Hunger (5 page)

He leaned his head back against the wall, all the way, and opened his mouth wide. Something was stirring behind that bum's forehead of his; thinking, no doubt, that I meant to trick him in some way, he handed the money back to me.

I stamped my feet, swearing he should keep it. Did he imagine I had gone to all that trouble for nothing? When all was said and done, maybe I owed him that krone—I had a knack for remembering old debts, he was in the presence of a person of integrity, honest to his very fingertips. In short, the money was his. . . . No need for thanks, it had been a pleasure. Goodbye.

I left. I was rid at last of this paralytic nuisance and could feel at ease. I went down Pilestrædet Lane again and stopped outside a grocery store. The window was packed with food, and I decided to go in and get me something for the road.

“A piece of cheese and a white loaf!” I said, smacking my half krone down on the counter.

“Cheese and bread for all of it?” the woman asked ironically, without looking at me.

“For all of fifty øre, yes,” I replied, unruffled.

I got my things, said goodbye to the fat old woman with the utmost politeness, and started up Palace Hill to the park without delay. I found a bench for myself and began gnawing greedily at my snack. It did me a lot of good; it had been a long time since I'd had such an ample meal, and I gradually felt that same sense of satiated repose you experience after a good cry. My courage rose markedly; I was no longer satisfied with writing an article about something so elementary and straightforward as the crimes of the future, which anybody could guess, or simply learn by reading history. I felt capable of a greater effort and, being in the mood to surmount difficulties, decided upon a three-part monograph about philosophical cognition. Needless to say, I would have an opportunity to deal a deathblow to Kant's sophisms. . . . When I wanted to get out my writing materials to begin work, I discovered I didn't have a pencil on me anymore—I had left it in the pawnshop, my pencil was in the vest pocket.

God, how everything I touched seemed bent on going wrong! I reeled off a few curses, got up from the bench and strolled along the paths, back and forth. It was very quiet everywhere; way over by the Queen's Pavilion a couple of nursemaids were wheeling their baby carriages about, otherwise not a single person could be seen anywhere. I felt mighty angry and paced like a madman up and down in front of my bench. Strange how badly things were going for me wherever I turned! A three-part article would come to nothing simply because I didn't have a ten-øre pencil in my pocket! What if I went down to Pilestrædet Lane again and got my pencil back! There would still be time to complete a sizable portion before the park began to be overrun by pedestrians. So much depended on this monograph about philosophical cognition, maybe several people's happiness, you never knew. I told myself that it might turn out to be a great help to many young people. On second thought, I would not attack Kant; it could be avoided, after all—I just had to make an imperceptible detour when I came to the problem of time and space. But I wouldn't answer for Renan, that old reverend. . . . At all events, what had to be done was to write an article filling so and so many columns; the unpaid rent and my landlady's long looks when I met her on the stairs in the morning, tormented me all day and popped up even in my happy moments, when there wasn't another dark thought in my head. This had to be stopped. I walked rapidly out of the park to pick up my pencil at the pawnbroker's.

When I got as far as Palace Hill I overtook and passed two ladies. As I walked by I brushed the sleeve of one of them; I looked up—she had a full, somewhat pale face. Suddenly she blushes and becomes wonderfully beautiful, I don't know why, maybe from a word she's heard spoken by a passerby, maybe only because of some silent thought of her own. Or could it be because I had touched her arm? Her high bosom heaves visibly several times, and she presses her hand firmly around the handle of her parasol. What was the matter with her?

I stopped and let her get ahead of me again—I couldn't continue on just then, it all seemed so strange. I was in an irritable mood, annoyed with myself because of the mishap with the pencil and highly stimulated by all the food I had put away on an empty stomach. All at once my thoughts, by a fanciful whim, take an odd direction—I'm seized by a strange desire to frighten this lady, to follow her and hurt her in some way. I overtake her once more and walk past her, then abruptly turn around and meet her face to face to observe her. As I stand there looking her straight in the eye, a name I'd never heard before pops into my head, a name with a nervous, gliding sound: Ylajali. Once she is close enough to me, I straighten up and say urgently, “Miss, you're losing your book.”

I could hear the sound of my heartbeat as I said it.

“My book?” she asks her companion. And she walks on.

My malice increased and I followed the lady. I was at that moment fully conscious of playing a mad prank, without being able to do anything about it; my confused state was running away with me, giving me the craziest ideas, which I obeyed one after the other. No matter how much I kept telling myself that I was behaving like an idiot, it was no use; I made the stupidest faces behind the lady's back and coughed furiously several times as I walked past her. Strolling on thus at a slow pace, always with a few steps' lead, I could feel her eyes on my back and instinctively ducked with shame at having pestered her. Gradually I began to have an odd sensation of being far away, in some other place; I vaguely felt that it wasn't I who was walking there on the flagstones with bowed head.

A few minutes later the lady has reached Pascha's Bookstore. I'm already standing at the first window, and as she walks by I step out and say again, “Miss, you're losing your book.”

“What book?” she asks, scared. “Can you understand what book he's talking about?”

She stops. I gloat cruelly over her confusion, the bewilderment in her eyes gives me a thrill. Her thoughts cannot fathom my little desperate remark; she has no book at all with her, not a single page of a book, and yet she searches her pockets, looks repeatedly at her hands, turns her head to examine the street behind her, and racks her sensitive little brain to the utmost to find out what sort of book I am talking about. Her color comes and goes, her face changes from one expression to another, and her breath is audible; even the buttons on her dress seem to stare at me, like a row of terrified eyes.

“Don't mind him,” her companion says, pulling her by the arm; “he's drunk. Can't you see the man is drunk!”

However estranged I was from myself in that moment, so completely at the mercy of invisible influences, nothing that was taking place around me escaped my perception. A big brown dog ran across the street, toward the Students' Promenade and down to the amusement park; it had a narrow collar of German silver. Farther up the street a window was opened on the second floor and a maid, her sleeves rolled up, leaned out and began to clean the panes on the outside. Nothing escaped my attention, I was lucid and self-possessed; everything rushed in upon me with a brilliant dis tinctness, as if an intense light had suddenly sprung up around me. The ladies before me had each a bluebird's wing in their hats and a plaid silk band around their necks. It occurred to me that they were sisters.

Turning aside, they stopped at Cisler's Music Store and talked. I stopped also. Then they both started back, going the same way they had come, passed me once again, turned the corner at University Street and went straight up to St. Olaf Place. All the while I followed as hard upon their heels as I dared. They turned around once, giving me a half-scared, half-curious glance; I didn't perceive any resentment in their looks nor any knitted brows. This patience with my harassment made me feel very ashamed, and I lowered my eyes. I didn't want to pester them anymore—I would follow them with my eyes out of sheer gratitude, not lose sight of them until they entered somewhere and disappeared.

In front of number 2, a big four-story building, they turned once more and then went in. I leaned against a lamppost near the fountain and listened for their footsteps on the stairs; they died away on the second floor. I step out from under the lamp and look up at the building. Then something odd happens—high up some curtains stir, a moment later a window is opened, a head pops out, and two queer-looking eyes are fixed on me. “Ylajali,” I said under my breath, feeling myself turning red. Why didn't she call for help? Why didn't she push one of those flowerpots over on my head or send someone down to chase me away? We stand looking each other straight in the face without moving; a minute goes by; thoughts dart back and forth between the window and the street, but not a word is spoken. She turns around—I feel a jolt, a light shock, go through me; I see a shoulder turning, a back disappearing into the room. This unhurried stepping away from the window, the inflection of that movement of her shoulder, was like a nod to me; my blood perceived this subtle greeting and I felt wonderfully happy all at once. Then I turned around and walked down the street.

Not daring to look back, I didn't know if she had come to the window again; as I pondered this question I grew more and more uneasy and nervous. In all likelihood she was at this moment closely following every movement of mine, and it was absolutely unbearable to know that you were being scrutinized like that from behind. I pulled myself together as best I could and walked on; my legs began twitching and my walk became unsteady just because I purposely tried to make it graceful. In order to seem calm and indifferent I waved my arms absurdly, spat at the ground and cocked my nose in the air, but it was no use. I constantly felt those pursuing eyes on my neck and a chill went through my body. At last I took refuge in a side street, from which I set off for Pilestrædet Lane to get hold of my pencil.

I didn't have any trouble retrieving it. The man brought me the vest himself and invited me to go through all the pockets while I was at it. I did find a couple of pawn tickets, which I pocketed, and thanked the friendly man for his courtesy. I liked him more and more, and it became very important to me at that moment to make a good impression on him. I started walking toward the door but turned back to the counter again as if I had forgotten something; I felt I owed him an explanation, a bit of information, and began humming to catch his attention. Then I took the pencil into my hand and held it up.

It would never occur to me, I said, to come such a long way for just any pencil; but with this one it was a different matter, there was a special reason. However insignificant it might look, this stump of a pencil had simply made me what I was in this world, had put me in my right place in life, so to speak. . . .

I didn't say any more. The man came right up to the counter.

“Is that so?” he said, looking curiously at me.

With this pencil, I continued coolly, I had written my monograph about philosophical cognition in three volumes. Hadn't he heard of it?

And the man thought that, sure enough, he had heard the name, the title.

Well, I said, that one was by me, you bet! So he shouldn't be at all surprised that I wanted to get this tiny stub of a pencil back; it was far too precious to me, it seemed almost like a little person. Anyway, I was sincerely grateful to him for his kindness and would remember him for it—oh yes, I would really remember him for it; a word was a word, that was the kind of person I was, and he deserved it. Goodbye.

I probably walked to the door with the bearing of someone having the power to make a high appointment. The respectable pawnbroker bowed twice to me as I withdrew, and I turned once more to say goodbye.

On the stairs I met a woman carrying a traveling bag in her hand. She timidly pressed closer to the wall to make room for me since I was giving myself such airs, and I instinctively put my hand in my pocket for something to give her. When I didn't find anything I felt embarrassed and ducked my head as I passed her. Shortly afterward I heard her, too, knocking at the door of the shop—the door had a steel-wire grill on it, and I immediately recognized the jingling sound it made when touched by human knuckles.

The sun was in the south, it was about twelve. The city was beginning to get on its feet; with strolling time approaching, bowing and laughing people were surging up and down Karl Johan Street. I pressed my elbows against my sides to make myself small and slipped unnoticed past some acquaintances who had stationed themselves at a corner by the University to watch the passersby. I wandered up Palace Hill and became lost in thought.

These people that I met—how lightly and merrily they bobbed their bright faces, dancing their way through life as though it were a ballroom! There was no sign of grief in a single eye that I saw, no burden on any shoulder, not even a cloudy thought maybe, or a little secret suffering, in any of those happy hearts. While I, who walked there right beside these people, young and freshly blown, had already forgotten the very look of happiness! Coddling myself with this thought, I found that a terrible injustice had been done to me. Why had these last few months been so exceedingly rough on me? I couldn't recognize my cheerful disposition anymore, and I had the weirdest troubles wherever I turned. I couldn't sit down on a bench by myself or set foot anywhere without being attacked by small, trivial incidents, miserable trifles that forced their way among my ideas and scattered my powers to the four winds. A dog streaking past, a yellow rose in a gentleman's buttonhole, could start my thoughts vibrating and occupy me for a long time. What was the matter with me? Had the Lord's finger pointed at me? But why exactly me? Why not just as well at some person in South America, for that matter? When I pondered this, it became more and more incomprehensible to me why precisely I should have been chosen as a guinea pig for a caprice of divine grace. To skip a whole world in order to get to me—that was a rather odd way of doing things; there was, after all, both Pascha the second-hand book dealer and Hennechen the steamship agent.