Free Victoria by Knut Hamsun Page B

to!”
    The tutor looked at Johannes and asked, “Can you figure her out?”
    “And then it was you who didn’t want to?”
    “Could I? I ask. Penniless, naked and exposed, with a teaching post, tobacco in my pipe on Sundays only—what do you imagine? I couldn’t do that to her. I’m simply asking, can you figure her out?”
    “And what became of her afterward?”
    “Good Lord, you’re not answering my question. She married a captain. That was the following year. A captain of artillery. Skoal!”
    “Certain women, they say, are looking for a chance to exercise their compassion,” Johannes remarked. “If the man does well, they hate him and feel superfluous; if he does poorly and buckles under, they crow and say, ‘Here I am.’ ”
    “But why didn’t she accept me when things were going well? I had the prospects of a demigod.”
    “Well, she wanted to wait until you were brought low. God knows.”
    “But I was not brought low. Never. I kept my pride and turned her down. What do you say to that?”
    Johannes didn’t answer.
    “But perhaps you’re right,” the old tutor said. “By God and all his angels, you’re right in what you’re saying,” he exclaimed, suddenly animated, and took another drink. “In the end she took an old captain; she nurses him, cuts up his meat for him, and wears the pants in the house. A captain of artillery.”
    Johannes looked up. Victoria sat with her glass in her hand, staring in his direction. She raised her glass high in the air. He felt a jolt go through him, and he too picked up his glass. His hand was shaking.
    Then, bursting into laughter, she called aloud to his neighbor; it was the tutor’s name she called.
    Humiliated, Johannes put down his glass, giving a perplexed, empty smile. Everybody had had their eyes on him.
    The old tutor was moved to tears by this friendly attention from his pupil. He quickly emptied his glass.
    “And here I am, an old man now,” he continued, “here I am, walking the earth alone and unknown. That became my lot. No one knows what I’ve got in me, but no one has heard me grumble. By the way, are you familiar with the turtledove? Isn’t it the turtledove, with its great penchant for mourning, that muddies the clear, bright spring water before drinking?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “No, indeed. It is, though. And I do the same. I didn’t get the one I was supposed to have; still, my life is anything but lacking in pleasures. But I muddy them up. I always muddy them up. Then the disappointment can’t get the better of me afterward. Look at Victoria there. She just drank a toast with me. I used to be her tutor, now she’s getting married and I’m happy for her; it makes me feel a truly personal happiness, as if she were my own daughter. Some day, perhaps, I’ll tutor her children. Yes, life still offers quite a few pleasures, it certainly does. But what you said about compassion and women and buckling under—the more I think about it, the more I think you are right. God knows you are. . . . Excuse me a moment.”
    He rose, picked up his glass and went up to Victoria. He was already a bit unsteady on his legs and walked with a marked stoop.
    There were some more speeches; the Lieutenant spoke, the neighboring landowner raised his glass to the fair sex, to the lady of the house. Suddenly the gentleman with the diamond studs rose and mentioned Johannes’ name. He had received permission for what he was doing: he wished to salute the young poet on behalf of youth. His words, spoken in a spirit of pure friendship, were offered as a well-meant thank-you from his contemporaries, full of recognition and admiration.
    Johannes could barely believe his own ears. “Is he giving a speech for me?” he whispered to the tutor.
    “Yes,” the tutor replied. “He forestalled me. I was going to do it myself; Victoria asked me to already this afternoon.”
    “Who asked you, did you say?”
    The tutor stared at him. “Nobody,” he