a doctor. Solem went
with them to the top and down the other side, and they offered him a
fifty-_oere_ bit. Solem held out the palm of his hand, he told me
afterwards, for he thought they would put more in it, but nothing came of
that. So he created a disturbance--Solem has grown spoiled and insolent
from all his idling with tourists.

_"Mehr,_ more," said he.

No, they would not. Solem flung the coin on the ground and struck his
hands together repeatedly. This had the required effect, and one
_krone_ made its appearance. But on Solem's taking the noble lord by
the shoulder and exerting a little pressure, two _kroner_ were at
last forthcoming.

At length a conducted party arrived. Many tongues, both sexes, huntsmen,
fishermen, dogs, mountaineers, porters. There was a tremendous commotion
at the farm; the flag was run up, Paul bent double under all the orders he
received, and Josephine ran, flew at every call. Mrs. Brede had to give up
her sitting room to three English ladies, and the rest of us were crowded
together as close as possible. I, for my part, was to be allowed to keep
my bed because of my settled age; but I said, "By no means, let this
English solicitor or whatever he is have my bed; what does it matter for a
night!"

Then I went out.

If one keeps one's eyes open, one may see a great deal at such a resort in
the daytime. And one may see much at night, too. What is the meaning of
all this bleating of goats in the shed? Why are the animals not at rest?
The door is closed; none of the visiting dogs has got in. Or--_have_
some of the visiting dogs got in? Vice, like virtue, walks in rings and
circles; nothing is new, all returns to its beginnings and repeats itself.
The Romans ruled the world, yes. They were so mighty, the Romans, so
invincible, that they could permit themselves a vice or two, they could
afford to live at the arena, they had their fun with young boys and
animals. Then one day retribution overtook them, their children's children
lost battles everywhere, and their children's children again only sat--sat
and looked backward. The ring was closed; none were less rulers of the
world than the Romans.

They paid no attention to me, the two Englishmen in the goats' shed; I was
merely one of the natives, a Norwegian, who had but to accept the ways of
the mighty tourists. But they themselves belonged to that nation of
gamblers, coachmen, and vice which one day the wholesome Gothic soul will
castigate to death....

The disturbance continued all night, and very early, the dogs began to
bark. The caravan awoke; it was six in the morning, and doors began to
bang in all the houses. They were in a great hurry, these travelers; they
were running to catch the doctor. They had breakfast in two sessions, but
though the household was bent double before them and gave of its best,
they were not satisfied. "If we had only known a little earlier," said
Paul. But they muttered that we should just wait; there were motor cars in
other places. Then Paul spoke--Paul, the master of the farm, the man who
lived under the Tore peaks:

"But I'm going to enlarge; don't you see all the timber outside? And I'm
planning to get a telephone...."

The caravan paid the exact amount of their small bill and departed,
accompanied by the master and Solem, both carrying trunks.

Peace descended on us again.

Schoolmaster Staur left now, too. He had been busy collecting plants round
the Tore peaks, and talked about his plants at table in a very learned
fashion, giving the Latin names, and pointing out their peculiarities.
Yes, indeed, he had learned a great deal at school.

"Here you see an _Artemis cotula_," he said.

Miss Torsen, who had also imbibed much learning, recognized the name and
said:

"Yes, take plenty of it with you."

"What for?"

"It's insect powder."

Schoolmaster Staur knew nothing of that, and there was a good deal of
discussion in which Associate Master Hoey had to take a hand.

No, Schoolmaster Staur knew nothing of that. But he could classify plants
and learn their names by heart. He enjoyed that. The peasant children in
his neighborhood were ignorant of these classes and names, and he could
teach them. He enjoyed that so much.

But was the spirit of the soil his friend? The plant that is cut down one
year, yet grows again the next--did this miracle make him religious and
silent? The stones, and the heather, and the branches of trees, and the
grass, and the woods, and the wind, and the great heaven of all the
universe--were these his friends?

_Artemis cotula_....

XII

When I get tired of Associate Master Hoey and the ladies.... Sometimes I
think of Mrs. Molie. She sits sewing while the Associate Master gravely
keeps her company; they talk about the servants at home whose only desire
is to stay out all night. Mrs. Molie is a thin, flat-chested lady, but
probably she has at one time been less plain; her bluish teeth look as
though they were cold, as though they were made of ice, but perhaps a few
years ago, her full lips and the dark down at the corners of her mouth
seemed to her husband the most beautiful thing he knew. Her husband--well,
he was a seafaring man, a ship's captain; he only came home on rare
occasions, just often enough to increase the family; usually he was in
Australia, China, or Mexico. It was hail and farewell with him. And here
is his wife now for the sake of her health. I wonder--is it only for her
health, or are she and the Associate Master possibly children of the same
provincial town?

When I get tired of Associate Master Hoey and the ladies, I leave them and
go out. And then I stay out all day long and nobody knows where I keep
myself. It is fitting that a settled man should be different from the
Associate Master, who is very far from being so settled. So I go out. It
is a bright day with just the right amount of warmth, and my summer woods
are filled with the fragrance of plants. I rest frequently, not because I
need to, but because the ground is full of caresses. I go so far that no
one can find me; only then am I released. No sound reaches me from farms
or men, no one is in sight; only this overgrown little goat track, which
is green at the edges and lovely. Only a bit of a goat track which looks
as though it had fallen asleep in the woods, lying there so thin and
lonely.

You who read this feel nothing, but I who sit here writing feel a kind of
sweetness at the memory of a mere track in the woods. It was like meeting
a child.

With my hands under my neck and my nose in the air, my eyes flit across
the sky. High up above the peaks of Tore, a clustering mist sways in slow
rhythm, breaks apart and presses close again, fluctuates and strains to
give birth to something. But when I rise to walk on, the end is not yet in
sight.

I meet a line of ants, a procession of ants, busy travelers. They neither
toil nor carry anything; they simply move. I retrace my steps to see if I
can find their leader, but it is useless: farther and farther I retreat, I
begin to run, but the procession is endless before and behind me. Perhaps
they started a week ago. So I go on my way, and the other insects go on
theirs.

Surely this is not a mountainside I walk on; this is a bosom, an embrace,
in its softness. I tread gently, for I do not wish to stamp or weigh it
down, and I marvel: a mountain so tender and defenseless, indulgent like a
mother. To think of an ant walking on this! Here and there lie stones,
half-covered with moss, not because they have fallen there, but because
this is their home, and they have lived here long. This is peerless.

When I reach the top and look back, it is high noon. Far away on another
peak walks one of the cows of the cotters, a strange little cow with red
and white flanks. A crow sits on a high cliff above me and caws down at me
in a voice like an iron rasp scraping against the stone. A warm thrill
runs through me, and I feel, as I have done in the woods so many times
before, that someone has just been here, and has stepped to one side.
Someone is with me here, and a moment later I see his back disappearing
into the woods. "It is God," I think. There I stand, neither speaking nor
singing. I only see. I feel all my face being filled with the sight. "It
was God," I think.

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