Mysteries - Knut Hamsun [64]
“I do, indeed.”
“Say, something just occurred to me: why don’t you rather use a cart to take the coal around?”
“I can’t because of my handicap, I’m no good at pulling. I can withstand considerable weight, if I load myself with care, but I cannot go all out and pull and strain that way; if I did, I would overtax myself and fall flat on my face in great pain. But it doesn’t work so poorly with a sack either.”
“Good. Drop by again sometime.4 Number 7, remember; just walk right in.”
With that he slipped a bill into Miniman’s hand and quickly walked down the street toward the docks. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the green dress ahead of him for a moment, and now he set off after it.
When he reached Martha Gude’s little house, he stopped for a moment and peered about him. Nobody was watching. He knocked on the door, but there was no answer. He had tried her door twice before without getting an answer, but this time he had clearly seen her going straight home from the market, and he refused to turn back without having been inside. He pushed the door open and stepped in.
She was standing in the middle of the room looking at him. Her face was pale and she appeared upset;5 she was so timorous that she momentarily threw up her hands, being at her wits’ end.
“Please, forgive my intrusion,” Nagel said, making an unusually respectful bow. “I would be very grateful if you allowed me to talk to you for a moment. Don’t be uneasy, my business is soon taken care of. I’ve looked for you a couple of times before, but only today was I lucky enough to find you at home. My name is Nagel, I’m a stranger here, for the time being staying at the Central.”
She still didn’t say anything, but put out a chair for him and sidled toward the kitchen door. She was terribly bashful and kept fingering her apron as she looked at him.
The room was as he had pictured it: a table, a couple of chairs, and a bed was pretty much all it contained. In the windows were some plants with white flowers, but there were no curtains, and the floor wasn’t clean. Nagel noticed, besides, a poor old high-backed chair in the corner by the bed. It had only two legs and rested against the wall, decrepit and broken. The seat was covered with red plush.
“If only I could put you at ease, miss!” Nagel said once more. “You know, people don’t always get so frightened when I call on them, heh-heh-heh; this is not, you see, the first time I’ve been to someone’s house here. You’re not the only one I’ve inflicted myself on. I go from house to house, trying my luck everywhere. Well, perhaps you’ve heard about it? No? It’s true, though. It comes with my occupation, I’m a collector, you see; I collect all kinds of old things, buy antiquated articles and pay what they may be worth. Now, don’t get frightened, miss, I don’t sneak off with anything when I leave, heh-heh-heh, I certainly don’t have that bad habit. You may rest assured of that. If I fail to obtain an article by friendly means, that cannot be helped.”
“But I don’t have any old things,” she said at last, looking quite desperate.
“They always say that,” he replied. “Well, I admit there are things one may have become fond of and therefore is reluctant to part with, familiar things one has been surrounded with all one’s life, such as heirlooms from one’s parents or even one’s grand-parents. But on the other hand, these cast-off things just stand there without doing much good, so why should they take up space and tie up money? You see, these useless heirlooms keep many a shilling locked up, and in the end they fall to pieces and have to be taken to the attic. So why not rather sell them while there’s time? Some people get angry when I come, telling me they don’t hold on to old things. Fine, to each his own, I bow and go