Look Back on Happiness by Knut Hamsun

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"What are you doing?" I said.

At first he tried to brazen it out.

"Never you mind," he replied. But my knowing something about him was so
much to my advantage that he soon drew in his horns. How I wronged him, he
complained, and exploited him:

"You haven't bought these clothes," he said. "I could have got more for
them if I'd sold them." He had been paid, but he still wanted more, like
the stomach, which goes on digesting after death. That was Eilert. Yet he
was not too bad; he had never been any better, and he certainly had grown
no worse with his new livelihood.

May no one ever grow worse with a new livelihood!

So I moved the knapsack and the clothes into my own room in order to take
better care of them. It was a slow job to tidy everything up for the
second time, but it had to be done. Later that evening I would resume my
journey, taking the knapsack with me. I had done with the place, and the
nights were moonlit again.

Enough of these clothes!

XXX

Once again I am at an age when I walk in the moonlight. Thirty years ago I
walked in the moonlight, too, walked on crackling, snowy roads, on bare,
frozen ground, round unlocked barns, on the hunt for love. How well I
remember it! But it is no longer the same moonlight. I could even read by
it the letter she gave me. But there are no such letters any more.

Everything is changed. The tale is told, and tonight I walk abroad on an
errand of the head, not of the heart: I shall go across to the trading
center and dispatch a knapsack by the steamer; after that I shall wander
on. And that requires nothing but a little ordinary training in walking,
and the light of the moon to see by. But in those old days, those young
days, we studied the almanac in the autumn to find out if there would be a
moon on Twelfth Night, for we could use it then.

Everything is changed; I am changed. The tale lies within the teller.

They say that old age has other pleasures which youth has not: deeper
pleasures, more lasting pleasures. That is a lie. Yes, you have read
right: that is a lie. Only old age itself says this, in a self-interest
that flaunts its very rags. The old man has forgotten when he stood on the
summit, forgotten his own self, his own _alias_, red and white,
blowing a golden horn. Now he stands no longer--no, he sits--it is less of
a strain to sit. But now there comes to him, slow and halting, fat and
stupid, the honor of old age. What can a sitting man do with honor? A man
on his feet can use it; to a sitting man it is only a possession. But
honor is meant to be used, not to be sat with.

Let sitting men wear warm stockings.

* * * * *

What a coincidence: another barn on my road, just as in the days of the
golden horn! It offers me plenty of straw and shelter for the night; but
where is the girl who gave me the letter? How warm her breath was, coming
between lips a little parted! She will come again, of course; let us wait,
we have plenty of time, another twenty years--oh, yes, she will come....

I must be on my guard against such traps. I have entered upon the
honorable years; I am weak and quite capable of believing that a barn is a
gift from above: thou well-deserving old man, here is a barn for thee!

No, thank you, I'm only just in my seventies.

And so in my errand of the head I pass by the barn.

Toward morning I find shelter under a projecting crag. It is fitting that
I should live under crags hereafter, and I lie down in a huddle, small and
invisible. Anything else you please, as long as you don't flaunt your
selfishness and your rags!

I am comfortable now, lying with my head on another person's knapsack full
of used clothes; I am doing this solely because it is just the right size.
But sleep will not come; there are only thoughts and dreams and lines of
poetry and sentimentality. The sack smells human, and I fling it away,
laying my head on my arm. My arm smells of wood--not even wood.

But the slip of paper with the address--have I got the address? And I
scratch a match to read it through and know it by heart tomorrow. Just a
line in pencil, nothing; but perhaps there is a softness in the letters, a
womanliness--I don't know.

It doesn't matter.

I manage to reach the trading center at midday, when everyone is up and
about, and the post office open. They give me a large sheet of wrapping
paper and string and sealing wax; I wrap the parcel and seal it and write
on the outside. There!

Oh--I forgot the slip of paper with the address--to put it inside, I mean.
Stupid! But otherwise I have done what I should. As I continue on my way,
I feel strangely void and deserted; no doubt because the knapsack was
quite heavy after all, and now I am well rid of it. "The last pleasure!" I
think suddenly. And as I walk on I think irrelevantly: "The last country,
the last island, the last pleasure...."

XXXI

What now?

I didn't know at first. The winter stood before me, my summer behind me--
no task, no yearning, no ambition. As it made no difference where I
stayed, I remembered a town I knew, and thought I might as well go there--
why not? A man cannot forever sit by the sea, and it is not necessary to
misunderstand him if he decides to leave it. So he leaves his solitude--
others have done so before him--and a mild curiosity drives him to see the
ships and the horses and the tiny frostbitten gardens of a certain town.
When he arrives there, he begins to wonder in his idleness if he does not
know someone in this town, in this terrifyingly large town. The moonlight
is bright now, and it amuses him to give himself a certain address to
visit evening after evening, and to take up his post there as though
something depended on it. He is not expected anywhere else, so he has the
time. Then one evening someone finds him reading under a lamppost, stops
suddenly and stares, takes a few steps toward him, and bends forward
searchingly.

"Isn't it--? Oh, no, excuse me, I thought--"

"Yes, it is. Good evening, Miss Torsen."

"Why, good evening. I thought it looked like you. Good evening. Yes, thank
you, very well. And thanks for the knapsack; I understood all at once--I
quite understand--"

"Do you live here? What a strange coincidence!"

"Yes, I live here; those are my windows. You wouldn't like to come up,
would you? No, perhaps you wouldn't."

"But I know where there are some benches down by the shore. Unless you're
cold?" I suggested.

"No, I'm not cold. Yes, thank you, I'd like to."

We went down to a bench, looking like a father and daughter out walking.
There was nothing striking about us, and we sat the whole evening
undisturbed. Later we sat undisturbed on other evenings all through a cold
autumn month.

Then she told me first the short chapter of her journey home, some of it
only hinted, suggested, and some of it in full; sometimes with her head
deeply bowed, sometimes, when I asked a question, replying by a brief word
or a shake of the head. I write it down from memory; it was important to
her, and it became important for others as well.

Besides--in a hundred years it will all be forgotten. Why do we struggle?
In a hundred years someone will read about it in memoirs and letters and
think: "How she wriggled, how she fussed--dear me!" There are others about
whom nothing at all will be written or read; life will close over them
like a grave. Either way....

What sorrows she had--dear, dear, what sorrows! The day she had been
unable to pay the bill, she thought herself the center of the universe;
everybody stared at her, and she was at her wits' end. Then she heard a
man's voice outside saying: "Haven't you watered Blakka yet?" That was
_his_ preoccupation. So she was not the center of the universe after
all.

Then she and her companion had left the house, and set out on their tour.
The center? Not at all. Day after day they walked across fields, and
through valleys, had meals in houses by the way, and water from the
brooks. If they met other travelers, they greeted them, or they did not
greet them; no one was less a center of attention than they, and no one
more. Her companion walked in vacant thoughtlessness, whistling as he
went.

At one place they stopped for food.

"Will you pay for mine for the time being?" he said.

She hesitated and then said briefly that she could not pay "for the time
being" all the way.

"Of course not, by no means," said he. "Just for the moment. Perhaps we
can get a loan further down the valley."

"I don't borrow."

"Ingeborg!" said he, pretending playfully to whimper.

"What is it?"

"Nothing. Can't I say 'Ingeborg' to my own wife?"

"I'm not your own wife," she said, getting up.

"Pish! We were man and wife last night. It says so in the visitors' book."

She was silent at this. Yes, last night they had been man and wife; that
was to save getting two rooms, and travel economically. But she had been
very foolish to agree to it.

"'Miss Torsen,' then?" he whimpered.

And to put an end to the game, she paid for both of them and took her
knapsack on her back.

They walked again. At the next stop she paid for them both without
discussion--for the evening meal, for bed and breakfast. It grew to be a
habit. They walked on once more. They reached the end of the valley by the
sea, and here she revolted again.

"Go away--go on by yourself; I don't want you in my room any more!"

The old argument no longer held good. When he repeated that they saved
money by it, she replied that she for her part required no more than one
room, and was quite able to pay for it. He joked again, whimpered,
"Ingeborg!" and left her. He was beaten, and his back was bent.

She ate alone that evening.

"Isn't your husband coming in?" asked the woman of the house.

"Perhaps he doesn't want anything," she replied.

There he stood, away by the tiny barn pretending to be interested in the
roof, in the style of building, and walked round looking at it, pursing
his lips and whistling. But she could see perfectly well from the window
that his face was blue and dejected. When she had eaten, she walked down
to the shore, calling as she passed him:

"Go in and eat!"

But he had not sunk quite so low; he would not go in to eat, and slept
under no roof that night.

It ended as such things usually end: when she found him at last next
morning, regretting her action and shaken by his appearance, everything
slipped back again to where it had been.

They stopped at this place a few days, waiting for the mail boat, when one
evening an elderly man came to the house. She knew him, and he knew them
both; she was thrown into a state of the greatest excitement, made ready
to leave at once, wept and beat her breast, and wanted to go home,
immediately, at once. It ended as such things usually end: when she had
calmed down, she went to bed for the night. She was not the center of the
universe, and the old acquaintance who had happened to pass that way did
not appear to be looking only at her. Nevertheless, she staged a sort of
flight early next morning, in the gray dawn, before other people were up.
This much she did.

Aboard the mail boat she met no more acquaintances, and had leisure to
think things over calmly. She now broke with her companion in earnest. She
had a minor disagreement with him again, for he had no ticket, and one
word gave rise to the next. It was all very well for her, he said; she had
her return ticket in her pocket. Besides, had he not got himself involved
in all these trials and tribulations because of her letter last summer,
and was she not ashamed of herself? He would not have moved a foot outside
the town had it not been for that letter of hers. Then she gave him her
purse and all her money and asked him to leave her. There was probably
enough to buy him a ticket, and now she would be rid of him.

"Of course I shouldn't accept this, but there's no other way," he said,
and left her.

She stood gazing across the water, and wondering what to do. She was in a
bad way now, so very different from what she had once thought; what shame,
what utter futility she had wandered into! She brooded till she was worn
out; then she began to listen to what people about her were saying. Two
men were huddled on benches trying to shelter from the wind; she heard one
of them say he was a schoolmaster, and the other that he was an artisan.
The schoolmaster did not remain seated long, but got up and swaggered
toward her. She passed him in silence and took his place on the bench.

It was a raw autumn day, and it did her good to get out of the wind. The
artisan probably thought this tall, well-dressed lady had a berth, but
when she sat down, he moved over on his own bench. He was on the point of
lighting his pipe, but stopped.

"Go on, don't mind me," she said.

So he lit it, but he was careful not to blow the smoke into her face.

He was only a youngster, a little over twenty, with thick reddish hair
under his cap, and whitish eyebrows high up on his forehead. His chest was
broad and flat, but his back was round and his hands massive. A great
horse.

Then a tray was brought him, sandwiches and coffee, which he had evidently
been waiting for; he paid, but went on smoking and let the food stand.

"Please eat," she said. "You don't mind my sitting here?"

"Not at all," he replied. He knocked out his pipe slowly, taking plenty of
time over it; then sat still again.

"I don't really need anything to eat yet, either," he said.

"Oh--haven't you come far?"

"No, only last night. Where do you come from, lady?"

"From the town. I've been on holiday."

"That's what I thought," he said, nodding his head.

"I've been up at the Tore Peak farm," she added.

"The Tore Peak? So."

"Do you know it?"

"No, but I know some of the people there."

A pause.

"Josephine's there," he resumed.

"Yes. Do you know her?"

"Oh, no."

They talked a little more. The boat sailed on, and they sat there talking;
it was all they had to do. She asked where he came from and what his trade
was, and it seemed he was nothing important, only a paltry carpenter, and
his mother had a small farm. Would the lady like a simple cup of coffee?

"Why, yes, thank you." Could she have a little of his, "just a little in
the saucer?"

She poured some of the coffee into the saucer and asked for a bite of food
as well. Never had food tasted so good, and when she had finished, she
thanked him for that, too.

"Haven't you a berth?" he asked.

"Yes, but I'd rather stay here," she said. "If I go below, I'll be sick."

"That's what I thought. Well, now I wonder--"

With that he got up and walked slowly and heavily away. She watched his
back disappearing down the companion to the lower deck.

She waited for him a long time, fearing that someone else might come and
take his place. Coffee from the saucer, a good-sized sandwich with the
carpenter: nothing wily or unnatural about that; this sheltered corner
seemed to her like a tiny foothold in life.

There he was, coming back with more food and coffee, a whole tray in his
big hands. He laughed good-naturedly at himself for walking so carefully.

She threw up her hands and overdid things a little:

"Great heavens! Really, you're much, much too kind!"

"Well, I thought since you were sitting here anyhow--"

They both ate; she grew warm and sleepy, and leaned back half-dozing.
Every time she opened her eyes, she saw the carpenter lighting his pipe;
he struck two or three matches at once, but he was in no hurry; they were
always half burned before he put his pipe in his mouth and began to suck
at it. The schoolmaster called something to him, drew his attention to
something far inland, but the carpenter merely nodded and said nothing.

"I wonder if he's afraid he'll wake me," she thought.

At one stop, her former traveling companion turned up again; he had been
below in the cabin.

"Aren't you coming down, Ingeborg?" he asked.

She did not reply.

The carpenter looked from one to the other.

"Miss Torsen, then!" whimpered the traveling companion playfully. He stood
waiting a moment, and finally went away.

"Ingeborg," the carpenter was probably thinking. "Miss Torsen," he was
thinking.

"How long will you be in the town?" she asked, getting up.

"Oh, I'll be there some time."

"What are you doing there?"

He was a little embarrassed, and since his skin was so fair, she could see
at once that he reddened. He bent forward, planting his elbows on his
knees before he replied.

"I want to learn a little more in my trade, be an apprentice, maybe. It
all depends."

"Oh, I see."

"What do you think of it?" he asked.

"I think it's a good idea."

"Do you?"

They were on deck nearly the whole of the day, but toward evening it
turned bitter cold and windy. When she had grown stiff with sitting, she
got up and stamped her feet, and when she had stamped till she was tired,
she sat down again. Once when she was standing a little distance away, she
saw the carpenter place a parcel on the bench as though to keep her seat
for her.

Her quondam traveling companion stuck his head out of a doorway, the wind
blowing his hair forward over his forehead, and cried:

"Ingeborg, go below, will you!"

"Oh," she groaned. Suddenly she was seized with fury. The ship heeled over
on its side as she walked toward him, and she had to take a few skips to
keep her balance.

"I don't want you to talk to me again," she hissed at him. "Do you hear? I
mean it, by all that's holy!"

"Good gracious!" he exclaimed and disappeared.

At about three o'clock, the carpenter turned up with coffee and sandwiches
again.

"Really you mustn't be doing this all the time," she said.

He merely laughed good-naturedly again, and told her to eat if she thought
it was good enough.

"We'll soon be there now," she said as she ate. "Have you someone to go
to?"

"Oh, yes, I have a sister."

Slowly and thoughtfully he took another sandwich and turned it over,
looking at it absently before he took a bite out of it. When he had
finished one mouthful, he took another. And when he had finished that one,
too, he said:

"I thought that as I'm going to stay in town over the winter, I'd better
learn something. And what with the farm as well--"

"Yes, indeed."

"You think so too?"

"Oh, yes. I think so."

Why did he tell her about his private affairs? She had private affairs of
her own. She thanked him for the sandwiches and got up.

As the boat drew alongside the pier, he offered her his hand and said:

"My name is Nikolai."

"Oh, yes?"

"I thought in case we meet again--Nikolai Palm--but I expect the town's
too big--"

"Yes, I expect it is. Well, thanks ever so much for all your kindness.
Good-bye."

XXXII

I ask Miss Torsen:

"Have you met the carpenter since?"

"What carpenter? Oh--no, I haven't. I only told you about him because he's
a sort of mutual acquaintance."

"Acquaintance?"

"Yes, of yours and mine. Only indirectly, of course. He happens to be the
brother of that schoolmistress Miss Palm that was at the Tore Peak farm
last summer."

"Well, the world's a small place. We all belong to the same family."

"And that's why I've told you all this about him."

"But you didn't find out about this relationship on the boat, did you? So
you must have met him since."

"Yes,--well, no, that is to say I've seen him a few times, but not to
speak to. We just said good morning and how are you and so on. Then he
said he was her brother."

"Ha, ha, ha!"

"It was just in passing, quite by accident."

This gave me a good opportunity for saying: "What a lot of things are
accidental! It was an accident that I should have stopped under a
particular lamppost to look up something, to read a few lines. And then
you happened to live there."

"That's right."

"I expect you and the carpenter will be getting married," I said.

"Ha, ha! No, indeed, I shan't marry anyone."

"No?"

"You have to be pretty naive to marry."

"Well, I don't know that being naive does any harm--being not quite so
clever. Where does your cleverness lead you? Only to being cheated.
Because there isn't anybody who's quite clever enough."

"I should have thought being clever is just the thing to protect you
against being cheated. What else would it do?"

"Exactly. What else? But the trouble is we trust our cleverness so much
that we get cheated that way. Or else we let things go from bad to worse,
because why should we worry? After all we've got our cleverness to help
get us out of the mess!"

"Well, in that case it's pretty hopeless!"

"Relying on your cleverness--yes. That was your own opinion last summer,
you know."

"Yes, I remember that. I thought--oh, I don't know. But when I came back
to town again it was as though--"

A pause.

"I don't know what to think," she said.

"And I do because I'm old and wise. You see, Miss Torsen, in the old days
people didn't think so much about cleverness and secondary schools and the
right to vote; they lived their lives on a different plane, they were
naive. I wonder if that wasn't a pretty good way to live. Of course people
were cheated in those days, too, but they didn't smart under it so; they
bore it with greater natural strength. We have lost our healthy powers of
endurance."

"It's getting cold," she said. "Shall we go home?--Yes, of course that's
all quite true, but we're living in modern times. We can't change the
times; I can't, at any rate; I've got to keep up with the times."

"Yes, that's what it says in the Oslo morning paper. Because it used to
say so in the _Neue Freie Presse_. But a person with character goes
his own way up to a point, even if the majority go a different way."

"Yes--well, I'm really going to tell you something now," she said,
stopping. "I go to a really sensible school during the day."

"Do you?" I said.

"Only this time I'm learning housekeeping; isn't that a good thing?"

"You mean you're learning to cut sandwiches for yourself?"

"Ha, ha!"

"Well, you said you weren't going to marry!"

"Oh, I don't know."

"Very well. You marry; you settle down in his valley. But first you have
to learn housekeeping so that you can make an omelette or possibly a
pudding for tourists or Englishmen that pass through."

"His valley? Whose valley?"

"You'd much better go to his mother's and learn all the housekeeping
you're going to need from her."

"Really, really," she said smiling as she walked on again, "you're quite
on the wrong track. It isn't he--it isn't anybody."

"So much the worse for you. There ought to be somebody."

"Yes, but suppose it's not the one I want."

"Oh, yes, it will be the one you want. You're big enough and handsome
enough and capable enough."

"Thank you very much, but--well. Thanks so much. Good night."

Why did she break off so suddenly and leave me so hurriedly, almost at a
run? Was she crying? I should have liked to have said more, to have been
wise and circumstantial and made useful suggestions, but I was left
standing in a kind of stupid surprise.

Then something happened.

"We haven't seen each other for such a long time," she said, the next time
we met. "I'm so glad to see you again. Shall we take a short walk? I was
just--"

"Going to post a letter, I see."

"Yes, I was going to post a letter. It's only--it's not--"

We went to a newspaper office with the letter. It was evidently an
advertisement; perhaps she was trying to find a situation.

As she came out of the office a gentleman greeted her. She turned a deep
red, and stopped for a moment at the top of the two stone steps leading
from the entrance. Her head was bent almost to her chest, as though she
were looking very carefully at the steps before venturing to come down
them. They greeted each other again; the stranger shook her hand, and they
began to talk.

He was a man of her own age, good-looking, with a soft, fair beard, and
dark eyebrows that looked as though he had blacked them. He wore a top
hat, and his overcoat, which was open, was lined with silk.

I heard them mention an evening of the previous week on which they had
enjoyed themselves; it had been a relaxation. There had been quite a
party, first out driving, then at supper together. It was a memory they
had in common. Miss Torsen didn't say much. She seemed a little
embarrassed, but smiling and beautiful. I began to look at the illustrated
papers displayed in the window, when suddenly the thought struck me: "Good
God, she's in love!"

"Look, I have a suggestion," he said. Then they discussed something,
agreed about something, and she nodded. After that he left her.

She came toward me slowly and in silence. I spoke to her about some of the
pictures in the window. "Yes," she said, "just think!" But she gazed at
them without seeing anything. Silently we walked on, and for several
minutes, at least, she said nothing.

"Hans Flaten never changes," she said finally.

"Is that who it was?" I asked.

"His name's Flaten."

"Yes, I remember you mentioned the name last summer. Who is he?"

"His father's a merchant."

"But he himself?"

"His father owns the big shop in Almes Street, you know."

"Yes, but what about _him_; what does he do?"

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