Mysteries - Knut Hamsun [60]
“Wonderful ones. Only of a different sort.” We had no idea of a sun that could shine and burn excessively. Our legends about the hulder, the wood nymph, stuck to the ground, stayed underground in fact; they were the products of a13 fantasy wearing skin trousers, hatched on dark winter nights in log cabins with smoke vents in the roof. Had she ever read the fairy tales in Thousand and One Nights? The fairy tales from Gudbrandsdal with their peasant-saturated poetry and pedestrian fantasy—they belonged to us, they were our spirit. Our fairy tales didn’t make us shudder, they were good-humored and droll, they made us laugh. Our hero was not a splendid prince, but a wily parish clerk.14 I beg your pardon? Well, the Nordland fairy tales—but weren’t they just the same?15 What had we managed to make of the mysterious, rough beauty of the ocean? The Nordland sloop alone would be a fabled boat, a phantom ship, to the Oriental. Had she ever seen one of those sloops? No? It looked as if it were sexed, as if it were a large she-animal, its belly bulging with young and its rear quite flat, as if it could sit down. Its nose points skyward like a horn that could draw down the four winds.... “No, we live too far north.16 Well, this is in all modesty intended only as an agronomist’s opinion of a geographical phenomenon.”17
She must have grown tired of all his chatter, for there was a hint of mockery in her blue eyes as she asked, “What time is it?”
“What time?” he said absentmindedly. “It’s a few minutes past one. The night is still young, time is nil.”
Pause.
“What’s your opinion of Tolstoy?” she asked.
“I don’t care for him,” he replied at once, jumping at the bait. “I do like Anna Karenina and War and Peace and—”
Then she asked, smiling, “And what’s your opinion of universal peace?”
That was quite a rap. His expression changed, he was bewildered. “What do you mean? ... Oh, I’ve been boring you to death, haven’t I?”
“It just occurred to me, I assure you,” she said hurriedly, turning red. “You mustn’t take it amiss. The fact is, we’re getting up a bazaar, an evening entertainment for the benefit of the National Defense. It was only this that flashed through my mind just then.”
Pause. Suddenly he looks up at her with beaming eyes.
“I’m happy this evening, you see, and so I’ve probably been jabbering too much.18 I’m happy because of everything, first and foremost because I’m walking here with you;19 but I’m also happy because this night seems the most beautiful I’ve ever known. I can’t explain it. It’s as if I were part of this forest or this field, a branch on a pine tree or a rock, yes, a rock, why not, but a rock imbued with all this delicate fragrance and peace that surround us. Look yonder, it’s getting light; there is a silver streak in the sky.”
They both looked in the direction of the white streak.
“I, too, am happy tonight,” she said.20
She said this without being obliged to, of her own free will, spontaneously, as if it were a pleasure to say it.21 A close look at her face gave Nagel fresh grist for his mill. Nervously, impulsively, he began to expatiate on Midsummer Night, how the forest swayed and soughed, swayed and soughed, how the breaking day yonder was effecting a change in him, bringing other forces to ascendancy in his heart. Grundtvig sings: “As children of light we feel that now the night is over!” But, instead of talking too much, maybe he could show her a little