Mysteries (11 page)

Just as they were passing, Dr. Stenersen, who was also among them, paused. He beckoned to Miniman, who stood up. Nagel was left sitting there by himself.

“Please ask that gentleman ... ,” he heard the doctor say; that was all he heard. But a moment later his name was mentioned quite loudly, and he too stood up. He doffed his cap and made a deep bow.

The doctor apologized: he had been entrusted by a lady, one of the ladies who were with him at the moment, Miss Meek, with the disagreeable task of asking the gentlemen to be a bit careful with that stone, that burial slab, and not sit on it. The slab was new, it had just been put in place; the bed was still fresh, the sod quite soft, so the whole thing might give way before you knew it. The request was made by the sister of the deceased.

Nagel begged pardon more than once. It was sheer thoughtlessness on his part, a piece of carelessness, and he perfectly understood the young lady’s uneasiness about the stone. He also thanked the doctor.

Meanwhile they had started idling along. When they reached the gate Miniman said goodbye, and the doctor and Nagel were left alone. Only now did they introduce themselves to one another.

“You will settle down here for a while, perhaps?” the doctor asked.

“Yes,” Nagel replied. “One has to follow custom, you know, take one’s summer holiday in the country, gather strength for the winter, and then return to work.... You’ve got a pleasant little town here.”

“Where do you come from? I’ve been trying to figure out what dialect you’re speaking.”

“I hail from Finnmark originally, I’m of Finnish descent. But I’ve lived on and off in various places.”

“Have you just returned from abroad?”
³

“Only from Helsingfors.”

At first they talked about a number of indifferent things, but soon the conversation drifted to other topics: the election, the crop failure in Russia, literature, and Karlsen’s death.

“What’s your opinion—did you bury a suicide today?” Nagel asked.

The doctor couldn’t say, refused to say. It didn’t concern him, and so he refused to get involved. People were saying all sorts of things. For that matter, why shouldn’t it have been a suicide? All theologians ought to do away with themselves.

But why?

Why? Because their role had been played out, because our century had made them superfluous. People had begun to think for themselves, and their religious feelings were fading away more and more.

A Liberal! Nagel thought. He couldn’t understand what human beings would gain by having life stripped of all symbols, all poetry. Besides, it was open to question whether the century had made theologians superfluous, as long as religious feelings were simply
not
on the decline....

Not among the lower social strata, to be sure, though more and more even there; but among enlightened people they were decidedly on the wane.
⁴

“However, we won’t talk any more about that,” the doctor broke off sullenly, “our viewpoints are too far apart.” The doctor was a freethinker, he had heard these objections so many times before that he couldn’t keep track of them. And had it converted him? For twenty years he had remained the same. As a physician he had participated in extracting people’s “souls” by the spoonful! No, he had outgrown superstition.... “What is your opinion of the election?”

“The election?” Nagel laughed. “I’m hoping for the best,” he said.

“So am I,” the doctor said. “It would be a damn shame if the government didn’t win a majority on such a thoroughly democratic platform.” The doctor was a man of the left and a radical, had been so ever since he learned to use his head. He harbored great fear for Buskerud County; Smålenene he had given up on. “The fact of the matter is,” he said, “we’re short of money in the Liberal Party. You and others who’ve got the money ought to support us. After all, the future of the whole country is at stake.”

“I? Do
I
have money?” Nagel asked. “Alas, a mere pittance.”

“Well, you don’t have to be a millionaire. Someone could relate that you were a regular capitalist, that, for one, you owned a landed estate worth sixty-two thousand kroner.”

“Heh-heh-heh, I’ve never heard anything so absurd. What it comes down to is that I’ve just received a small inheritance from my mother, a few thousand kroner. That’s all. But I have no landed estate, that’s a mystification.”

They had reached the doctor’s place, a two-story house painted yellow, with a veranda. The paint had come off in several places. The gutters were in shambles. In the top story a window-pane was missing, and the curtains were far from clean. The untidy appearance of the house produced a feeling of antipathy in Nagel, and he wanted to leave at once; but the doctor said, “Wouldn’t you like to come in? No? Then I hope to see you later. My wife and I would be very happy if you paid us a visit. You won’t come in now then, to say hello to my wife?”

“Your wife was at the cemetery, wasn’t she? She’ll scarcely be back yet.”

“You’re damn right, she went with the others. Oh well, drop in later then, when you pass by.”

Nagel strolled back to the hotel, but just as he was about to step through the door something occurred to him. He snapped his fingers, broke into a short little laugh and said out loud, “It would be interesting to see if the verse is still there!” With that he went back to the cemetery and stopped before Mina Meek’s tombstone. No people were to be seen anywhere; but the verse had been wiped off. Who had done it? There wasn’t the least trace left of his characters.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING Nagel found himself in an excellent, joyful mood. It had come upon him while lying in bed; it was as though the ceiling of his room were suddenly rising higher and higher, rising endlessly until it became a clear, far-away vault of heaven. All at once he felt a sweet, mild breeze blowing on him, as if he were lying in a green meadow. And the flies were buzzing about the room; it was a warm summer morning.

He got into his clothes in a jiffy, left the hotel without breakfast, and strolled into town. It was eleven o’clock.

Already the pianos were reechoing from house to house; from one block after another, different melodies could be heard through the open windows, and way up the street a nervous dog responded loudly with drawn-out howls. Filled with a sweet contentment, Nagel began instinctively to sing softly to himself, and when he passed an old man who greeted him he saw his chance to slip a coin into his hand.

He came to a large white house. A window is opened on the second floor, a slender white hand fastens the hook. The curtain is still stirring, the hand still resting on the hook; Nagel had a feeling that someone was watching him from behind the curtain. Pausing, he stared upward; he remained at his post for over a minute, but nobody appeared. He looked at the sign above the door: “F. M. Andresen, Danish Consulate.”

Nagel was just about to go, but as he turned Miss Fredrikke stuck her long, aristocratic face out of the window and gave him a surprised, searching look. He paused once more, their eyes met, her cheeks were coloring; but as if brazening it out, she pulled up her sleeves and rested her elbows on the windowsill. She stayed like this for quite a long time, without anything happening, and eventually Nagel had to make an end of it and go. At that moment a quaint question came into his head. Was the young lady kneeling behind the window? If so, he thought, the consul’s apartment didn’t have very tall ceilings, since the window was scarcely over six feet high and extended to a mere foot below the eaves. He had to laugh at himself for this fancy out of nowhere: what the hell did he have to do with Consul Andresen’s apartment!

And he wandered on.

Down by the quays work was in full swing. Warehouse workers, customs officers and fishermen were running helterskelter, each busy with his own thing; capstans were rattling, and two steamships blew their whistles for departure almost simultaneously. The sea was dead calm; the sun beat down, turning the water into a seamless sheet of gold in which ships and boats lay immersed up to the middle of their bellies. From a huge three-master in the distance came the sound of a wretched street organ, and when the steam whistles and the capstans were silent for a moment, its mournful melody sounded like a girl’s faint, tremulous voice on the point of giving up. Even those on board made merry with the street organ, starting to dance a polka to its maudlin songs.

Nagel caught sight of a child, a tiny little girl who was squeezing a cat in her arms; the cat hung straight down, quite patiently, its hind legs nearly touching the ground, and it didn’t stir. Nagel patted the girl’s cheek and spoke to her: “Is it your cat?”

“Yes. Two four six seven.”

“Oh, you can count too?”

“Yes. Seven eight eleven two four six seven.”

He walked on. In the direction of the parsonage, a sun-intoxicated white pigeon reeled sideways down the sky and disappeared behind the treetops; it looked like a shining silver arrow falling to the ground far away. A brief, nearly soundless shot was fired somewhere, and shortly afterward a wisp of blue smoke rose from the forest on the other side of the bay.

After reaching the last pier and wandering up and down the deserted jetty a few times, he walked unthinkingly up the hill and entered the forest. He walked for a good half hour, deeper and deeper into the forest, and at last came to a halt at a small path. All was still, not even a songbird to be seen, and not a cloud in the sky. He walked a few steps off the path, found a dry spot and stretched out. On his right was the parsonage, on his left the town, and above him an endless sea of blue sky.

What if one were up there, drifting about among suns and feeling the tails of comets fan one’s forehead! How small the earth was and how puny the people; a Norway of two million provincial souls and a mortgage bank to help feed them! What was life worth at such a rate? You elbowed yourself ahead in the sweat of your face for a few mortal years, only to perish all the same, all the same! Nagel tore at his head. Oh dear, it would end by his getting out of this world, putting an end to it all! Would he ever be able to carry it out? Yes. By God in heaven, yes, he wouldn’t flinch! At the moment he felt quite ecstatic at having this simple way of escape in reserve; his eyes watered with enthusiasm and his breathing grew all but loud. He was already rocking about on a heavenly sea, fishing with a silver hook and singing to himself. And his boat was made of aromatic wood and the oars gleamed like white wings; but the sail was of pale-blue silk and cut in the shape of a half-moon....

A quivering joy shot through him; forgetting himself, he felt transported, hidden inside the fierce sunshine. The silence filled him with a perfect contentment, nothing disturbed him; only, up aloft a soft, soughing sound could be heard, the sound of the vast stamping mill, God treading his wheel. Not a leaf, not a needle stirred in the woods round about. Nagel curled up with pleasure, hugging his knees and shivering with well-being. Someone called him, and he answered yes; he raised himself on his elbow and looked about him. Not a soul to be seen. He said yes once more and listened, but no one appeared. How strange; he had definitely heard someone calling him. But he didn’t give it further thought, perhaps it was just a fantasy; in any case, he wasn’t going to be disturbed. He was in an enigmatic state, brimming with inward pleasure; every nerve in his body was awake, he perceived music in his blood, sensed a kinship with all of nature, with the sun and the mountains and all the rest, felt enveloped by his own sense of self as it came back to him from trees and tussocks and blades of grass. His soul grew big and rich, like the sound of an organ inside him, and he would never forget how this soft music positively glided up and down in his blood.

He lay there a while longer, enjoying his solitude. Then he heard footsteps on the path, real footsteps that couldn’t be mistaken. Raising his head, he noticed a man coming back from town. The man was carrying a long loaf of bread under his arm and leading a cow on a rope; he kept wiping the sweat off his face and was in his shirtsleeves due to the heat, and yet he was wearing a thick red woolen scarf wound twice around his neck. Nagel lay quietly observing the peasant. There he was! There was the Setesdaler, the typical Norwegian, heh-heh, oh yes, there was the native, with the crust of bread under his arm and the cow in tow! Oh, what a sight! Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh, God help you, my noble Norse Viking! How about loosening your scarf a bit and letting the lice out? But you wouldn’t survive it, you would catch some fresh air from it and die. And the press would lament your untimely demise and make a big number out of it. But to guard against repetitions, Vetle Vetlesen, that liberal Storting representative, would introduce a bill for the strict protection of our national vermin.

Nagel’s brain threw off one merry piece of sarcasm after another. He stood up and went back to the hotel, dejected and angry. No, he was always right, there was nothing but lice and stinking “old cheese” and Luther’s catechism everywhere. And the people were medium-sized burghers in three-story shanties; they ate and drank as was needful, regaled themselves with toddy and electoral politics, and traded in green soap and brass combs and fish day in, day out. But at night, when there was thunder and lightning, they lay in their beds reading the homilies of Johann Arendt for sheer fright. Oh, give us a real exception, just one, let us see if it can be done! Give us, for example, an advanced crime, a first-rate sin! But none of your ludicrous petty-bourgeois ABC-misdemeanor—no, a rare, hair-raising debauchery, refined depravity, a royal sin, full of raw infernal splendor. No, the whole thing was pusillanimous. What is your opinion of the election, sir? I have the greatest fear for Buskerud....

But when he again passed the docks and saw the bustling activity around him, his humor gradually lightened somewhat; he was happy once more and started singing again. This was no weather for moping, it was fine, fair weather, a blazing June day. The whole little town lay gleaming in the sunshine like an enchanted city.