Free Mysteries by Knut Hamsun

the doctor broke off sullenly, “our viewpoints are too far apart.” The doctor was a freethinker, he had heard these objections so many times before that he couldn’t keep track of them. And had it converted him? For twenty years he had remained the same. As a physician he had participated in extracting people’s “souls” by the spoonful! No, he had outgrown superstition.... “What is your opinion of the election?”
    “The election?” Nagel laughed. “I’m hoping for the best,” he said.
    “So am I,” the doctor said. “It would be a damn shame if the government didn’t win a majority on such a thoroughly democratic platform.” The doctor was a man of the left and a radical, had been so ever since he learned to use his head. He harbored great fear for Buskerud County; Smålenene he had given up on. “The fact of the matter is,” he said, “we’re short of money in the Liberal Party. You and others who’ve got the money ought to support us. After all, the future of the whole country is at stake.”
    “I? Do I have money?” Nagel asked. “Alas, a mere pittance.”
    “Well, you don’t have to be a millionaire. Someone could relate that you were a regular capitalist, that, for one, you owned a landed estate worth sixty-two thousand kroner.”
    “Heh-heh-heh, I’ve never heard anything so absurd. What it comes down to is that I’ve just received a small inheritance from my mother, a few thousand kroner. That’s all. But I have no landed estate, that’s a mystification.”
    They had reached the doctor’s place, a two-story house painted yellow, with a veranda. The paint had come off in several places. The gutters were in shambles. In the top story a window-pane was missing, and the curtains were far from clean. The untidy appearance of the house produced a feeling of antipathy in Nagel, and he wanted to leave at once; but the doctor said, “Wouldn’t you like to come in? No? Then I hope to see you later. My wife and I would be very happy if you paid us a visit. You won’t come in now then, to say hello to my wife?”
    “Your wife was at the cemetery, wasn’t she? She’ll scarcely be back yet.”
    “You’re damn right, she went with the others. Oh well, drop in later then, when you pass by.”
    Nagel strolled back to the hotel, but just as he was about to step through the door something occurred to him. He snapped his fingers, broke into a short little laugh and said out loud, “It would be interesting to see if the verse is still there!” With that he went back to the cemetery and stopped before Mina Meek’s tombstone. No people were to be seen anywhere; but the verse had been wiped off. Who had done it? There wasn’t the least trace left of his characters.

VI
    THE FOLLOWING MORNING Nagel found himself in an excellent, joyful mood. It had come upon him while lying in bed; it was as though the ceiling of his room were suddenly rising higher and higher, rising endlessly until it became a clear, far-away vault of heaven. All at once he felt a sweet, mild breeze blowing on him, as if he were lying in a green meadow. And the flies were buzzing about the room; it was a warm summer morning.
    He got into his clothes in a jiffy, left the hotel without breakfast, and strolled into town. It was eleven o’clock.
    Already the pianos were reechoing from house to house; from one block after another, different melodies could be heard through the open windows, and way up the street a nervous dog responded loudly with drawn-out howls. Filled with a sweet contentment, Nagel began instinctively to sing softly to himself, and when he passed an old man who greeted him he saw his chance to slip a coin into his hand.
    He came to a large white house. A window is opened on the second floor, a slender white hand fastens the hook. The curtain is still stirring, the hand still resting on the hook; Nagel had a feeling that someone was watching him from behind the curtain. Pausing, he stared upward; he remained at