Hunger (19 page)

Yes, it was obviously the same man he had driven. He had recognized him. . . .

We tore along, making the horse's shoes throw off sparks.

In the midst of this agitated state I hadn't for a single moment lost my presence of mind. We pass a police officer, and I notice his number is 69. This figure hits me with a terrible accuracy, it sticks in my brain instantly, like a splinter. Sixty-nine, exactly 69, I would never forget it!

A prey to the wildest fancies, I leaned back in the carriage, curled up under the oilskin hood so that no one could see I was moving my lips, and took to chattering idiotically to myself. Madness rages through my brain and I let it rage, fully aware of being subject to influences I cannot control. I began to laugh, noiselessly and passionately, without a trace of a reason, still jolly and drunk from the couple of glasses of beer I had had. Gradually my agitation subsides, my calm returns more and more. Feeling a chill in my sore finger, I stuck it inside my neck band to warm it a bit. We arrived thus at Tomte Street. The coachman reins up.

I alight from the carriage without haste, absent-mindedly, limply, my head heavy. I walk in through the gate, come into a back yard, which I cross, run into a door which I open and pass through, and find myself in a hallway, a kind of anteroom with two windows. In one corner stand two trunks, one on top of the other, and against the long wall an old, unpainted sofa bed with a blanket on it. In the next room, to the right, I can hear voices and the squalling of babies and, above me, on the second floor, the sound of someone hammering on an iron slab. I notice all this as soon as I enter.

I walk quietly straight across the room, over to the opposite door, without hurrying, without any thought of flight, open it too and step out into Vognmand Street. I glance up at the house I have just walked through and read above the door: “Refreshments and Lodging for Travelers.”

It never enters my head to try and get away, giving the coachman waiting for me the slip. I walk sedately through Vognmand Street without fear and without being conscious of having done anything wrong. Kierulf, this trader in wool who had been haunting my brain for so long, this person who I thought existed and whom I perforce had to see, had vanished from my thoughts, erased together with other mad inventions that came and went by turns. I didn't remember him anymore except as a vague feeling, a memory.

I sobered up more and more as I wandered on, feeling heavy and limp and dragging my feet. The snow was still falling in big, wet dollops. I got to the Grønland section at last, as far as the church, where I sat down on a bench to rest. All who walked past looked at me in great surprise. I became lost in thought.

Good God, what an awful state I was in! I was so thoroughly sick and tired of my whole wretched life that I didn't find it worth my while to go on fighting in order to hang on to it. The hardships had got the better of me, they had been too gross; I was so strangely ruined, nothing but a shadow of what I once was. My shoulders had slumped completely to one side, and I had fallen into the habit of leaning over sharply when I walked, in order to spare my chest what little I could. I had examined my body a few days ago, at noon up in my room, and I had stood there and cried over it the whole time. I had been wearing the same shirt for weeks on end, it was stiff with old sweat and had gnawed my navel to bits. A little blood and water was oozing from the wound, though it didn't hurt; but it was so sad to have this wound in the middle of one's stomach. I had no remedy for it, and it refused to heal by itself; I washed it, wiped it carefully and put on the same old shirt again. There was nothing to be done about it. . . .

I sit there on the bench mulling over all this and feeling quite dismal. I am disgusted with myself, even my hands appear loathsome to me. That flabby, shameless expression on the backs of my hands pains me, makes me uneasy. I feel rudely affected by the sight of my bony fingers, and I hate my whole slack body and shudder at having to carry it, to feel it around me. God, if only it would end! I yearned to die.

Completely defeated, defiled, and degraded in my own estimation, I got mechanically to my feet and began to walk homeward. On my way I passed a gate where one could read the following: “Shrouds at Madam Andersen's, main entrance to the right.” Old memories! I said, remembering my previous room at Hammersborg, the little rocking chair, the newspaper wall-covering down by the door, the ad from the Director of Lighthouses and the freshly baked bread of Fabian Olsen, the baker. Well, yes, I had been much better off then; one night I had written a story worth ten kroner, now I couldn't write anything anymore—I was completely unable to, my head grew empty as soon as I tried. Yes, I wanted to end it all! I walked and walked.

As I got closer and closer to the grocery store, I had a semiconscious feeling that I was approaching a danger; but I stuck to my purpose: I was going to give myself up. I walked calmly up the steps. In the doorway I meet a little girl carrying a cup in her hand, and I let her pass and close the door. The clerk and I stand face to face for the second time.

“Why,” he says, “some awful weather we're having.” What was the point of this detour? Why didn't he just nab me at once? I became furious and said, “I haven't come here to chat about the weather.”

My anger takes him aback, his little huckster's brain breaks down; it had never even crossed his mind that I had cheated him out of five kroner.

“You don't know that I have bamboozled you, do you?” I say impatiently, breathing heavily, trembling and ready to use force if he won't get to the matter in hand at once.

But the poor man is quite unsuspecting.

Good heavens, the sort of blockheads one had to deal with! I bawl him out, explaining to him point by point how it had all occurred, showing him where I stood and where he stood when the deed took place, where the coins had been, how I had gathered them up in my hand and closed my fingers over them—and he understands everything but still doesn't do anything about it. He turns this way and that, listens for footsteps in the next room, shushes me to get me to talk lower and finally says, “That was a mean thing to do!”

“No, wait a minute!” I cried, feeling an urge to contradict him and egg him on. It wasn't as base or shabby as he, with his miserable grocer's mind, had imagined. I didn't keep the money obviously, that would never occur to me; I didn't want to reap any benefit from it personally, that went against the grain of my thoroughly honest nature.

“So what did you do with it?”

I gave it away to a poor old woman, every penny, I wanted him to know. I was that kind of person, I never quite forgot the poor. . . .

He ponders this awhile, evidently beginning to have doubts whether I am an honest man or not. Finally he says, “Shouldn't you have returned the money instead?”

“No, just listen,” I answer brashly. “I didn't want to get you into trouble, I wanted to spare you. But that's the thanks one gets for being magnanimous. Here I'm explaining the whole thing to you, which should make you cringe with shame, and yet you do nothing at all to settle the dispute between us. Therefore I'm washing my hands of it all. And besides, you can go to hell. Goodbye!”

I left, slamming the door behind me.

But when I got home to my room, into that miserable hole, soaked from the wet snow and my knees shaking from the day's wanderings, I lost my cockiness instantly and collapsed afresh. I regretted my attack on the poor store clerk, wept, grabbed hold of my throat to punish myself for my dastardly trick and kicked up an awful row. He had naturally been in mortal fear on account of his job, hadn't dared make a fuss about the five kroner the business had lost. And I had exploited his fear, had tortured him with my loud talk, transfixing him with every word I yelled out. The boss himself had perhaps been sitting in the next room, within an ace of feeling called upon to come out and see what was going on. Why, there was no limit anymore to the sort of vile things I was capable of.

All right. But why had I not been run in? Then it would be over with. After all, I had practically held out my hands for the irons. I wouldn't have put up the least resistance, I would have helped them. Lord of heaven and earth, one day of my life for a happy moment once again! My whole life for a mess of pottage! Hear me just this once! . . .

I went to bed in my wet clothes. I had a vague idea that I might die during the night, and I used my last strength to fix up my bed a little so it would look fairly tidy around me in the morning. I folded my hands and chose my position.

All at once I remember Ylajali. That I could have forgotten her so completely all evening! A faint light penetrates my mind again, a tiny ray of sun, making me feel wonderfully warm. And the sunlight increases, a mild delicate silken light that brushes me in such a soothingly delicious way. The sun grows stronger and stronger, scorching my temples and seething white-hot and heavy in my emaciated brain. In the end a mad fire of sunbeams blazes before my eyes, a heaven and earth set on fire, humans and animals of fire, mountains of fire, devils of fire, an abyss, a desert, a whole world on fire, a raging Judgment Day.

And I saw and heard no more. . . .
⁸

 

The next morning I awoke in a sweat, damp all over; the fever had been quite rough on me. At first I had no clear awareness of what had happened to me; I looked about me in surprise, felt my nature had been totally changed, and could no longer recognize myself. I passed my hands up along my arms and down my legs, wondered at the window being where it was and not on the wall directly opposite, and heard the stomping of the horses down in the yard as if it came from above. I also felt rather nauseous.

My hair lay damp and cold around my forehead. I got up on my elbow and looked down at the pillow: wet hair there too, left behind in small tufts. My feet had swollen inside my shoes during the night, but they weren't painful, I just wasn't able to move my toes very much.

As the afternoon wore on and it was beginning to grow dark, I got out of bed and started puttering about the room. I felt my way with short, careful steps, making sure I kept my balance and sparing my feet as much as possible. I didn't feel much pain and I didn't cry; I wasn't at all sad, rather felt wonderfully contented. It didn't enter my mind just then that anything could be different than it was.

Then I went out.

The only thing that still bothered me a little was my hunger, despite the fact that food made me nauseous. I was beginning to feel an outrageous appetite again, a ravenous inner craving for food that was constantly growing worse and worse. There was a merciless gnawing in my chest, a queer silent labor was going on in there. I pictured a score of nice teeny-weeny animals that cocked their heads to one side and gnawed a bit, then cocked their heads to the other side and gnawed a bit, lay perfectly still for a moment, then began anew and bored their way in without a sound and without haste, leaving empty stretches behind them wherever they went.

I wasn't ill, just weak, and I broke into a sweat. I had meant to go over to Stortorvet Square to take a brief rest, but it was a long, difficult walk. Finally I was almost there, standing at the corner of the marketplace and Torv Street. The sweat trickled down into my eyes, fogging up my glasses and blinding me, and I had just stopped to wipe my face. I didn't notice where I was standing, gave it no thought. The noise around me was terrible.

Suddenly a yell rings out, a cold, sharp warning. I hear this yell, hear it very well, and jump nervously to one side, stepping as quickly as my poor legs would allow. A monster of a baker's van sweeps past me and the wheel grazes my coat; if I had been a bit quicker I would have gotten off scot-free. I could have been a bit quicker perhaps, a wee bit quicker, if I had exerted myself. But there it was: one foot hurt, a couple of toes were crushed—I could feel how they sort of curled up inside my shoe.

The driver reins in his horses with all his might; he turns around in the van and asks, terrified, how it went. Oh, well, it could have been much worse . . . no big deal really . . . I didn't think any bones had been broken. . . . It's quite all right. . . .

I walked over to a bench as fast as I could; all those people who stopped to stare at me had made me feel embarrassed. It wasn't a deathblow after all, as far as accidents went it had turned out relatively well. The worst thing about it was that my shoe had been crushed to pieces, the sole torn loose at the tip. Lifting my foot, I could see blood in the gap. Oh well, it wasn't done willfully by either party, it hadn't been the man's intention to make things even worse than they were for me; he looked very frightened. If I had asked him for a small loaf of bread from his van, maybe I would have gotten it. He would probably have been glad to give it to me. May God give him joy in return, wherever he is!

I was terribly hungry and didn't know where to turn because of my shameless appetite. I twisted and turned on the bench and pressed my chest against my knees. When it got dark I trudged over to the jail—God knows how I got there—and sat down on the edge of the balustrade. I ripped a pocket out of my coat and started chewing on it, without any particular purpose, frowning angrily and staring into space with unseeing eyes. I heard some small children playing around me and sensed instinctively when a pedestrian went by. Otherwise I observed nothing.

Then I suddenly take it into my head to go down to one of the stalls in the arcade below me and lay hold of a piece of raw meat. I get up, cross the balustrade, step over to the far end of the arcade roof and walk down the stairs. When I was almost at the meat stand, I yelled up the empty stairway, shaking my fist as if talking to a dog up there, and turned brazenly to the first butcher I saw.