Maybe as night drew on a way could be found to procure shelter. There was no hurry; at the worst, I could seek a place out in the woods. I had the entire environs of the city at my disposal; as yet, there was no degree of cold worth speaking of in the weather.
And outside there the sea rocked in drowsy rest; ships and clumsy, broad-nosed prams ploughed graves in its bluish surface, and scattered rays to the right and left, and glided on, whilst the smoke rolled up in downy masses from the chimney-stacks, and the stroke of the engine pistons pierced the clammy air with a dull sound. There was no sun and no wind; the trees behind me were almost wet, and the seat upon which I sat was cold and damp.
Time went. I settled down to doze, waxed tired, and a little shiver ran down my back. A while after I felt that my eyelids began to droop, and I let them droop....
When I awoke it was dark all around me. I started up, bewildered and freezing. I seized my parcel and commenced to walk. I went faster and faster in order to get warm, slapped my arms, chafed my legs—which by now I could hardly feel under me—and thus reached the watch-house of the fire brigade. It was nine o’clock; I had been asleep for several hours.
Whatever shall I do with myself? I must go to some place. I stand there and stare up at the watch-house, and query if it would not be possible to succeed in getting into one of the passages if I were to watch for a moment when the watchman’s back was turned. I ascend the steps, and prepare to open a conversation with the man. He lifts his ax in salute, and waits for what I may have to say. The uplifted ax, with its edge turned against me, darts like a cold slash through my nerves. I stand dumb with terror before this armed man, and draw involuntarily back. I say nothing, only glide farther and farther away from him. To save appearances I draw my hand over my forehead, as if I had forgotten something or other, and slink away. When I reached the pavement I felt as much saved as if I had just escaped a great peril, and I hurried away.
Cold and famished, more and more miserable in spirit, I flew up Carl Johann. I began to swear out aloud, troubling myself not a whit as to whether any one heard me or not. Arrived at Parliament House, just near the first trees, I suddenly, by some association of ideas, bethought myself of a young artist I knew, a stripling I had once saved from an assault in the Tivoli, and upon whom I had called later on. I snap my fingers gleefully, and wend my way to Tordenskjiolds Street, find the door, on which is fastened a card with C. Zacharias Bartel on it, and knock.
He came out himself, and smelt so fearfully of ale and tobacco that it was horrible.
“Good-evening!” I say.
“Good-evening! is that you? Now, why the deuce do you come so late? It doesn’t look at all its best by lamplight. I have added a hayrick to it since, and have made a few other alterations. You must see it by daylight; there is no use our trying to see it now!”
“Let me have a look at it now, all the same,” said I; though, for that matter, I did not in the least remember what picture he was talking about.
“Absolutely impossible,” he replied; “the whole thing will look yellow; and, besides, there’s another thing”—and he came towards me, whispering: “I have a little girl inside this evening, so it’s clearly impracticable.”
“Oh, in that case, of course there’s no question about it.”
I drew back, said good-night, and went away.
So there was no way out of it but to seek some place out in the woods. If only the fields were not so damp. I patted my blanket, and felt more and more at home at the thought of sleeping out. I had worried myself so long trying to find a shelter in town that I was wearied and bored with the whole affair. It would be a positive pleasure to get to rest, to resign myself; so I loaf down the street without a thought in my head. At a place in Haegdehaugen I halted outside a provision shop where some food was displayed in the window. A cat lay there and slept beside a round French roll. There was a basin of lard and several basins of meal in the background. I stood a while and gazed at these eatables; but as I had no money wherewith to buy, I turned quickly away and continued my tramp. I went very slowly, passed by Majorstuen, went on, always on—it seemed to me for hours,—and came at length to Bogstad’s wood.
I turned off the road here, and sat down to rest. Then I began to look about for a place to suit me, to gather together heather and juniper leaves, and make up a bed on a little declivity where it was a bit dry. I opened the parcel and took out the blanket; I was tired and exhausted with the long walk, and lay down at once. I turned and twisted many times before I could get settled. My ear pained me a little—it was slightly swollen from the whip-lash—and I could not lie on it. I pulled off my shoes and put them under my head, with the paper from Semb on top.
And the great spirit of darkness spread a shroud over me ... everything was silent—everything. But up in the heights soughed the everlasting song, the voice of the air, the distant, toneless humming which is never silent. I listened so long to this ceaseless faint murmur that it began to bewilder me; it was surely a symphony from the rolling spheres above. Stars that intone a song....
“I am damned if it is, though,” I exclaimed; and I laughed aloud to collect my wits. “They’re night-owls hooting in Canaan!”
I rose again, pulled on my shoes, and wandered about in the gloom, only to lay down once more. I fought and wrestled with anger and fear until nearly dawn, then fell asleep at last.
It was broad daylight when I opened my eyes, and I had a feeling that it was going on towards noon.
I pulled on my shoes, packed up the blanket again, and set out for town. There was no sun to be seen today either; I shivered like a dog, my feet were benumbed, and water commenced to run from my eyes, as if they could not bear the daylight.
It was three o’clock. Hunger began to assail me downright in earnest. I was faint, and now and again I had to retch furtively. I swung round by the Dampkökken,[2] read the bill of fare, and shrugged my shoulders in a way to attract attention, as if corned beef or salt pork was not meet food for me. After that I went towards the railway station.
A singular sense of confusion suddenly darted through my head. I stumbled on, determined not to heed it; but I grew worse and worse, and was forced at last to sit down on a step. My whole being underwent a change, as if something had slid aside in my inner self, or as if a curtain or tissue of my brain was rent in two.
I was not unconscious; I felt that my ear was gathering a little, and, as an acquaintance passed by, I recognized him at once and got up and bowed.
What sore of fresh, painful perception was this that was being added to the rest? Was it a consequence of sleeping in the sodden fields, or did it arise from my not having had any breakfast yet? Looking the whole thing squarely in the face, there was no meaning in living on in this manner, by Christ’s holy pains, there wasn’t. I failed to see either how I had made myself deserving of this special persecution; and it suddenly entered my head that I might just as well turn rogue at once and go to my “Uncle’s” with the blanket. I could pawn it for a shilling, and get three full meals, and so keep myself going until I thought of something else. ’Tis true I would have to swindle Hans Pauli. I was already on my way to the pawn-shop, but stopped outside the door, shook my head irresolutely, then turned back. The farther away I got the more gladsome, ay, delighted I became, that I had conquered this strong temptation. The consciousness that I was yet pure and honourable rose to my head, filled me with a splendid sense of having principle, character, of being a shining white beacon in a muddy, human sea amidst floating wreck.
Pawn another man’s property for the sake of a meal, eat and drink one’s self to perdition, brand one’s soul with the first little sear, set the first black mark against one’s honour, call one’s self a blackguard to one’s own face, and needs must cast one’s eyes down before one’s self? Never! never! It could never have been my serious intention—it had really never seriously taken hold of me; in fact, I could not be answerable for every loose, fleeting, desultory thought, particularly with such a headache as I had, and nearly killed carrying a blanket, too, that belonged to another fellow.
There would surely be some way or another of getting help when the right time came! Now, there was the grocer in Groenlandsleret. Had I importuned him every hour in the day since I sent in my application? Had I rung the bell early and late, and been turned away? Why, I had not even applied personally to him or sought an answer! It did not follow, surely, that it must needs be an absolutely vain attempt.
Maybe I had luck with me this time. Luck often took such a devious course, and I started for Groenlandsleret.
The last spasm that had darted through my head had exhausted me a little, and I walked very slowly and thought over what I would say to him.
Perhaps he was a good soul; if the whim seized him he might pay me for my work a shilling in advance, even without my asking for it. People of that sort had sometimes the most capital ideas.
I stole into a doorway and blackened the knees of my trousers with spittle to try and make them look a little respectable, left the parcel behind me in a dark corner at the back of a chest, and entered the little shop.
A man is standing pasting together bags made of old newspaper.
“I would like to see Mr. Christie,” I said.
“That’s me!” replied the man.
“Indeed!” Well, my name was so-and-so. I had taken the liberty of sending him an application. I did not know if it had been of any use.
He repeated my name a couple of times and commenced to laugh.
“Well now, you shall see,” he said, taking my letter out of his breast-pocket, “if you will just be good enough to see how you deal with dates, sir. You dated your letter 1848,” and the man roared with laughter.
“Yes, that was rather a mistake,” I said, abashed—a distraction, a want of thought; I admitted it.
“You see I must have a man who, as a matter of fact, makes no mistakes in figures,” said he. “I regret it, your handwriting is clear, and I like your letter, too, but—”
I waited a while; this could not possibly be the man’s final say. He busied himself again with the bags.
“Yes, it was a pity,” I said; “really an awful pity, but of course it would not occur again; and, after all, surely this little error could not have rendered me quite unfit to keep books?”
“No, I didn’t say that,” he answered, “but in the meantime it had so much weight with me that I decided at once upon another man.”
“So the place is filled?”
“Yes.”
“A—h, well, then there’s nothing more to be said about it!”
“No! I’m sorry, but—”
“Good-evening!” said I.
Fury welled up in me, blazing with brutal strength. I fetched my parcel from the entry, set my teeth together, jostled against the peaceful folk on the footpath, and never once asked their pardon.
As one man stopped and set me to rights rather sharply for my behaviour, I turned round and screamed a single meaningless word in his ear, clenched my fist right under his nose, and stumbled on, hardened by a blind rage that I could not control.
He called a policeman, and I desired nothing better than to have one between my hands just for one moment. I slackened my pace intentionally in order to give him an opportunity of overtaking me; but he did not come. Was there now any reason whatever that absolutely every one of one’s most earnest and most persevering efforts should fail? Why, too, had I written 1848? In what way did that infernal date concern me? Here I was going about starving, so that my entrails wriggle together in me like worms, and it was, as far as I knew, not decreed in the book of fate that anything in the shape of food would turn up later on in the day.
I was becoming mentally and physically more and more prostrate; I was letting myself down each day to less and less honest actions, so that I lied on each day without blushing, cheated poor people out of their rent, struggled with the meanest thoughts of making away with other men’s blankets—all without remorse or prick of conscience.
Foul places began to gather in my inner being, black spores which spread more and more. And up in Heaven God Almighty sat and kept a watchful eye on me, and took heed that my destruction proceeded in accordance with all the rules of art, uniformly and gradually, without a break in the measure.
But in the abysses of hell the angriest devils bristled with rage because it lasted such a long time until I committed a mortal sin, an unpardonable offence for which God in His justice must cast me—down....
I quickened my pace, hurried faster and faster, turned suddenly to the left and found myself, excited and angry, in a light ornate doorway. I did not pause, not for one second, but the whole peculiar ornamentation of the entrance struck on my perception in a flash; every detail of the decoration and the tiling of the floor stood clear on my mental vision as I sprang up the stairs. I rang violently on the second floor. Why should I stop exactly on the second floor? And why just seize hold of this bell which was some little way from the stairs?
A young lady in a grey gown with black trimming came out and opened the door. She looked for a moment in astonishment at me, then shook her head and said:
“No, we have not got anything today,” and she made a feint to close the door.
What induced me to thrust myself in this creature’s way? She took me without further ado for a beggar.
I got cool and collected at once. I raised my hat, made a respectful bow, and, as if I had not caught her words, said, with the utmost politeness:
“I hope you will excuse me, madam, for ringing so hard, the bell was new to me. Is it not here that an invalid gentleman lives who has advertised for a man to wheel him about in a chair?”
She stood awhile and digested this mendacious invention and seemed to be irresolute in her summing up of my person.
“No!” she said at length; “no, there is no invalid gentleman living here.”
“Not really? An elderly gentleman—two hours a day—sixpence an hour?”
“No!”
“Ah! in that case, I again ask pardon,” said I.
“It is perhaps on the first floor. I only wanted, in any case, to recommend a man I know, in whom I am interested; my name is Wedel-Jarlsberg,”[3] and I bowed again and drew back. The young lady blushed crimson, and in her embarrassment could not stir from the spot, but stood and stared after me as I descended the stairs.
My calm had returned to me, and my head was clear. The lady’s saying that she had nothing for me today had acted upon me like an icy shower. So it had gone so far with me that any one might point at me, and say to himself, “There goes a beggar—one of those people who get their food handed out to them at folk’s back-doors!”
I halted outside an eating-house in Möller Street, and sniffed the fresh smell of meat roasting inside; my hand was already upon the door-handle, and I was on the point of entering without any fixed purpose, when I bethought myself in time, and left the spot. On reaching the market, and seeking for a place to rest for a little, I found all the benches occupied, and I sought in vain all round outside the church for a quiet seat, where I could sit down.
Naturally. I told myself, gloomily—naturally, naturally; and I commenced to walk again. I took a turn round the fountain at the corner of the bazaar, and swallowed a mouthful of water. On again, dragging one foot after the other; stopped for a long time before each shop window; halted, and watched every vehicle that drove by. I felt a scorching heat in my head, and something pulsated strangely in my temples. The water I had drunk disagreed with me fearfully, and I retched, stopping here and there to escape being noticed in the open street. In this manner I came up to Our Saviour’s Cemetery.
I sat down here, with my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands. In this cramped position I was more at ease, and I no longer felt the little gnawing in my chest.
A stone-cutter lay on his stomach on a large slab of granite, at the side of me, and cut inscriptions. He had blue spectacles on, and reminded me of an acquaintance of mine, whom I had almost forgotten.
If I could only knock all shame on the head and apply to him. Tell him the truth right out, that things were getting awfully tight with me now; ay, that I found it hard enough to keep alive. I could give him my shaving-tickets.
Zounds! my shaving-tickets; tickets for nearly a shilling. I search nervously for this precious treasure. As I do not find them quickly enough, I spring to my feet and search, in a sweat of fear. I discover them at last in the bottom of my breast-pocket, together with other papers—some clean, some written on—of no value.
I count these six tickets over many times, backwards and forwards; I had not much use for them; it might pass for a whim—a notion of mine—that I no longer cared to get shaved.
I was saved to the extent of sixpence—a white sixpence of Kongsberg silver. The bank closed at six; I could watch for my man outside the Opland Café between seven and eight.
I sat, and was for a long time pleased with this thought. Time went. The wind blew lustily through the chestnut trees around me, and the day declined.
After all, was it not rather petty to come slinking up with six shaving-tickets to a young gentleman holding a good position in a bank? Perhaps, he had already a book, maybe two, quite full of spick and span tickets, a contrast to the crumpled ones I held.
Who could tell? I felt in all my pockets for anything else I could let go with them, but found nothing. If I could only offer him my tie? I could well do without it if I buttoned my coat tightly up, which, by the way, I was already obliged to do, as I had no waistcoat. I untied it—it was a large overlapping bow which hid half my chest,—brushed it carefully, and folded it up in a piece of clean white writing-paper, together with the tickets. Then I left the churchyard and took the road leading to the Opland.
It was seven by the Town Hall clock. I walked up and down hard by the café, kept close to the iron railings, and kept a sharp watch on all who went in and came out of the door. At last, about eight o’clock, I saw the young fellow, fresh, elegantly dressed, coming up the hill and across to the café door. My heart fluttered like a little bird in my breast as I caught sight of him, and I blurted out, without even a greeting:
“Sixpence, old friend!” I said, putting on cheek; “here is the worth of it,” and I thrust the little packet into his hand.
“Haven’t got it,” he exclaimed. “God knows if I have!” and he turned his purse inside out right before my eyes. “I was out last night and got totally cleared out! You must believe me, I literally haven’t got it.”
“No, no, my dear fellow; I suppose it is so,” I answered, and I took his word for it. There was, indeed, no reason why he should lie about such a trifling matter. It struck me, too, that his blue eyes were moist whilst he ransacked his pockets and found nothing. I drew back. “Excuse me,” I said; “it was only just that I was a bit hard up.” I was already a piece down the street, when he called after me about the little packet. “Keep it! keep it,” I answered; “you are welcome to it. There are only a few trifles in it—a bagatelle; about all I own in the world,” and I became so touched at my own words, they sounded so pathetic in the twilight, that I fell a-weeping....
The wind freshened, the clouds chased madly across the heavens, and it grew cooler and cooler as it got darker. I walked, and cried as I walked, down the whole street; felt more and more commiseration with myself, and repeated, time after time, a few words, an ejaculation, which called forth fresh tears whenever they were on the point of ceasing: “Lord God, I feel so wretched! Lord God, I feel so wretched!”
An hour passed; passed with such strange slowness, such weariness. I spent a long time in Market Street; sat on steps, stole into doorways, and when any one approached, stood and stared absently into the shops where people bustled about with wares or money. At last I found myself a sheltered place, behind a deal hoarding, between the church and the bazaar.
No; I couldn’t go out into the woods again this evening. Things must take their course. I had not strength enough to go, and it was such an endless way there. I would kill the night as best I could, and remain where I was; if it got all too cold, well, I could walk round the church. I would not in any case worry myself any more about that, and I leant back and dozed.
The noise around me diminished; the shops closed. The steps of the pedestrians sounded more and more rarely, and in all the windows about the lights went out. I opened my eyes, and became aware of a figure standing in front of me. The flash of shining buttons told me it was a policeman, though I could not see the man’s face.
“Good-night,” he said.
“Good-night,” I answered and got afraid.
“Where do you live?” he queried.
I name, from habit, and without thought, my old address, the little attic.
He stood for a while.
“Have I done anything wrong?” I asked anxiously.
“No, not at all!” he replied; “but you had perhaps better be getting home now; it’s cold lying here.”
“Ay, that’s true; I feel it is a little chilly.” I said good-night, and instinctively took the road to my old abode. If I only set about it carefully, I might be able to get upstairs without being heard; there were eight steps in all, and only the two top ones creaked under my tread. Down at the door I took off my shoes, and ascended. It was quiet everywhere. I could hear the slow tick-tack of a clock, and a child crying a little. After that I heard nothing. I found my door, lifted the latch as I was accustomed to do, entered the room, and shut the door noiselessly after me.
Everything was as I had left it. The curtains were pulled aside from the windows, and the bed stood empty. I caught a glimpse of a note lying on the table; perhaps it was my note to the landlady—she might never have been up here since I went away.
I fumbled with my hands over the white spot, and felt, to my astonishment, that it was a letter. I take it over to the window, examine as well as it is possible in the dark the badly-written letters of the address, and make out at least my own name. Ah, I thought, an answer from my landlady, forbidding me to enter the room again if I were for sneaking back.
Slowly, quite slowly I left the room, carrying my shoes in one hand, the letter in the other, and the blanket under my arm. I draw myself up, set my teeth as I tread on the creaking steps, get happily down the stairs, and stand once more at the door. I put on my shoes, take my time with the laces, sit a while quietly after I’m ready, and stare vacantly before me, holding the letter in my hand. Then I get up and go.
The flickering ray of a gas lamp gleams up the street. I make straight for the light, lean my parcel against the lamp-post and open the letter. All this with the utmost deliberation. A stream of light, as it were, darts through my breast, and I hear that I give a little cry—a meaningless sound of joy. The letter was from the editor. My story was accepted—had been set in type immediately, straight off! A few slight alterations.... A couple of errors in writing amended.... Worked out with talent ... be printed tomorrow ... half-a-sovereign.
I laughed and cried, took to jumping and running down the street, stopped, slapped my thighs, swore loudly and solemnly into space at nothing in particular. And time went.
All through the night until the bright dawn I “jodled” about the streets and repeated—“Worked out with talent—therefore a little masterpiece—a stroke of genius—and half-a-sovereign.”