Victoria

by Knut Hamsun

"Dead? When did she die? Do you say Victoria is dead?"

"She is dead," replied the Tutor. "She died this morning, this very forenoon." He put his hand in his pocket and brought out a thick letter. "And she confided this letter to me to hand to you. Here it is. After my death, she said. She is dead. I hand you this letter. My mission is ended."

And without taking leave, without a word more, the Tutor turned and strolled slowly down the street and vanished.

Johannes was left with the letter in his hand. Victoria was dead. He spoke her name aloud again and again and his voice was without feeling, almost callous. He looked at the letter and recognized the writing; there were big and small letters, the lines were straight, and she who had written them was dead!

Then he entered his doorway, went upstairs, found the right key to put into his latch and opened his door. His room was cold and dark. He sat down in the window and read Victoria's letter by the last of the daylight.

"Dear Johannes," she wrote. "When you read this letter I shall be dead. Everything is so strange to me now, I am no longer ashamed to write to you again as though nothing had happened to prevent it. Before, while I was altogether among the living, I would rather have suffered night and day than written to you again; but now I have begun to pass away I do not think so any longer. Strangers have seen me bleed, the Doctor has examined me and found that I have only a shred of a lung left; what is there to hold me back now?

"I have been thinking as I lay here in bed of the last words I said to you. It was that evening in the wood. I never thought then that they would be my last words, for then I would have said good-bye to you at the same time and thanked you. Now I shall never see you again, so now I am sorry I did not throw myself down and kiss your shoe and the ground you trod on, to show you how unspeakably I have loved you. I have lain here both yesterday and today wishing I could be just well enough to go home again and walk in the wood and find the place where we sat when you held both my hands; for then I could lie down there and see if I could find the trace of you and kiss all the heather about. But I cannot come home now, unless, as Mamma thinks, I may possibly get a little better.

"Dear Johannes, it is so curious to think that all I have ever been able to do was to come into the world and love you and now say good-bye to life. It is strange indeed to lie here waiting for the day and the hour. I am moving step by step away from life and the people in the street and the noise of the traffic; I shall never see spring again either, and these houses and streets and the trees in the Park I shall leave behind. Today I was allowed to sit up in bed and look out of the window a little while. Down at the corner I saw two people meet, they stopped and shook hands and laughed at what they said; but it seemed so strange to me that I who lay and watched them was to die. It made me think—of course those two people do not know that I am lying here waiting for my hour; but if they did know it they would still stop and talk just as they are doing now. Last night when it was dark I thought my last hour had come, my heart began to stand still and I seemed to hear already the distant roar of eternity coming towards me. But the next moment I was back from somewhere a long way off and began to breathe again. It was a feeling I can't describe at all. Mamma thinks it was perhaps only the river and the waterfall at home that were in my mind.

"O God, if you knew how I have loved you, Johannes. I have not been able to show it to you, so many things have come in my way, and above all my own nature. Papa was hard on himself in the same way and I am his daughter. But now that I am to die and it is all too late, I write to you once more and tell you so. I ask myself why I do it, as it cannot make any difference to you, especially as I shall not even be alive any more; but I want so much to be near you to the last so that I may not feel more lonely than before, at any rate. When you read this it is as though I can see your shoulders and hands and watch every movement you make as you hold the letter before you and read it. So we are not so far from each other, I think to myself. I cannot send for you, I have no right to do that. Mamma would have sent for you two days ago, but I would rather write. And I would rather you should remember me as I was once, before I began to be ill. I remember you ... [here some words are omitted] ... my eyes and eye-brows; but even they are not as they were. That is another reason why I would not have you come. And I will ask you not to see me in my coffin either. I expect I am much the same as when I was alive, only a little paler, and I am lying in a yellow dress; but still you would regret it if you came and saw me.

"Now I have been writing at this letter so many times today and yet I have not been able to say a thousandth part of what I wanted to say. It is so terrible for me to die, I do not want to, I am still hoping so fervently to God that perhaps I might get a little better, if only till the spring. Then the days are light and there are leaves on the trees. If I got well again now I would never be unkind to you any more, Johannes. How I have cried and thought about that! Oh, I would go out and stroke all the stones in the street and stop and thank every step of the stairs as I went by and be good to all. It would not matter how badly off I was if I might only live. I should never complain again about anything; no, I would smile at any one who attacked me and struck me and thank and praise God if I might live. My life is so unlived, I have not been able to do anything for anybody, and this failure of a life is to end now. If you knew how unwilling I was to die perhaps you would do something, do all in your power. I don't suppose you can do anything; but I thought that if you and every one else prayed for me and would not let me go then God would grant me life. Oh, how thankful I should be, I would never do harm to any one again, but smile at whatever fell to my lot, if only I were allowed to live.