Pelle the Conqueror, Complete by Martin Anderson Nexo

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"Wouldn't you have done better to buy a cottage-holding with twelve
or fourteen acres of land, and that in a good state of cultivation?"
he asked.

Lasse turned on him impatiently. "Yes, and then a man might stint
and save all his life, and never get beyond cutting off his fly
to mend his seat; he'd most likely spend twice what he made! What
the deuce! I might as well have stayed where I was. Here, it's true,
I do work harder and I have to use my brains more, but then there's
a future before me. When I've once got the place under cultivation
this will be a farm to hold its own with any of them!" Lasse gazed
proudly over his holding; in his mind's eye it was waving with grain
and full of prime cattle.

"It would carry six horses and a score or two of cows easily," he
said aloud. "That would bring in a nice income! What do you think,
Karna?"

"I think the dinner will be cold," said Karna, laughing. She was
perfectly happy.

At dinner Lasse proposed that Pelle should send his clothes to
be washed and mended at home. "You've certainly got enough to do
without that," he said indulgently. "Butcher Jensen goes to market
every Saturday; he'd take it for you and put it down by the church,
and it would be odd if on a Sunday no one from the heath went to
church, who could bring the bundle back to us."

But Pelle suddenly turned stubborn and made no reply.

"I just thought it would be too much for you to wash and mend for
yourself," said Lasse patiently. "In town one must have other things
to think about, and then it isn't really proper work for a man!"

"I'll do it myself all right," murmured Pelle ungraciously.

Now he would show them that he could keep himself decent. It was
partly in order to revenge himself for his own neglect that he
refused the offer.

"Yes, yes," said Lasse meekly; "I just asked you. I hope you won't
take it amiss."

However strong Karna might be, and however willing to help in
everything, Lasse did greatly feel the need of a man to work with
him. Work of a kind that needed two had accumulated, and Pelle did
not spare himself. The greater part of the day was spent in heaving
great stones out of the soil and dragging them away; Lasse had
knocked a sledge together, and the two moorland horses were
harnessed up to it.

"Yes, you mustn't look at them too closely," said Lasse, as he
stroked the two scarecrows caressingly. "Just wait until a few
months have gone by, and then you'll see! But they've plenty of
spirit now."

There was much to be done, and the sweat was soon pouring down their
faces; but they were both in good spirits. Lasse was surprised at
the boy's strength--with two or three such lads he could turn the
whole wilderness over. Once again he sighed that Pelle was not
living at home; but to this Pelle still turned a deaf ear. And
before they were aware of it Karna had come out again and was
calling them to supper.

"I think we'll harness the horses and drive Pelle halfway to town--
as a reward for the work he's done," said Lasse gaily. "And we've
both earned a drive." So the two screws were put into the cart.

It was amusing to watch Lasse; he was a notable driver, and one
could not but be almost persuaded that he had a pair of blood horses
in front of him. When they met any one he would cautiously gather up
the reins in order to be prepared lest the horses should shy--"they
might so easily bolt," he said solemnly. And when he succeeded in
inducing them to trot he was delighted. "They take some holding," he
would say, and to look at him you would have thought they called for
a strong pair of wrists. "Damn it all, I believe I shall have to put
the curb on them!" And he set both his feet against the dashboard,
and sawed the reins to and fro.

When half the distance was covered Father Lasse wanted to drive
just a little further, and again a little further still--oh, well,
then, they might as well drive right up to the house! He had quite
forgotten that the following day would be a day of hard labor both
for himself and for the horses. But at last Pelle jumped out.

"Shan't we arrange that about your washing?" asked Lasse.

"No!" Pelle turned his face away--surely they might stop asking
him that!

"Well, well, take care of yourself, and thanks for your help.
You'll come again as soon as you can?"

Pelle smiled at them, but said nothing; he dared not open his mouth,
for fear of the unmanly lump that had risen in his throat. Silently
he held out his hand and ran toward the town.

VI

The other apprentices were able to provide themselves with clothes,
as they worked on their own account in their own time; they got work
from their friends, and at times they pirated the master's customers,
by underbidding him in secret. They kept their own work under the
bench; when the master was not at home they got it out and proceeded
with it. "To-night I shall go out and meet my girl," they would say,
laughing. Little Nikas said nothing at all.

Pelle had no friends to give him work, and he could not have done
much. If the others had much to do after work-hours or on Sundays
he had to help them; but he gained nothing by so doing. And he also
had Nilen's shoes to keep mended, for old acquaintances' sake.

Jeppe lectured them at great length on the subject of tips, as
he had promised; for the townsfolk had been complaining of this
burdensome addition to their expenditure, and in no measured
terms had sworn either to abate or abolish this tax on all retail
transactions. But it was only because they had read of the matter
in the newspapers, and didn't want to be behind the capital! They
always referred to the subject when Pelle went round with his shoes,
and felt in their purses; if there was a shilling there they would
hide it between their fingers, and say that he should have something
next time for certain--he must remind them of it another time! At
first he did remind them--they had told him to do so--but then Jeppe
received a hint that his youngest apprentice must stop his attempts
at swindling. Pelle could not understand it, but he conceived an
increasing dislike of these people, who could resort to such a
shameless trick in order to save a penny piece, which they would
never have missed.

Pelle, who had been thinking that he had had enough of the world
of poor folk, and must somehow contrive to get into another class,
learned once again to rely on the poor, and rejoiced over every pair
of poor folk's shoes which the master anathematized because they
were so worn out. The poor were not afraid to pay a shilling if they
had one; it made him feel really sad to see how they would search in
every corner to get a few pence together, and empty their children's
money-boxes, while the little ones stood by in silence, looking on
with mournful eyes. And if he did not wish to accept their money
they were offended. The little that he did receive he owed to people
who were as poor as himself.

Money, to these folk, no longer consisted of those round,
indifferent objects which people in the upper strata of human
society piled up in whole heaps. Here every shilling meant so much
suffering or happiness, and a grimy little copper would still the
man's angry clamor and the child's despairing cry for food. Widow
Hoest gave him a ten-ore piece, and he could not help reflecting
that she had given him her mid-day meal for two days to come!

One day, as he was passing the miserable hovels which lay out by
the northern dunes, a poor young woman came to her door and called
to him; she held the remains of a pair of elastic-sided boots in her
hand. "Oh, shoemaker's boy, do be so kind as to mend these a bit for
me!" she pleaded. "Just sew them up anyhow, so that they'll stick
on my feet for half the evening. The stone-masons are giving their
feast, and I do so want to go to it!" Pelle examined the boots;
there was not much to be done for them, nevertheless he took them,
and mended them in his own time. He learned from Jens that the woman
was the widow of a stone-cutter, who was killed by an explosion
shortly after their marriage. The boots looked quite decent when
he returned them.

"Well, I've no money, but I do offer you many, many thanks!" she
said, looking delightedly at the boots; "and how nice you've made
them look! God bless you for it."

"Thanks killed the blacksmith's cat," said Pelle smiling. Her
pleasure was contagious.

"Yes, and God's blessing falls where two poor people share their
bed," the young woman rejoined jestingly. "Still, I wish you
everything good as payment--now I can dance after all!"

Pelle was quite pleased with himself as he made off. But few doors
farther on another poor woman accosted him; she had evidently heard
of the success of the first, and there she stood holding a dirty
pair of children's boots, which she earnestly begged him to mend.
He took the boots and repaired them although it left him still
poorer; he knew too well what need was to refuse. This was the first
time that any one in the town had regarded him as an equal, and
recognized him at the first glance as a fellow-creature. Pelle
pondered over this; he did not know that poverty is cosmopolitan.

When he went out after the day's work he took a back seat; he went
about with the poorest boys and behaved as unobtrusively as possible.
But sometimes a desperate mood came over him, and at times he would
make himself conspicuous by behavior that would have made old Lasse
weep; as, for example, when he defiantly sat upon a freshly-tarred
bollard. He became thereby the hero of the evening; but as soon as
he was alone he went behind a fence and let down his breeches in
order to ascertain the extent of the damage. He had been running his
errands that day in the best clothes he possessed. This was no joke.
Lasse had deeply imbued him with his own moderation, and had taught
him to treat his things carefully, so that it seemed to Pelle almost
a pious duty. But Pelle felt himself forsaken by all the gods, and
now he defied them.

The poor women in the streets were the only people who had eyes for
him. "Now look at the booby, wearing his confirmation jacket on a
weekday!" they would say, and call him over in order to give him a
lecture, which as a rule ended in an offer to repair the damage. But
it was all one to Pelle; if he ran about out-of-doors in his best
clothes he was only doing as the town did. At all events he had
a shirt on, even if it was rather big! And the barber's assistant
himself, who looked most important in tail-coat and top-hat, and was
the ideal of every apprentice, did not always wear a shirt; Pelle
had once noticed that fact as the youth was swinging some ladies.
Up in the country, where a man was appraised according to the number
of his shirts, such a thing would have been impossible. But here in
town people did not regard such matters so strictly.

He was no longer beside himself with astonishment at the number of
people--respectable folk for the most part--who had no abiding place
anywhere, but all through the year drifted in the most casual manner
from one spot to another. Yet the men looked contented, had wives
and children, went out on Sundays, and amused themselves; and after
all why should one behave as if the world was coming to an end
because one hadn't a barrel of salt pork or a clamp of potatoes to
see one through the winter? Recklessness was finally Pelle's refuge
too; when all the lights seemed to have gone out of the future it
helped him to take up the fairy-tale of life anew, and lent a glamor
to naked poverty. Imagination entered even into starvation: are you
or are you not going to die of it?

Pelle was poor enough for everything to be still before him, and
he possessed the poor man's alert imagination; the great world and
the romance of life were the motives that drew him through the void,
that peculiar music of life which is never silent, but murmurs to
the reckless and the careful alike. Of the world he knew well enough
that it was something incomprehensibly vast--something that was
always receding; yet in eighty days one could travel right round it,
to the place where men walk about with their heads downward, and
back again, and experience all its wonders. He himself had set out
into this incomprehensible world, and here he was, stranded in
this little town, where there was never a crumb to feed a hungry
imagination; nothing but a teeming confusion of petty cares. One
felt the cold breath of the outer winds, and the dizziness of great
spaces; when the little newspaper came the small tradesmen and
employers would run eagerly across the street, their spectacles on
their noses, and would speak, with gestures of amazement, of the
things that happened outside. "China," they would say; "America!"
and fancy that they themselves made part of the bustling world. But
Pelle used to wish most ardently that something great and wonderful
might wander thither and settle down among them just for once! He
would have been quite contented with a little volcano underfoot,
so that the houses would begin to sway and bob to one another; or
a trifling inundation, so that ships would ride over the town, and
have to moor themselves to the weather-cock on the church steeple.
He had an irrational longing that something of this kind should
happen, something to drive the blood from his heart and make his
hair stand on end. But now he had enough to contend against apart
from matters of this sort; the world must look after itself until
times were better.

It was more difficult to renounce the old fairy-tales, for poverty
itself had sung them into his heart, and they spoke to him with
Father Lasse's quivering voice. "A rich child often lies in a poor
mother's lap," his father used to say, when he prophesied concerning
his son's future, and the saying sank deep into the boy's mind, like
the refrain of a song. But he had learned this much, that there were
no elephants here, on whose necks a plucky youngster could ride
astraddle, in order to ride down the tiger which was on the point
of tearing the King of the Himalayas to pieces so that he would of
course receive the king's daughter and half his kingdom as a reward
for his heroic deed. Pelle often loitered about the harbor, but no
beautifully dressed little girl ever fell into the water, so that he
might rescue her, and then, when he was grown up, make her his wife.
And if such a thing did really happen he knew now that his elders
would cheat him out of any tip he might receive. And he had quite
given up looking for the golden coach which was to run over him,
so that the two terrified ladies, who would be dressed in mourning,
would take him into their carriage and carry him off to their six-
storied castle! Of course, they would adopt him permanently in place
of the son which they had just lost, and who, curiously enough, was
exactly the same age as himself. No, there were no golden coaches
here!

Out in the great world the poorest boy had the most wonderful
prospects; all the great men the books had ever heard of had been
poor lads like himself, who had reached their high estate through
good fortune and their own valor. But all the men in town who
possessed anything had attained their wealth by wearily plodding
forward and sucking the blood of the poor. They were always sitting
and brooding over their money, and they threw nothing away for a
lucky fellow to pick up; and they left nothing lying about, lest
some poor lad should come and take it. Not one of them considered
it beneath him to pick up an old trouser-button off the pavement,
and carry it home.

One evening Pelle was running out to fetch half a pound of canister
tobacco for Jeppe. In front of the coal-merchant's house the big dog,
as always, made for his legs, and he lost the twenty-five-ore piece.
While he was looking for it, an elderly man came up to him. Pelle
knew him very well; he was Monsen the shipowner, the richest man
in the town.

"Have you lost something, my lad?" he asked, and began to assist
in the search.

"Now he will question me," thought Pelle. "And then I shall answer
him boldly, and then he will look at me attentively and say--"

Pelle was always hoping for some mysterious adventure, such as
happens to an able lad and raises him to fortune.

But the shipowner did nothing he was expected to do. He merely
searched eagerly, and inquired: "Where were you walking? Here,
weren't you? Are you quite certain of that?"

"In any case he'll give me another twenty-five ore," thought Pelle.
"Extraordinary--how eager he is!" Pelle did not really want to go on
searching, but he could not very well leave off before the other.

"Well, well!" said the shipowner at last, "you may as well whistle
for those twenty-five ore. But what a booby you are!" And he moved
on, and Pelle looked after him for a long while before putting his
hand into his own pocket.

Later, as he was returning that way, he saw a man bowed over the
flagstones, striking matches as he searched. It was Monsen. The
sight tickled Pelle tremendously. "Have you lost anything?" he asked
mischievously, standing on the alert, lest he should get a box on
the ear. "Yes, yes; twenty-five ore;" groaned the shipowner. "Can't
you help me to find it, my boy?"

Well, he had long understood that Monsen was the richest man in the
town, and that he had become so by provisioning ships with spoiled
foodstuffs, and refitting old crank vessels, which he heavily
insured. And he knew who was a thief and who a bankrupt speculator,
and that Merchant Lau only did business with the little shopkeepers,
because his daughter had gone to the bad. Pelle knew the secret
pride of the town, the "Top-galeass," as she was called, who in her
sole self represented the allurements of the capital, and he knew
the two sharpers, and the consul with the disease which was eating
him up. All this was very gratifying knowledge for one of the
rejected.

He had no intention of letting the town retain any trace of those
splendors with which he had once endowed it. In his constant
ramblings he stripped it to the buff. For instance, there stood the
houses of the town, some retiring, some standing well forward, but
all so neat on the side that faced the street, with their wonderful
old doorways and flowers in every window. Their neatly tarred
framework glistened, and they were always newly lime-washed, ochrous
yellow or dazzling white, sea-green, or blue as the sky. And on
Sundays there was quite a festive display of flags. But Pelle had
explored the back quarters of every house; and there were sinks and
traps there, with dense slimy growths, and stinking refuse-barrels,
and one great dustbin with a drooping elder-tree over it. And the
spaces between the cobble-stones were foul with the scales of
herrings and the guts of codfish, and the lower portions of the
walls were covered with patches of green moss.

The bookbinder and his wife went about hand in hand when they set
out for the meeting of some religious society. But at home they
fought, and in chapel, as they sat together and sang out of the
same hymn-book, they would secretly pinch one another's legs. "Yes,"
people used to say, "such a nice couple!" But the town couldn't
throw dust in Pelle's eyes; he knew a thing or two. If only he had
known just how to get himself a new blouse!

Some people didn't go without clothes so readily; they were
forever making use of that fabulous thing--credit! At first it took
his breath away to discover that the people here in the town got
everything they wanted without paying money for it. "Will you please
put it down?" they would say, when they came for their boots; and
"it's to be entered," he himself would say, when he made a purchase
for his employers. All spoke the same magical formula, and Pelle was
reminded of Father Lasse, who had counted his shillings over a score
of times before he ventured to buy anything. He anticipated much
from this discovery, and it was his intention to make good use of
the magic words when his own means became exhausted.

Now, naturally, he was wiser. He had discovered that the very poor
must always go marketing with their money in their hands, and even
for the others there came a day of reckoning. The master already
spoke with horror of the New Year; and it was very unfortunate for
his business that the leather-sellers had got him in their pocket,
so that he could not buy his material where it was cheapest. All
the small employers made the same complaint.

But the fairy-tale of credit was not yet exhausted--there was
still a manner of drawing a draft upon fortune, which could be kept
waiting, and on the future, which redeems all drafts. Credit was
a spark of poetry in the scramble of life; there were people going
about who were poor as church mice, yet they played the lord. Alfred
was such a lucky fellow; he earned not a red cent, but was always
dressed like a counter-jumper, and let himself want for nothing. If
he took a fancy to anything he simply went in and got it on "tick";
and he was never refused. His comrades envied him and regarded him
as a child of fortune.

Pelle himself had a little flirtation with fortune. One day he went
gaily into a shop, in order to procure himself some underclothing.
When he asked for credit they looked at him as though he could not
be quite sane, and he had to go away without effecting his object.
"There must be some secret about it that I don't know," he thought;
and he dimly remembered another boy, who couldn't stir the pot to
cook his porridge or lay the table for himself, because he didn't
know the necessary word. He sought Alfred forthwith in order to
receive enlightenment.

Alfred was wearing new patent braces, and was putting on his collar.
On his feet were slippers with fur edging, which looked like feeding
pigeons. "I got them from a shopkeeper's daughter," he said; and he
coquetted with his legs; "she's quite gone on me. A nice girl too--
only there's no money."

Pelle explained his requirements.

"Shirts! shirts!" Alfred chortled with delight, and clapped his
hands before his face. "Good Lord, he wants to gets shirts on tick!
If only they had been linen shirts!" He was near bursting with
laughter.

Pelle tried again. As a peasant--for he was still that--he had
thought of shirts first of all; but now he wanted a summer overcoat
and rubber cuffs. "Why do you want credit?" asked the shopkeeper,
hesitating. "Are you expecting any money? Or is there any one who
will give you a reference?"

No, Pelle didn't want to bring any one else into it; it was simply
that he had no money.

"Then wait until you have," said the shopkeeper surlily. "We don't
clothe paupers!" Pelle slunk away abashed.

"You're a fool!" said Alfred shortly. "You are just like Albinus--he
can never learn how to do it!"

"How do you do it then?" asked Pelle meekly.

"How do I do it--how do I do it?" Alfred could give no explanation;
"it just came of itself. But naturally I don't tell them that I'm
poor! No, you'd better leave it alone--it'll never succeed with you!"

"Why do you sit there and pinch your upper lip?" asked Pelle
discontentedly.

"Pinch? You goat, I'm stroking my moustache!"

VII

On Saturday afternoon Pelle was busily sweeping the street. It was
getting on for evening; in the little houses there was already
a fire in the grate; one could hear it crackling at Builder
Rasmussen's and Swedish Anders', and the smell of broiled herrings
filled the street. The women were preparing something extra good in
order to wheedle their husbands when they came home with the week's
wages. Then they ran across to the huckster's for schnaps and beer,
leaving the door wide open behind them; there was just half a minute
to spare while the herring was getting cooked on the one side! And
now Pelle sniffed it afar off--Madame Rasmussen was tattling away
to the huckster, and a voice screeched after her: "Madame Rasmussen!
Your herring is burning!" Now she came rushing back, turning her
head confusedly from house to house as she scampered across the
street and into her house. The blue smoke drifted down among the
houses; the sun fell lower and filled the street with gold-dust.

There were people sweeping all along the street; Baker Jorgen, the
washerwoman, and the Comptroller's maid-servant. The heavy boughs
of the mulberry-tree across the road drooped over the wall and
offered their last ripe fruits to whomsoever would pick them. On
the other side of the wall the rich merchant Hans--he who married
the nurse-maid--was pottering about his garden. He never came out,
and the rumor ran that he was held a prisoner by his wife and her
kin. But Pelle had leaned his ear against the wall, and had heard
a stammering old voice repeating the same pet names, so that it
sounded like one of those love-songs that never come to an end; and
when in the twilight he slipped out of his attic window and climbed
on to the ridge of the roof, in order to take a look at the world,
he had seen a tiny little white-haired man walking down there in the
garden, with his arm round the waist of a woman younger than himself.
They were like a couple of young lovers, and they had to stop every
other moment in order to caress one another. The most monstrous
things were said of him and his money; of his fortune, that once
upon a time was founded on a paper of pins, and was now so great
that some curse must rest upon it.