The Best of Knut Hamsun. Knut Hamsun

      "Oh, we won't mention that," he interrupted, with a smile; "when young people are out ... we understand!"

      Turning to a policeman, he said, as he rose and bowed politely to me, "Show this gentleman up to the reserved section. Good-night!"

      I felt ice run down my back at my own boldness, and I clenched my hands to steady myself a bit. If I only hadn't dragged in the Morgenbladet. I knew Friele could show his teeth when he liked, and I was reminded of that by the grinding of the key turning in the lock.

      "The gas will burn for ten minutes," remarked the policeman at the door.

      "And then does it go out?"

      "Then it goes out!"

      I sat on the bed and listened to the turning of the key. The bright cell had a friendly air; I felt comfortably and well sheltered; and listened with pleasure to the rain outside--I couldn't wish myself anything better than such a cosy cell. My contentment increased. Sitting on the bed, hat in hand, and with eyes fastened on the gas jet over in the wall, I gave myself up to thinking over the minutes of my first interview with the police. This was the first time, and how hadn't I fooled them? "Journalist!--Tangen! if you please! and then Morgenbladet!" Didn't I appeal straight to his heart with Morgenbladet? "We won't mention that! Eh? Sat in state in the Stiftsgaarden till two o'clock; forgot door- key and a pocket-book with a thousand kroner at home. Show this gentleman up to the reserved section!"...

      All at once out goes the gas with a strange suddenness, without diminishing or flickering.

      I sit in the deepest darkness; I cannot see my hand, nor the white walls-- nothing. There was nothing for it but to go to bed, and I undressed.

      But I was not tired from want of sleep, and it would not come to me. I lay a while gazing into the darkness, this dense mass of gloom that had no bottom--my thoughts could not fathom it.

      It seemed beyond all measure dense to me, and I felt its presence oppress me. I closed my eyes, commenced to sing under my breath, and tossed to and fro, in order to distract myself, but to no purpose. The darkness had taken possession of my thoughts and left me not a moment in peace. Supposing I were myself to be absorbed in darkness; made one with it?

      I raise myself up in bed and fling out my arms. My nervous condition has got the upper hand of me, and nothing availed, no matter how much I tried to work against it. There I sat, a prey to the most singular fantasies, listening to myself crooning lullabies, sweating with the exertion of striving to hush myself to rest. I peered into the gloom, and I never in all the days of my life felt such darkness. There was no doubt that I found myself here, in face of a peculiar kind of darkness; a desperate element to which no one had hitherto paid attention. The most ludicrous thoughts busied me, and everything made me afraid.

      A little hole in the wall at the head of my bed occupies me greatly--a nail hole. I find the marks in the wall--I feel it, blow into it, and try to guess its depth. That was no innocent hole--not at all. It was a downright intricate and mysterious hole, which I must guard against! Possessed by the thought of this hole, entirely beside myself with curiosity and fear, I get out of bed and seize hold of my penknife in order to gauge its depth, and convince myself that it does not reach right into the next wall.

      I lay down once more to try and fall asleep, but in reality to wrestle again with the darkness. The rain had ceased outside, and I could not hear a sound. I continued for a long time to listen for footsteps in the street, and got no peace until I heard a pedestrian go by--to judge from the sound, a constable. Suddenly I snap my fingers many times and laugh: "That was the very deuce! Ha--ha!" I imagined I had discovered a new word. I rise up in bed and say, "It is not in the language; I have discovered it. 'Kuboa.' It has letters as a word has. By the benign God, man, you have discovered a word!... 'Kuboa' ... a word of profound import."

      I sit with open eyes, amazed at my own find, and laugh for joy. Then I begin to whisper; some one might spy on me, and I intended to keep my discovery a secret. I entered into the joyous frenzy of hunger. I was empty and free from pain, and I gave free rein to my thoughts.

In all calmness I revolve things in my mind. With the most singular jerks in my chain of ideas I seek to explain the meaning of my new word. There was no occasion for it to mean either God or the Tivoli;4 and who said that it was to signify cattle show? I clench my hands fiercely, and repeat once again, "Who said that it was to signify cattle show?" No; on second thoughts, it was not absolutely necessary that it should mean padlock, or sunrise. It was not difficult to find a meaning for such a word as this. I would wait and see. In the meantime I could sleep on it.

      I lie there on the stretcher-bed and laugh slily, but say nothing; give vent to no opinion one way or the other. Some minutes pass over, and I wax nervous; this new word torments me unceasingly, returns again and again, takes up my thoughts, and makes me serious. I had fully formed an opinion as to what it should not signify, but had come to no conclusion as to what it should signify. "That is quite a matter of detail," I said aloud to myself, and I clutched my arm and reiterated: "That is quite a matter of detail." The word was found, God be praised! and that was the principal thing. But ideas worry me without end and hinder me from falling asleep. Nothing seemed good enough to me for this unusually rare word. At length I sit up in bed again, grasp my head in both hands, and say, "No! it is just this, it is impossible to let it signify emigration or tobacco factory. If it could have meant anything like that I would have decided upon it long since and taken the consequences." No; in reality the word is fitted to signify something psychical, a feeling, a state. Could I not apprehend it? and I reflect profoundly in order to find something psychical. Then it seems to me that some one is interposing, interrupting my confab. I answer angrily, "Beg pardon! Your match in idiocy is not to be found; no, sir! Knitting cotton? Ah! go to hell!" Well, really I had to laugh. Might I ask why should I be forced to let it signify knitting cotton, when I had a special dislike to its signifying knitting cotton? I had discovered the word myself, so, for that matter, I was perfectly within my right in letting it signify whatsoever I pleased. As far as I was aware, I had not yet expressed an opinion as to....

      But my brain got more and more confused. At last I sprang out of bed to look for the water-tap. I was not thirsty, but my head was in a fever, and I felt an instinctive longing for water. When I had drunk some I got into bed again, and determined with all my might to settle to sleep. I closed my eyes and forced myself to keep quiet. I lay thus for some minutes without making a movement, sweated and felt my blood jerk violently through my veins. No, it was really too delicious the way he thought to find money in the paper cornet! He only coughed once, too! I wonder if he is pacing up and down there yet! Sitting on my bench? the pearly blue sea ... the ships....

      I opened my eyes; how could I keep them shut when I could not sleep? The same darkness brooded over me; the same unfathomable black eternity which my thoughts strove against and could not understand. I made the most despairing efforts to find a word black enough to characterize this darkness; a word so horribly black that it would darken my lips if I named it. Lord! how dark it was! and I am carried back in thought to the sea and the dark monsters that lay in wait for me. They would draw me to them, and clutch me tightly and bear me away by land and sea, through dark realms that no soul has seen. I feel myself on board, drawn through waters, hovering in clouds, sinking--sinking.

      I give a hoarse cry of terror, clutch the bed tightly--I had made such a perilous journey, whizzing down through space like a bolt. Oh, did I not feel that I was saved as I struck my hands against the wooden frame! "This is the way one dies!" said I to myself. "Now you will die!" and I lay for a while and thought over that I was to die.

      Then I start up in bed and ask severely, "If I found the word, am I not absolutely within my right to decide myself what it is to signify?"... I could hear myself that I was raving. I could hear it now whilst I was talking. My madness was a delirium of weakness and prostration, but I was not out of my senses. All at once the thought darted through my brain that I was insane. Seized with terror, I spring out of bed again, I stagger to the door, which I try to open, fling myself against it a couple of times to burst it, strike my head against the wall, bewail loudly, bite my fingers, cry and curse....

      All