Knut Hamsun, The Ring is Closed
Souvenir Press, 2010. trans: Robert Ferguson (org. “Ringen Sluttet”, 1936 )
Also from this book: Ringen Sluttet
Let me look at you now, you’re so wonderfully unpainted today, Olga, he said and switched on the ceiling light.
Yes. And it may well be I had my reasons for that, since I knew I was coming on board.
Well I don’t suppose it was for the benefit of me and the Mate.
Abel, why don’t you get married too?
You’re right, I should really have someone at home to take care of the milking and the chickens and mend my stockings.
I’m being serious.
I’ve been married, he said.
That was a piece of nonsense. I’m the one you should’ve had, Abel.
Yes, you probably were. But I had no chance.
No.
And anyway, I would only have lost you again if I had won you.
Yes, if you couldn’t keep hold of me.
Hold of you, Olga? With what? You’re impossible to get a hold of. You’re like that electric light there. A fire created just for the eyes, for the vision. Maybe there’s a tiny amount of heat in it, but it’s not like the heat of a fire.
Not like with a stove, exactly. But I do try, in my fashion, to be held onto, she said quietly. Did you notice when we were out together that time – with Clemens, I mean – that I didn’t call him by his first name?
In the restaurant, yes I remember that.
Not one single time. I just said You, so I didn’t have to say his name. I saved that for my new husband, they both have the same name, they’re both William. Of course, he wasn’t my new husband then, but I saved it for him. I wanted to do that for him. Do that much for him.
Abel blushed furiously and tried to hide it by being casual: Very nicely done, I think.
Olga flushed: Oh, Abel, it’s so kind of you to say that. No-one else seems to think it matters.
Oh yes, very nicely done. But – if I can say this – it’s not – I mean, there’s tenderness in it alright. But not the other thing. It’s not the heat of a fire.
Olga complains: I’ve worked hard on that too.
Silence.
Around her wrist there’s a bracelet he recognises, but apart from that she isn’t wearing a lot of rings and suchlike, she’s modest in her jewelery. Suddenly he feels for her. This is Olga, with whom he was once so desperately in love, the only one for him at school, and in town, the only one in the whole world. He laid his hand on hers.
What is it?
Nothing, he says and takes his hand away.
No, what was it, Abel?
Nothing. Just a moment I forgot to remember to forget.
p.219
Am I boring you?
No, Olga.
No, she wasn’t boring him. But the way she spoke it was as though she spoke of a love of some kind, and he didn’t seize the moment, didn’t grab it, instead he was suspicious: maybe she would lead him on, a long way on, and then leave? What did he know – an unhappy woman, time on her hands, passionate, tender, hysterical? Sure he could make a pass at her, and if necessary put up with the rejection and the loss. But that would be such a pity, because this, this here, this was Olga.
p.309
