I manage to reach the trading center at midday, when everyone is up and about, and the post office open. They give me a large sheet of wrapping paper and string and sealing wax; I wrap the parcel and seal it and write on the outside. There!
Oh--I forgot the slip of paper with the address--to put it inside, I mean. Stupid! But otherwise I have done what I should. As I continue on my way, I feel strangely void and deserted; no doubt because the knapsack was quite heavy after all, and now I am well rid of it. "The last pleasure!" I think suddenly. And as I walk on I think irrelevantly: "The last country, the last island, the last pleasure...."
XXXI
What now?
I didn't know at first. The winter stood before me, my summer behind me--no task, no yearning, no ambition. As it made no difference where I stayed, I remembered a town I knew, and thought I might as well go there--why not? A man cannot forever sit by the sea, and it is not necessary to misunderstand him if he decides to leave it. So he leaves his solitude--others have done so before him--and a mild curiosity drives him to see the ships and the horses and the tiny frostbitten gardens of a certain town. When he arrives there, he begins to wonder in his idleness if he does not know someone in this town, in this terrifyingly large town. The moonlight is bright now, and it amuses him to give himself a certain address to visit evening after evening, and to take up his post there as though something depended on it. He is not expected anywhere else, so he has the time. Then one evening someone finds him reading under a lamppost, stops suddenly and stares, takes a few steps toward him, and bends forward searchingly.
"Isn't it--? Oh, no, excuse me, I thought--"
"Yes, it is. Good evening, Miss Torsen."
"Why, good evening. I thought it looked like you. Good evening. Yes, thank you, very well. And thanks for the knapsack; I understood all at once--I quite understand--"
"Do you live here? What a strange coincidence!"
"Yes, I live here; those are my windows. You wouldn't like to come up, would you? No, perhaps you wouldn't."