Mysteries - Knut Hamsun [87]
“But is it her—Isn’t it rather Mrs. Stenersen—?”
“Come, you’re on the wrong track, Miss Gude must be going on forty. But she has a chair, an old armchair, which I’ve decided to acquire, and for that I need your help.... Now, put your money away and I’ll explain it all to you.”
It was beginning to grow dark; the hotel guests were leaving the dining room, making an awful din, while Nagel was still carefully explaining everything concerning the old armchair. She would have to proceed with caution, grand gestures were no good. Kamma became more and more eager to get going, this questionable mission sent her into raptures; she laughed aloud and kept asking if she shouldn’t appear in disguise, wear glasses at least. Didn’t he once have a red hat? She could wear that—
“No, no, you mustn’t use any tricks. You are simply to make a bid on the chair, drive the price up; you can go as high as two hundred kroner, well, two hundred and twenty kroner. And don’t worry, you won’t be stuck with it; you won’t get it.”
“Lord, what heaps of money! Why wouldn’t I get it for two hundred and twenty kroner?”
“Because I have a prior claim on it.”
“But suppose she takes me at my word?”
“She won’t take you at your word. Now go.”
At the very last moment she asked him again for a comb and expressed a concern that her dress might have gotten crumpled. “I really can’t stand the idea of your going to see that Mrs. Stenersen so often,” she said, shamming.3 “I just can’t stand it, I’ll be inconsolable.” She again checked whether her money had been safely stowed away. “How sweet of you to give me all that money!” she exclaimed. And with a quick movement she lifted her veil and kissed him on the lips, right smack on the lips. But still completely wrapped up in her strange errand to Martha Gude, she asked, “How can I let you know that everything has gone well? I can have the captain blow the whistle, if you like, blow it four or five times, wouldn’t that do? There you see, I’m not that dumb. Trust me! That’s the least I can do for you, after you have—. Listen, it was not because of the money that I came here today, believe me! Well, let me thank you again! So long, so long!”
Once more she checked on the money.
Half an hour later Nagel did, in fact, hear a steam whistle blow five brief blasts.
XIII
A COUPLE OF DAYS went by.
Nagel stayed at the hotel, wandering about with a gloomy air and looking harassed and suffering; his eyes had in the course of these two days become quite lusterless. He never spoke to anyone, not even to people in the hotel. He had a rag tied around one hand; one night when he had been out until the early morning as usual, he returned with one hand inside his handkerchief. He said the two wounds he had were caused by his tripping over a discarded harrow left on the dock.
On Thursday morning it rained, and the unpleasant weather made him still more depressed. However, after reading the papers in bed and enjoying an animated scene in the French Chamber of Deputies, he suddenly snapped his fingers and jumped out of bed. Why the hell should he mope! The world was big, rich, merry, the world was beautiful, you bet your life it was!
Before he was fully dressed, he rang and informed Sara that he intended to have some visitors in the evening, six or seven who could whoop it up a bit in this vale of tears, merry souls: Dr. Stenersen; Mr. Hansen, the lawyer; the teacher, and so on.
He promptly sent out invitations. Miniman answered that he would come; Mr. Reinert, the deputy, was also invited but stayed away. By five o’clock they were all gathered in Nagel’s room. Since it was still raining and the skies were dark, the lamp was lighted and the blinds drawn.
And so the bacchanal began, a carouse and a priceless infernal hubbub that gave the little town something to talk about for several days to come....
As soon as Miniman entered the room, Nagel went up to him and apologized for having talked so much nonsense the last time they met. He took Miniman’s hand and shook