Mysteries - Knut Hamsun [150]
He was constantly getting worse, and Sara was on tenterhooks. She would have liked to cut and run, but whenever she got up he noticed right away and asked if she was abandoning him. She waited for him to fall fast asleep, after he had tired himself out by his jabbering. Oh, what nonsense he talked, always with his eyes closed and his face red-hot with fever. He had contrived a new method of delousing Mrs. Stenersen’s red currant bushes. It consisted of his going into a store one fine day and buying a can of kerosene, after which he would go to Market Square, take off his shoes and fill them with kerosene. Then he would set fire to both shoes, one after the other, and conclude by dancing around them in his stocking feet and singing a song. This must be done some morning when he was well again. He would crack his whip and make a regular circus of it, a real horse opera.
He also kept dreaming up ridiculous quaint names and titles for his acquaintances. Thus, he called Reinert, the deputy, “Bilge,” saying that Bilge was a title. “Mr. Reinert, esteemed Town Bilge,” he said. In the end he began to rave about how high the ceiling might be in Consul Andresen’s apartment. “Seven feet, seven feet!” he cried again and again. “Seven feet, by a rough estimate. Am I not right?” But seriously, he was really lying there with a fish hook in his throat, he wasn’t making it up, and he was bleeding, it hurt quite a bit....
Finally, toward evening, he fell soundly asleep.
He awoke again about ten. Alone, he was still lying on the sofa. The blanket that Sara had spread over him had fallen on the floor, but he didn’t feel cold. Sara had also closed the windows, and he opened them again. His head seemed to be clear, but he felt faint and was trembling. Once more he was falling prey to a dull terror-pierced to the quick whenever the walls creaked or a shout came from the street. If he went to bed and slept till tomorrow morning, maybe it would pass. He undressed.
However, he wasn’t able to fall asleep. He lay there thinking about all his adventures in the last twenty-four hours, from yesterday evening when he went out into the woods and emptied the vial of water, until this moment as he lay in his room, quite worn out and plagued by fever. How endlessly long this day and night had been! And his anxiety refused to leave him; this dull, lurking sensation that he found himself on the verge of some danger, a misfortune, wouldn’t let go of him. Whatever had he done? What a whispering there was around his bed! The room was filled with a hissing murmur. He folded his hands and thought he was falling asleep....
Suddenly, looking at his fingers, he notices that his ring is gone. His heart instantly begins to beat faster. He takes a closer look: a faint dark streak around his finger, but no ring! God in heaven, the ring was gone! Yes, he’d thrown it into the sea; since he was going to die, he didn’t think he would need it anymore, and so he threw it into the sea. But now it was gone, the ring was gone!
He jumps out of bed, gets into his clothes and staggers about the room like a madman. It was ten o’clock. By twelve the ring must have been found, he thought; the stroke of twelve was the last second, the ring, the ring ...
He rushes down the stairs, into the street and down toward the docks. He is seen by people at the hotel, but he doesn’t care. He’s getting dead tired again, his knees wobbly, but he doesn’t heed that either. Ah, now he knew the reason for the oppressive anxiety that had weighed upon him all day: the iron ring was gone! And the woman with the crucifix had appeared to him.
Quite beside himself with terror, he jumps into the first boat he comes across at the jetty. It’s made fast on shore