Mysteries - Knut Hamsun [91]
“Listen,” the doctor said brusquely, to have done with it—he even gave a distinct shrug—“do you really believe that someone could achieve the kind of world-wide fame Tolstoy enjoys without being a mind of high rank? It’s extremely amusing to listen to you, but what you’ve said is pure tommyrot. Your damn blather is enough to turn one’s stomach.”
“Bravo, Doctor!” Master Holtan roared. “Just don’t let our host turn your heads—your heads—”
“The teacher reminds me that11 I’m not being a very good host,” Nagel said, laughing. “But I’ll do better. Mr. 0ien, you don’t have anything in your glass, do you? Why on earth aren’t you drinking?”
The fact was that Øien had been sitting silent as death listening to the conversation all along; he had barely missed a word. His eyes were narrow and curious, and he veritably cocked his ears as he listened. The young man was intensely interested. It was rumored that—like other students—he was working on a novel during the holidays.
Sara came and announced that supper was served. The lawyer, who had collapsed in his chair, suddenly opened his eyes and shot a glance after her, and when she had disappeared through the door he jumped up, caught up with her on the stairs and said, full of admiration, “Sara, you are a feast for the eye. You really are!”
Then he went back in and sat down in his place, as serious as ever. He was quite pickled. When Dr. Stenersen finally pitched into him for his socialism, he was totally unable to explain himself. A fine socialist he was! A leech, that’s what he was, a miserable middleman between power and impotence, a man of the law who made a living from other people’s wrangling and charged a fee so the caviler could have his rights, his legal rights! And such people wanted to pass for socialists!
“It’s the principle, the principle!” the lawyer protested.
Ah, principle! The doctor spoke with the deepest scorn about Mr. Hansen’s principles. As the men went down to the dining room, he made one sally after another, ridiculing Mr. Hansen as a lawyer and attacking the whole socialist system. The doctor was a Liberal heart and soul, he was no skin-deep socialist. What was the socialist principle anyway? To hell with it! The doctor was getting on his high horse: in short, the idea behind socialism was the revenge of the lower classes. Just look at the socialist movement! A flock of blind and deaf brutes jogging along after a leader, their tongues hanging out of their mouths. Did they ever manage to think beyond their noses? No, those people didn’t think. If they did, they would switch to the Liberal Party and do something useful and practical instead of slobbering over a dream all their lives. Pfui. Take anyone they liked among the socialist leaders, what kind of people were they? Shabby, skinny fellows who sat around on their wooden stools in some attic writing treatises for the world’s improvement! They might be decent people, of course, who could say anything else about Karl Marx? But there he sat all the same, this Marx fellow, scribbling poverty out of existence—theoretically. His brain has figured out every species of poverty, every degree of misery; his head encompasses all humanity’s suffering. And so, in the fervor of his spirit, he dips his pen and writes page after