Mysteries by Knut Hamsun Read Free Book Online Page B

until the boat finally gets to us. What would you have done? Behaving like a ruthless, brutal bully, I saved him, so what? Well, haven’t I already left it to you, gentlemen and ladies, to judge? You mustn’t spare anybody, it’s all one to me. But what if, say, it was very important to the man to avoid ending up in Hamburg? There’s the rub! Maybe he was supposed to meet someone he didn’t want to meet. Yet the medal was given for a meritorious deed and I carry it in my pocket—I don’t cast it before swine, no way! This, too, is for you to judge—go ahead and judge, what the hell do I care? I care so little about it that I don’t even remember the unfortunate man’s name, though he must still be alive. Why did he do it? Maybe because of a hopeless love, maybe there really was a woman involved, I don’t know; anyway, it’s nothing to me. Enough!
    Oh, women, those women! Take Kamma, for instance, my little Danish Kamma. Lord help me! Gentle as a dove, sick as can be with tenderness and full of devotion to boot, but still capable of wheedling the last penny out of you, squeezing you to the point of destitution, just by leaning her wily little head sideways and whispering, “Simonsen, my sweet little Simonsen!” Well, God be with you, Kamma, you were full of devotion, so go to blazes, we’re quits—.
    And now I’ll get up.
    No, one has to watch out for that sort of thing. “My son, beware of women’s favor,” says a great writer—or whatever it is that a great writer says. Karlsen was a weakling, an idealist who died because of his strong feelings, that is to say, because of his weak nerves, which again is to say, because of the lack of a nourishing diet and outdoor work—heh-heh—and outdoor work. “May your steel be as sharp as your final no!” He ruined his entire earthly reputation by a quotation from a poet. 8 If I had met Karlsen in time, on his last day as lief as any, but still half an hour before the disaster, and he’d told me that he would quote someone when he was dying, I would’ve said something like this: Look at me! As someone of sound mind, I’m concerned on behalf of humankind that you do not blacken your last moments by quoting some great poet or other. Do you know what a great poet is? Why, a great poet is a person without shame, someone who never blushes. 9 Other fools have moments when they blush with shame by themselves, in private; not the great poet. Look at me again: if you want to quote someone, quote a geographer and don’t give yourself away. Victor Hugo—do you have a sense of humor? One day Baron Lesdain was talking to Victor Hugo. In the course of the conversation the artful baron asked, “Who, in your opinion, is the greatest French poet?” Victor Hugo made a face, bit his lip and finally said, “Alfred de Musset is the second greatest!” Heh-heh-heh. But perhaps you don’t have a sense of humor? 10 Do you know what Victor Hugo did in 1870? He wrote a proclamation addressed to the inhabitants of the earth in which, in the strictest possible terms, he forbade the German troops to besiege and bombard Paris. “I have grandsons as well as other family here, and I don’t want them to be hit by shells,” said Victor Hugo. 11
    Can you believe it, I still have no shoes. What has Sara done with my shoes? It’ll soon be eleven, and she hasn’t yet brought them. 12
    So we’re going to quote a geographer—.
    Incidentally, that Sara has a delicious figure. When she walks, her hips quiver, they’re like the flanks of a really sleek mare. It’s perfectly splendid. I wonder if she has ever been married. In any case, she doesn’t squeal very loud if you poke her in the ribs, and she would probably be game for anything—. Oh, what a marriage I once witnessed, I might even say attended. Hm. Gentlemen and ladies, it took place on a Sunday evening at a railroad station in Sweden, the Kungsbacka station. I beg you not to forget that it was a Sunday evening. She had large