Mysteries - Knut Hamsun [159]
No, one shouldn’t open one’s mouth, not at all. One ought to have a delicatessen shop and squeeze sausages, contemplate lard, chew leaf fat and quote Hugo. One ought to have a horse and buggy and an office in town, arrange things like a human being, make connections, invite Storting representatives, get on, have a house, a wife, and a dog. Period. Nagel.
Yes, a house! Good Lord, if one only had a house! And a wife! I would be sure to feel glad about it every day and to give something to the poor, according to my ability.
6 58/169. Deleted in CW: I’ll be damned, but all this stupidity is becoming rather unseemly!
7 58/169. Deleted in CW: Ah-ah-ee! There, I yawned on it. And that’s that.
8 62/170. The preceding sentence replaced the following passage in P: Upon my word, I can’t forget it, no, I can’t. There the good soul went and ruined his entire earthly reputation with a platitude! I swear it is by Victor Hugo, I can hear it so clearly; it is by the greatest man of that time.
9 62/170. P continues: at the humbug in which he trades.
10 63/171. Deleted in CW: ... No, quote a geographer; say, for example, that, Norway being so far north, it is absolutely necessary to live robustly, since blood is feelings and feelings are nerves, and nerves therefore are simply a question of climate.... Heh-heh, or perhaps this is ethnography? God only knows what it is, at the moment I can’t decide that. But quote something of the sort and leave it at that. Anything but Victor Hugo, that inflated spirit oozing purple, whose pen was a ham.... Give it a thought, I’m trying to save you.
11 64/171. Deleted in CW: Heh-heh-heh. But come to think, you don’t have a sense of humor....
12 64/171. Deleted in CW: What will she say when she comes in? Exactly, I mean, the very words? “Sorry you’ve had to wait so long for your shoes!” Or will she say nothing? It would be quite a trick if she said nothing at all. She is always in the habit of saying something, she’ll at least say “please,” she always does, so she won’t forget to now either. Well, but if she should really say nothing, what then? Let us assume that, if she says nothing, something will happen to me in the course of the day. Yes, we’ll assume that! So, if she doesn’t say anything, something bad will befall me. We’ll see! Heh-heh-heh. Ugh, what the hell! Drivel, twaddle, trifles and stupidities....
13 67/172. Here a brief paragraph is deleted in CW: Deedle-ee, deedle-ee, deedle-ee do. Knut of Rotnam, Knut of Røtnam, no guy is so stout he can chase him out....
14 67-68/172. In P, the rest of this paragraph reads: the unfortunate bluster of those who get their hackles up about all and everything—in an age where nobody, whether thistles, thorns, hedgehogs or Rochefort, can afford to prick anyone or anything.... Heh, heh. Oh yes, you have to put up with it, Croppy Boy. Hey, my steed, try again! But really, why? Let me rock the ground under a couple of erroneous ideas of life....
15 71/174. In starting a new paragraph here, I am following P.
16 73/175. Here P continues: Heh-heh-heh. Anyway, I should have known that beforehand. But how lovely she was, and she—
But now I have to get up, damn it, shoes or no shoes.
17 73-74/175. From this point until “Oh, I’m real sorry ...,” P reads: “Will she say something,” he said, actually talking aloud to himself. “Of course she will; she will say, ‘I’m sorry.’ But what if she doesn’t say anything, not a word, not a grunt, what then? Then nothing bad will happen to me today. Nothing bad, nothing bad! I wish to God she would keep her mouth shut!”
He thought things over for a moment after these