I sat down once more on a bench near the Church of Our Savior and dozed with my head on my breast, limp after my last excitement, sick and worn-out with hunger. Time passed.
I’d better sit this hour out, too; it was a bit lighter outdoors than in the house. Moreover, it seemed to me that my chest didn’t labor quite so hard in the open air. I would get home soon enough anyway.
So I dozed and mused and hurt quite badly. I had picked up a little stone, which I brushed off and stuck in my mouth to have something to munch on. Otherwise I didn’t stir, didn’t even move my eyes. People came and went. The clatter of carriages, clopping of horses’ hoofs, and talk filled the air.
I could try with the buttons though, couldn’t I? But it obviously wouldn’t do any good, and besides I was rather sick. On second thought, however, walking home I would have to go in the direction of “Uncle’s”—my proper “Uncle’s”—anyway.
I got up at last and dragged myself, slowly and shakily, along the streets. I began to feel a burning sensation above my eyebrows, a fever was coming on and I hurried along as best I could. Once more I passed the bakery with the loaf of bread in the window. Come, we won’t stop here, I said with affected firmness. But what if I walked in and asked for a piece of bread? It was a fleeting thought, a flash. Phooey! I whispered, shaking my head. And I walked on,5 bristling with irony at my own expense. I knew very well it was no use making any appeals for help in that shop.
In the Ropewalk, a pair of lovers were whispering in an entranceway; a little further on a girl stuck her head out of the window. Walking so slowly and warily, I might have all sorts of ideas in my head, and the girl came out on the street.
“How are you doing, old man? What, are you sick? God help us, what a face!” And the girl beat a hasty retreat.
I stopped immediately. What was the matter with my face? Had I really started dying? I passed my hand up along my cheeks: thin—of course I was thin, my cheeks were like two bowls with the bottoms in. Oh Lord! I shuffled on.
But I stopped again. I must be just incredibly thin. My eyes were sinking deep into my skull. What, exactly, did I look like? The devil only knew why you had to be turned into a veritable freak just because of hunger! I experienced rage once more, its final flare-up, a spasm. God help us, what a face, eh? Here I was, with a head on my shoulders without its equal in the whole country, and with a pair of fists, by golly, that could grind the town porter to fine dust, and yet I was turning into a freak from hunger, right here in the city of Kristiania! Was there any rhyme or reason in that? I had put my shoulder to the wheel and toiled day and night, like a nag lugging a parson; I had read till my eyes were bursting from their sockets and starved till my wits took leave of my brain—and where the hell had it gotten me? Even the street-walkers prayed to God to free them from the sight of me. But now it was going to stop, understand; it was going to stop, or I’d be damned! . . . With ever-increasing rage, grinding my teeth in response to my fatigue, sobbing and cursing, I continued to rant and rave, paying no heed to the people passing by. I began once more to torture myself, running my head against the lampposts on purpose, digging my fingernails deep into the backs of my hands, and biting my tongue in frenzy when it didn’t speak clearly, and I laughed madly whenever it fairly hurt.
“Yes, but what shall I do?” I asked myself at last. I stamp my feet on the pavement several times and repeat, “What shall I do?” A gentleman just walking by remarks with a smile, “You should go and ask to be committed.”
I followed him with my eyes. It was one of our well-known women’s physicians, going by the name the “Duke.” Not even he understood my condition, a man I knew and whose hand I had shaken. I fell silent. Committed? Sure, I was mad; he was right. I felt the insanity in my blood, felt it tearing through my brain. That was what I would come to, was it? Oh, well. I resumed my slow, sad walk. So that was where I would end up!
All of a sudden I stop again. But not committed, I say, not that! I was almost hoarse with fear. I begged for mercy, making wild entreaties not to be committed. For then I would land in jail again, be confined in a dark cell where there wasn’t a glimmer of light. Not that! There were other ways open which I hadn’t yet tried. I would try them; I would work harder at it, take my time, walk tirelessly from house to house. There was Cisler, the music dealer, for example, I hadn’t been to him at all. Something would be sure to turn up. . . . I went along talking this way until I made myself cry from emotion once more. Anything rather than being committed!
Cisler? Was this perhaps a higher hint, a pointer? His name had occurred to me for no reason at all and he lived so far away, but I would go and see him all the same, walking slowly and resting once in a while. I knew the place, had been there often in the good old days to buy sheet music. Should I ask him for a half krone? That might embarrass him; I had better ask for a whole krone.
I entered the store and asked for the boss; I was shown into his office. There he sat, a handsome and fashionably dressed man, looking through some papers.
I stammered forth an apology and stated my errand. Forced by need to turn to him . . . Wouldn’t be too long before I should pay him back . . . As soon as I received the fee for my newspaper article . . . He would be doing me such a kindness. . . .
Even while I was talking he turned back to his desk and went on with his work. When I was through he gave me a sidelong glance, shook his handsome head and said, “No.” Simply no. No explanation. Not a word.
My knees shook violently and I leaned against the small polished counter. I had to try once more. Why should exactly his name occur to me as I was standing way down in the Vaterland section? I felt repeated twitches in my left side and I started perspiring. Hmm. I was really terribly rundown, I said, quite sick, I was afraid. It would almost certainly be no more than two or three days before I could pay him back. If he would be so kind?
“My dear man, why do you come to me?” he said. “You are a perfect stranger to me, come in straight off the street. Go to the paper, where they know you.”
“Only for tonight,” I said. “The office is closed now and I’m very hungry.”
He kept shaking his head, continued to shake it even after I had my hand on the latch.
“Goodbye,” I said.
There wasn’t any higher hint or pointer, I thought, smiling bitterly; as high as that I could point, too, if it came to that. I struggled along block after block, resting briefly on some front steps every once in a while. If only I didn’t get locked up! My dread of the cell pursued me all along, refusing to leave me alone; every time I saw a policeman ahead of me, I shuffled into a side street to avoid meeting him. Now we’ll count one hundred steps, I said, and try our luck again! Something will turn up eventually.
It was a small yarn store, a place where I had never set foot before. A lone man behind the counter, an office further back with a porcelain name plate on the door, long rows of packed shelves and tables. I waited until the last customer had left the store, a young lady with dimples. How happy she looked! I decided against trying to impress her with the pin in my coat and turned away.
“Can I help you?” the clerk asked.
“Is the boss in?” I said.
“He’s on a hiking tour in the Jotunheimen mountains,” he replied. “Is it something special?”
“It’s about a few øre for a meal,” I said, trying to smile. “I’m hungry and I haven’t got a single øre.”
“Then you’re just as rich as I am,” he said, and set about arranging some parcels of yarn.
“Oh, don’t turn me away—not now!” I said, suddenly feeling cold all over. “Believe me, I’m almost dead with hunger, it’s been many days since I had anything to eat.”
With the utmost seriousness, without saying a word, he started turning his pockets inside out, one by one. Wouldn’t I take his word for it?
“Just five øre,” I said. “And I’ll give you ten back in a couple of days.”
“My dear man, do you want me to
steal from the till?” he asked impatiently.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, take five øre from the till.”
“I don’t do that sort of thing,” he wound up. Then he added, “And while we’re at it, let me tell you I’ve had enough of this.”
I dragged myself out, sick with hunger and hot with shame.6 Why, this would have to stop! Things had really gone too far with me. I had held my head above water for so many years, I’d kept upright in such hard times, and now all of a sudden I had lowered myself to the crassest sort of panhandling. This one day had brutalized my mind through and through, spattered my heart with shamelessness. I’d had the gall to become maudlin, shedding tears in front of petty shopkeepers. And what good had it done me? Wasn’t I still without a piece of bread to stick in my mouth? I had managed to make me disgusted with myself. Yes, it had to stop, right now! But at this very moment they were locking the gate at home, and I had to hurry if I didn’t want to spend the night in the jail again.
This gave me strength, I didn’t want to spend the night in jail. My body bent over, one hand pressed against my left ribs to ease the stinging pain a little, I struggled on, keeping my eyes fixed upon the sidewalk to avoid forcing eventual acquaintances to say hello, and hurried over to the fire station. Thank God, it was only seven by Our Savior’s clock, I had still three hours before the gate closed. How scared I had been!
I had now done everything I could, no stone had been left unturned. That a whole day should go by without my succeeding even once! I thought. If I told that to someone, nobody would believe me, and if I wrote it down they would say it had been fabricated. Not in a single place! Well, it couldn’t be helped; above all, don’t go around being maudlin anymore. Phooey, how sickening—on my word, it makes me feel disgusted with you! When all hope was gone, it was gone. By the way, couldn’t I steal a handful of oats in the stable? A shaft of light, a stray beam—I knew that the stable was locked.
I took my time going home, crawling at a snail’s pace. I felt thirsty, happily for the first time all day, and kept looking around for a place to drink. I had gotten too far away from the Arcades, and I didn’t want to walk into a private house. Perhaps I could just wait till I got home, it would take a mere quarter of an hour. It was by no means certain that I could keep down a mouthful of water anyway; my stomach didn’t tolerate anything anymore, I even felt nauseated by the saliva I kept swallowing.
But the buttons! I hadn’t tried with the buttons yet. I stood stock-still and broke into a smile. There might still be a way out. I wasn’t completely doomed. I would certainly get ten øre for them, tomorrow I would get ten more someplace or other, and Thursday I would be paid for my newspaper article! There you could see, things would take a turn for the better! Imagine forgetting the buttons! I took them out of my pocket and inspected them as I walked on; my eyes went dim with joy, and I couldn’t properly see the street I was walking on.
How thoroughly familiar I was with that big basement, my refuge in the dark evenings, my bloodsucking friend! One by one my possessions had vanished down there, little things from home, my last book. I would go down to watch on the auction day, and I was glad every time my books seemed to fall into good hands. Magelsen, the actor, had my watch, and that made me almost feel proud; a yearbook with my first modest poetic attempts in it had been bought by an acquaintance, and my overcoat ended up with a photographer, to be on loan in the studio. So I had no reason to complain.
I held the buttons ready in my hand and stepped in. “Un cle” sits at his desk, writing.
“I’m not in a hurry,” I say, afraid to disturb him and rub him the wrong way with my request. My voice sounded so strangely hollow that I almost failed to recognize it, and my heart was thumping like a hammer.
He approached me with a smile as usual, placed both his hands palms down on the counter, and looked me squarely in the face without saying anything.
Well, I had brought something I wanted to ask if he could use . . . something that was only in my way at home—“believe me, a real nuisance, some buttons.”
Well, what about it, what about those buttons? And he brings his eyes right down to my hand.
Couldn’t he let me have a few øre for them? . . . As much as he himself saw fit . . . Using his own discretion . . .
“For those buttons?” “Uncle” stares at me in surprise. “For these buttons?”
Just enough for a cigar or whatever he pleased to give me. “I was just passing by and thought I’d drop in.”
The old pawnbroker laughed and returned to his desk without saying a word. I just stood there. I hadn’t really hoped for very much, and yet I had thought I might possibly be helped out. This laughter was my death sentence. It probably wasn’t any use to try with the glasses either.
“Naturally I would throw in my glasses, too, that goes without saying,” I said, taking them off. “Just ten øre”—or, if he pleased, five øre.
“You know, don’t you, that I can’t lend you anything on your glasses,” “Uncle” said. “I have told you so before.”
“But I need a stamp,” I said, in a muffled voice. I couldn’t even mail the letters I was going to write. “A ten- or five øre stamp, just as you please.”
“May God bless you, and now, be on your way!” he answered, motioning me off with his hand.
All right, we’ll forget about it, I said to myself. Mechanically, I put my glasses back on, picked up the buttons and left. I said good night and closed the door behind me as usual. There, nothing more to be done! I stopped at the top of the stairs and took another look at the buttons. Imagine, he wasn’t at all interested! I said. And the buttons are almost new; I just can’t understand.
While I stood there, absorbed in these reflections, a man came by and went down into the basement. In his hurry he had brushed against me, we both apologized, and I turned around and followed him with my eyes.
“Oh, it’s you!” he suddenly said, from the bottom of the stairs. He came back up and I recognized him. “Goodness gracious, you look a mess!” he said. “What were you doing down here?”
“Oh—I had some business. You’re going there too, I see.”
“Yes. What did you bring?”
My knees shook, I leaned against the wall and held out my hand with the buttons.
“What the hell!” he cried. “No, this is going too far!”
“Good night,” I said, turning to go. I had a lump in my throat.
“No, wait a moment!” he said.
What should I wait for? He was on his way to “Uncle” himself, bringing his engagement ring perhaps, had been going hungry for several days, was in debt to his landlady.
“All right,” I answered, “if you will be quick—”
“Of course,” he said, grabbing my arm. “But the fact is, I don’t believe you, idiot that you are. You’d better come with me.”
I understood what he had in mind, felt another twinge of honor of a sudden and answered, “I can’t! I’ve promised to be in Bernt Anker Street at half-past seven, and—”
“Half-past seven, right! But it’s eight now. See this watch in my hand? That’s what I’m taking down there. So, in with you, you hungry sinner! I’ll get at least five kroner for you.”
And he pushed me in.
PART THREE
A WEEK WENT BY in joy and gladness.
I was over the worst this time too. I had food every day, my courage rose, and I had more and more irons in the fire. I was working on three or four monographs, which picked my poor brain clean of every spark, every thought that arose in it, and I felt it was going better than before. My last article, which had cost me so much running around and given rise to so much hope, had already been returned by the editor, and I had destroyed it immediately, angry and insulted, without reading it afresh. In the future I would try another paper, in order to open up more opportunities for myself. At worst, if that didn’t help either, I had the ships to turn to. The Nun lay ready to sail at the pier, and I might be able to
work my way to Arkhangelsk on it, or wherever it was bound for. So there was no lack of prospects in several quarters.
My last crisis had dealt roughly with me. I began to lose a lot of hair, my headaches were also very troublesome, especially in the morning, and my nervousness refused to go away. During the day I sat and wrote with my hands swathed in rags, merely because I couldn’t stand my own breath on them. When Jens Olai slammed the stable door downstairs or a dog entered the back yard and started barking, I felt as though pierced to the quick by cold stabs of pain which hit me everywhere. I was fairly done for.
I toiled at my work day after day, barely allowing myself time to gulp down my food before going on with my writing again. In those days both my bed and my small wobbly writing table were flooded with notes and manuscript pages I took turns working on, adding new things that would occur to me in the course of the day, erasing, brushing up the dead spots with a colorful word here and there, struggling ahead sentence by sentence with the greatest difficulty. Then, one afternoon, one of my articles was finished at last and, pleased and happy, I stuck it in my pocket and went up to the “Commander’s.” It was high time I bestirred myself to get some money again, I didn’t have very many øre left.
The “Commander” asked me to sit down for a moment, then he would right away . . . And he went on writing.
I looked about me in the small office: busts, lithographs, clippings, and an immense wastebasket that looked as though it could swallow a man whole. I felt sad at the sight of that huge maw, those dragon’s jaws which were always open, always ready to receive fresh scrapped writings—fresh blasted hopes.
“What is today’s date?” the “Commander” suddenly asks from his desk.
“The 28th,” I answer, glad to be of service to him.
“The 28th.” And he goes on writing. Finally he slips a couple of letters into their envelopes, tosses some papers into the wastebasket and lays down his pen. Then he swings around in his chair and looks at me. When he notices that I am still standing by the door, he waves his hand in a half-serious, half-facetious manner and points to a chair.