Mysteries - Knut Hamsun [93]
But Hansen refused to part with his glasses, and the doctor turned away from him in a huff. He again took a seat beside Nagel.
“So, it’s just rubbish, nothing but junk altogether,” he said, “the way you see it. Maybe you’re right, in the main. Look at Hansen over there, for instance, ha-ha-ha—well, you must excuse me, Hansen, lawyer and socialist Hansen, for permitting myself to laugh at you. You wouldn’t happen to feel a certain inward joy whenever two respectable citizens get into a dispute and sue one another, would you? No, of course not, you would have them settle out of court and not charge them a penny for it! And the following Sunday you would again visit the Workers’ Society and give a lecture on the socialist state to two artisans and a butcher boy. To be sure, everyone is to be rewarded according to his capacity to produce, you’d say, everything is wonderfully arranged and nobody shall suffer wrong. But then the butcher boy gets up—the butcher boy who, by George, is a genius compared to all the rest of you—he gets up and says, ‘But I, you see, have a certain merchant-like capacity to consume,’ he says, ‘though I’m only a poor butcher boy as far as producing goes, because I haven’t got much of a talent for that,’ he says. Oh, wouldn’t you turn pale and peevish, though, bungler that you are! ... Yes, just go on snoring, that’s the smartest thing you can do, snore away!” The doctor had become very drunk, his tongue sadly failed him, and his eyes were swimming. After a pause he again turned to Nagel and continued glumly, “By the way, I didn’t mean to say theologians were the only ones who should do away with themselves. Goddamn it, no, we should all of us do it, destroy the world and let the show go on.”
Nagel clinked glasses with Miniman. Receiving no answer, the doctor blew his top and yelled, “Didn’t you hear what I said? We should all do away with ourselves, I said, you too naturally, you too.”
The doctor looked quite bloodthirsty.
“Yes,” Nagel replied, “I’ve had the same idea. But as far as I’m concerned, I lack the courage.” Pause. “That is, I’m saying I definitely don’t have the courage for it. But if some day I should, I have the pistol ready. And to be on the safe side, I always carry it on me.”
He took a vial marked “Poison” out of his vest pocket and held it up. The vial was only half full.
“Genuine Prussic acid, of the purest water!” he said. “But I’ll never have the courage; it’s just too difficult.... Doctor, you can probably tell me whether this is enough. I’ve already used half of it on an animal, and it worked perfectly. There were a few spasms, a touch of comic-sardonic mimicry, two or three gasps, that was all; checkmate in three moves.”
The doctor took the vial, looked at it, shook it a few times and said, “It’s enough, more than enough.... I really ought to take this vial away from you, but since you don’t have the courage—”
“No, I don’t.”
Pause. Nagel put the vial back in his vest pocket. The doctor collapsed more and more, drank from his glass, looked about him with dead eyes and spat on the floor. Suddenly he called to the teacher, “Hey, how far along are you, Holtan? Can you still manage to say ‘association of ideas’? Because I can’t anymore. Good night!”
The teacher opened his eyes, stretched, got up and walked to the window, where he stopped to look out. When the conversation resumed he seized the opportunity to make his getaway; he stole along the wall unobserved, opened the door and slipped out before anyone noticed. This was Master Holtan’s usual way of leaving a party.
Miniman also rose and wanted to be off, but when he was asked to stay on for a little while he sat down again. Hansen, the lawyer, was asleep. The three who were still sober, Øien, Miniman and Nagel, then began to discuss literature. The doctor listened with half-closed eyes and without saying another word. Soon after he too was asleep.
Øien, the student, was very well read and backed Maupassant. There was no denying it: Maupassant had penetrated the innermost recesses of woman’s soul and was unrivaled as