Hunger (26 page)

I stood up.

“I just wanted to say goodbye,” I mumbled, “and so I had to wait for you. I haven't touched a thing, I was just sitting here on this chair—”

“No harm done,” the mate said. “Why the damn fuss? Just leave the man alone!”

Going down the stairs, I suddenly flew into a rage with this fat, bloated woman who was following hard on my heels to get rid of me in a jiffy, and I stood still for a moment, my mouth full of the most awful epithets which I had a mind to spit at her. But I thought better of it and held my tongue—held my tongue out of gratitude to the stranger who walked behind her and would hear it all. The landlady was constantly pursuing me, hurling abuse without letup, while my anger increased with every step that I took.

We came down into the yard, with me walking very slowly, still trying to decide whether to take on the landlady. I was at this moment frantic with rage, contemplating the most awful bloodshed, a blow that would strike her dead instantly, a kick in the belly. A messenger passes me in the entrance, he says hello but I don't answer. He turns to the matron behind me, and I can hear him asking for me. But I don't turn around.

A few steps outside the entrance the messenger catches up with me, says hello once more and stops me. He hands me a letter. Angry and reluctant, I tear it open—a ten-krone bill falls out of the envelope, but no letter, not a word.

I look at the man and ask, “What sort of silly prank is this? Who is this letter from?”

“I don't know,” he answers, “but it was a lady who gave it to me.”

I stood still. The messenger left. I put the bill back in the envelope, crumple it all up, turn around and walk up to the landlady, who is still keeping an eye on me from the entrance, and throw the bill in her face. I didn't say anything, didn't utter a syllable, only noticed that she examined the crumpled-up paper before I left.

Ha, that's what was called knowing how to acquit oneself!
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Not say a word, not speak to the scum, but quite calmly crumple up a big bill and throw it straight in the face of one's persecutors. That's what one could call behaving with dignity. It served them right, the brutes!

When I got to the corner of Tomte Street and Jærnbanetorvet Square, the street suddenly began swirling before my eyes, there was an empty buzzing in my head, and I fell up against the wall of a building. I simply couldn't walk any further, couldn't even straighten up from my awkward position. I remained slumped over against the wall, just as I had fallen, and I felt I was about to pass out. My insane anger was only heightened by this fit of exhaustion, and I lifted my foot and stamped it on the sidewalk. I also did various other things to recover my strength: I clenched my teeth, knitted my brows and rolled my eyes in despair, and it began to help. My mind cleared up, I understood I was about to go under. I stretched out my hands and pushed myself back from the wall; the street was still whirling around with me. Bursting into sobs of rage, I fought my distress with my innermost soul, bravely holding my own so as not to fall down: I had no intention of collapsing, I would die on my feet. A cart rolled slowly by. I see there are potatoes in the cart, but out of rage, from sheer obstinacy, I take it into my head to say they weren't potatoes at all, they were cabbages, and I swore horribly that they were cabbages. I heard quite well what I said, and I swore willfully time after time, upholding this lie just to have the droll satisfaction of committing downright perjury. Drunk with this unprecedented sin, I raised three fingers and swore with quivering lips in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost that they were cabbages.

Time passed. I let myself sink down on the steps near me and wiped the sweat off my forehead and my neck, took a deep breath and forced myself to be calm. The sun was going down, the afternoon was wearing on. I began once more to brood on my situation. My hunger was getting outrageous, and in a few hours it would be night again; I had to think of a way out while there was still time. My thoughts began again to circle around the rooming house I had been driven away from; I certainly didn't want to go back there but still couldn't help thinking about it. Actually, the woman had every right in the world to throw me out. How could I expect people to put me up if I didn't pay them! What's more, she had given me food off and on; even last night, after I had provoked her, she had offered me two sandwiches, offered them to me out of kindness because she knew that I needed them. So I had nothing to complain about, and as I sat there on the steps I began to ask—no, beg—her forgiveness in my heart for the way I had behaved. Most of all, I was bitterly sorry I had shown myself ungrateful to her at the end and thrown that piece of paper in her face. . . .

The ten-krone bill! I gave a whistle. The letter the messenger brought, where did it come from? Only now, at this moment, did I think clearly about this, and I had a hunch right away what the story was. Sick with pain and shame, I whispered “Ylajali” several times in a hoarse voice and shook my head. Was it not me who had decided only yesterday to walk proudly past her when we met and to display the utmost indifference toward her? And instead of that I had merely aroused her compassion and coaxed her out of a pen nyworth of charity. No, no, no, there was no end to my degradation! Not even vis-à-vis her had I been able to maintain a respectable posture; I was sinking, sinking everywhere I turned, sinking to my knees, to my middle, going down in infamy never to come up again, never! That beat everything! To accept ten kroner of alms money without being able to throw it back at the secret donor, to scramble for pennies with both hands wherever they were offered, hang on to them, use them to pay the rent despite my own innermost repugnance!

Couldn't I put my hands on those ten kroner again somehow or other? Going back to the landlady to get the bill returned wouldn't do any good, of course; but there must be some other way if I stopped to think, if I just tried real hard to stop and think about it. Here, honest to God, it wasn't sufficient to think just in the ordinary way, I had to think about some means of procuring those ten kroner till my whole body ached. I sat down to think hard.

It was probably around four by now, in a couple of hours I might get to see the theater manager if my play had been finished. I take out the manuscript on the spot and try to put together the three or four last scenes, by hook or by crook. I think and sweat and read it through from the beginning but can't get anywhere. No nonsense now! I say, no bullheadedness there! And so I work for dear life on my play, writing down everything that comes to mind just to finish quickly and be off. I tried to convince myself I was having another big moment, lying to my face and openly deceiving myself while scribbling away as though there was no need to look for the right words. That's good! That's a real find! I whispered every so often, just get it down! Eventually, however, my most recent lines of dialogue began to sound suspicious to me: they contrasted so sharply with the dialogue in the early scenes. Besides, there wasn't the slightest tinge of the Middle Ages about the monk's words. I break my pencil between my teeth, jump up, tear my manuscript to bits, every single sheet, toss my hat in the gutter and trample it. “I'm lost!” I whisper to myself. “Ladies and gentlemen, I'm lost!” I say nothing except these words as I stand there trampling my hat.

A few steps away a policeman is observing me; he stands in the middle of the street and doesn't pay attention to anything else. Our eyes meet as I lift my head; maybe he had been standing there for quite a while just watching me. I pick up my hat, put it on, and walk over to the man.

“Do you know what time it is?” I ask.

He waits awhile before pulling out his watch, not taking his eyes off me for a moment.

“A little past four,” he says.

“Exactly!” I say. “A little past four, perfectly correct! You know your stuff, I see, and I'll be thinking of you.”

With that I left him. I threw him into a state of the utmost astonishment, and he followed me with his eyes, mouth agape, still holding the watch in his hand. When I had reached the Royal Hotel I turned around and looked back; he was still standing in the same position, following me with his eyes.

Heh-heh, that's the way to treat those brutes! With the most refined impudence! That impressed the brutes, gave them a fright. . . . I was extremely pleased with myself and began again to sing a snatch of song. Tense with excitement, feeling no pain anymore, or even any kind of discomfort, I walked through the whole market light as a feather, turned around at the Arcades and settled on a bench near Our Savior's.

Might it not, after all, be a matter of indifference whether I returned a ten-krone bill or not? Once I had received it, it was mine, and there certainly wasn't any want where it came from. Anyway, I couldn't help accepting it, since it was sent expressly to me; it wouldn't have made any sense to let the messenger keep it. Nor would it do to return an entirely different ten-krone bill than the one I had received. So, there was nothing to be done about it.

I tried to look at the traffic around the market in front of me and occupied my thoughts with indifferent things; but I didn't succeed and was still taken up with the ten-krone bill. Finally I clenched my hands and got angry. She would feel hurt, I said, if I sent it back, so why should I do it? I was always ready to consider myself too good for this, that and the other, to shake my head arrogantly and say, No, thanks! Now I could see what it led to: I found myself once more on the street. Even when I had the best opportunity to do so, I didn't hold on to my nice, warm lodging; I turned proud, jumped up at the first word and brazened it out, handed out ten kroner left and right and went my way. . . . I took myself sharply to task for having abandoned my lodging and once again landing myself in a quandary.

For the rest, I didn't give a tinker's damn about the whole business. I hadn't asked for that ten-krone bill and had barely held it in my hands; I had given it away at once, paid it out to some total strangers I would never see again. That was the sort of man I was, always paying down to the last mite when something was at stake. If I knew Ylajali rightly, she wasn't sorry she had sent me that money either, so what was I carrying on for? Actually, it was the least she could do, sending me a ten-krone bill every now and then. After all, the poor girl was in love with me, ha! perhaps even hopelessly in love with me. . . . And I sat there puffing myself up at this thought. There could be no doubt that she was in love with me, the poor girl! . . .

It turned five o'clock. After my long bout of nervous excitement, I collapsed anew and began once more to hear that empty buzzing in my head. My eyes fixed in a blank stare, I looked in the direction of the Elephant Pharmacy. Hunger was raging fiercely inside me and I was in great pain. As I sit thus looking into vacancy, a figure is gradually revealed to my fixed stare, one that I finally see quite distinctly and recognize: it is the cake vendor by the Elephant Pharmacy.

I give a start, draw myself up on the bench and start thinking. Yes, sure enough, it was the same woman in front of the same table in the same spot! I whistle a couple of times and snap my fingers, get up from the bench and start walking toward the pharmacy. No nonsense now! I didn't give a damn whether it was the wages of sin or good Norwegian huckster's money minted in silver at Kongsberg! I wasn't going to be ridiculous, you could die from too much pride.

I walk over to the corner, aim for the woman and take my stand in front of her. I smile, nod familiarly, and frame my words as if it were a matter of course that I would be back someday.

“Hello!” I say. “Perhaps you don't recognize me?”

“No,” she answers slowly, looking at me.

I smile even more broadly, as if it were only her funny little joke that she didn't know me, and say, “Don't you remember that I gave you a stack of kroner one day? I didn't say anything on that occasion as far as I remember, that's true, I didn't; I don't usually do that. When you are dealing with honest people, it is unnecessary to make an agreement and, so to speak, sign a contract for every little thing. Heh-heh. Oh yes, it was I who handed over that money to you.”

“Really, so it was you! Yes, now I guess I know you too, when I think back a little.”

Wanting to forestall her thanking me for the money, I say quickly, letting my eyes wander around her table in search of eatables, “Well, here I've come to pick up the cakes.”

She doesn't understand.

“The cakes,” I repeat, “I've come to pick them up. Some anyway, the first helping. I won't need them all today.”

“You've come to pick them up?” she asks.

“Yes, I've come to pick them up, you bet I have!” I answer, laughing aloud, as though it ought to have been quite obvious to her from the very beginning that I had come to pick them up. And I grab a cake from the table, a kind of french roll, which I begin to eat.

When the woman sees this, she rises in her basement hole and makes an instinctive gesture to protect her merchandise, giving me to understand that she hadn't expected me to be back to rob her of it.

“You hadn't?” I say. “Indeed, you hadn't?” What a funny woman she was! Had it ever happened to her that someone gave her a chunk of kroner for safekeeping without that person asking to get it back? No! Well, there you are! Maybe she thought it was stolen money, since I had tossed it to her like that? Ah, she didn't! That was nice anyway, real nice. It was, if I might say so, sweet of her to take me for an honest man at least. Haw-haw! Oh, she was a good one, all right!

But why, then, did I give her the money? The woman was furious and raised a hue and cry.

I explained why I had given her the money, explained it quietly and emphatically: I was in the habit of acting like that because I had such faith in everybody. Whenever someone offered me a contract or an IOU, I always shook my head and said, No, thanks! As God was my witness, I did.