Free Mysteries by Knut Hamsun Page B

quivering joy shot through him; forgetting himself, he felt transported, hidden inside the fierce sunshine. The silence filled him with a perfect contentment, nothing disturbed him; only, up aloft a soft, soughing sound could be heard, the sound of the vast stamping mill, God treading his wheel. Not a leaf, not a needle stirred in the woods round about. Nagel curled up with pleasure, hugging his knees and shivering with well-being. Someone called him, and he answered yes; he raised himself on his elbow and looked about him. Not a soul to be seen. He said yes once more and listened, but no one appeared. How strange; he had definitely heard someone calling him. But he didn’t give it further thought, perhaps it was just a fantasy; in any case, he wasn’t going to be disturbed. He was in an enigmatic state, brimming with inward pleasure; every nerve in his body was awake, he perceived music in his blood, sensed a kinship with all of nature, with the sun and the mountains and all the rest, felt enveloped by his own sense of self as it came back to him from trees and tussocks and blades of grass. His soul grew big and rich, like the sound of an organ inside him, and he would never forget how this soft music positively glided up and down in his blood.
    He lay there a while longer, enjoying his solitude. Then he heard footsteps on the path, real footsteps that couldn’t be mistaken. Raising his head, he noticed a man coming back from town. The man was carrying a long loaf of bread under his arm and leading a cow on a rope; he kept wiping the sweat off his face and was in his shirtsleeves due to the heat, and yet he was wearing a thick red woolen scarf wound twice around his neck. Nagel lay quietly observing the peasant. There he was! There was the Setesdaler, the typical Norwegian, heh-heh, oh yes, there was the native, with the crust of bread under his arm and the cow in tow! Oh, what a sight! Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh, God help you, my noble Norse Viking! How about loosening your scarf a bit and letting the lice out? But you wouldn’t survive it, you would catch some fresh air from it and die. And the press would lament your untimely demise and make a big number out of it. But to guard against repetitions, Vetle Vetlesen, that liberal Storting representative, would introduce a bill for the strict protection of our national vermin.
    Nagel’s brain threw off one merry piece of sarcasm after another. He stood up and went back to the hotel, dejected and angry. No, he was always right, there was nothing but lice and stinking “old cheese” and Luther’s catechism everywhere. And the people were medium-sized burghers in three-story shanties; they ate and drank as was needful, regaled themselves with toddy and electoral politics, and traded in green soap and brass combs and fish day in, day out. But at night, when there was thunder and lightning, they lay in their beds reading the homilies of Johann Arendt for sheer fright. Oh, give us a real exception, just one, let us see if it can be done! Give us, for example, an advanced crime, a first-rate sin! But none of your ludicrous petty-bourgeois ABC-misdemeanor—no, a rare, hair-raising debauchery, refined depravity, a royal sin, full of raw infernal splendor. No, the whole thing was pusillanimous. What is your opinion of the election, sir? I have the greatest fear for Buskerud....
    But when he again passed the docks and saw the bustling activity around him, his humor gradually lightened somewhat; he was happy once more and started singing again. This was no weather for moping, it was fine, fair weather, a blazing June day. The whole little town lay gleaming in the sunshine like an enchanted city.
    When he passed through the hotel entrance he had long since forgotten all his bitterness; his heart was without rancor, and his mind was again luminous with the image of a boat of aromatic wood and a pale-blue silken sail cut in the shape of a half-moon.
     
     
    This mood stayed with him all