Wanderers by Knut Hamsun

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I question him:

"That lady you told me about once--the one that was drowned--was it
somewhere about here?"

"Eh? Oh, the one that fell in! Yes. Ay, it was close by here. Dreadful it
was. There must have been twenty of us here, with the police, searching
about."

"Dragging the channel?"

"Yes. We got out planks and ladders, but they broke through under us; we
cut up all the ice in the end. Here"--he stopped suddenly--"you can see
the way we went."

I can see in the dark space where the boats had moved out and broken
through the ice to drag the depth; it was frozen over again now.

The porter goes on:

"We found her at last. And a mercy it was, I dare say. The river was low
as it was. Gone right down at once, she had, and got stuck fast between
two stones. There was no current to speak of; if it had been spring, now,
she'd have travelled a long way down."

"Trying to cross to the other side, I suppose?"

"Ay. They're always getting out on the ice as soon as it comes; a nasty
way it is. Somebody had been over already, but that was two days before.
She just came walking down on this side where we are, and the engineer, he
was coming down the road on the other side--he'd been out on his bicycle
somewhere. Then they caught sight of each other and waved or made a sign
or something, for they were cousins or something, both of them. Then the
lady must have mistaken him somehow, the engineer says, and thought he was
beckoning, for she started to come across. He shouted at her not to, but
she didn't hear, and he'd got his bicycle and couldn't move, but, anyhow,
some one had got across before. The engineer told the police all about how
it happened, and it was written down, every word. Well, and then when
she's half-way across, she goes down. A rotten piece of ice it must have
been where she trod. And the engineer, he comes down like lightning on his
bicycle through the town and up to the hotel and starts ringing. I never
heard the like, the way he rang. 'There's someone in the river!' he cries
out. 'My cousin's fallen in!' Out we went, and he came along with us. We'd
ropes and boat-hooks, but that was no use. The police came soon after, and
the fire brigade; they got hold of a boat up there and carried it between
them till they got to us; then they got it out and started searching about
with the drag. We didn't find her the first day, but the day after. Ay, a
nasty business, that it was."

"And her husband came, you said. The Captain?"

"Yes, the Captain, he came. And you can reckon for yourself the state he
was in. And we were all the same for that matter, all the town was. The
engineer, he was out of his senses for a long while, so they told us at
the hotel, and when the Captain arrived, the engineer went off inspecting
up the river, just because he couldn't bear to talk any more about it."

"So the Captain didn't see him, then?"

"No. H'm! Nay, I don't know," said the porter, looking around. "No, I
don't know anything about that--no."

His answer was so confused, it was evident that he did know. But it was of
no importance, and I did not question him again.

"Well, thanks for coming up with me," I said, and shared a little money
with him for a winter wrap or something of the sort. And I took leave of
him, and wanted him to turn back.

He seemed anxious, however, to go on with me a little farther. And, to get
me to agree, he suddenly confesses that the Captain had seen the engineer
while he was here--yes. The porter, good foolish creature, had understood
enough of the maids' gossip in the kitchen to make out that there was
something wrong about the engineer and this cousin of his who had come to
stay; more than this, however, he had not seen. But, as regards the
meeting between the two men, it was he himself who had acted as guide to
the Captain on his way up to find the engineer.

"He said he must find him, and so we went up together. And the Captain, he
asked me on the way, what could there be to inspect up the river now it
was frozen over? And I couldn't see myself, I told him. And so we walked
up all day to about three or four in the afternoon. 'We might see if he's
not in the hut here,' I said, for I'd heard the lumbermen used the place.
Then the Captain wouldn't let me go on with him any farther, but told me
to wait. And he walked up to the hut by himself, and went in. He'd not
been in the place more than a bare couple of minutes, when out he comes,
and the engineer with him. There was a word or so between them--I didn't
hear; then all of a sudden the Captain flings up one arm like that, and
lands out at the engineer, and down he goes. Lord! but he must have felt
it pretty badly. And not content with that, he picks him up and lands out
at him again as hard as before. Then he came back to me and said we'd be
going home."

I grew thoughtful at this. It seemed strange that this porter, a creature
who bore no grudge or ill-will to any one, should leave the engineer up
there at the hut without aid. And he had shown no disapproval in his
telling of the thrashing. The engineer must have been miserly with him,
too, I thought, and never paid him for his services, but only ordered him
about and laughed at him, puppy that he was. That would be it, no doubt.
And this time, perhaps, I was not misled by jealous feelings of my own.

"But the Captain--he was free with his money, if you like," said the
porter at last. "I paid off all my owings with what he gave me--ay, indeed
I did."

When at last I had got rid of the man, I crossed the river; the ice was
firm enough. I was on the main road now. And I walked on, thinking over
the porter's story. That scene at the hut--what did it amount to, after
all? It merely showed that one of the two men was big and strong, the
other a little, would-be sportsman heavily built behind. But the Captain
was an officer--it was something of that sort, perhaps, he had been
thinking. Perhaps he ought to have thought a little more in other ways
while there was yet time--who can say? It was his wife! who had been
drowned. The Captain might do what he pleased now; she would never come
again.

But if she did, what then? She was born to her fate, no doubt. Husband and
wife had tried to patch up the damage, but had failed. I remember her as
she was six or seven years back. She found life dull, and fell in love a
trifle here and there perhaps, even then, but she was faithful and
delicate-minded. And time went on. She had no occupation, but had three
maid-servants to her house; she had no children, but she had a piano. But
she had no children.

And Life can afford to waste.

Mother and child it was that went down.

EPILOGUE

A wanderer plays with muted strings when he comes to fifty years. Then he
plays with muted strings.

Or I might put it in this way.

If he comes too late for the harvest of berries in autumn, why, he is come
too late, that is all; and if one fine day he finds he can no longer be
gay and laugh all over his face in delight of life, 'tis because he is
old, no doubt; blame him not for that! And there can be no doubt that it
requires a certain vacuity of mind to go about feeling permanently
contented with oneself and all else. But we have all our softer moments.
A prisoner is being driven to the scaffold in a cart. A nail in the seat
irks him; he shifts aside a little, and feels more at ease.

A Captain should not pray that God may forgive him--as he forgives his
God. It is simply theatrical. A wanderer who cannot reckon every day on
food and drink, clothes and boots, and house and home, feels just the
right degree of privation when all these luxuries are lacking. If you
cannot manage one way, why, there will be another. But if the other way
should also fail, then one does not forgive one's God, but takes up the
responsibility oneself. Shoulder against what comes--that is, bow to it.
A trifle hard for flesh and blood, and it greys a man's hair sadly. But a
wanderer thanks God for life; it was good to live!

I might put it that way.

For why these high demands on life? What have we earned? All the boxes of
sweetmeats a sweet-tooth could wish for? Well and good. But have we not
had the world to look upon each day, and the soughing of the woods to
hear? There is nothing so grand in all the world as that voice of the
woods.

There was a scent of jasmine in a shrubbery, and one I know thrilled with
joy, not for the jasmine's scent but for all there was--for the light in a
window, a memory, the whole of life. He was called away from the jasmines
after, but he had been paid beforehand for that little mishap.

And so it is; the mere grace that we are given life at all is generous
payment in advance for all the miseries of life--for every one of them.

No, do not think we have the right to more sweetmeats than we get. A
wanderer's advice: no superstition. What is life's? All. But what is
yours? Is fame? Oh, tell us why! A man should not so insist on what is
"his." It is comical; a wanderer laughs at any one who can be so comical.
I remember one who could not give up that "his." He started to lay a fire
in his stove at noon, and by evening he got it to burn at last. He
couldn't leave the comfortable warmth to go to bed, but sat there till
other people got up, lest it should be wasted. A Norwegian writer of stage
plays, it was.

I have wandered about a good deal in my time, and am grown foolish now,
and out of bloom. But I do not hold the perverse belief of old men
generally, that I am wiser than I was. And I hope I may never grow wise;
'tis a sign of decrepitude. If I thank God for life, it is not by virtue
of any riper wisdom that has come to me with age, but because I have
always taken a pleasure in life. Age gives no riper wisdom; age gives
nothing but age.

* * * * *

I was too late for the berries this year, but I am going up that way all
the same. I am allowing myself this little treat, by way of reward for
having worked well this summer. And I reach my goal on the 12th of
December.

It is true, no doubt, that I might have stayed down among the villages. I
could have managed somehow, no doubt, as did all the others who had found
it time to settle down. And Lars Falkenberg, my colleague and mate, he had
urged me to take up a holding with keep for a wife and two cows and a pig.
A friend's advice; _vox populi._ And then, why, one of the cows might
be an ox to ride, a means of transport for my shivering age! But it came
to naught--it came to naught! My wisdom has not come with age; here am I
going up to Trovatn and the waste lands to live in a wooden hut!

What pleasure can there be in that? _Ai_, Lars Falkenberg, and
_ai,_ every one else, have no fear; I have a man to come up with
things I need.

* * * * *

So I drift about and about by myself, looking after myself, living alone.
I miss that seal of Bishop Pavel's. One of his descendants gave it to me,
and I had it in my waistcoat pocket this summer, but, looking for it now,
I find I have lost it. Well, well; but, anyhow, I have been paid in
advance for that mishap, in having owned it once.

But I do not feel the want of books to read.

The 12th of December--I can keep a date in mind and carelessly forget
things more important. It is only just now I remember about the books--
that Captain Falkenberg and his wife had many books in their house--novels
and plays--a whole bookcase full. I saw it one day when I was painting
windows and doors at Ovrebo. Entire sets of authors they had, and authors'
complete works--thirty books. Why the complete works? I do not know. Books
--one, two, three, ten, thirty. They had come out each Christmas--novels,
thirty volumes--the same novel. They read them, no doubt, the Captain and
his wife; knew every time what they should find in the poets of the home;
there was always such a lot about all coming right in the end. So they
read them, no doubt. How should I know? Heavens, what a host of books! Two
men could not shift the bookcase when I wanted to paint behind; it took
three men and a cook to move it. One of the men was Grindhusen; he flushed
under the weight of those poets of the home, and said: "I can't see what
folk want with such a mighty crowd of books!"

Grindhusen! As if he knew anything about it! The Captain and his wife had
all those books, no doubt, that none should be lacking; there they were
all complete. It would make a gap to take away a single one; they were
paired each with the rest, uniform poetry, the same story throughout.

* * * * *

An elk-hunter has been up here with me in the hut. Nothing much; and his
dog was an ill-tempered brute. I was glad when he went on again. He took
down my copper saucepan from the wall, and used it for his cooking, and
left it black with soot.

It is not my copper saucepan, but was here in the hut, left by some one
who was here before. I only rubbed it with ashes and hung it up on the
wall as a weather-guide for myself. I am rubbing it up again now, for it
is a good thing to have; it turns dim unfailingly when there is rain or
snow coming on.

If Ragnhild had been here, now, she would have polished up that saucepan
herself. But then, again, I tell myself, I would rather see to my own
weather-guides; Ragnhild can find something else to do. And if this place
up in the woods were our clearing, then she would have the children, and
the cows, and the pig. But _my_ copper things I prefer to do myself,
Ragnhild.

I remember a lady, the mistress of a house: she did no work at all, and
saw to nothing, least of all to herself. And ill she fared in the end. But
six or seven years back I had never believed any one could be so delicate
and lovely to another as she. I drove her once, upon a journey, and she
was shy with me, although she was a lady, and above me. She blushed and
looked down. And the strange thing was that she made me feel a kind of
shyness myself, although I was only her servant. Only by looking at me
with her two eyes when she spoke to me, she showed me treasures and beauty
beyond what I knew before; I remember it still. Ay, here I sit,
remembering it yet, and I shake my head and say to myself how strange it
was--how strange! And then she died. And what more? Nothing more. I am
still here, but she is gone. But I should not grieve at her death. I had
been paid beforehand, surely, for that loss, in that she looked at me with
her two eyes--a thing beyond my deserts. Ay, so it must be.

Woman--what do the sages know of woman?

I know a sage, and he wrote of woman. Wrote of woman in thirty volumes of
uniform theatre-poetry: I counted the volumes once in a big bookcase. And
at last he wrote of the woman who left her own children to go in search
of--the wonderful! But what, then, were the children? Oh, it was comical:
a wanderer laughs at anything so comical.

What does the sage know of woman?

To begin with, he was not a sage at all till he grew old, and all he knew
of woman then was from memory. But then, again, he can have no memory of
her, seeing he never knew her. The man who has an aptitude for wisdom
busies himself jealously with his little aptitude and nothing else;
cultivates and cherishes it; holds it forth and lives for it.

We do not turn to woman for wisdom. The four wisest heads in the world,
who have delivered their findings on the subject of woman, simply sat and
invented her out of their own heads--octogenarians young or old they were,
that rode on oxen. They knew nothing of woman in holiness, woman in
sweetness, woman as an indispensable, but they wrote and wrote about her.
Think of it! Without finding her.

Heaven save me from growing wise! And I will mumble the same to my last
turn: Heaven save me from growing wise!

* * * * *

Just cold enough now for a little outing I have had in mind: the
snow-peaks lie rosy in the sun, and my copper saucepan points to fair. It
is eight in the morning.

Knapsack and a good stock of food, an extra lashing in my pocket in case
anything should break, and a note on the table for the man with supplies
in case he should come up while I am away.

Oh, but I have been showing off nicely all to myself: pretending I was
going far, and needed to equip myself with care, had occasion for all my
presence of mind and endurance. A man can show off like that when he is
going far; but I am not. I have no errand anywhere, and nothing calls me;
I am only a wanderer setting forth from a hut, and coming back to it
again; it does not matter where I am.

It is quiet and empty in the woods; all things deep in snow, holding their
breath as I come. At noon, looking back from a hill, I can see Trovatn far
behind; white and flat it lies, a stretch of chalk, a desert of snow.
After a meal I go on again, higher and higher, nearing the fjeld now, but
slowly and thoughtfully, with hands in my pockets. There is no hurry; I
have only to find a shelter for the night.

Later on in the afternoon I sit down again to eat, as if I needed a meal
and had earned it. But it is only for something to do; my hands are idle,
and my brain inclined to fancies. It gets dark early: well to find a
sheltered cleft in the hillside here; there are fallen firs enough lying
about for a fire.

Such are the things I tell of now, playing with muted strings.

I was out early next morning, as soon as it began to get light. A quiet,
warm snowfall came on, and there was a soughing in the air. Bad weather
coming, I thought to myself; but who could have foreseen it? Neither I nor
my weather-guide looked for it twenty-four hours ago.

I left my shelter and went on again over moor and heath; full day again
now, and snowing. It was not the best of shelters I had found for the
night: passably soft and dry, with branches of fir to lie on, and I had
not felt the cold, but the smoke from my fire drifted in over me and
troubled my breathing.

But now, this afternoon, I found a better place--a spacious and elegant
cave with walls and roof complete. Room here for me and my fire, and the
smoke went up. I nodded at this, and decided to settle down here, though
it was early yet, and still quite light; I could distinctly make out the
hills and valleys and rocks on a naked fjeld straight ahead some few
hours' march away. But I nodded, as if I had reached my goal, and set to
work gathering firewood and bedding for the night.

I felt so thoroughly at home here. It was not for nothing I nodded and
took off my knapsack. "Was this the place you were making for?" I say,
talking to myself in jest. "Yes," I answer.

The soughing in the air grew stronger; it was not snow that was falling
now, but rain. Strange--a great wet rainfall down over the cave, over all
the trees outside, and yet it was the cold Christmas month--December. A
heat-wave had taken it into its head to visit us.

It rained and rained that night, and there was a soughing all through the
trees outside. It was like spring; it filled my sleep at last with so rich
an ease, that I slept on sound and deep till it was broad day.

Ten o'clock.

The rain had ceased, but it is still warm. I sit looking out of the cave,
and listening to the bend and whisper of the trees. Then a stone breaks
loose on the fjeld opposite; it butts against a rock and brings that down
as well; a few faint thuds are heard. Then a rumble: I see what is
happening, and the sound echoes within me; the rock loosened other rocks,
an avalanche goes thundering down the mountain-side, snow and earth and
boulders, leaving a smoky cloud in its wake. The stream of rubble seems in
a living rage; it thrusts its way on, tearing down other masses with it--
crowding, pouring, pouring, fills up a chasm in the valley--and stops. The
last few boulders settle slowly into place, and then no more. The thunder
over, there is silence, and within myself is only a breathing as of a
slowly descending bass.

And so I sit once more, listening to the soughing of the woods. Is it the
heaving of the AEgean sea, or is it the ocean current Glimma? I grow weak
from just listening. Recollections of my past life rise within me, joys by
the thousand, music and eyes, flowers. There is nothing more glorious than
the soughing of the woods. It is like swinging, rocking--a madness:
Uganda, Antananarivo, Honolulu, Atacama, Venezuela.

But it is all the years, no doubt, that make me so weak, and my nerves
that join in the sounds I hear. I get up and stand by the fire to get over
it; now I think of it, I feel I could talk to the fire a little, make a
speech to the dying fire. I am in a fire-proof house here, and the
acoustic conditions are good. H'm!

Then the cave is darkened; it is the elk-hunter again with his dog.

It begins to freeze as I trudge along homeward to my hut. The frost soon
hardens the ground, moor and heath, making it easy walking. I trudge along
slowly and carelessly, hands in my pockets. There is no hurry now; it
matters little where I am.

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