Mysteries (27 page)

Sara came and announced that supper was served. The lawyer, who had collapsed in his chair, suddenly opened his eyes and shot a glance after her, and when she had disappeared through the door he jumped up, caught up with her on the stairs and said, full of admiration, “Sara, you are a feast for the eye. You really are!”

Then he went back in and sat down in his place, as serious as ever. He was quite pickled. When Dr. Stenersen finally pitched into him for his socialism, he was totally unable to explain himself. A fine socialist he was! A leech, that’s what he was, a miserable middleman between power and impotence, a man of the law who made a living from other people’s wrangling and charged a fee so the caviler could have his rights, his legal rights! And such people wanted to pass for socialists!

“It’s the principle, the principle!” the lawyer protested.

Ah, principle! The doctor spoke with the deepest scorn about Mr. Hansen’s principles. As the men went down to the dining room, he made one sally after another, ridiculing Mr. Hansen as a lawyer and attacking the whole socialist system. The doctor was a Liberal heart and soul, he was no skin-deep socialist. What was the socialist principle anyway? To hell with it! The doctor was getting on his high horse: in short, the idea behind socialism was the revenge of the lower classes. Just look at the socialist movement! A flock of blind and deaf brutes jogging along after a leader, their tongues hanging out of their mouths. Did they ever manage to think beyond their noses? No, those people didn’t think. If they did, they would switch to the Liberal Party and do something useful and practical instead of slobbering over a dream all their lives. Pfui. Take anyone they liked among the socialist leaders, what kind of people were they? Shabby, skinny fellows who sat around on their wooden stools in some attic writing treatises for the world’s improvement! They might be decent people, of course, who could say anything else about Karl Marx? But there he sat all the same, this Marx fellow, scribbling poverty out of existence—theoretically. His brain has figured out every species of poverty, every degree of misery; his head encompasses all humanity’s suffering. And so, in the fervor of his spirit, he dips his pen and writes page after page, filling up large sheets with figures, taking from the rich and giving to the poor, distributing sums, turning the world’s entire economy topsy-turvy, throwing billions into the hands of the astonished poor—all of it scientific, all of it theoretical! And then, when all is said and done, it turns out that, in one’s simplicity, one has started from a radically false principle: people’s equality! Pfui! Yes, a radically false principle! This instead of doing something useful and supporting the Liberal Party in its work of reform, for the promotion of true democracy....

The doctor had gradually gotten the wind up and came out with many assertions and commonplaces. At the table he went from bad to worse; a great deal of champagne was consumed and the mood became exuberant: even Miniman, who was sitting beside Nagel and had been silent so far, joined in the conversation with a few remarks. The teacher sat stiff as a poker, crying out again and again about an egg he’d gotten all over himself, so that he couldn’t move. He was completely helpless. And when Sara came to wipe it off, the lawyer seized the opportunity to grab her, taking her into his arms and carrying on with her. The whole table was in confusion.

Meanwhile Nagel ordered a basket of champagne to be brought up to his room. Shortly thereafter they got up from the table. The teacher and the lawyer walked arm in arm, singing merrily, and the doctor again began to expatiate on the principles of socialism in an animated tone. But on the stairs he was unlucky enough to lose his pince-nez, which fell off, for the tenth time very likely, and finally went to pieces. Both lenses broken. He pocketed the frame and was half blind for the remainder of the evening. This was an annoyance and made him even more irascible; as he sat down beside Nagel, he said
¹²
sarcastically, “If I understand you correctly, you are a religious man, eh?”

He said this in full seriousness and expected an answer. After a brief pause he went on to say that, after their first conversation—the day of Karlsen’s funeral, to be precise—he had gotten the impression that he, Nagel,
¹³
was, indeed, a religious man.

“I defended man’s religious
life,”
Nagel replied, “not Christianity in particular, not at all, but the religious life in general. You were of the opinion that all theologians should be hanged. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Because their role has been played out,’ you replied. I didn’t agree with that. The religious life is a fact. A Turk cries, ‘Allah is great!’ and dies for this conviction; Norwegians kneel at the altar and drink Christ’s blood to this day. A people needs some cowbell or other to believe in, and dies blissfully in that belief. The decisive thing, you see, is not
what
you believe in, but
how
you believe in it—”

“It amazes me to hear that sort of talk,”
¹⁴
the doctor said indignantly. “In fact, I’m once again asking myself whether, at bottom, you aren’t simply a disguised Conservative. Here we have one scientific critique of theologians and theological books after another, writers come along, one after the other, cutting up this or that book of sermons, this or that theological treatise, and even so you won’t admit, say, that this farce regarding Christ’s blood is no longer of any value in our time. I don’t understand your way of thinking.”

After considering a moment, Nagel said, “My way of thinking is briefly this:
¹⁵
What would it profit us, after all—pardon me, by the way, if I’ve asked this before—what would it profit us, after all, even from a purely practical viewpoint, if we stripped life of all poetry, all dreams, all beautiful mysteries, all lies? What is truth, can you tell me that? You see, we only advance by way of symbols, and we change these symbols as we progress.
¹⁶
However, let’s not forget our drinks.”

The doctor got up and took a turn on the floor. He felt irritated by the sight of a crumpled piece of rug lying by the door, he even went down on his knees to straighten it out.

“Hansen, why don’t you lend me your glasses, since you are sleeping anyway,” he said, quite exasperated.

But Hansen refused to part with his glasses, and the doctor turned away from him in a huff. He again took a seat beside Nagel.

“So, it’s just rubbish, nothing but junk altogether,” he said, “the way you see it. Maybe you’re right, in the main. Look at Hansen over there, for instance, ha-ha-ha—well, you must excuse me, Hansen, lawyer and socialist Hansen, for permitting myself to laugh at you. You wouldn’t happen to feel a certain inward joy whenever two respectable citizens get into a dispute and sue one another, would you? No, of course not, you would have them settle out of court and not charge them a penny for it! And the following Sunday you would again visit the Workers’ Society and give a lecture on the socialist state to two artisans and a butcher boy. To be sure, everyone is to be rewarded according to his capacity to produce, you’d say, everything is wonderfully arranged and nobody shall suffer wrong. But then the butcher boy gets up—the butcher boy who, by George, is a genius compared to all the rest of you—he gets up and says, ‘But I, you see, have a certain merchant-like capacity to consume,’ he says, ‘though I’m only a poor butcher boy as far as producing goes, because I haven’t got much of a talent for that,’ he says. Oh, wouldn’t you turn pale and peevish, though, bungler that you are! ... Yes, just go on snoring, that’s the smartest thing you can do, snore away!” The doctor had become very drunk, his tongue sadly failed him, and his eyes were swimming. After a pause he again turned to Nagel and continued glumly, “By the way, I didn’t mean to say theologians were the only ones who should do away with themselves. Goddamn it, no, we should all of us do it, destroy the world and let the show go on.”

Nagel clinked glasses with Miniman. Receiving no answer, the doctor blew his top and yelled, “Didn’t you hear what I said? We should all do away with ourselves, I said, you too naturally, you too.”

The doctor looked quite bloodthirsty.

“Yes,” Nagel replied, “I’ve had the same idea. But as far as I’m concerned, I lack the courage.” Pause. “That is, I’m saying I definitely don’t have the courage for it. But if some day I
should,
I have the pistol ready. And to be on the safe side, I always carry it on me.”

He took a vial marked “Poison” out of his vest pocket and held it up. The vial was only half full.

“Genuine Prussic acid, of the purest water!” he said. “But I’ll never have the courage; it’s just too difficult.... Doctor, you can probably tell me whether this is enough. I’ve already used half of it on an animal, and it worked perfectly. There were a few spasms, a touch of comic-sardonic mimicry, two or three gasps, that was all; checkmate in three moves.”

The doctor took the vial, looked at it, shook it a few times and said, “It’s enough, more than enough.... I really ought to take this vial away from you, but since you don’t have the courage—”

“No, I don’t.”

Pause. Nagel put the vial back in his vest pocket. The doctor collapsed more and more, drank from his glass, looked about him with dead eyes and spat on the floor. Suddenly he called to the teacher, “Hey, how far along are you, Holtan? Can you still manage to say ‘association of ideas’? Because I can’t anymore. Good night!”

The teacher opened his eyes, stretched, got up and walked to the window, where he stopped to look out. When the conversation resumed he seized the opportunity to make his getaway; he stole along the wall unobserved, opened the door and slipped out before anyone noticed. This was Master Holtan’s usual way of leaving a party.

Miniman also rose and wanted to be off, but when he was asked to stay on for a little while he sat down again. Hansen, the lawyer, was asleep. The three who were still sober, Øien, Miniman and Nagel, then began to discuss literature. The doctor listened with half-closed eyes and without saying another word. Soon after he too was asleep.

Øien, the student, was very well read and backed Maupassant. There was no denying it: Maupassant had penetrated the innermost recesses of woman’s soul and was unrivaled as a portrayer of passion. What boldness of description, what a marvelous knowledge of the human heart! To this Nagel replied in an absurdly hotheaded manner, banging the table, bragging, attacking writers at random, nearly making a clean sweep of them; only a few were spared. During all this impetuosity, his breast seemed to heave with genuine sincerity, and he was foaming at the mouth.

The writers? Heh-heh, oh sure, there was no denying that they had penetrated the depths of the human heart! What were they, these writers, these stuck-up creatures who had known how to acquire such power in modern life, what were they? Well, they were a rash, a scab on the body politic, swollen and irritable pimples that had to be treated gently, be handled carefully and reverently, or they caused trouble; for they couldn’t stand rough treatment! Oh yes, you certainly had to make a fuss over the writers, especially the most stupid ones, those with the least developed humanity, the pixies, for otherwise they sulked their way abroad! Heh-heh, abroad, sure! Good Lord, what a priceless comedy! And if there appeared a writer, a truly inspired bard with music in his breast, you could be damn sure he would be placed far behind a coarse, prolific professional
¹⁷
like Maupassant, a man who had written a lot about love and shown he could turn out book after book! One must give the devil his due. Alas, a bright little twinkling star, a real poet as far as it lay within his power, Alfred de Musset, in whose work love was not just a routine of rutting but a delicate, ardent note of spring in his characters, and whose words were positively blazing in line after line—this writer probably didn’t have half as many followers as puny Maupassant with his extremely coarse and soulless crotch poetry....

Nagel was going beyond all bounds. He even found occasion to pitch into Victor Hugo, and condemned the greatest world-class authors up hill and down dale. If they would allow him to offer just one brief sample of the hollow poetic rumble of such a world author, they should listen to this: “May your steel be as sharp as your final no!” What did they think, didn’t it have a nice ring to it? What was Mr. Grøgaard’s opinion?

As he said this, Nagel gave Miniman a piercing glance. Continuing to stare at him, he repeated this silly line,
¹⁸
not taking his eyes off Miniman’s face. Miniman didn’t reply; his blue eyes burst open in utter dismay, and in his confusion he took a deep draft from his glass.
¹⁹

“You mentioned Ibsen,” Nagel went on, still as agitated and without Ibsen’s name having been mentioned. In his opinion Norway had only one poet, and it was not Ibsen. No, it was not. People spoke about Ibsen as a thinker, but hadn’t we better distinguish between popular argument and real thought? People talked about Ibsen’s fame and assaulted our ears with his courage; hadn’t we better distinguish between theoretical and practical courage, between a ruthless, unselfish revolutionary urge and the daring of domestic revolt? The former shines forth in life, the latter astounds in the theater. A Norwegian author who didn’t puff himself up and brandish a pin like a lance was not a Norwegian author, of course; you would have to find some gatepost or other to square up to, otherwise you weren’t seen as a plucky fellow. It was really a very amusing sight if viewed from a distance. There was a turmoil of battle and a show of true mettle as in a Napoleonic engagement, while the danger and risk were those of a French duel. Heh-heh-heh.... No, a man who wanted to rebel
²⁰
couldn’t be just a scribbling curiosity, a merely literary concept for Germans, but had to be an active, kicking human being in the turmoil of life. Ibsen’s revolutionary courage would certainly never lead him onto thin ice; that bit about putting a torpedo under the ark was a pitiful bureaucratic theory, as compared to the living, flaming deed. Oh well, come to that, perhaps one thing was no worse than another
²¹
as long as we groveled before the sort of womanish work involved in writing books for people. But however paltry it might be, it was at least as much worth as Leo Tolstoy’s
²²
impertinent philosophical drivel. The devil take it all!