Mysteries - Knut Hamsun [29]
Can you believe it, I still have no shoes. What has Sara done with my shoes? It’ll soon be eleven, and she hasn’t yet brought them.12
So we’re going to quote a geographer—.
Incidentally, that Sara has a delicious figure. When she walks, her hips quiver, they’re like the flanks of a really sleek mare. It’s perfectly splendid. I wonder if she has ever been married. In any case, she doesn’t squeal very loud if you poke her in the ribs, and she would probably be game for anything—. Oh, what a marriage I once witnessed, I might even say attended. Hm. Gentlemen and ladies, it took place on a Sunday evening at a railroad station in Sweden, the Kungsbacka station. I beg you not to forget that it was a Sunday evening. She had large white hands, he a brand-new cadet’s uniform and still no beard, that’s how young he was. They were traveling together from Göteborg—and she was very young, too, they were both mere children. I was observing them from behind my newspaper; they were quite helpless with me being there. They never took their eyes off each other; the girl was bright-eyed and couldn’t sit still. Suddenly the whistle blows for Kungsbacka and he grabs her hand—they understood one another: as soon as the train stopped they promptly jumped off. She runs toward “For women,” he strides after her, at her heels—by God, he makes a mistake, he too steps into “For women”! They quickly shut the door behind them. At that moment the church bells burst out ringing in the center of town, because it was a Sunday evening; their visit was accompanied by a full peal of bells. Three minutes, four minutes, five minutes go by, what has become of them? They’re still in there and the bells keep ringing—God knows whether they won’t be late! Finally he opens the door and peeps out. He is bareheaded, she stands right behind him putting on his cap, he turns to her and smiles. Then he jumps down the steps, followed by her, still fiddling with her dress, and when they reached the train and got back to their seats not a soul had noticed them, no, not a soul except me. The girl’s eyes were perfectly golden when she looked at me and smiled, and her little bosom was bouncing up and down, up and down. A few minutes later they were both asleep; they just faded away, so deliciously tired were they.
What do you think? Gentlemen and ladies, my story has come to an end. I pass over that excellent lady over there, the one with the pince-nez and the stand-up men’s collar, that is, the blue-stocking. I address myself to the two or three among you who don’t spend your lives with clenched teeth, engaged in socially beneficial activity. Pardon me if I’ve hurt anyone’s feelings; a special apology to the honorable lady with the pince-nez and the blue stockings. Look, there she rises, she’s getting up! Good grief, she will either go her way or quote someone. If she’s going to quote someone, she will probably refute me. And if she wants to refute me, she will say something like this: “Hm,” she will say, “that gentleman has the most uncouth masculine idea of life I’ve ever heard. Is that life? I wonder whether the gentleman is totally ignorant of what one of the world’s greatest thinkers has said on the subject: ‘Life is a war with trolls in the vaults of the heart and head,’ he says....”13
Life is a war with trolls, sure. In the vaults of the heart and head, that figures. Gentlemen and ladies, one day the Norwegian