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Look Back on Happiness

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LOOK BACK ON HAPPINESS

KNUT HAMSUN

Translated from the Norwegian
By PAULA WIKING




LOOK BACK ON HAPPINESS




I


I have gone to the forest.

Not because I am offended about anything, or very unhappy about men's evil
ways; but since the forest will not come to me, I must go to it. That is
all. I have not gone this time as a slave and a vagabond. I have money
enough and am overfed, stupefied with success and good fortune, if you
understand that. I have left the world as a sultan leaves rich food and
harems and flowers, and clothes himself in a hair shirt.

Really, I could make quite a song and dance about it. For I mean to roam
and think and make great irons red-hot. Nietzsche no doubt would have
spoken thus: The last word I spake unto men achieved their praise, and
they nodded. But it was my last word; and I went into the forest. For then
did I comprehend the truth, that my speech must needs be dishonest or
foolish.... But I said nothing of the kind; I simply went to the forest.

* * * * *

You must not believe that nothing ever happens here. The snowflakes drift
down just as they do in the city, and the birds and beasts scurry about
from morning till night, and from night till morning. I could send solemn
stories from this place, but I do not. I have sought the forest for
solitude and for the sake of my great irons; for I have great irons which
lie within me and grow red-hot. So I deal with myself accordingly. Suppose
I were to meet a buck reindeer one day, then I might say to myself:

"Great heavens, this is a buck reindeer, he's dangerous!"

But if then I should be too frightened, I might tell myself a comforting
lie and say it was a calf or some feathered beast.

You say nothing happens here?

One day I saw two Lapps meet. A boy and a girl. At first they behaved as
people do. "_Boris!_" they said to each other and smiled. But
immediately after, both fell at full length in the snow and were gone from
my sight. After a quarter of an hour had passed, I thought, "You'd better
see to them; they may be smothered in the snow." But then they got up and
went their separate ways.

In all my weatherbeaten days, I have never seen such a greeting as that.

* * * * *

Day and night I live in a deserted hut of peat into which I must crawl on
my hands and knees. Someone must have built it long ago and used it, for
lack of a better,--perhaps a man who was in hiding, a man who concealed
himself here for a few autumn days. There are two of us in the hut, that
is if you regard Madame as a person; otherwise there is only one. Madame
is a mouse I live with, to whom I have given this honorary title. She eats
everything I put aside for her in the nooks and corners, and sometimes she
sits watching me.

When I first came, there was stale straw in the hut, which Madame by all
means was allowed to keep; for my own bed I cut fresh pine twigs, as is
fitting. I have an ax and a saw and the necessary crockery. And I have a
sleeping bag of sheepskin with the wool inside. I keep a fire burning in
the fireplace all night, and my shirt, which hangs by it, smells of fresh
resin in the morning. When I want coffee, I go out, fill the kettle with
clean snow, and hang it over the fire till the snow turns to water.

Is this a life worth living?

There you have betrayed yourself. This is a life you do not understand.
Yes, your home is in the city, and you have furnished it with vanities,
with pictures and books; but you have a wife and a servant and a hundred
expenses. Asleep or awake you must keep pace with the world and are never
at peace. I have peace. You are welcome to your intellectual pastimes and
books and art and newspapers; welcome, too, to your bars and your whisky
that only makes me ill. Here am I in the forest, quite content. If you ask
me intellectual questions and try to trip me up, then I will reply, for
example, that God is the origin of all things and that truly men are mere
specks and atoms in the universe. You are no wiser than I. But if you
should go so far as to ask me what is eternity, then I know quite as much
in this matter, too, and reply thus: Eternity is merely unborn time,
nothing but unborn time.

My friend, come here to me and I will take a mirror from my pocket and
reflect the sun on your face, my friend.

You lie in bed till ten or eleven in the morning, yet you are weary,
exhausted, when you get up. I see you in my mind's eye as you go out into
the street; the morning has dawned too early on your blinking eyes. I rise
at five quite refreshed. It is still dark outdoors, yet there is enough to
look at--the moon, the stars, the clouds, and the weather portents for the
day. I prophesy the weather for many hours ahead. In what key do the winds
whistle? Is the crack of the ice in the Glimma light and dry, or deep and
long? These are splendid portents, and as it grows lighter, I add the
visible signs to the audible ones, and learn still more.

Then a narrow streak of daylight appears far down in the east, the stars
fade from the sky, and soon light reigns over all. A crow flies over the
woods, and I warn Madame not to go outside the hut or she will be
devoured.

But if fresh snow has fallen, the trees and copses and the great rocks
take on giant, unearthly shapes, as though they had come from another
world in the night. A storm-felled pine with its root torn up looks like a
witch petrified in the act of performing strange rites.

Here a hare has sprung by, and yonder are the tracks of a solitary
reindeer. I shake out my sleeping bag and after hanging it high in a tree
to escape Madame, who eats everything, I follow the tracks of the reindeer
into the forest. It has jogged along without haste, but toward a definite
goal--straight east to meet the day. By the banks of the Skiel, which is
so rapid that its waters never freeze, the reindeer has stopped to drink,
to scrape the hillside for moss, to rest a while, and then moved on.

And perhaps what this reindeer has done is all the knowledge and
experience I gain that day. It seems much to me. The days are short; at
two, I am already strolling homeward in the deep twilight, with the good,
still night approaching. Then I begin to cook. I have a great deal of meat
stored in three pure-white drifts of snow. In fact I have something even
better: eight fat cheeses of reindeer milk, to eat with butter and
crisp-bread.

While the pot is boiling I lie down, and gaze at the fire till I fall
asleep. I take my midday nap before my meal. And when I waken, the food is
cooked, filling the hut with an aroma of meat and resin. Madame darts back
and forth across the floor and at length gets her share. I eat, and light
my cutty-pipe.

The day is at an end. All has been well, and I have had no unpleasantness.
In the great silence surrounding me, I am the only adult, roaming man;
this makes me bigger and more important, God's kin. And I believe the
red-hot irons within me are progressing well, for God does great things
for his kin.

I lie thinking of the reindeer, the path it took, what it did by the
river, and how it continued on its journey. There under the trees it has
nibbled, and its horns have rubbed against the bark, leaving their marks;
there an osier bed has forced it to turn aside; but just beyond, it has
straightened its path and continued east once more. All this I think of.

And you? Have you read in a newspaper, which disagrees with another
newspaper, what the public in Norway is thinking of old-age insurance?




II


On stormy days I sit indoors and find something to occupy my time. Perhaps
I write letters to some acquaintance or other telling him I am well, and
hope to hear the same from him. But I cannot post the letters, and they
grow older every day. Not that it matters. I have tied the letters to a
string that hangs from the ceiling to prevent Madame from gnawing at them.


One day a man came to the hut. He walked swiftly and stealthily; his
clothes were ordinary and he wore no collar, for he was a laboring man. He
carried a sack, and I wondered what could be in it.

"Good morning," we said to each other. "Fine weather in the woods."

"I didn't expect to find anybody in the hut," said the man. His manner was
at once forceful and discontented; he flung down the sack without
humility.

"He may know something about me," I thought, "since he is such a man."

"Have you lived here long?" he asked. "And are you leaving soon?"

"Is the hut yours, perhaps?" I asked in my turn.

Then he looked at me.

"Because if the hut is yours, that's another matter," I said. "But I don't
intend like a pickpocket to take it with me when I leave."

I spoke gently and jestingly to avoid committing a blunder by my speech.

But I had said quite the right thing; the man at once lost his assurance.
Somehow I had made him feel that I knew more about him than he knew about
me.

When I asked him to come in, he was grateful and said:

"Thank you, but I'm afraid I'll get snow all over your floor."

Then he took special pains to wipe his boots clean, and bringing his sack
with him, crawled in.

"I could give you some coffee," I said.

"You shouldn't trouble on my account," he replied, wiping his face and
panting with the heat, "though I've been walking all night."

"Are you crossing the fjeld?"

"That depends. I don't suppose there's work to be got on a winter day on
the other side, either."

I gave him coffee.

"Got anything to eat?" he said. "It's a shame to ask you. A round of
crisp-bread? I had no chance to bring food with me."

"Yes, I've got bread, butter, and reindeer cheese. Help yourself."

"It's not so easy for a lot of people in the winter," said the man as he
ate.

"Could you take some letters to the village for me?" I asked. "I'll pay
you for it."

"Oh, no, I couldn't do that," the man replied. "I'm afraid that's
impossible. I must cross the fjeld now. I've heard there's work in
Hilling, in the Hilling Forest. So I can't."

"Must get his back up a bit again," I thought. "He just sits now there
without any guts at all. In the end he'll start begging for a few
coppers."

I felt his sack and said:

"What's this you're lugging about with you? Heavy things?"

"Mind your own business!" was his instant retort, as he drew the sack
closer to him.

"I wasn't going to steal any of it; I'm no thief," I said, jesting again.

"I don't care what you are," he muttered.

The day wore on. Since I had a visitor, I had no desire to go to the
woods, but wanted to sit and talk to him and ask him questions. He was a
very ordinary man, of no great interest to the irons in my fire, with
dirty hands, uneducated and uninteresting in his speech; probably he had
stolen the things in his sack. Later I learned that he was quick in much
small knowledge that life had taught him. He complained that his heels
felt cold, and took off his boots. And no wonder he felt cold, for where
the heels of his stockings should have been there were only great holes.
He borrowed a knife to cut away the ragged edges, and then drew on the
stockings again back to front, so that the torn soles came over his
instep. When he had put on his boots again, he said, "There, now it's nice
and warm."

He did no harm. If he took down the saw and the ax from their hooks to
inspect them, he put them back again where he had found them. When he
examined the letters, trying perhaps to read the addresses, he did not let
them go carelessly, leaving them to swing back and forth, but held the
string so that it hung motionless. I had no reason to complain about him.

He had his midday meal with me, and when he had eaten, he said:

"Do you mind if I cut myself some pine twigs to sit on?"

He went out to cut off some soft pine, and we had to move Madame's straw
to make room for the man inside the hut. Then we lay on our twigs, burning
resin and talking.

He was still there in the afternoon, still lying down as though to
postpone the time of his leaving. When it began to grow dark, he went to
the low doorway and looked out at the weather. Then, turning his head
back, he asked:

"Do you think there'll be snow tonight?"

"You ask me questions and I ask you questions," I said, "but it looks like
snow; the smoke is blowing down."

It made him uneasy to think it might snow, and he said he had better leave
that night. Suddenly he flew into a rage. For as I lay there, I stretched,
so that my hand accidentally touched his sack again.

"You leave me alone!" he shouted, tearing the sack from my grasp. "Don't
you touch that sack, or I'll show you!"

I replied that I had meant nothing by it, and had no intention of stealing
anything from him.

"Stealing, eh! What of it? I'm not afraid of you, and don't you go
thinking I am! Look, here's what I've got in the bag," said the man, and
began to rummage in it and to show me the contents: three pairs of new
mittens, some sort of thick cloth for garments, a bag of barley, a side of
bacon, sixteen rolls of tobacco, and a few large lumps of sugar candy. In
the bottom of the bag was perhaps half a bushel of coffee beans.

No doubt it was all from the general stores, with the exception of a heap
of broken crisp-bread, which might have been stolen elsewhere.

"So you've got crisp-bread after all," I said.

"If you knew anything about it, you wouldn't talk like that," the man
replied. "When I'm crossing the fjeld on foot, walking and walking, don't
I need food to put in my belly? It's blasphemy to listen to you!"

Neatly and carefully he put everything back into the sack, each article in
its turn. He took pains to build up the rolls of tobacco round the bacon,
to protect the cloth from grease stains.

"You might buy this cloth from me," he said. "I'll
let you have it cheap. It's duffle. It only gets in my way."

"How much do you want for it?" I asked.

"There's enough for a whole suit of clothes, maybe more," he said to
himself as he spread it out.

I said to the man:

"Truly you come here into the forest bringing with you life and the world
and intellectual values and news. Let us talk a little. Tell me something:
are you afraid your footprints will be visible tomorrow if there's fresh
snow tonight?"

"That's my business. I've crossed the field before and I know many paths,"
he muttered. "I'll let you have the cloth for a few crowns."

I shook my head, so the man again neatly folded the cloth and put it back
in the bag exactly as though it belonged to him.

"I'll cut it up into material for trousers; then the pieces won't be so
large, and I'll be able to sell it."

"You'd better leave enough for a whole suit in one piece," I said, "and
cut up the rest for trousers."

"You think so? Yes, maybe you're right."

We calculated how much would be necessary for a grown man's suit, and took
down the string from which the letters hung to measure our own clothes, so
as to be sure to get the measurements right. Then we cut into the edge of
the cloth, and tore it across. In addition to one complete suit, there was
enough left for two good-sized pairs of trousers.

Then the man offered to sell me other things out of his sack, and I bought
some coffee and a few rolls of tobacco. He put the money away in a leather
purse, and I saw how empty the purse was, and the circumstantial and
poverty-stricken fashion in which he put the money away, afterward feeling
the outside of his pocket.

"You haven't been able to sell me much," I said, "but I don't need any
more than that."

"Business is business," said he. "I don't complain."

It was quite decent of him.

While he was making ready to depart and clearing his bed of pine needles
out of the way, I thought pityingly of his sordid little theft. Stealing
because he was needy--a side of bacon and a length of cloth which he was
trying to sell in the forest! Theft has indeed ceased to be a matter of
great moment. This is because legal punishment for misdemeanors of all
kinds has also ceased to be of great moment. It is only a dull, human
punishment; the religious element has been removed from the law, and a
local magistrate is no longer a man of mystic power.

I well remember the last time I heard a judge explain the meaning of the
oath as it should be explained. It chilled us all to the bone to hear him.
We need some witchcraft again, and the Sixth Book of Moses, and the sin
against the Holy Ghost, and signing your name in the blood of a newly
baptized child! Steal a sack of money and silver treasure, if you like,
and hide the sack in the hills where on autumn evenings a blue flame will
hover over the spot. But don't come to me with three pairs of mittens and
a side of household bacon!

The man no longer worried about the sack; leaving it behind, he crawled
out of the hut to study the weather. The coffee and tobacco I had bought I
put back into the sack, for I did not need them. When he returned, he
said:

"I think after all I'd better stop the night here with you, if you don't
mind."

In the evening he gave no indication of being prepared to contribute any
of his own food. I cooked some coffee and gave him some dry bread to eat
with it.

"You shouldn't have expenses for me," he said.

Then he began to rummage in his sack again, pushing the bacon well down so
that the cloth might not be stained by it; after this he took off his
leather belt and put it round the sack, with a loop to carry over one
shoulder.

"Now if I take the neck of the sack over the other shoulder, I'll find it
easier to carry," he said.

I gave him my letters to post on the other side of the fjeld and he stowed
them away safely, slapping the outside of his pocket afterward; I also
gave him a special envelope in which to keep the money for the stamps, and
tied it to the neck of the sack.

"Where do you live?" I asked him.

"Where can a poor man live? Of course I live by the sea. I'm sorry to say
I have a wife and children--no use denying it."

"How many children have you?"

"Four. One's got a crippled arm and the others--there's something wrong
with all of them. It's not easy for a poor devil. My wife's ill, and a few
days ago she thought she was dying and wanted Communion."

A sad note crept into his voice. But the note was false. He was telling me
a pack of lies. When they came to look for him from the village, no
Christian would have the heart to accuse a man with such a large and sick
family. This, no doubt, was his meaning.

Man, oh man, thou art worse than a mouse!

I questioned him no further, but asked him to sing something, a ballad or
a song, since we had nothing else to do.

"I've no heart to sing now," he replied. "Except possibly a hymn."

"All right; sing a hymn, then."

"Not now. I'd like to do you a favor, but--"

His uneasiness was rising. A little later he took his sack and went out.

"Well, he's gone," I thought, "but he hasn't said the customary
peace-be-with-you. I'm glad I've come into the forest," I thought. "This
is my home, and from this day forth, no mother's son shall come within my
walls again."

I made an elaborate agreement with myself that I should have no more truck
with men.

"Madame, come here," I said. "I esteem you highly, and herewith, Madame, I
undertake to enter upon a union with you for life!"

Half an hour later, the man returned. He carried no sack.

"I thought you'd gone," I said.

"Gone? I'm not a dog," he replied. "I've met people before this, and I say
good morning when I come and peace-be-with-you when I go. You shouldn't
sneer at me, you know."

"What have you done with the sack?"

"I've carried it part of the way."

His concealing the sack in case anyone should come proved he had
forethought, for it was easier to get away scot-free without a burden on
one's back. To stop him from telling me any more lies about his poverty, I
said:

"I expect you've raised plenty of dust in your day? Still do, for that
matter?"

"Well, I do what I can," he replied cheerfully. "I can lift a barrel
easier than most, and nobody was able to dance me off the floor last
Christmas! Hush--is that someone coming?"

We listened. His eyes darted toward the entrance, and in a moment he had
chosen to meet danger halfway. He was taut and splendid; I could see his
jaw working.

"It's nothing," I said.

Resolute and strong as a bull, he crawled out of the hut and was gone for
a few minutes. When he returned, breathing heavily, he said:

"It's nothing."

We lay down for the night.

"In God's name!" he said, as he settled himself on his pine bed. I fell
asleep at once, and for some time slept deeply. But during the night
restlessness seized on the man again. "Peace be with you!" I heard him
mutter as he crawled out of the hut.

In the morning I burned the man's bed of pine needles; it made a lively
fire of crackling pine in the hut.

Outside, the ground was covered with new-fallen snow.




III


There is nothing like being left alone again, to walk peacefully with
oneself in the woods. To boil one's coffee and fill one's pipe, and to
think idly and slowly as one does it.

There, now I'll fill the kettle with snow, I think, and now I'm crushing
the coffee beans with a stone; later I must beat my sleeping bag well in
the snow and get the wool white again. There is nothing in this of
literature or great novels or public opinion; does it matter? But then I
haven't been toiling just to get this coffee into my life. Literature?
When Rome ruled the world, she was no more than Greece's apprentice in
literature. Yet Rome ruled the world. Let us look too at another country
we know: it fought a war of independence the glory of which still shines,
and it brought forth the greatest school of painting in the world. Yet it
had no literature, and has none today....

Day by day I grow more knowing in the ways of the trees and the moss and
the snow on the ground, and all things are my friends. The stump of a fir
tree stands thawing in the sun; I feel my familiarity with it grow, and
sometimes I stand there loving it, for there is something in it that moves
my soul. The bark is badly broken. One winter in the deep snow, the tree
must have been crippled, and now it points upward long and naked. I put
myself in its place, and look at it with pity. My eyes perhaps have the
simple, animal expression that human eyes had in the age of the mastodons.

No doubt you will seize this opportunity to mock me, for there are many
amusing things you can say about me and this stump of a fir. Yet in your
heart, you know that I am superior to you in this as in everything else,
with the single exception that I have not your conventional
accomplishments, nor have I passed examinations. About the forest and the
earth you can teach me nothing, for here I feel what no man else has felt.

Sometimes I take the wrong direction and lose my way. Yes, truly this may
happen sometimes. But I do not begin to twist and lose myself outside my
very door, like the children of the city. I am twelve miles out, far up
the opposite bank of the Skjel River, before I begin to get lost, and then
only on a sunless day, with perhaps thick, wild snow coming down, and no
north or south in the sky. Then you must know the special marks of this
kind of tree and that, the galipot of the pine, the bark of deciduous
trees, the moss that grows at their roots, the angle of the south and
north-pointing branches, the stones that are moss-covered and those that
are bare, and the pattern of the network of veins in the leaves. From all
these things while there is daylight I can find my way.

But if the dusk falls, I know it will be impossible for me to get home
till the next day. "How shall I pass this night?" I say to myself. And I
roam about till I find a sheltered spot; the best is a crag standing with
its back to the wind. Here I collect a few armfuls of pine needles, button
my jacket tight, and take a long time to settle. No one who has not tried
it knows anything of the fine pleasure that streams through the soul as
one sits in a snug shelter on such a night. I light my pipe to pass the
time, but the tobacco doesn't agree with me because I haven't eaten, so I
put some resin in my mouth to chew as I lie thinking of many things. The
snow continues to fall outside; if I have been lucky enough to find a
shelter facing the right way, the snowdrifts will close in over me and
form a crest like a roof above my retreat. Then I am quite safe, and may
sleep or wake as I please; there will be no danger of freezing my feet.

* * * * *

Two men came to my hut; they were in a great hurry, and one of them called
to me:

"Good morning. Has a man passed this way?"

I didn't like his face. I was not his servant and his question was too
stupid.

"Many people may have passed this way. Do you mean have I _seen_ a
man go by?"

So much for him!

"I meant what I said," the man replied surlily. "I'm asking you in the
name of the law."

"Oh."

I had no desire for further conversation, and crawled into my hut.

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