Author: Bjornstjerne Bjornson
Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5052]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on April 11, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** Start of the project gutenberg
EBOOK, Absalom’s hair ***
Nicole Apostola, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.
BJORNSTJERNE BJORNSON
Harald Kaas was sixty.
He had given up his free, uncriticised bachelor life;
his yacht was no longer seen off the coast in summer;
his tours to England and the south had ceased; nay,
he was rarely to be found even at his club in Christiania.
His gigantic figure was never seen in the doorways;
he was failing.
Bandy-legged he had always been, but this defect had
increased; his herculean back was rounded, and he
stooped a little. His forehead, always of the
broadest—no one else’s hat would fit
him--was now one of the highest, that is to say,
he had lost all his hair, except a ragged lock over
each ear and a thin fringe behind. He was beginning
also to lose his teeth, which were strong though small,
and blackened by tobacco; and now, instead of “deuce
take it” he said “deush take it.”
He had always held his hands half closed as though
grasping something; now they had stiffened so that
he could never open them fully. The little finger
of his left hand had been bitten off “in gratitude”
by an adversary whom he had knocked down: according
to Harald’s version of the story, he had compelled
the fellow to swallow the piece on the spot.
He was fond of caressing the stump, and it often served
as an introduction to the history of his exploits,
which became greater and greater as he grew older
and quieter.
His small sharp eyes were deep set and looked at one
with great intensity. There was power in his
individuality, and, besides shrewd sense, he possessed
a considerable gift for mechanics. His boundless
self-esteem was not devoid of greatness, and the emphasis
with which both body and soul proclaimed themselves
made him one of the originals of the country.
Why was he nothing more?
He lived on his estate, Hellebergene, whose large
woods skirted the coast, while numerous leasehold
farms lay along the course of the river. At one
time this estate had belonged to the Kurt family,
and had now come back to them, in so far as that Harald’s
father, as every one knew, was not a Kaas at all, but
a Kurt; it was he who had got the estate together
again; a book might be written about the ways and
means that he had employed.
