The Best of Knut Hamsun. Knut Hamsun

I didn't say. I crushed her in my arms, stepped back, rushed to the door, and went out backwards. She remained in there behind me.

      Part IV

       Table of Contents

      Winter had set in--a raw, wet winter, almost without snow. A foggy, dark, and everlasting night, without a single blast of fresh wind the whole week through. The gas was lighted almost all the day in the streets, and yet people jostled one another in the fog. Every sound, the clang of the church bells, the jingling of the harness of the droske horses, the people's voices, the beat of the hoofs, everything, sounded choked and jangling through the close air, that penetrated and muffled everything.

      Week followed week, and the weather was, and remained, still the same.

      And I stayed steadily down in Vaterland. I grew more and more closely bound to this inn, this lodging-house for travellers, where I had found shelter, in spite of my starving condition. My money was exhausted long since; and yet I continued to come and go in this place as if I had a right to it, and was at home there. The landlady had, as yet, said nothing; but it worried me all the same that I could not pay her. In this way three weeks went by. I had already, many days ago, taken to writing again; but I could not succeed in putting anything together that satisfied me. I had not longer any luck, although I was very painstaking, and strove early and late; no matter what I attempted, it was useless. Good fortune had flown; and I exerted myself in vain.

      It was in a room on the second floor, the best guest-room, that I sat and made these attempts. I had been undisturbed up there since the first evening when I had money and was able to settle for what I got. All the time I was buoyed up by the hope of at last succeeding in getting together an article on some subject or another, so that I could pay for my room, and for whatever else I owed. That was the reason I worked on so persistently. I had, in particular, commenced a piece from which I expected great things--an allegory about a fire--a profound thought upon which I intended to expend all my energy, and bring it to the "Commandor" in payment. The "Commandor" should see that he had helped a talent this time. I had no doubt but that he would eventually see that; it only was a matter of waiting till the spirit moved me; and why shouldn't the spirit move me? Why should it not come over me even now, at a very early date? There was no longer anything the matter with me. My landlady gave me a little food every day, some bread and butter, mornings and evenings, and my nervousness had almost flown. I no longer used cloths round my hands when I wrote; and I could stare down into the street from my window on the second floor without getting giddy. I was much better in every way, and it was becoming a matter of astonishment to me that I had not already finished my allegory. I couldn't understand why it was....

      But a day came when I was at last to get a clear idea of how weak I had really become; with what incapacity my dull brain acted. Namely, on this day my landlady came up to me with a reckoning which she asked me to look over. There must be something wrong in this reckoning, she said; it didn't agree with her own book; but she had not been able to find out the mistake.

      I set to work to add up. My landlady sat right opposite and looked at me. I added up these score of figures first once down, and found the total right; then once up again, and arrived at the same result. I looked at the woman sitting opposite me, waiting on my words. I noticed at the same time that she was pregnant; it did not escape my attention, and yet I did not stare in any way scrutinizingly at her.

      "The total is right," said I.

      "No; go over each figure now," she answered. "I am sure it can't be so much; I am positive of it."

      And I commenced to check each line--2 loaves at 2 1/2d., 1 lamp chimney, 3d., soap, 4d., butter, 5d.... It did not require any particularly shrewd head to run up these rows of figures--this little huckster account in which nothing very complex occurred. I tried honestly to find the error that the woman spoke about, but couldn't succeed. After I had muddled about with these figures for some minutes I felt that, unfortunately, everything commenced to dance about in my head; I could no longer distinguish debit or credit; I mixed the whole thing up. Finally, I came to a dead stop at the following entry--"3. 5/16ths of a pound of cheese at 9d." My brain failed me completely; I stared stupidly down at the cheese, and got no farther.

      "It is really too confoundedly crabbed writing," I exclaimed in despair. "Why, God bless me, here is 5/16ths of a pound of cheese entered--ha, ha! did any one ever hear the like? Yes, look here; you can see for yourself."

      "Yes," she said; "it is often put down like that; it is a kind of Dutch cheese. Yes, that is all right--five-sixteenths is in this case five ounces."

      "Yes, yes; I understand that well enough," I interrupted, although in truth I understood nothing more whatever.

      I tried once more to get this little account right, that I could have totted up in a second some months ago. I sweated fearfully, and thought over these enigmatical figures with all my might, and I blinked my eyes reflectingly, as if I was studying this matter sharply, but I had to give it up. These five ounces of cheese finished me completely; it was as if something snapped within my forehead. But yet, to give the impression that I still worked out my calculation, I moved my lips and muttered a number aloud, all the while sliding farther and farther down the reckoning as if I were steadily coming to a result. She sat and waited. At last I said:

      "Well, now, I have gone through it from first to last, and there is no mistake, as far as I can see."

      "Isn't there?" replied the woman, "isn't there really?" But I saw well that she did not believe me, and she seemed all at once to throw a dash of contempt into her words, a slightly careless tone that I had never heard from her before. She remarked that perhaps I was not accustomed to reckon in sixteenths; she mentioned also that she must only apply to some one who had a knowledge of sixteenths, to get the account properly revised. She said all this, not in any hurtful way to make me feel ashamed, but thoughtfully and seriously. When she got as far as the door, she said, without looking at me:

      "Excuse me for taking up your time then."

      Off she went.

      A moment after, the door opened again, and she re-entered. She could hardly have gone much farther than the stairs before she had turned back.

      "That's true," said she; "you mustn't take it amiss; but there is a little owing to me from you now, isn't there? Wasn't it three weeks yesterday since you came?" Yes, I thought it was. "It isn't so easy to keep things going with such a big family, so that I can't give lodging on credit, more's the...."

      I stopped her. "I am working at an article that I think I told you about before," said I, "and as soon as ever that is finished, you shall have your money; you can make yourself quite easy...."

      "Yes; but you'll never get that article finished, though."

      "Do you think that? Maybe the spirit will move me tomorrow, or perhaps already, tonight; it isn't at all impossible but that it may move me some time tonight, and then my article will be completed in a quarter of an hour at the outside. You see, it isn't with my work as with other people's; I can't sit down and get a certain amount finished in a day. I have just to wait for the right moment, and no one can tell the day or hour when the spirit may move one--it must have its own time...."

      My landlady went, but her confidence in me was evidently much shaken.

      As soon as I was left alone I jumped up and tore my hair in despair. No, in spite of all, there was really no salvation for me--no salvation! My brain was bankrupt! Had I then really turned into a complete dolt since I could not even add up the price of a piece of Dutch cheese? But could it be possible I had lost my senses when I could stand and put such questions to myself? Had not I, into the bargain, right in the midst of my efforts with the reckoning, made the lucid observation that my landlady was in the family way? I had no reason for knowing it, no one had told me anything about it, neither had it occurred to me gratuitously. I sat and saw it with my own eyes, and I understood it at once, right at a despairing moment where I sat and added up sixteenths. How could I explain