Mysteries - Knut Hamsun [132]
There is something you could do, though: you could bring your influence to bear in favor of the Home Mission, Japanese art, the Hallingdal Railroad, anything whatever, as long as you bring your influence to bear in favor of something, help something get started. It dawns on you that a man like J. Hansen, the respectable tailor from whom you once may have bought a coat for Miniman—that this man has enormous merits as a citizen and a human being; you begin by venerating him and end up loving him. Why do you love him? From inclination, from spite, from hardened joy, because you are affected by and give in to certain peculiar influences. You whisper your admiration in his ear, you sincerely wish him lots of cattle and sheep and goats, and as you leave him, God help me, you slip your lifesaving medal into his hand. Why shouldn’t you, once you have begun to give in to those peculiar influences? What’s more, you even regret that you may at one time have spoken disrespectfully of Ola Upnorth, elected Storting representative. Only now do you leave yourself at the mercy of the sweetest madness—ho-ho, how you let yourself go:
Look at what Ola Upnorth has accomplished in the Storting for Ryfylke County and for the kingdom! Little by little you begin to appreciate his faithful, honest labor, and your heart melts. Your kindness runs away with you, you cry and sob with compassion for him and swear in your heart to make twofold, even threefold, amends. The thought of this graybeard from the struggling, suffering folk, this man in the modest shaggy coat, spurs you to such a wild, blissful desire to do good deeds that it makes you bawl. To make amends to Ola you malign everybody else, the whole world, take pleasure in despoiling everyone else for his benefit, and search for the most extravagant, glorious words to extol him. You actually say that Ola has done most of the things that have been done in this world, that he has written the only treatise on spectral analysis which is worth reading, that in the year 1719 he single-handedly turned up America’s prairies, that he invented the telegraph, and that, to top it off, he has been on Saturn and talked to God five times. You know very well that Ola hasn’t done all this, but in your desperate kindness you say nonetheless that he has done it, he has done it, and you shed hot tears and swear, viciously damning yourself to the worst torments of hell, that it’s precisely Ola and no one else who has done it. Why? Out of kindness, to make reparation to Ola many times over! And you burst out singing to give him a huge reparation; indeed, you sing a bawdy, blasphemous song to the effect that it was Ola who created the world and put the sun and the stars in their orbits, and will maintain it all from now on, adding a slew of horrible curses to vouch for its truth. In short, you allow your mind to abandon itself to the most singular, most charming excesses of kindheartedness, to the point of the most subtle whoring around with oaths and outrageousness. And every time you’ve come up with something truly unheard-of to say, you pull your knees up under you and chuckle with glee over the happy amends Ola will finally get. Sure, Ola shall have it all, Ola deserves it because you once spoke disrespectfully of him and now regret it.
Pause.
How was it, didn’t I once tell a stale joke about a body that—well, that died—wait a moment, it was a young girl; she died thanking God for the loan of her body, which she had never used. Stop, it was Mina Meek, I remember it now and feel ashamed from head to foot. How often we talk through our hats, saying things we later regret and groan with shame at—oh, the shame of it makes us stop in our tracks and let out a scream! True, Miniman was the only one who knew about it, but I’m ashamed of it on my own account.