Hunger (23 page)

She left.

Shortly afterward the door opened again and my landlady came in once more; she could hardly have gone further than the hallway before turning around.

“By the way,” she said, “you mustn't be offended, but you do owe me some money by now, don't you? It was three weeks ago yesterday since you came, wasn't it? I figured it was, anyway. It's not easy to manage with such a big family, so I'm afraid I can't let anyone stay here on credit—”

I stopped her.

“I'm working on an article, as I mentioned to you before,” I said, “and as soon as it's finished you'll get your money. There's no need to worry.”

“But you won't ever finish that article, will you?”

“You think so? I may feel inspired to write tomorrow, or maybe even tonight; it's not at all impossible that the inspiration will come sometime tonight, and then my article will be finished in a quarter of an hour, at the most. You see, it's not the same with my work as with other people's; I can't just sit down and get so much done every day, I have to wait for the right moment. And nobody can tell the day or the hour when the spirit will come upon him. It must take its course.”

My landlady left. But her confidence in me seemed greatly shaken.

As soon as I was alone, I sprang up and started tearing my hair in despair. No, there wasn't the least hope for me, no hope at all! My brain was bankrupt! Had I turned into an utter idiot, since I couldn't even figure out the price of a piece of clove cheese anymore? But then, could I have lost my wits as long as I was asking myself questions like that? On top of it all, hadn't I made the crystal-clear observation in the midst of my efforts with the bill that my landlady was pregnant? I had no basis for knowing that, nobody had told me anything about it, nor did it occur to me haphazardly—I saw it with my own eyes and I understood it immediately, in a moment of desperation at that, when I was figuring with sixteenths! How was I to explain that?

I walked to the window and looked out; my window faced Vognmand Street. Some children were playing on the pavement below, poorly dressed children in the middle of a poverty-stricken street. They were tossing an empty bottle back and forth amid loud yells. A moving van rolled slowly by; it must have been an evicted family, since they were moving at such an unusual time of year. This thought came to me immediately. The van was loaded with bedding and furniture, worm-eaten beds and chests of drawers, red-painted chairs with three legs, mats, scrap iron, tin articles. A little girl, a mere child, a downright ugly brat with a runny nose, was sitting on top of the load, holding on with her poor blue hands to keep from falling off. She sat on a bunch of ghastly, wet mattresses that had been slept on by children, and looked down at the small fry tossing the empty bottle among themselves.

I was watching all this and hadn't the least difficulty understanding what was going on. While I stood there at the window observing it, I could also hear my landlady's maid singing in the kitchen, right beside my room; I knew the tune she was singing and was listening on purpose to hear if she would make a mistake. I said to myself that no idiot could have done all this; I was, thank God, as much in my senses as anyone.

Suddenly I saw two of the children in the street leaping up and starting to wrangle, two small boys; I knew one of them, my landlady's son. I open the window to hear what they are saying to each other, and instantly a flock of children crowd together under my window and look up wish-fully. What were they waiting for? Something to be thrown down? Dried-up flowers, bones, cigar stubs, something or other they could chew on or amuse themselves with? They looked up at my window with infinitely wistful eyes, their faces blue with cold. In the meantime the two small enemies continue to bawl each other out. Words swarm out of their childish mouths like big clammy monsters, horrible nicknames, gutter language, and sailors' cuss words they may have picked up at the docks. They're both so engrossed in this that they don't notice my landlady, who comes rushing out to learn what's up.

“Why,” her son explains, “he grabbed me by the wea sand, it took me a long time to get my wind back.” Then, turning toward the little malefactor, who is laughing maliciously at him, he flies into a rage and yells, “Go and fry in hell, you Chaldean beast! That a lousy bastard like you should dare grab people by the throat! By golly, I'll—”

And the mother, this pregnant woman who dominates the whole length of the narrow street with her belly, answers the ten-year-old, seizing him by the arm to pull him along, “Ssh! Shut your trap! So you swear too, do you! You're shooting your mouth off like someone who's spent years in a whorehouse! Now, get yourself inside!”

“No, I won't!”

“Oh yes, you will!”

“No, I won't!”

I stand at the window and see the mother's anger rising. This ghastly scene upsets me terribly, I cannot take it any longer and call down to the boy to come up to me a moment. I call twice just to distract them, trying to break it up; my last call is very loud and the mother turns around bewildered and looks up at me. But she regains her composure on the spot, looks at me brazenly, downright arrogantly, and then marches off with a reproachful remark to her son. Talking loudly for my benefit, she says to him, “Pfoo! You should be ashamed of yourself, letting people see how bad you are!”

In all that I observed in this way there was nothing, not even a tiny incidental circumstance, that escaped me. My attention was most alert, every little thing was sensitively picked up, and I had my own ideas about these matters as they occurred. So there couldn't possibly be anything wrong with my sanity. As things were, how could there possibly be anything the matter with it?

Now, look here, I said all of a sudden, you have been bothering yourself about your sanity long enough, making yourself anxious on that score; now let's put a stop to these tomfooleries! Is it a sign of insanity to perceive and understand all things as accurately as you do? On my word, you almost make me laugh at yourself; it does have its humorous side, you know. In short, everyone gets stuck once in a while, and precisely in the simplest things. It doesn't mean anything, it's pure chance. As I've said, I'm only a hairs-breadth away from having a good laugh at you. As far as that grocery bill is concerned, those piddling ten-sixteenths of a poor man's cheese, I might call it—hee-hee, a cheese with cloves and pepper in it—as far as this ridiculous cheese is concerned, the very best among us might have been stupefied by that. The very smell of that cheese could finish a man. . . . And I held all clove cheese up to the most vicious ridicule. . . . No, give me something edible! I said. Give me, if you please, ten-sixteenths of good creamery butter! That's something else!

I laughed frantically at my own cracks, finding them terribly funny. There was really nothing wrong with me anymore, I was in my right mind.
¹

My gaiety kept rising as I paced the floor talking to myself; I laughed aloud and felt mighty glad. It really looked as though all I needed was this brief happy hour, this moment of truly carefree delight without a worry on the horizon, to get my head in working order. I sat down at the table and started busying myself with my allegory. It went very well, better than it had in a long while. It didn't go fast, but I thought the little I accomplished was altogether first-rate. Also, I worked for about an hour without getting tired.

I am right now at a very important point in my allegory about a fire in a bookstore. It seemed to me so important that everything else I had written counted for nothing as compared to this point. I was about to express, in a truly profound way, the idea that it wasn't books that were burning, it was brains, human brains, and I wanted to make a veritable Bartholomew's Night out of those burning brains. Suddenly my door was opened in great haste and my landlady came barging in. She strode to the middle of the room, without even stopping on the threshold.

I gave a little hoarse cry; indeed, I felt as though I had received a blow.

“What?” she said. “I thought you said something. We've got a new arrival and need this room for him. You can sleep downstairs with us tonight, you'll have your own bed there too.” And before I had managed to answer her, she began quite casually to gather up my papers on the table, messing them all up.

My happy mood was blown away, I was angry and disheartened and got up at once. I let her clear the table without opening my mouth; I didn't utter a word. She handed me all the papers.

There was nothing else I could do, I had to vacate the room. And so this precious moment, too, was spoiled! I met the new arrival on the stairs, a young man with big blue anchors traced on the backs of his hands. Behind him came a stevedore with a sea chest on his shoulder. The stranger was evidently a sailor, hence just a casual overnight guest; he would hardly occupy my room for any length of time. Perhaps, too, I would be lucky tomorrow, when the man was gone, and get one of my good moments again. All I needed now was a five-minute inspiration, and my work about the fire would be finished. So I'd better put up with my lot.

I hadn't been inside the family's apartment before, that one room in which they were all staying night and day—husband, wife, the wife's father, and four children. The maid lived in the kitchen, where she also slept at night. I approached the door very reluctantly and knocked. Nobody answered, but I could hear talk inside.

The husband didn't say a word when I entered, didn't even answer my greeting; he merely gave me an indifferent glance as if I didn't concern him. Anyway, he was playing cards with a person I had seen down at the docks, a porter who answered to the name “Pane o'Glass.” An infant lay prattling to itself over in the bed, and the old man, the landlady's father, sat hunched up on a settle bed, his head bent over his hands as though he had a pain in his chest or stomach. His hair was nearly white, and in his hunched-up position he looked like a humped insect pricking up its ears for something.

“I'm sorry, but I've come to ask for a place to stay down here tonight,” I said to the husband.

“Did my wife say so?” he asked.

“Yes. A new man has moved into my room.”

To this the husband made no reply; he addressed himself to his cards again.

This man would sit like that day after day, playing cards with anyone who happened to drop in, playing for nothing, just to kill time and have something in his hands while it lasted. Beyond that he did nothing, stirring no more than his lazy limbs felt inclined to, while his wife trudged up and down the stairs, bustled about everywhere, and saw to the business of getting patrons for the house. She had also made contacts with dockers and porters, whom she paid a certain fee for every new lodger they brought her, and she often gave these dockers shelter for the night. This time it was “Pane o'Glass” who had brought the new guest.

Two of the children came in, a pair of small girls with thin freckled, sluttish faces; they were quite wretchedly clad. Shortly afterward the landlady came in too. I asked her where she wanted to put me up for the night, and she answered curtly that I could sleep here, together with the others, or on the sofa bed in the hall, just as I pleased. As she was giving me this answer, she walked around the room, busying herself with various things which she put in order, and she didn't even look at me.

My heart sank at her answer; I stood by the door trying to look small, even pretending I was perfectly happy to trade rooms with someone else for the night. I put on a friendly face on purpose, so as not to provoke her and perhaps get thrown out of the house altogether. I said, “Oh well, I'll manage somehow,” and was silent.

She was still scurrying around the room.

“While I think of it, I must tell you that I simply can't afford to let people have board and room on credit,” she said. “I have told you that before, remember.”

“But, please, it's only a matter of a couple of days, till my article gets finished,” I answered. “Then I'll gladly give you an extra five-krone bill, yes, very gladly.”

But she obviously had no faith in my article, I could see that. And I couldn't start acting proud and quit the house only because of a slight insult. I knew what awaited me if I marched off.
²

 

A few days went by.

I was still staying downstairs with the family, since it was too cold in the hall where there was no stove; and at night I slept on the floor in the family room. The stranger was still living in my room and didn't seem minded to move out very soon. Anyway, around noon the landlady came in and said that the sailor had paid up for a whole month in advance. Incidentally, he was going to take his mate's examination before leaving, that was why he was staying in town. Hearing this, I understood that my room was now lost to me for good.

I went out into the hall and sat down; if I should be lucky enough to get anything written, it would have to be here, in the stillness, despite everything. I was no longer occupied with my allegory; I had a new idea, a really splendid plan: I was going to compose a one-act drama, “The Sign of the Cross,” on a subject from the Middle Ages. In particular, the central character was fully worked out in my mind—a gorgeous fanatical whore who had sinned in the temple, not out of weakness or lust, but from a hatred of heaven, had sinned at the very foot of the altar, with the altar cloth under her head, simply from a voluptuous contempt of heaven.

I became more and more obsessed by this character as the hours went by. She stood vividly alive before my eyes at last, exactly the way I wanted to portray her. Her body was to be misshapen and repulsive: tall, very skinny and rather dark, with long legs that showed through her skirts at every step she took. She would also have big, protruding ears. In short, she would not be easy on the eyes, barely tolerable to look at. What interested me about her was her wonderful shamelessness, the desperate excess of premeditated sin that she had committed. I was really too much taken up with her; my brain was downright swollen with this queer monstrosity of a human being. I worked for two whole hours at a stretch on my play.