A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings (Stallybrass 2000 Translation) by Knut Hamsun

Author:Knut Hamsun [Hamsun, Knut]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature
ISBN: 9781892295736
Amazon: 1892295733
Publisher: Green Integer
Published: 1905-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

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On a summer evening the bridge is crowded with people out walking--school teachers and tradespeople, young girls and children. I watch my time when it is getting late, and the bridge is deserted; then I can lounge over that way myself, and stay for an hour or so in the midst of the roar. No need to do anything really but listen; only my brain is so over-rested with idleness and good sound sleep, it finds no end of things to busy itself about. Last evening I determined in all seriousness to go to Fru Falkenberg and say:

"Go away from here, Frue; leave by the first train that goes." Today I have been calling myself a fool for entertaining such a ridiculous thought, and set in its place another: "Get out of this yourself, my good man, by the first train that goes. Are you her equal, her adviser? Very well, then; see that what you do is not too utterly at variance with what you are!"

And this evening I am still treating myself as I deserve. I fall to humming a little tune, but can scarcely hear it myself! the sound is crushed to death in the roar of the water. "That's right," I say to myself scornfully. "You ought always to stand by a deafening foss when you feel like humming a tune." And I laugh at myself again. With suchlike childish fancies do I pass the time.

The noise of the rapids anywhere inland is as useful to the ear as the noise of breakers on the shore. But the voice of the breakers is louder and fainter by turns. The roar of waters in a river-bed is like an audible fog, a monotony of sound beyond reason, contrary to all sense, a miracle of idiocy. "What is the time, do you know?" "Yes, isn't it?" "Day or night?" "Yes!" As if some one had laid a stone on six keys of an organ, and walked off and left it there.

With such childish fancies do I while away the time.

"Godaften!" says Fru Falkenberg, and there she is beside me.

I hardly felt surprised; it was almost as if I had expected her. After her behaviour with her husband's letter, she might well go a little farther.

Now I could think two ways about her coming: either she had turned thoroughly sentimental at being reminded so directly of her home once more, or she wanted to make her engineer jealous; he might perhaps be watching us from his window that very moment, and I had been sent for to go back to vreb. Possibly she was thoroughly calculating, and had been trying to work on his jealousy even yesterday, when she studied the letter so attentively.

It seemed, however, that none of my clever theories was to be confirmed. It was me she wanted to see, and that only to make a sort of apology for getting me dismissed. That she should ever care about such a trifle! Was she

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