I said nothing, I never opened my mouth once. I sat down again next the door and listened to the noise. They all screamed together, even the children, and the girl who wanted to explain how the whole disturbance commenced. If I only kept quiet, it would all blow over sometime; it would surely not come to the worst if I only did not utter a word; and what word after all could I have to say? Was it not perhaps winter outside, and far advanced into the night, besides? Was that a time to strike a blow, and show one could hold one’s own? No folly now! … So I sat still and made no attempt to leave the house; I never even blushed at keeping silent, never felt ashamed, although I had almost been shown the door. I stared coolly, case-hardened, at the wall where Christ hung in an oleograph, and held my tongue obstinately during all the landlady’s attack.
“Well, if it is me you want to get quit of, ma’am, there will be nothing in the way as far as I am concerned,” said one of the card-players as he stood up. The other card-players rose as well.
“No, I didn’t mean you—nor you either,” replied the landlady to them. “If there’s any need to, I will show well enough who I mean, if there’s the least need to, if I know myself rightly. Oh, it will be shown quick enough who it is. …”
She talked with pauses, gave me these thrusts at short intervals, and spun it out to make it clearer and clearer that it was me she meant. “Quiet,” said I to myself; “only keep quiet!” She had not asked me to go—not expressly, not in plain words. Just no putting on side on my part—no untimely pride! Brave it out! … That was really most singular green hair on that Christ in the oleograph. It was not too unlike green grass, or expressed with exquisite exactitude thick meadow grass. Ha! a perfectly correct remark—unusually thick meadow grass. … A train of fleeting ideas darts at this moment through my head. From green grass to the text, Each life is like unto grass that is kindled; from that to the Day of Judgment, when all will be consumed; then a little detour down to the earthquake in Lisbon, about which something floated before me in reference to a brass Spanish spitoon and an ebony pen handle that I had seen down at Ylajali’s. Ah, yes, all was transitory, just like grass that was kindled. It all ended in four planks and a winding-sheet. “Winding-sheets to be had from Miss Andersen’s, on the right of the door.” … And all this was tossed about in my head during the despairing moment when my landlady was about to thrust me from her door.
“He doesn’t hear,” she yelled. “I tell you, you’ll quit this house. Now you know it! I believe, God blast me, that the man is mad, I do! Now, out you go, on the blessed spot, and so no more chat about it.”
I looked towards the door, not in order to leave—no, certainly not in order to leave. An audacious notion seized me—if there had been a key in the door, I would have turned it and locked myself in along with the rest to escape going. I had a perfectly hysterical dread of going out into the streets again.
But there was no key in the door.
Then, suddenly my landlord’s voice mingled with that of his wife, I stood still with amazement. The same man who had threatened me a while ago took my part, strangely enough, now. He said:
“No, it won’t do to turn folk out at night; do you know one can be punished for doing that?”
“I didn’t know if there was a punishment for that; I couldn’t say, but perhaps it was so,” and the wife bethought herself quickly, grew quiet, and spoke no more.
She placed two pieces of bread and butter before me for supper, but I did not touch them, just out of gratitude to the man; so I pretended that I had had a little food in town.
When at length I took myself off to the anteroom to go to bed, she came out after me, stopped on the threshold, and said loudly, whilst her unsightly figure seemed to strut out towards me:
“But this is the last night you sleep here, so now you know it.”
“Yes, yes,” I replied.
There would perhaps be some way of finding a shelter tomorrow, if I tried hard for it. I would surely be able to find some hiding-place. For the time being I would rejoice that I was not obliged to go out tonight.
I slept till between five and six in the morning—it was not yet light when I awoke—but all the same I got up at once. I had lain in all my clothes on account of the cold, and had no dressing to do. When I had drunk a little cold water and opened the door quietly, I went
