Mysteries - Knut Hamsun [90]
we’ll skip that.... But look: does one really give away a krone because one is kind, because one intends to do a kind and moral deed? How naive this view appears to me! There are some people who cannot help giving. Why? Because they experience a real psychological pleasure in doing so. They don’t do it with an eye to their own advantage, they do it on the quiet; they detest doing it openly because that would take away some of the satisfaction. They do it in secret, with quick trembling hands, their breast rocked by a spiritual well-being which they do not themselves understand. Suddenly they are overcome by an impulse to give something away; it manifests itself as a sensation in their breasts, a mysterious momentary desire that springs up in them and floods their eyes with tears. They don’t give out of kindness, but from an urge, for the sake of their personal well-being; some people are like that! One speaks of generous people with admiration; as I’ve said, I must be differently made from the rest of you: I don’t admire generous people. No, I don’t. Who the hell wouldn’t rather give than receive! May I ask if there exists a human being on earth who wouldn’t rather relieve destitution than be destitute? To use you as an example, Doctor: Not long ago you gave your oarsman five kroner. I overheard it by chance. Now then, why did you give away those five kroner? Surely not to perform a deed pleasing to God, which probably didn’t occur to you then; maybe the man didn’t even need the money very badly, but you gave it to him all the same. At that moment, I suspect, you simply yielded to a certain happy impulse to relinquish something and give pleasure to someone else.... To me, it seems unspeakably shabby to make a fuss over charity. You’re walking along the street one day, the weather is so and so and you see such and such people, all of which builds up a certain mood in you. Suddenly you catch sight of a face, a child’s face, a beggar’s face—let’s say a beggar’s face—which makes you tremble. A strange sensation vibrates through your soul, and you stamp your foot and come to a halt. This face has struck an exceptionally sensitive chord in you, and you lure the beggar into an entranceway and press a ten-krone bill into his hand. If you give me away by as much as a word, I’ll kill you! you whisper, and you fairly grind your teeth and shed tears of anger saying it. That’s how important it is to you to remain undiscovered. And this can happen repeatedly, day after day, so that often you end up in the worst kind of scrape yourself, without a penny in your pocket.... These traits are not my own, of course; but I do know a man, another man—well, for that matter, I know two men who are thus constituted.... No, you give because you have to give, and that’s that! However, I’ll make an exception as far as misers are concerned. Misers and blatantly stingy people make real sacrifices when they give something away, there can be no doubt about that. And so I say that such people are more worthy of respect, for the one øre they bring themselves to spare, than a man like you, or him or me, who squanders a krone for the pleasure of it. Tell Tolstoy from me that I don’t give a stiver for all his nauseating show of kindness—not until he gives away all he owns, and not even then.... By the way, I apologize if I have given offense to anybody. Have another cigar, Mr. Grøgaard. Skoal, Doctor!”
Pause.
“How many people do you think you’ll convert in your lifetime?” the doctor asked.
“Bravo!” the teacher cried, “a bravo from Master Holtan!”
“I?” Nagel asked. “None, none at all. If I were to live by converting people, I would starve pretty soon. It’s just that I can’t understand why everyone else doesn’t think the way I do. So I must be the one who is mostly in the wrong. But not completely, I can’t possibly be completely wrong.”
“But so far I haven’t heard you express approval of anything or anybody,” the doctor said. “It would be interesting to know if there is someone with whom you, too, can hit it off.”
“Let me explain myself a bit, a couple of