Mysteries - Knut Hamsun [149]
“There it is!” he says. “Thousands of kroner! So you were joking, you only wanted to see if I could take a joke?”
Nagel was happy as a child and accepted this explanation. Heaving a delicious sigh of relief, he says, “Yes, of course, I was only joking; I suddenly felt like pulling a fast one on you. Sure, I still have lots of money, thank God; look here, just take a look!”
There were, in fact, many big bills, lots of money in thousand-kroner bills; the hotel keeper had to go out and change them before he could get his part. But even long after he had left, beads of perspiration stood out on Nagel’s forehead, and he was shaking with emotion. How upset he had been, and what an empty buzz there was in his head!
After a while he dropped into an uneasy slumber on the sofa; tossing and turning in his dreams, he talked aloud, sang, and called for cognac, which he drank, half asleep and feverish. Sara was constantly looking in on him, but though he talked to her almost all the time, she understood very little of what he said. He lay with his eyes closed.
No, he didn’t want to undress, what was she thinking of? Wasn’t it the middle of the day? He could still clearly hear the birds chirping. She mustn’t fetch the doctor either. Why, the doctor would only give him some yellow ointment and some white ointment, and then they would mistake one for the other and use them the wrong way, killing him on the spot. Karlsen had died of it; she remembered Karlsen, didn’t she? Yes, he’d died of it. Karlsen had somehow gotten a fish hook in his throat, but when the doctor came with his medicines it turned out he’d choked on a glass of quite ordinary christening water from the well. Heh-heh-heh, though it was no laughing matter.... “Sara, you mustn’t think I’m drunk; you don‘t, do you? ‘Association of ideas,‘ do you hear that? ‘Encyclopedists,’ and so forth. Count on your buttons, Sara, and see if I’m drunk.... Listen, the mills are running, the town mills! My God, what a godforsaken hole you live in, Sara; I would like to deliver you out of the hands of your enemies, as it says in Holy Writ. Oh, go to hell, go to hell! Who are you, anyway? You are all fakes, and I’ll get the better of you, one and all. You don’t believe me? Oh, but I’ve been keeping an eye on you! I’m convinced that Lieutenant Hansen promised Miniman two woolen shirts, but do you think he got them! And do you think Miniman dared admit it? Let me disabuse you on that score: Miniman did not dare admit it, he wriggled out of it. Do you get me? If I’m not mistaken, Mr. Grøgaard, you’re again laughing your dirty laugh behind your newspaper, aren’t you? No? Well, no matter.... Are you still there, Sara? Good! If you’ll sit here another five minutes, I’ll tell you something; is it an agreement? But first try to imagine a man whose eyebrows are gradually falling out. Can you hold on to that? Whose eyebrows are falling out. Next, may I ask if you’ve ever slept in a bed that creaked? Count on your buttons to see if you have. I’m very suspicious of you. For that matter, everyone in town is under suspicion, I’ve been keeping an eye on them all. For that matter. And I’ve acquitted myself well, I’ve given you all a score of extremely rich topics of conversation every time and turned your lives into disarray; I’ve contributed one turbulent scene after another to your respectable appendix-like existence. Ho-ho, how the mills have been whirring! Whereupon, my highly respected maiden, Sara Tosspot Josefsdatter, I advise you to eat your broth while it’s hot, because if you wait until it’s cold, I swear to God there won’t be anything left but water.... More cognac, Sara, I have a headache, on both sides of my head and in the middle. It’s quite strange, the way it hurts....”
“Wouldn’t you like something warm?” Sara asks.
Something warm? What sort of ideas she was coming up with all the time! It would be all over town in a wink that he’d drunk something warm. Keep in mind that he had no intention of causing