Absaloms Hair

Absalom's Hair

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Title: Absalom's Hair
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]

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Language: English
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ABSALOM'S HAIR
BJORNSTJERNE BJORNSON

CHAPTER 1
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.
The house looked out over a bay studded with islands; farther out were
more islands and the open sea. An immensely long building, raised on
an old and massive foundation, its eastern wing barely half furnished,
the western inhabited by Harald Kaas, who lived his curious life here.
These wings were connected by two covered galleries, one above the
other, with stairs at each end.
Curiously enough, these galleries did not face the sea, that is, the south,
but the fields and woods to the north. The portion of the house between
the two wings was a neutral territory--namely, a large dining-room with
a ballroom above it, neither of which was used in later years.

Harald Kaas's suite of rooms was distinguished from without by a
mighty elk's head with its enormous antlers, which was set up over the
gallery.
In the gallery itself were heads of bear, wolf, fox and lynx, with stuffed
birds from land and sea. Skins and guns hung on the walls of the
anteroom, the inner rooms were also full of skins and impregnated with
the smell of wild animals and tobacco-smoke. Harald