I muse on all this, and understand that her staying here is somehow
connected with her carnal desires, with the fact that Solem is still here.
How muddled it all is, and how this handsome girl has been spoiled! I saw
her not long ago, tall and proud, upright, untouched, walking
intentionally close to Solem, yet not replying to his greeting. Did she
suspect him of complicity in the death of the lawyer and avoid him for
that reason? Not in the least; she avoided him less than before, even
letting him take her letters to the post office, which she had not done
previously. But she was unbalanced, a poor thing that had lost her
bearings. Whenever she could, she secretly defiled herself with pitch,
with dung; she sniffed at foulness and was not repelled.
One day, when Solem swore a needlessly strong oath at a horse that was
restless, she looked at him, shivered, and went a deep red. But she
mastered herself at once, and asked Josephine:
"Isn't that man leaving soon?"
"Yes," Josephine replied, "in a few days."
Though she had seized this opportunity to ask her question with a great
show of indifference, I am certain it was an important one to her. She
went away in silence.
Yes, Miss Torsen stayed, for she was sexually bound to Solem. Solem's
despair, Solem's rough passion that she herself had inflamed, his
brutality, his masculinity, his greedy hands, his looks--she sniffed at
all this and was excited by it. She had grown so unnatural that her sexual
needs were satisfied by keeping this man at a distance. The Torsen type no
doubt lies in her solitary bed at night, reveling in the sensation that in
another house a man lies writhing for her.
But her friend, the actor? He was in no sense the other's equal. There was
nothing of the bull in him, nothing of action, only the braggadocio of the
theater....
* * * * *
Here am I, growing small and petty with this life. I question Solem about
the accident. We are alone together in the woodshed.
Why had he lied and said the Dane wanted to climb the Blue Peak that
unfortunate Sunday morning?
Solem looked at me, pretending not to understand.