Look Back on Happiness by Knut Hamsun

K >> Knut Hamsun >> Look Back on Happiness

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14

His father, the old man alone in his room, stands sometimes on his
threshold, as he used to do, and reflects. He is lost in memories, for he
has ninety years behind him. The many houses on the farm confuse him a
little; the roofs are all too big for him, and he is afraid they might
come down and carry him off. Once he asked Josephine if it was right that
his hands and fingers should run away from him every day across the
fields. So they put mittens on his hands, but he took to chewing them; in
fact he ate everything he was given, and enjoyed a good digestion. So they
must be thankful he had his health, Josephine said, and could be up and
about.

* * * * *

I did not follow the others across the field, but returned the way I had
come last spring, down toward the woods and the sea. It is fitting that I
should go back, always back, never forward again.

I passed the hut where Solem and I had lived together, and then the
Lapps--the two old people and Olga, this strange cross between a human
being and a dwarf birch. A stove stood against the peat wall, and a
paraffin lamp hung from the roof of their stone-age dwelling. Olga was
kind and helpful, but she looked tiny and pathetic, like a ruffled hen; it
pained me to watch her flit about the room, tiny and crooked, as she
looked for a pair of reindeer cheeses for me.

Then I reached my own hut of last winter where I had passed so many lonely
months. I did not enter it.

Or rather, I did enter it, for I had to spend the night there. But I shall
skip this, so for the sake of brevity, I call it not entering. This
morning I wrote something playful about Madame, the mouse I left here last
spring; but tonight I am taking it out again because I am no longer in the
mood, and because there is no point in it. Perhaps it would have amused
you to read it, my friend; but there is no point in amusing you now. I
must deject you now and make you listen to me; there is not much more to
hear.

Am I moralizing? I am explaining. No, I am not moralizing; I am
explaining. If it is moralizing to see the truth and tell it to you, then
I am moralizing. Can I help that? Intuitively I see into what is distant;
you do not, for this is something you cannot learn from your little
schoolbooks. Do not let this rouse your hatred for me. I shall be merry
again with you later, when my strings are tuned to merriment. I have no
power over them. Now they are tuned to a chorale....

* * * * *

At dawn, in the bright moonlight, I leave the hut and push on quickly in
order to reach the village as soon as possible. But I must have started
too early or walked too fast, for at this rate I shall reach the village
at high noon. What am I chasing after? Perhaps it is feeling the nearness
of the sea that drives me forward. And as I stand on the last high ridge,
with the glitter and roar of the sea far beneath, a sweetness darts
through me like a greeting from another world. "_Thalatta!_" I cry;
and I wipe my eyeglasses tremblingly. The roar from below is sleepless and
fierce, a tone of jungle passion, a savage litany. I descend the ridge as
though in a trance and reach the first house.

There was no one about, and a few children's faces at a window suddenly
disappeared. Everything here was small and poor, though only the barn was
of peat; the house was a timbered fisherman's home. As I entered the
house, I saw that though it was as poor within as without, the floor was
clean and covered with pine twigs. There were many children here. The
mother was busy cooking something over the fire.

I was offered a chair, and sitting down, began to chat with a couple of
small boys. As I was in no hurry and asked for nothing, the woman said:

"I expect you want a boat?"

"A boat?" I said in my turn, for I had not come by boat on my last visit;
I had walked instead over fjelds and valleys many miles from the sea.
"Yes, why not?" I said. "But where does it go?"

"I thought you wanted a boat to go to the trading center," she replied,
"because that's where the steamer stops. We've rowed over lots of people
this year."

Great changes here; the motor traffic in Stordalen must have completely
altered all the other traffic since my last visit ten months ago.

"Where can I stop for a few days?" I asked.

"At the trading center, the other side of the islands. Or there's Eilert
and Olaus; they're both on this side. You could go there; they've got big
houses."

She showed me the two places on this side of the water, close to the
shore, and I proceeded thither.

XXVII

A large house, with and upper story of planks built on later, displayed a
new signboard on the wall: Room and Board. The barn, as usual, was a peat
hut.

As I did not know which was Eilert and which Olaus, and had stopped to
consider which road to take, a man came hurrying toward me. Ah, well, the
world is a small place; we meet friends and acquaintances everywhere. Here
am I, meeting an old acquaintance, the thief of last winter, the pork
thief. What luck, what a satisfaction!

This was Eilert. He took in paying guests now.

At first he pretended not to recognize me, but he soon gave that up. Once
he had done so, however, he carried the thing off in style:

"Well, well," he said, "what a nice surprise! You are most welcome under
my humble roof, and such it is!"

My own response was rather less jaunty, and I stood still collecting my
thoughts. When I had asked a few questions, he explained that since the
motor traffic had started in Stordalen, many visitors came through this
way, and sometimes they wanted to stop over at his house before being
rowed across to the steamer. They always came down in the evenings, and it
might be fine, or it might not, and at night the fjord was often wild. He
had therefore had to arrange to house them, because after all, you can't
expect people to spend the night outdoors.

"So you've turned into a hotelkeeper," I said.

"Well, you can joke about it," he returned, "but all I do is to give
shelter to the people who come here. That's all the hotel there is to it.
My neighbor Olaus can't do any more either, even if he builds a place
that's ten times as big. Look over there--now he's building another
house--a shed, I'd call it--and he's got three grown men working on it so
he can get it done by next summer. But it won't be much bigger than my
place at that, and anyhow, the gentry don't want to be bothered walking
all that distance to his place when here's my house right at the car stop.
And besides it was me that started it, and if I was Olaus I wouldn't have
wanted to imitate me like a regular monkey and started keeping boarders
which I didn't know the first thing about. But he can't make himself any
different from what he is, so he puts up a few old bits of canvas and rugs
and cardboard inside his barn and gets people to sleep there. But I'd
never ask the gentry to sleep in a barn, a storehouse for fodder and hay
for dumb beasts, if you'll excuse my mentioning it! But of course if
you've no shame in you and don't know how to behave in company--"

"Lucky I've met you," I said. "Why, I might have gone on down the road to
his place!"

We walked on together, with Eilert talking and explaining all the way, and
assuring me over and over again that Olaus was a good-for-nothing for
copying him as he did.

If I had known what was awaiting me, I should certainly have passed by
Eilert's house. But I did not know. I was innocent, though I may not have
appeared so. It cannot be helped.

"It's too bad I've got somebody in the best room," said Eilert. "They're
gentlefolk from the city. They came down here through Stordalen, and they
had to walk because the cars have stopped for the season. They've been in
my house for quite some days, and I think they'll be staying on a while
yet. I think they're out now, but of course it means I can't let you have
my best room."

I looked up, and saw a face in the window. A shiver ran through me--no, of
course not a shiver, far from it, but certainly this was a fresh surprise.
What a coincidence! As we were about to enter the door, there was the
actor, too--standing there looking at me: the actor from the Tore Peak
resort. It was his knees, his coat, and his stick. So I was right--I
_had_ recognized her face at an upper window. Yes, indeed, the world
is small.

The actor and I greeted each other and began to talk. How nice to see me
again! And how was Paul, the good fellow--still soaking himself in liquor,
he supposed? Funny effect it has sometimes; Paul seemed to think the whole
inn was an aquarium and we visitors the goldfish! "Ha, ha, ha, goldfish; I
wish we were, I must say!--Well, Eilert, are we getting some fresh haddock
for supper? Good!--Really, we like it here very much; we've already been
here several days; we want to stay and get a good rest."

As we stood there, a rather stout girl came down from the loft and
addressed the actor:

"The missis wants you to come right upstairs."

"Oh? Very well, at once.... Well, see you later. You'll be stopping here,
too, I expect?"

He hurried up the stairs.

Eilert and I followed to my room.

* * * * *

As a matter of fact, I went out again with Eilert at once. He had a great
deal to tell me and explain to me, and I was not unwilling to listen to
him then. Really, Eilert was not too bad, a fine fellow with four ragged,
magnificent youngsters by his first wife, who had died two years before,
and another child by his second wife. He must have forgotten, as he told
me this, the yarn about the sick wife and the ailing children that he had
spun for me last winter. The girl who had come down the stairs with the
message from the "missis" was no servant, but Eilert's young wife. And
she, too, was all right--strong and good, handy about the stables, and
pregnant again.

It all looks good to me, Eilert: your wife and everything you tell me
about your family.

No one will understand my strange contentment, then; I had been full of an
obscure happiness from the moment I came to this house. Probably a mere
coincidence, but that did not detract from my satisfactory state of mind;
I was pleased with everything, and all things added to my cheerful frame
of mind. There were some pigs by the barn, very affectionate pigs, because
they were used to the children playing with them and kissing them and
riding on their backs. And there was one of the goats, up on the roof of
course, standing so far out along the edge that it was a wonder he didn't
grow dizzy. Seagulls flew criss-cross over the fields, screaming their
own language to one another, and being friends or enemies to the best of
their ability. Down by the mouth of the river, just beneath the sunset,
began the great road that winds up through the woods and the valley. There
is something of the friendliness of a living being about such a forest
road.

Eilert was going out in his boat to fish haddock, and I went with him.
Actually he should have been getting some meat for us; but he had promised
the gentry from the city some fish, and fish was one of the gifts of God.
Besides, if he lacked meat, he could always slaughter one of the pigs.

There was a slight wind; but then we wanted some wind, Eilert said, as
long as there was not too much of it.

"Not reliable tonight though," he said, looking up into the sky; "the
bigger the wind, the stronger the current."

At first I was very brave, and sat on the thwart thinking of Eilert's
French words: _travali, prekevary, sutinary, mankemang_, and many
others. They've had a long way to travel, coming here by ancient routes
via Bergen, and now they're common property.

And then suddenly I lost all interest in French words, and felt extremely
ill. It was much too windy, and we got no haddock.

"Pity she's come up so quick," said Eilert; "let's try inshore for a
while."

But we got nothing there either, and as the wind increased and the sea
rose, "We'd better go home," said Eilert.

The sea had been just right before, remarkably so, but now there was
entirely too much of it. Why on earth did I feel so bad? An inner
exhaustion, some emotional excitement, would have explained it. But I had
experienced no emotional excitement.

We rowed in the foam and feathery jets of spray. "She's rising fast!"
cried Eilert, rowing with all his might.

I felt so wretched that Eilert told me to ship my oars; he would manage by
himself. But for all my wretchedness, I remembered that they could see me
from the shore, and I would not put down my oars. Eilert's wife might see
me and laugh at me.

What a revolting business, this seasickness that forced me to put my head
over the gunwale and make a pig of myself! I had a moment's relief, and
then it began all over again. Charming! I felt as though I were in labor;
the wrong way up, of course, through my throat, but it was a delivery
nonetheless. It moved up, then stopped, came on again and stopped, came on
and stopped once more. It was a lump of iron--iron, did I say? No, steel;
I had never felt anything like it before; it was not something I was born
with. All my internal mechanism was stopped by it. Then I took a running
start far down inside me and began, strangely, to howl with all my
strength; but a howl, however successful, cannot break down a lump of
steel. The pains continued. My mouth filled with bile. Soon, thank heaven,
my chest would burst. O--oh--oh.... Then we rowed inside the islands that
served as a breakwater, and I was saved.

Quite suddenly I was well again, and began to play the clown, imitating my
own behavior in order to deceive the people ashore. And I assured Eilert,
too, that this was the first time I had ever been seasick, so that he
should understand it was nothing to gossip about. After all, he had not
heard about the great seas I had sailed without the slightest discomfort;
once I had been four-and-twenty days on the ocean, with most of the
passengers in bed, and even the captain sick in cascades; but not me!

"Yes, I get seasick sometimes, too," says Eilert.

That evening I sat eating alone in the dining room. Since we had not
brought back any haddock, the visitors upstairs had no desire to come
down. All they wanted, Eilert's wife said, was some bread and butter and
milk to be sent up.

XXVIII

Next morning they had gone.

Yes, indeed, they left at four in the morning, at dawn; I heard them
perfectly well, for my room was near the stairs. The knight of the plump
thighs came first, clumping heavily down the stairs. She hushed him, and
her voice sounded angry.

Eilert had just risen too, and they stood outside for some minutes,
negotiating with him for the boat--yes, at once; they had changed their
minds and wanted to leave, immediately. Then they went down to the boat,
Eilert with them. I could see them through the window, chilled by the cold
of early morning and short-tempered with each other. There had been a
frost during the night; ice lay on the water in the buckets, and the
ground was harsh to walk on. Poor things--no food, no coffee; a windy
morning, with the sea still running rather high. There they go with their
knapsacks on their backs; she is still wearing her red hat.

Well, it was no concern of mine, and I lay down again, intending to sleep
till about noon. Nothing was any concern of mine, except myself. I could
not see the boat from my bed, so I got up again--just to while the time
away--to see how far they had gone. Not very far, though both men were
rowing. A little later I got up and looked again--oh, yes, they were
getting on. I took up my post by the window. It was really quite
interesting to watch the boat getting smaller and smaller; finally I
opened the window, even looked through my field-glasses. As it was not yet
quite light, I could not see them very clearly, but the red hat was still
discernible. Then the boat disappeared behind an island. I dressed and
went down. The children were all still in bed, but the wife, Regine, was
up. How calmly and naturally she took everything!

"Do you know where your husband is?" I asked her.

"Yes--funny, aren't they?" she replied. "I never saw them till after
they'd left--gone down to the fjord. Where do you suppose they're going?
Haddock fishing?"

"Maybe," was all I said. But I thought to myself: "They're leaving, all
right. They had their knapsacks on their backs."

"Funny couple," Regine resumed. "Nothing to eat, no coffee, not a thing!
And the missis not wanting anything to eat last night, neither!"

I merely shook my head and went out. Regine called to me that coffee was
nearly ready, so if I'd like a cup--

Of course the only thing I could do in the face of such foolishness was to
shake my head and go away. One must take the sensible view. How was it
possible to understand such behavior? Nevertheless I, the undersigned,
should have gone on to Olaus yesterday, instead of going fishing. That
would have been still more sensible. What business had I at this house?
Very likely she found it embarrassing to be called the "missis," and this
was why she could neither eat last night nor stay here today. So she had
beaten a retreat, with her friend and her knapsack.

Well, it was not much to go away with, but perhaps that doesn't matter. As
long as one has a reason to go away.

* * * * *

Later in the forenoon Eilert returned home. He was alone, but he came up
the path carrying one of the knapsacks--the larger one. He was in a
furious temper, and kept saying they'd better not try it on him--no,
they'd just better not.

Of course it was the bill again.

"She'll probably have a good deal of this sort of trouble," I thought to
myself, "but no doubt she'll get used to it, and take it as nonchalantly
as it should be taken. There are worse things."

But the fact remains that it was I that upset them, I that had driven them
away without their clothes; perhaps they had really expected some money to
be sent here--who knows?

I got hold of Eilert. How big was the bill? What, was that all? "Good
heavens! Here you are, here's your money; now row across to them at once
with their clothes!"

But it all proved in vain, for the strangers had gone; they had arrived
just in time for the boat, and were aboard it at that very moment.

Well, there was no help for it.

"Here's their address," says Eilert. "We can send the clothes next
Thursday; that's the next trip the boat goes south again."

I took down the address, but I was most ungracious to Eilert. Why couldn't
he have kept the other knapsack--why this particular one?

Eilert replied that it was true the gentleman had offered him the other
one, but he could see from the outside that it was not so good as this
one. And I should remember that the money the missis had paid him hadn't
covered more than the bill for one of them. So it was only reasonable that
he should take the fullest knapsack. As a matter of fact, he had behaved
very well, and that was the truth. Because when she gave him the larger
knapsack, and wrote the address, she had scolded, but he had kept quiet,
and said not another word. And anyway, nobody had better try it on him--
they'd better not, or he'd know the reason why!

Eilert shook a long-armed fist at the sky.

When he had eaten, drunk his coffee, and rested for a while, he was not so
lively and talkative as on the previous day. He had been brooding and
speculating ever since last summer, when the motor traffic started, and
did I think it would be a good idea for him to hire three grown men, too,
and build a much bigger house than Olaus's?

So he had caught it, too--the great, modern Norwegian disease!

The knapsack was back in her room again; yes, these were her clothes; I
recognized her blouses, her skirts and her shoes. I hardly looked at them,
of course; just unpacked them, folded them neatly, and put them back in
the bag again; because no doubt Eilert had had them all out in a heap.
This was really my only reason for unpacking them.

XXIX

Once more I was run into a party of English, the last for this year.

They arrived by steamer in the morning and stopped at the trading station
for a few hours, meanwhile sending up a detachment through the valley to
order a car to meet them. Stordalen, Stordalen, they said. So they had
apparently not yet seen Stordalen--an omission they must repair at once.

And what a sensation they made!

They came across by rowboat from the trading station; we could hear them a
long way off, an old man's voice drowning out all the others. Eilert
dropped everything he had in hand, and ran down to the landing place in
order to be the first on the spot. From Olaus's house, too, a man and a
few half-grown boys went down, and from all the houses round swarmed
curious and helpful crowds. There were so many spectators at the landing
place that the old man with the loud voice drew himself up to his full
height in the boat and majestically shouted his English at us, as though
his language must of course be ours as well:

"Where's the car? Bring the car down!"

Olaus, who was sharp, guessed what he meant and at once sent his two boys
up the valley to meet the car and hurry it on, for the Englishmen had
arrived.

They disembarked, they were in a great hurry, they could not understand
why the car had not come to meet them: "What was the meaning of this?"
There were four of them. "Stordalen!" they said. As they came up past
Eilert's house, they looked at their watches and swore because so many
minutes were being wasted. Where the devil was the car? The populace
followed at some distance, gazing with reverence on these dressed-up
fools.

I remember a couple of them: an old man--the one with the loud voice--who
wore a pleated kilt on each thigh and a jacket of green canvas with braid
and buckles and straps and innumerable pockets all over it. What a man,
what a power! His beard, streaming out from under his nose like the
northern lights, was greenish-white, and he swore like a madman. Another
of the party was tall and bent, a flagpole of sorts, astonishing,
stupendous, with sloping shoulders, a tiny cap perched above extravagantly
arched eyebrows; he was an upended Roman battering ram, a man on stilts. I
measured him with my eyes, and still there was something left over. Yet he
was bent and broken, old before his time, quite bald; but his mouth was
tight as a tiger's, and he had a madness in his head that kept him on the
move.

"Stordalen!" he cried.

England will soon have to open old people's homes for her sons. She
desexes her people with sport and obsessive ideas: were not other
countries keeping her in perpetual unrest, she would in a couple of
generations be converted to pederasty....

Then the horn of the car was heard tooting in the woods, and everyone
raced to meet it.

Of course Olaus's two boys had done an honest day's work in meeting the
car so far up the road, and urging the driver to hurry; were they not to
get any reward? True, they were allowed to sit in the back seat for their
return journey and thus enjoyed the drive of a lifetime; but money! They
had acquired enough brazenness in the course of the summer not to
hesitate, and approached the loud-voiced old man, holding out their palms
and clamoring: "Money!" But that did not suit the old man, who entered the
car forthwith, urging his companions to hurry. The driver, no doubt
thinking of his own tips, felt he would serve his passengers best by
driving off with them at once. So off he went. A toot of the horn, and a
rapid fanfare--tara-ra-boom-de-ay!

The spectators turned homeward, talking about the illustrious visitors.
Foreign lands--ah, no, this country will not bear comparison with them!
"Did you see how tall the younger lord was?" "And did you see the other
one, the one with the skirts and the northern lights?"

But some of the homeward-turning bumpkins, such as the Olaus family, had
more serious matters on their minds. Olaus for the first time understood
what he had read in the paper so many times, that the Norwegian elementary
school is a worthless institution because it does not teach English to the
children of the lower orders. Here were his boys, losing a handsome tip
merely because they could not swear back intelligibly at the gentleman
with the northern lights. The boys themselves had also something to think
about: "That driver, that scoundrel, that southerner! But just wait!" They
had heard that bits of broken bottle were very good for tires....

* * * * *

I return to her knapsack and her clothes, and the reason why I do so is
that Eilert is so little to be trusted. I want to count her clothes to
make sure none of them disappear; it was a mistake not to have done so at
once.

It may seem as though I kept returning to these clothes and thinking about
them; but why should I do that? At any rate it is now evident that I was
right in suspecting Eilert, for I heard him going upstairs, and when I
came in, he was turning out the bag and going through the clothes.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14