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Wanderers by Knut Hamsun

K >> Knut Hamsun >> Wanderers




And that was enough; just that bit of a smile and saying I was right made
me all glad and proud again within.

Then Frokenen came up, and said a few words to Grindhusen; even jested
with him, asking what that red cardinal was to be stuck up there for on
the road. But to me she said nothing at all, and did not even look at me
when I took off my hat.

Dinner was a sore trial to me that day, not that the food was bad, no, but
Grindhusen, he ate his soup in a disgusting fashion, and his mouth was all
greasy with fat.

"What'll he be like when it comes to eating porridge?" I thought to myself
hysterically.

Then when he leaned back on the bench to rest after his meal in the same
greasy state, I called to him straight out:

"For Heaven's sake, man, aren't you going to wipe your mouth?"

He stared at me, wiping his mouth with one hand. "Mouth?" he said.

I tried to turn it off then as a joke, and said: "Haha, I had you there!"
But I was displeased with myself, for all that, and went out of the
brewhouse directly after.

Then I fell to thinking of Frokenen. "I'll make her answer when I give a
greeting," I said to myself. "I'll let her see before very long that I'm
not altogether a fool." There was that business of the well and the
pipe-line, now; what if I were to work out a plan for the whole
installation all complete! I had no instruments to take the height and
fall of the hill ... well, I could make one that would serve. And I set to
work. A wooden tube, with two ordinary lamp-glasses fixed in with putty,
and the whole filled with water.

Soon it was found there were many little things needed seeing to about the
vicarage--odd matters here and there. A stone step to be set straight
again, a wall to be repaired; the bridgeway to the barn had to be
strengthened before the corn could be brought in. The priest liked to have
everything sound and in order about the place--and it was all one to us,
seeing we were paid by the day. But as time went on I grew more and more
impatient of my work-mate's company. It was torture to me, for instance,
to see him pick up a loaf from the table, hold it close in to his chest,
and cut off a slice with a greasy pocket-knife that he was always putting
in his mouth. And then, again, he would go all through the week, from
Sunday to Sunday, without a wash. And in the morning, before the sun was
up, and the evening, after it had gone, there was always a shiny drop
hanging from the tip of his nose. And then his nails! And as for his ears,
they were simply deformed.

Alas! I was an upstart creature, that had learned fine manners in the
cafes in town. And since I could not keep myself from telling my companion
now and then what I thought of his uncleanly ways, there grew up a certain
ill-feeling between us, and I feared we should have to separate before
long. As it was, we hardly spoke now beyond what was needed.

And there was the well, as undug as ever. Sunday came, and Grindhusen had
gone home.

I had got my apparatus finished now, and in the afternoon I climbed up to
the roof of the main building and set it up there. I saw at once that the
sight cut the hillside several metres below the top. Good. Even reckoning
a whole metre down to the water-level, there would still be pressure
enough and to spare.

While I was busy up there the priest's son caught sight of me. Harald
Meltzer was his name. And what was I doing up there? Measuring the hill;
what for? What did I want to know the height for? Would I let him try?

Later on I got hold of a line ten metres long, and measured the hill from
foot to summit, with Harald to help. When we came down to the house, I
asked to see the priest himself, and told him of my plan.




VI


The priest listened patiently, and did not reject the idea at once.

"Really, now!" he said, with a smile. "Why, perhaps you're right. But it
will cost a lot of money. And why should we trouble about it at all?"

"It's seventy paces from the house to the well we started to dig. Seventy
steps for the maids to go through mud and snow and all sorts, summer and
winter."

"That's true, yes. But this other way would cost a terrible lot of money."

"Not counting the well--that you'll have to have in any case; the whole
installation, with work and material, ought not to come to more than a
couple of hundred Kroner," said I.

The priest looked surprised.

"Is that all?"

"Yes."

I waited a little each time before answering, as if I were slow by nature,
and born so. But, really, I had thought out the whole thing beforehand.

"It would be a great convenience, that's true," said the priest
thoughtfully. "And that water tub in the kitchen does make a lot of mess."

"And it will save carrying water to the bedrooms as well."

"The bedrooms are all upstairs. It won't help us there, I'm afraid."

"We can run the pipes up to the first floor."

"Can we, though? Up to the bedrooms? Will there be pressure enough for
that, do you think?"

Here I waited longer than usual before answering, as a stolid fellow, who
did not undertake things lightly.

"I think I can answer for a jet the height of the roof," I said.

"Really, now!" exclaimed the priest. And then again: "Come and let us see
where you think of digging the well."

We went up the hill, the priest, Harald, and I, and I let the priest look
through my instrument, and showed him that there would be more than
pressure enough.

"I must talk to the other man about it," he said.

But I cut out Grindhusen at once, and said: "Grindhusen? He's no idea of
this work at all."

The priest looked at me.

"Really?" he said.

Then we went down again, the priest talking as if to himself.

"Quite right; yes. It's an endless business fetching water in the winter.
And summer, too, for that matter. I must see what the women think about
it."

And he went indoors.

After ten minutes or so, I was sent for round to the front steps; the
whole family were there now.

"So you're the man who's going to give us water laid on to the house?"
said Fruen kindly.

I took off my cap and bowed in a heavy, stolid fashion, and the priest
answered for me: yes, this was the man.

Frokenen gave me one curious glance, and then started talking in an
undertone to her brother. Fruen went on with more questions--would it
really be a proper water-supply like they had in town, just turn on a tap
and there was the water all ready? And for upstairs as well? A couple of
hundred Kroner? "Really, I think you ought to say yes," she said to her
husband.

"You think so? Well, let's all go up to the top of the hill and look
through the thing and see."

We went up the hill, and I set the instrument for them and let them look.

"Wonderful!" said Fruen.

But Frokenen said never a word.

The priest asked:

"But are you sure there's water here?"

I answered carefully, as a man of sober judgment, that it was not a thing
to swear to beforehand, but there was every sign of it.

"What sort of signs?" asked Fruen.

"The nature of the ground. And you'll notice there's willow and osiers
growing about. And they like a wet soil."

The priest nodded, and said:

"He knows his business, Marie, you can see."

On the way back, Fruen had got so far as to argue quite unwarrantably that
she could manage with one maid less once they'd water laid on. And not to
fail her, I put in:

"In summer at least you might. You could water all the garden with a hose
fixed to the tap and carried out through the cellar window."

"Splendid!" she exclaimed.

But I did not venture to speak of laying a pipe to the cow-shed. I had
realized all the time that with a well twice the size, and a branch pipe
across the yard, the dairymaid would be saved as much as the kitchen-maids
in the house. But it would cost nearly twice as much. No, it was not wise
to put forward so great a scheme.

Even as it was, I had to agree to wait till Grindhusen came back. The
priest said he wanted to sleep on it.




VII


So now I had to tell Grindhusen myself, and prepare him for the new
arrangement. And lest he should turn suspicious, I threw all the blame on
the priest, saying it was his idea, but that I had backed him up.
Grindhusen had no objection; he saw at once it meant more work for us
since we should have the well to dig in any case, and the bed for the
pipes besides.

As luck would have it, the priest came out on Monday morning, and said to
Grindhusen half jestingly:

"Your mate here and I have decided to have the well up on the hill, and
lay down a pipe-line to the house. What do you think of it? A mad idea?"

Grindhusen thought it was a first-rate idea.

But when we came to talk it over, and went up all three to look at the
site of the well, Grindhusen began to suspect I'd had more to do with it
than I had said. We should have to lay the pipes deep down, he said, on
account of the frost....

"One metre thirty's plenty," I said.

... and that it would cost a great deal of money.

"Your mate here said about a couple of hundred Kroner in all," answered
the priest.

Grindhusen had no idea of estimates at all, and could only say:

"Well, well, two hundred Kroner's a deal of money, anyway."

I said:

"It will mean so much less in _Aabot_ when you move."

The priest looked at me in surprise.

"_Aabot_? But I'm not thinking of leaving the place," he said.

"Why, then, you'll have the full use of it. And may your reverence live to
enjoy it for many a year," said I.

At this the priest stared at me, and asked:

"What is your name?"

"Knut Pedersen."

"Where are you from?"

"From Nordland."

But I understood why he had asked, and resolved not to talk in that
bookish way any more.

Anyhow, the well and the pipe-line were decided on, and we set to work....

The days that followed were pleasant enough. I was not a little anxious at
first as to whether we should find water on the site, and I slept badly
for some nights. But once that fear was past, all that remained was simple
and straightforward work. There was water enough; after a couple of days
we had to bale it out with buckets every morning. It was clay lower down,
and our clothes were soon in a sorry state from the work.

We dug for a week, and started the next getting out stones to line the
well. This was work we were both used to from the old days at Skreia. Then
we put in another week digging, and by that time we had carried it deep
enough. The bottom was soon so soft that we had to begin on the stonework
at once, lest the clay walls should cave in on top of us.

So week after week passed, with digging and mining and mason's work. It
was a big well, and made a nice job; the priest was pleased with it.
Grindhusen and I began to get on better together; and when he found that I
asked no more than a fair labourer's wage, though much of the work was
done under my directions, he was inclined to do something for me in
return, and took more care about his table manners. Altogether, I could
not have wished for a happier time; and nothing on earth should ever
persuade me to go back to town life again!

In the evenings I wandered about the woods, or in the churchyard reading
the inscriptions on the tombstones, and thinking of this and that. Also, I
was looking about for a nail from some corpse. I wanted a nail; it was a
fancy of mine, a little whim. I had found a nice piece of birch-root that
I wanted to carve to a pipe-bowl in the shape of a clenched fist; the
thumb was to act as a lid, and I wanted a nail to set in, to make it
specially lifelike. The ring finger was to have a little gold ring bent
round.

Thinking of such trifles kept my mind calm and at ease. There was no hurry
now for me about anything in life. I could dream as I pleased, having
nothing else to do; the evenings were my own. If possible, too, I would
see and arrive at some feeling of respect for the sacredness of the church
and terror of the dead; I had still a memory of that rich mysticism from
days now far, far behind, and wished I could have some share in it again.
Now, perhaps, when I found that nail, there would come a voice from the
tombs: "That is mine!" and I would drop the thing in horror, and take to
my heels and run.

"I wish that vane up there wouldn't creak so," Grindhusen would say at
times.

"Are you afraid?"

"Well, not properly afraid; no. But it gives you a creeping feeling now
and then to think of all the corpses lying there so near."

Happy man!

One day Harald showed me how to plant pine cones and little bushes. I'd no
idea of that sort of work before; we didn't learn it in the days when I
was at school. But now I'd seen the way of it, I went about planting
busily on Sundays; and, in return, I taught Harald one or two little
things that were new to him at his age, and got to be friends with him.




VIII


And all might have been well if it had not been for Frokenen, the daughter
of the house. I grew fonder of her every day. Her name was Elischeba,
Elisabeth. No remarkable beauty, perhaps; but she had red lips, and a
blue, girlish glance that made her pretty to see. Elischeba, Elisabeth--a
child at the first dawn of life, with eyes looking out upon the world. She
spoke one evening with young Erik from the neighbouring _gaard_, and
her eyes were full of sweetness and of something ripening.

It was all very well for Grindhusen. He had gone ravening after the girls
when he was young, and he still spanked about with his hat on one side,
out of habit. But he was quiet and tame enough now, as well he might
be--'tis nature's way. But some there are who would not follow nature's
way, and be tamed; and how shall it fare with them at last? And then there
was little Elisabeth; and she was none so little after all, but as tall as
her mother. And she'd her mother's high breast.

Since that first Sunday they had not asked me in to coffee in the kitchen,
and I took care myself they should not, but kept out of the way. I was
still ashamed of the recollection. But then, at last, in the middle of the
week, one of the maids came with a message that I was not to go running
off into the woods every Sunday afternoon, but come to coffee with the
rest. Fruen herself had said so.

Good!

Now, should I put on my best clothes or not? No harm, perhaps, in letting
that young lady get into her head that I was one who had chosen to turn my
back upon the life of cities, and taken upon myself the guise of a
servant, for all I was a man of parts, that could lay on water to a house.
But when I had dressed, I felt myself that my working clothes were better
suited to me now; I took off my best things again, and hid them carefully
in my bag.

But, as it happened, it was not Frokenen at all who received me on that
Sunday afternoon, but Fruen. She talked to me for quite a while, and she
had spread a little white cloth under my cup.

"That trick of yours with the egg is likely to cost us something before
we've done with it," said Fruen, with a kindly laugh. "The boy's used up
half a dozen eggs already."

I had taught Harald the trick of passing a hard boiled egg with the shell
off through the neck of a decanter, by thinning the air inside. It was
about the only experiment in physics that I knew.

"But that one with breaking the stick in the two paper loops was really
interesting," Fruen went on. "I don't understand that sort of thing
myself, but.... When will the well be done?"

"The well is done. We're going to start on the trench tomorrow."

"And how long will that take to do?"

"About a week. Then the man can come and lay the pipes."

"No! really?"

I said my thanks and went out. Fruen had a way she had kept, no doubt,
from earlier years; now and again she would glance at one sideways, though
there was nothing the least bit artful in what she said....

Now the woods showed a yellowing leaf here and there, and earth and air
began to smell of autumn. Only the fungus growths were now at their best,
shooting up everywhere, and flourishing fine and thick on woolly stems--
milk mushrooms, and the common sort, and the brown. Here and there a
toadstool thrust up its speckled top, flaming its red all unashamed. A
wonderful thing! Here it is growing on the same spot as the edible sorts,
fed by the same soil, given sun and rain from heaven the same as they;
rich and strong it is, and good to eat, save, only, that it is
full of impertinent muscarin. I once thought of making up a fine old story
about the toadstool, and saying I had read it in a book.

It has always been a pleasure to me to watch the flowers and insects in
their struggle to keep alive. When the sun was hot they would come to life
again, and give themselves up for an hour or so to the old delight; the
big, strong flies were just as much alive as in midsummer. There was a
peculiar sort of earth-bug here that I had not seen before--little yellow
things, no bigger than a small-type comma, yet they could jump several
thousand times their own length. Think of the strength of such a body in
proportion to its size! There is a tiny spider here with its hinder part
like a pale yellow pearl. And the pearl is so heavy that the creature has
to clamber up a stalk of grass back downwards. When it comes upon an
obstacle the pearl cannot pass, it simply drops straight down and starts
to climb another. Now, a little pearl-spider like that is not just a
spider and no more. If I hold out a leaf towards it to help it to its
footing on a floor, it fumbles about for a while on the leaf, and thinks
to itself: "H'm, something wrong about this!" and backs away again,
refusing to be in any way entrapped on to a floor....

Some one calls me by name from down in the wood. It is Harald; he has
started a Sunday school with me. He gave me a lesson out of Pontoppidan to
learn, and now I'm to be heard. It is touching to be taught religion now
as I should have taught it myself when I was a child.




IX


The well was finished, the trench was dug, and the man had come to lay the
pipes. He chose Grindhusen to help him with the work, and I was set to
cutting a way for the pipes up from the cellar through the two floors of
the house.

Fruen came down one day when I was busy in the cellar. I called out to her
to mind the hole in the floor; but she took it very calmly.

"There's no hole there now, is there?" she asked, pointing one way. "Or
there?" But at last she missed her footing after all, and slipped down
into the hole where I was. And there we stood. It was not light there
anyway; and for her, coming straight in from the daylight outside, it must
have seemed quite dark. She felt about the edge, and said:

"Now, how am I to get up again?"

I lifted her up. It was no matter to speak of; she was slight of figure,
for all she had a big girl of her own.

"Well, I must say...." She stood shaking the earth from her dress. "One,
two, three, and up!--as neatly as could be.... Look here, I'd like you to
help me with something upstairs one day, will you? I want to move some
things. Only we must wait till a day when my husband's over at the annexe;
he doesn't like my changing things about. How long will it be before
you've finished all there is to do here?"

I mentioned a time, a week or thereabout.

"And where are you going then?"

"To the farm just by. Grindhusen's fixed it up for us to go and dig
potatoes there...."

Then came the work in the kitchen; I had to saw through the floor there.
Froken Elisabeth came in once or twice while I was there; it could hardly
have been otherwise, seeing it was the kitchen. And for all her dislike of
me, she managed to say a word or two, and stand looking at the work a
little.

"Only fancy, Oline," she said to the maid, "when it's all done, and you'll
only have to turn on a tap."

But Oline, who was old, did not look anyways delighted. It was like going
against Providence, she said, to go sending water through a pipe right
into the house. She'd carried all the water she'd a use for these twenty
years; what was she to do now?

"Take a rest," said I.

"Rest, indeed! We're made to work, I take it, not to rest."

"And sew things against the time you get married," said Froken Elisabeth,
with a smile.

It was only girlish talk, but I was grateful to her for taking a little
part in the talk with us, and staying there for a while. And heavens, how
I did try to behave, and talk smartly and sensibly, showing off like a
boy. I remember it still. Then suddenly Froken Elisabeth seemed to
remember it wasn't proper for her to stay out here with us any longer, and
so she went.

That evening I went up to the churchyard, as I had done so many times
before, but seeing Frokenen already there, I turned away, and took myself
off into the woods. And afterwards I thought: now she will surely be
touched by my humility, and think: poor fellow, he showed real delicacy in
that. And the next thing, of course, was to imagine her coming after me. I
would get up from the stone where I was sitting, and give a greeting. Then
she would be a little embarrassed, and say: "I was just going for a walk--
it's such a lovely evening--what are you doing here?" "Just sitting
here," say I, with innocent eyes, as if my thoughts had been far away. And
when she hears that I was just sitting there in the late of the evening,
she must realize that I am a dreamer and a soul of unknown depth, and then
she falls in love with me....

She was in the churchyard again the following evening, and a thought of
high conceit flew suddenly into my mind: it was myself she came to see!
But, watching her more closely, I saw that she was busy, doing something
about a grave, so it was not me she had come for. I stole away up to the
big ant-heap in the wood and watched the insects as long as I could see;
afterwards, I sat listening to the falling cones and clusters of rowan
berries. I hummed a tune, and whispered to myself and thought; now and
again I had to get up and walk a little to get warm. The hours passed, the
night came on, and I was so in love I walked there bare-headed, letting
myself be stared out of all countenance by the stars.

"How's the time?" Grindhusen might ask when I came back to the barn.

"Just gone eleven," I would say, though it might be two or three in the
morning.

"Huh! And a nice time to be coming to bed. _Fansmagt!_ Waking folk up
when they've been sleeping decently!"

And Grindhusen turns over on the other side, to fall asleep again in a
moment. There was no trouble with Grindhusen.

Eyah, it's over-foolish of a man to fall in love when he's getting on in
years. And who was it set out to show there _was_ a way to quiet and
peace of mind?




X


A man came out for his bricklayer's tools; he wanted them back. What? Then
Grindhusen had not stolen them at all! But it was always the same with
Grindhusen: commonplace, dull, and ordinary, never great in anything,
never a lofty mind.

I said:

"You, Grindhusen, there's nothing in you but eat and sleep and work.
Here's a man come for those tools now. So you only borrowed them; that's
all you're good for. I wouldn't be you for anything."

"Don't be a fool," said Grindhusen.

He was offended now, but I got him round again, as I had done so many
times before, by pretending I had only spoken in jest.

"What are we to do now?" he asked.

"You'll manage it all right," said I.

"Manage it--will I?"

"Yes, or I am much mistaken."

And Grindhusen was pacified once more.

But at the midday rest, when I was cutting his hair, I put him out of
temper once again by suggesting he should wash his head.

"A man of your age ought to know better than to talk such stuff," he said.

And Heaven knows but he may have been right. His red thatch of hair was
thick as ever, for all he'd grandchildren of his own....

Now what was coming to that barn of ours? Were spirits about? Who had been
in there one day suddenly and cleaned the place and made all comfortable
and neat? Grindhusen and I had each our own bedplace; I had bought a
couple of rugs, but he turned in every night fully dressed, with all he
stood up in, and curled himself up in the hay all anyhow. And now here
were my two rugs laid neatly, looking for all the world like a bed. I'd
nothing against it; 'twas one of the maids, no doubt, setting to teach me
neat and orderly ways. 'Twas all one to me.

I was ready now to start cutting through the floor upstairs, but Fruen
begged me to leave it to next day; her husband would be going over to the
annexe, and that way I shouldn't disturb him. But next morning we had to
put it off again; Froken Elisabeth was going in to the store to buy no end
of things, and I was to go with her and carry them.

"Good," said I, "I'll come on after."

Strange girl! had she thought to put up with my company on the way? She
said:

"But do you think you can find the way alone?"

"Surely; I've been there before. It's where we buy our things."

Now, I couldn't well walk through all the village in my working things all
messed up with clay: I put on my best trousers, but kept my blouse on
over. So I walked on behind. It was a couple of miles or more; the last
part of the way I caught sight of Froken Elisabeth on ahead now and again,
but I took care not to come up close. Once she looked round, and at that I
made myself utterly small, and kept to the fringe of the wood.

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Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet regains citizenship
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Turkey is restoring the citizenship of its most famous 20th century poet Nazim Hikmet over 50 years after it branded him a traitor.

Hikmet, a communist who died in exile in Moscow in 1963, was imprisoned in Turkey for more than a decade. He was stripped of his Turkish nationality in 1951 because of his communist views, but despite a ban on his poetry which remained in place until 1965, has remained one of Turkey's best-loved poets. His work, much of which was written in prison, including his masterpiece Human Landscapes, has been translated into more than 50 languages.

"This is very good news," said Richard McKane, Hikmet's English translator. "The restoration of his Turkish citizenship is long overdue: the people of Turkey and his readers are owed that."

Immortalised by Pablo Neruda, with whom he shared the Soviet Union's International Peace Prize in 1950, with the lines "Thanks for what you were and for the fire / which your song left forever burning", Hikmet was also supported by Jean-Paul Sartre and Pablo Picasso. Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, when given the editorship for a day of Turkish newspaper Radikal two years ago, used the example of Hikmet in his cover story to criticise the lack of freedom of expression in Turkey. In 2000, 500,000 Turks petitioned the government to restore Hikmet's citizenship rights and repatriate his remains.

Deputy prime minister Cemil Cicek told the Associated Press that it was time for the government to change its mind about Hikmet. "The crimes which forced the government to strip him of his citizenship at that time are no longer considered a crime," the BBC quoted him as saying.

Hikmet, whose remains are currently in Russia, had said that he wished to be buried in Turkey in his 1953 poem Testament, translated by Ruth Christie. "Friends if it's not my lot to see the day / of independence... / if I die before that day / - and it seems I will - / bury me in a village graveyard in Anatolia / and if it's fitting / and a plane tree grows at my head, / then there's no need for a gravestone or anything else."

Cicek said that Hikmet's family would now decide whether to ship his remains back to his homeland.

Hikmet introduced free verse to Turkey in the 1930s, with his themes ranging from war to love. Despite his imprisonment he retained a deep passion for Turkey. "I love my country", he wrote in one of his poems. "I swung in its lofty trees, I lay in its prisons. Nothing relieves my depression like the songs and tobacco of my country."

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