Mysteries (36 page)

Suddenly he starts up, negotiates the stairs in two jumps, rushes into the street, leaves the town behind him in a couple of minutes and finds himself back on Parsonage Road. Maybe he could still find the handkerchief! And sure enough, she had left it there, although he was certain she had seen him step on it the second time. How lucky he was, though, despite everything! Thank God for that! His heart throbbing, he puts it away, rushes back to the hotel and rinses it, changing the water countless times, and gently spreads it out. It was pretty badly messed up, one corner even torn by his heel, but what did that matter! Oh, how happy he was to have found it!

Not until he sat down by the window again did he discover that he had made this latest walk through town without his cap. Sure, he was mad, quite mad! Suppose she had noticed! She had wanted to test him, and when all was said and done he had again failed miserably. No, this would have to stop, the sooner the better! He must be able to look at her with a tranquil heart, his head held high and his eyes cold, without betraying himself. He would certainly make an effort. He would go away and take Martha with him. She was much too good for him, alas, but he would make himself worthy of her; never rest, never allow himself an hour’s rest, until he had made himself worthy of her.

The weather was getting milder and milder, gentle puffs of wind carried the fragrance of damp grass and earth in through his window and revived him more and more. Tomorrow he would go see Martha again and beg her most humbly to give in....

 

 

But already the following morning, his hopes were completely undone.

FIRST, DR. STENERSEN CAME; Nagel hadn’t even risen yet. The doctor excused himself, that confounded bazaar kept him busy night and day. He did have an errand, though, a mission: it was a question of getting him—Nagel—to appear at the bazaar again this evening. His playing was rumored to have been simply wonderful, the town had been sleepless from curiosity; it was the honest truth! “You read the papers, I see? Oh, politics! Did you notice the latest government appointments? In general, the election didn’t turn out the way it should, the Swedes didn’t get their faces slapped.... You sleep rather late, it seems to me; it’s ten o’clock. Some weather we’re having, the air is quivering with heat! You ought to go for a morning walk.”

Yes, Nagel would get up right away.

Well, what was his answer to the program committee?

No, Nagel wouldn’t play.

He wouldn’t? But it was a cause of national importance! Was it right of him to refuse such a small favor?

Well, he couldn’t.

Tut, tut! With such a strong feeling in his favor right now, especially among the ladies; they had made a real nuisance of themselves last night, begging him to make it come off. Miss Andresen hadn’t given him a moment’s rest, and Miss Kielland had actually taken him aside and asked him to flatly refuse letting Nagel go until he had promised to come.

Ah, but Miss Kielland didn’t have the faintest idea how he played. She had never heard him.

Still, she was the most enthusiastic; she had even offered to accompany him.... “She ended by saying, ‘Tell him we all beg him to come....’ You could give us the pleasure of doing some ten or twelve strokes, couldn’t you?”

He couldn‘t, he just couldn’t!

Why, those were nothing but excuses; he could Thursday evening, right?

Nagel squirmed. Suppose he knew only this poor fragment, this incoherent potpourri, that he had practiced these few dances to the highest level he could achieve to astonish people some evening! And besides, his playing was criminally out of tune; he couldn’t bear listening to himself, no, by Jove, he couldn’t!

“Yes but—”

“Doctor, I won’t do it!” “If not tonight, how about tomorrow night? Tomorrow is Sunday, the last day of the bazaar, and we’re anticipating a big turnout.”

“No, you’ll have to excuse me, I won’t play tomorrow night either. It’s simply idiotic to touch a violin when one cannot play any better than I do. How curious that
you
didn’t hear any better!”

This appeal to the doctor was effective.

“Well,” he said, “I did feel you made a few mistakes here and there; but what the hell, we aren’t all of us connoisseurs, you know.”

It was no use, the doctor got nothing but no all along and had to leave.

Nagel began getting dressed. So, even Dagny had been eager to make him do this, she would even have accompanied him! Another trap, eh? She failed last night, and now she would use this to even the score? ... But oh dear, maybe he was doing her an injustice, perhaps she wouldn’t hate him any more now, but leave him alone! And in his heart, he begged her pardon for his distrustfulness. He looked out at Market Square; there was the most glorious sunshine, the sky as lofty as could be. He began humming to himself.

When he was almost ready to go down, Sara slipped a letter through the door; it hadn’t come through the mail, a messenger had brought it. The letter was from Martha and contained only a few lines: he mustn’t come this evening, after all, she had gone away. For heaven’s sake, he must forgive her everything and not call on her anymore; it would give her pain to see him again. Goodbye. At the bottom of the page, below her name, she had added that she would never forget him. “I’ll never forget you,” she wrote. Altogether, this letter of three or four lines was filled with a note of sadness; even the characters looked sad and pitiful.

He collapsed on a chair. Everything was lost, lost! Even there he had been rejected! How strange it was, the way everything was conspiring against him! Had he ever been more honest or more well-intentioned? And yet—and yet it didn’t help! He sits motionless for several minutes.

All at once he jumps up from his chair; he looks at his watch, it’s eleven. If he dashed off at once, perhaps he could still catch Martha before she left! He goes straight to her place; it’s locked and empty. He peeks through the windows of both rooms and sees no trace of anybody.

Beaten and speechless, he turns back to the hotel without knowing where he is going, without taking his eyes off the ground. How could she do it, how could she! After all, he would have wanted to say goodbye to her and wish her every happiness, wherever she was going. He would have liked to kneel before her despite everything, for the sake of her goodness, because she had an utterly pure heart, and she hadn’t been able to endure his doing that. Well, never mind!

When he met Sara in the hallway, he learned that the letter had been brought by messenger from the parsonage. So that, too, was Dagny’s doing, she had arranged it all, had carefully calculated everything and acted swiftly. No, she would never forgive him!

He wandered about all day—in the streets, in his room, out in the woods, everywhere; he didn’t rest for a moment. He always walked with his head bowed, his eyes wide-open and unseeing.

The next day went by in the same manner. It was a Sunday, and lots of country people had come to town to visit the bazaar and see the tableaux on the last day. Nagel received another request to play, just one number, through another member of the program committee, Consul Andresen, Fredrikke’s father; but again he declined. For four whole days he walked about like a lunatic, in a strangely absent mood, as though engrossed by one single thought, one feeling. He walked down to Martha’s house several times a day to see whether she might have returned. Where had she gone? But even if he found her, it wouldn’t do him any good. Nothing would any longer!

One evening he barely escaped running into Dagny. She was coming out of a shop and nearly brushed his elbow. She moved her lips as if to talk to him, but suddenly blushed and said nothing. Failing to recognize her at first, in his bewilderment he paused for a moment to look at her before turning abruptly and moving off. She followed him, he could tell by her footsteps that she was walking faster and faster; he had a feeling that she was trying to overtake him and quickened his pace to get away, to give her the slip. He was afraid of her—she would never stop making trouble for him! Finally he escaped to the hotel, rushed in, and hurried up to his room in the utmost agitation. Thank God, he was saved!

This was on July 14, a Tuesday.

In the morning he seemed to have made a decision to do something. During the past few days his face had completely changed; it was gray and stiff, and his eyes were lifeless. Also, more and more often he would be way down the street before discovering he had forgotten his cap. On such occasions he would clench his fist and tell himself that this had got to stop, be done with once and for all.

When he got out of bed Wednesday morning he first examined the little poison vial in his vest pocket, shook it, smelled it, and put it away again. Getting dressed he began, as was his wont, to grapple with one of those long, untidy trains of thought which were constantly occupying him, giving his weary head no rest. His brain worked frantically, at tremendous speed; his emotions were in turmoil, and he felt so desperate that he often had difficulty holding back his tears. And in the midst of all this a swarm of thoughts crowded in on him.

Thank God, he still had his vial! It smelled of almonds, and the liquid was clear as water. Sure enough, he would be needing it very soon, despite everything, very soon, since there was no other way out. That’s how it would end, after all. And why not? He had had such a ridiculously beautiful dream of a mission in the world, something that would “count,” some achievement that would scandalize the carnivores—and it had turned out so badly; he hadn’t been up to the task. Why shouldn’t he make use of that liquid? All he had to do was to swallow it without making too many faces. Well, he would do it in the fullness of time, when the clock struck the hour.

Dagny would win....

What power that woman had,
¹
quite ordinary as she was, with her long braid and her wise heart! He understood the poor man who refused to live without her, the one with the steel and the final no. He was no longer surprised at him; the poor devil had quit, what else could he have done? ... How her blue velvet eyes will sparkle when I soon take the same path! But I love you, I love you for that too, not only for your virtues, but also for your malice. If anything, I suffer all too much by your being so indulgent with me; why do you tolerate that I have more than one eye? You should take one of them, well, both, why not? You shouldn’t put up with my being allowed to walk the street in peace and having a roof over my head. You have torn Martha away from me, but I love you in spite of it, and you know I love you in spite of it; it makes you snicker at me, and I also love you because you snicker at me. Can you ask for more? Isn’t that enough? Your long white hands, your voice, your blond hair, your breath and your soul—I love them all as I’ve never loved anything before; honest to God, I cannot help it, it’s beyond my control! You may mock me to your heart’s content and laugh at me, I don’t mind; what does it matter, Dagny, since I love you? I don’t see that it makes any difference; as far as I’m concerned, you can do whatever strikes your fancy, you’ll still be just as beautiful and lovable in my eyes, I willingly admit it. Somehow or other I’ve disappointed you; you regard me as wicked and mean and believe me capable of anything. If I could add to my low stature by some deception or other, I would even do that. Well, what about it? If you say so, it’s true for me as well, and a good thing; I assure you that my love begins to sing within me when you say it. Even if you look disdainfully at me or turn your back on me without answering my question, or you try to overtake me in the street to humiliate me, even so my heart thrills with love for you. Try to understand, I’m deluding neither you nor myself: it doesn’t really matter to me if you laugh again, it doesn’t change my feelings. That’s the way it is. And if I should find a diamond some day it would be called Dagny, because your name is enough to make me warm with joy. I would even go so far as to wish to hear your name perpetually, hear it spoken by all men and beasts, by every mountain and every star, as to wish I were deaf to everything else and only heard your name as an endless note in my ear night and day all my life long. I would want to institute a new oath in your name, an oath that all the peoples on earth would swear by, in your honor. And if that would be a sin and God warned me against it, I would answer him: charge it to my account, enter it on the books, I’ll pay for it with my soul in the fullness of time, when the clock strikes....

How strange it all is! I’ve been stopped everywhere, and yet I’m the same, in strength, in spirit. The same possibilities are open to me as before, I could accomplish the same tasks. Why, then, have I been stopped, and why have all possibilities become impossible to me all of a sudden? Is it my own fault? I do not see how. All my senses are intact, I have no harmful habits, I’m not addicted to a single vice, nor do I rush blindly into danger. I think as before, feel as before, I’m in control of my movements as before, and, yes, I appreciate people as before. I’ll go to Martha, I know that she’s my salvation, a kind soul, my guardian angel. She’s timid, very apprehensive; but in the end she will want what I want and we’ll be in agreement. Good! I’m dreaming of a life of happy tranquillity; we shall withdraw into solitude, live in a cottage with a spring nearby, roam about the woods in short togs and buckled shoes
²
—just as her kind, sentimental heart demands. Why not? Mohammed goes to the mountain! And Martha is with me, filling my days with purity and my nights with rest, and the Lord on high is over us. But then the world sticks its nose into it, the world takes umbrage, the world decides it’s madness. The world says that such and such a reasonable man or woman wouldn’t have done it, consequently it’s mad. And I, a single solitary individual, stand up, stamp my feet and say it is reasonable! What does the world know? Nothing! You simply get used to something, you accept it and acknowledge it, because your teacher has acknowledged it before you; everything is just a supposition—indeed, even time, space, motion, matter are suppositions. The world knows nothing, it merely accepts things....