Victoria by Knut Hamsun Read Free Book Online Page A

jack or a whirligig. Maybe he hadn’t lost everything in life, leaving some hope in his withered soul.
    A wispy, elegant lady suddenly turns up ahead of him. He gives a start and stops. No, he didn’t know her. She had come from a side street and was hurrying along, and she had no umbrella though it was pouring. He caught up with her, gave her a glance, and walked past. How young and elegant she was! She was getting wet and would catch a cold, but he didn’t dare approach her. Instead, he closed his umbrella so she wouldn’t be the only one getting wet. It was past midnight when he got home.
    A letter was lying on the table, a card—it was an invitation. The Seiers would be delighted to have him come over tomorrow evening. He would meet people he knew, among others—could he guess?—Victoria, the young lady from the Castle. Kind regards.
    He fell asleep in his chair. A couple of hours later he woke up and felt cold. Half awake, half asleep, shivering all over and weary from the day’s adversities, he sat down at the table to answer the card, this invitation which he didn’t intend to accept.
    He wrote his answer and was about to take it down to the mailbox. Suddenly it strikes him that Victoria was also invited. Well, well. She hadn’t said a word about it to him, she had been afraid he would come, she didn’t want to be seen with him there, among strangers.
    He tears up his letter and writes a new one, thanking them for the invitation: he would be glad to come. Repressed anger makes his hand tremble, he’s seized by a strange, gleeful indignation. Why shouldn’t he go? Why should he hide? Enough.
    He’s carried away by his violent emotion. With one twitch, he tears a handful of leaves off his wall calendar, putting himself a week ahead of time. He imagines he’s happy about something, exceedingly delighted; he wants to savor this moment, light a pipe, sit down in his chair and gloat. The pipe is in very bad shape, he looks in vain for a knife, a scraper; suddenly he jerks one hand off the corner clock to clean his pipe with. This piece of destruction is a feast to the eye, it makes him laugh inwardly, and he peers about him for more things to throw into confusion.
    Time goes by. At long last he throws himself on the bed fully dressed, in his wet clothes, and falls asleep.
    When he woke up the day was already far advanced. It was still raining, the streets were wet. His head was in turmoil, fragments of his dreams became mixed up with yesterday’s experiences, but he wasn’t running a fever. On the contrary, his temperature had tapered off, a coolness was coming his way, as if he had been wandering all night in a sultry forest and now found himself in the vicinity of a lake.
    There is a knock at the door, the mailman brings him a letter. He opens it, takes a look at it, reads it and has difficulty figuring it out. It was from Victoria, a note, a half-sheet: she had forgotten to tell him that she was going to the Seiers’ this evening, she hoped to see him there; she would give him a better explanation, ask him to forget her, to take it like a man. Sorry about the wretched paper. Kind regards.
    He went out, had something to eat, came back home, and finally sent his regrets to the Seiers. He couldn’t make it; he would take a rain check and come some other time, tomorrow evening, for example.
    He sent the letter by messenger.

V
    Fall came. Victoria had gone home, and the small, out-of-the-way street lay there as before, with its houses and its silence. In Johannes’ room the lamp burned through the night. It was lighted in the evening when the stars came out and was put out at the crack of dawn. He was working tirelessly, writing his big book.
    Weeks and months passed; he was alone and called on nobody, he never went to the Seiers’ anymore. Often his imagination played crazy tricks on him, messing up his book with irrelevant fancies that later had to be erased and trashed. This set him back a great deal. A