Mysteries (30 page)

She no longer made any resistance. Her head resting lightly on his left arm, he kissed her fervently, interrupted only, at brief intervals, by the most tender words. He had a distinct feeling that she clung to him of herself, and when he kissed her she closed her eyes even more.

“Meet me tomorrow by the tree, you remember the tree, the aspen. Meet me, I love you, Dagny! Will you meet me? Come whenever you like, come at seven.”

She didn’t make any reply to this but merely said, “Let me go now!”

And slowly she extricated herself from his arms.

She looked about her for a moment, her face assuming a more and more bewildered expression; finally a helpless spasm trembled at the corners of her mouth, and she went over to a stone by the roadside and sat down. She was crying.

He bent over her and spoke softly. This went on for a minute or two. Suddenly she jumps up, her fists clenched and her face white with rage, and, pressing her hands against her breast, she says furiously, “You’re a mean person, God, how mean you are! Though you aren’t likely to agree. Oh, how could you, how could you do it!”

And she started crying again.

He tried once more to calm her down, but to no avail; they stood at that stone by the roadside for half an hour, unable to tear themselves away.

“You even want me to see you again,” she said. “But I won’t see you, I will never lay eyes on you again, you’re a villain!”

He pleaded with her, threw himself down before her and kissed her dress; but she kept repeating that he was a villain and that he had behaved wretchedly. What had he done to her? Go away, go! He couldn’t walk her any farther, not one step!

And she headed for home.

He still tried to go after her, but she waved her hand deprecatingly and said, “Stay away!”

He kept following her with his eyes until she had gone ten or twenty paces; then he, too, clenches his fists and runs after her—he defies her prohibition and runs after her, forcing her to stop.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, “and do have some pity! I’m willing to kill myself here and now, just to rid you of me; it will cost you only a word. And I would repeat this tomorrow if I should meet you. Grant me the mercy of doing me justice, at least. You see, I’m in thrall to your power, and I have no control over that. And it isn’t all my fault that you came into my life. I wish to God you may never suffer as I do now!”

Then he turned around and left.

Once again, those broad shoulders on the short body kept twitching as he walked down the road. He saw none of the people he met, didn’t recognize a single face, and he came to his senses only after he had crossed the whole town and found himself at the steps of the hotel.

FOR THE NEXT two or three days Nagel was absent from town. He had taken a trip on the steamer, and his hotel room was locked. Nobody knew where he was, but he had boarded a northbound ship and might have gone away simply for the sake of recreation.

When he returned early one morning before the town was on its legs, he looked pale and exhausted for lack of sleep. Nevertheless, he didn’t go up to the hotel but strolled back and forth on the pier for quite a while, before turning onto a brand-new road out to Indviken Cove, where smoke was just beginning to rise from the chimney of the steam mill.

He wasn’t away for long, and was obviously strolling about simply to kill a few hours. When the traffic started in Market Square, there he was; he was standing at the corner of the post office, carefully observing everyone coming and going, and when he noticed Martha Gude’s green skirt he stepped forward to greet her.

Beg pardon, had she perhaps forgotten him? His name was Nagel; it was he who had made an offer for her chair, the old chair. Maybe she had already sold it?

No, she hadn’t sold it.

Good. And no one else had been to see her and driven up the price? No would-be buyers?

“Oh yes. But—”

“What? Indeed!” There had been others? “What are you saying, a lady? Oh, these pernicious women, poking their noses everywhere!” So, she had gotten wind of this rarity of a chair and had to snatch it up right away. Sure, that was the way those women operated. “But what did she offer, how high did she go? Let me tell you, I won’t let go of that chair for anything, the hell I will!”

Martha was bewildered by his vehemence and hastened to answer, “No, no, you can have it, with pleasure.”

“So, may I call on you this evening, around eight o’clock, and settle the matter?”

Yes, perhaps. But hadn’t she better send the chair to his hotel? Then it would be settled—?

Definitely not, by no means, that he would never allow. An article like that must be treated with care and by experienced hands; frankly, he couldn’t even bear having a stranger look at it. He would be there at eight. Then something occurred to him: “Say, no dustcloth near it, no washing, for God’s sake! Not a drop of water!”

Nagel went straight to the hotel, where he lay down on his bed fully dressed and slept soundly and quietly at a stretch until toward evening.

 

 

As soon as he’d had supper he went down to the docks, to Martha Gude’s little house. It was eight o’clock; he knocked and walked in.

The room had just been washed, the floor was clean and the windows polished; Martha herself had even put a string of beads around her neck. He was obviously expected.

He said good evening, sat down and began the negotiations straightaway. But she was no more willing to give in than before; on the contrary, she was more obstinate than ever and insisted on giving him the chair for nothing. Finally he became furious, threatened to throw
five
hundred kroner at her and make off with the chair. That’s what she deserved! He had never seen such folly in his entire life, and banging the table he asked if she was stark-staring mad.

“Do you know what?” he said, giving her a sharp look. “Your resistance is really beginning to make me suspicious. Tell me frankly, the chair has been acquired honestly, right? I have to deal with all sorts of people, you know, and one can never be too careful. If the chair has come into your possession by trickery or shady dealing, then I don’t dare touch it. However, if I’ve misunderstood your hesitation, please forgive me.”

And he admonished her strongly to tell the truth.

Confused by his suspicion, half afraid and half hurt, she immediately justified herself. The chair had been brought home by her grandfather and had been in the family’s possession for a hundred years; he mustn’t think she was hiding anything. She was getting tears in her eyes.

Good! And now he really wanted to have done with this nonsense, and that was the end of that! He felt for his wallet.

She took a step forward as if to stop him once again, but he calmly placed the two red bills on the table and closed his wallet with a smack.

“There you are!” he said.

“Don’t give me more than fifty kroner in any case!” she begged. At that moment she was so perplexed that she stroked his hair a couple of times as she said this, simply to make him give in. She wasn’t aware of what she was doing; she stroked his hair and begged him again to let her off with only fifty kroner. The silly woman still had tears in her eyes.

He raised his head and looked at her. This white-haired pauper, an old maid of forty, with still a black, burning glint in her eyes and yet with a manner that was reminiscent of a nun—this singular, exotic beauty affected him, making him waver for a moment. He took her hand, stroked it and said, “Goodness, how strange you are!” But the next moment he quickly got up from his chair and dropped her hand.

“I hope you won’t mind if I take the chair with me right away,” he said.

And he picked up the chair.

She was obviously no longer afraid of him. When she saw that his hands were getting dirty from touching the old piece of furniture, she at once reached into her pocket and handed him her handkerchief to wipe himself with.

The money was still lying on the table.

“By the way,” he said, “let me ask you something. Don’t you think you had better keep this transaction to yourself, as far as possible? After all, there’s no reason why the whole town should know about it, is there?”

“No,” she said thoughtfully.

“If I were you, I would put the money away at once. First of all, though, I would hang something before the window. Take that skirt over there!”

“Won’t it be very dark?” she said. Still, she took the skirt and hung it up, with some help from him.

“Come to think, we ought to have done this at the outset,” he said. “It might get sticky if someone saw me in here.”

To this she made no reply. She picked up the money from the table, gave him her hand and moved her lips, but without being able to utter a word.

As he still stands there holding her hand, he blurts out, “Look, may I ask you something: Isn’t it rather difficult for you to get by, I mean without help, without relief? ... Or maybe you’re getting some relief?”

“Yes.”

“Please forgive my asking. It just occurred to me that if they get wind of the fact that you have some money, they will not only stop your relief payments, but your money will be confiscated, simply confiscated. That’s why it’s important to keep our transaction a secret from everybody; do you understand? I’m just advising you as a practical man. Don’t tell a living soul about this bit of business we’ve had together.... Anyway, it just dawned on me that I ought to give you smaller bills, so you won’t have to change them.”

He thinks of everything, every contingency. He sits down again and counts out some small bills. Not bothering to count carefully, he gives her all the small bills he has, picking them at random and rolling them into a wad.

“There!” he says. “Now, put them away!”

She turns around, unhooks her bodice and puts the money in her bosom.

But once she has done this, he still doesn’t get up but keeps sitting there. “What I was going to say—do you happen to know Miniman?” he asks sort of casually.

He noticed that her face turned red.

“I’ve met him a few times,” Nagel continues. “I’m very fond of him, he seems to be as good as gold. Just now I’ve charged him with getting me a violin, and he will, don’t you think? But perhaps you don’t know him?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Yes, come to think, he did tell me he had bought some flowers from you for a funeral, for Karlsen’s funeral. Say, you know him rather well then, perhaps? What do you think of him? Don’t you trust him, at least, to carry out that assignment in a satisfactory manner? When one has to deal with as many people as I do, one must make inquiries now and then. I once lost quite a bit of money just because I trusted a man blindly, without making inquiries about him; that was in Hamburg.”

And for some reason or other Nagel tells the story of the man who had caused him to lose money. Martha still stands in front of him, leaning against the table; she’s restless and says at last, quite vehemently, “Oh, don’t talk about him!”

“About whom am I not to talk?”

“About Johannes, Miniman.”

“Is Miniman’s name Johannes?”

“Yes, Johannes.”

“Really, his name is Johannes?”

“Yes.”

Nagel falls silent. This simple piece of information that Miniman’s name is Johannes gives his thoughts a real jolt, even changing his facial expression momentarily. For a while he sits there quite speechless, before asking, “And why do you call him Johannes? Not Grøgaard or Miniman?”

She replies shyly, lowering her eyes, “We’ve known each other since childhood....”

Pause.

Then Nagel says, half facetiously and with the utmost nonchalance, “Do you know what impression I have? That Miniman must be very much in love with you. Yes, it’s true, that’s how it strikes me. And I’m not greatly surprised, though I have to admit it’s rather bold of him. Don’t you agree? In the first place, he’s no youth anymore, and besides he’s also somewhat disabled. But goodness, women are often so strange; if they take it into their heads they will deliberately throw themselves away, with pleasure, even ecstatically. Heh-heh-heh, that’s women for you. In 1886 I witnessed something very unusual: a young lady of my acquaintance simply married her father’s errand boy. I’ll never forget it. He was an apprentice in the store, a child of sixteen or seventeen, without even the beginnings of a beard; but he was handsome, oh, perfectly delicious, that I must admit. Anyway, she threw herself upon this greenhorn with a furious love and went abroad with him. After half a year or so she came back, her love gone. Sad, isn’t it? Her love was gone! Well, for the next few months she was bored stiff, being married and all and therefore out of the picture; what was she to do? She bangs the table, snaps her fingers at the whole world and has her fling, sowing her wild oats, as it were, running around with students and store clerks, and ends up being called
La Glu.
What a sorry sight! But once again she astonishes everybody: after amusing herself for a couple of years in this admirable way, suddenly one day she begins to write stories; she becomes an author, and was said to be very talented. She was incredibly quick to learn; those two years among students and store clerks had ripened her to an extraordinary degree and taught her the trick of writing. She went on to write some very fine things. Heh-heh-heh. What a devil of a woman! ... Oh, but that’s the way you women are. You may smile, but you can’t deny it, not outright. An errand boy of seventeen can easily make them lose their heads. I’m sure Miniman doesn’t have to go through life alone either, if he makes an effort and puts his shoulder to the wheel. You see, there’s something about him that even impresses a man, well, it impresses me: he’s so pure at heart, so defiantly pure, and there’s no guile on his lips. Don’t you agree? Knowing him inside out, you must realize that’s true. On the other hand, what shall we say about his uncle, the coal dealer? A sly old fox, I imagine, an unpleasant person. I have the impression that it’s really Miniman who is keeping the business afloat. And so I ask, Why shouldn’t he be able to run his own business? In short, Miniman is capable of supporting a family any day.... You’re shaking your head?”