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Pelle the Conqueror, Complete by Martin Anderson Nexo

M >> Martin Anderson Nexo >> Pelle the Conqueror, Complete




And one day the fishing-boats arrive! They come gliding across
from Hellavik and Nogesund on the Swedish coast. They cut swiftly
through the water, heeling far over under their queer lateen sails,
like hungry sea-birds that sweep the waves with one wing-tip in
their search for booty. A mile to seaward the fishermen of the town
receive them with gunshots; they have no permission to anchor in
the fishing port, but have to rent moorings for themselves in the
old ship's harbor, and to spread out the gear to dry toward the
north. The craftsmen of the town come flocking down to the harbor,
discussing the foreign thieves who have come from a poorer country
in order to take the bread out of the mouths of the townsfolk;
for they are inured to all weathers, and full of courage, and are
successful in their fishing. They say the same things every Spring,
but when they want to buy herrings they deal with the Swedes, who
sell more cheaply than the Bornholmers. "Perhaps our fishermen wear
leather boots?" inquires Jeppe. "No, they wear wooden shoes week-
days and Sunday alike. Let the wooden-shoe makers deal with them--I
buy where the fish is cheapest!"

It is as though the Spring in person has arrived with these thin,
sinewy figures, who go singing through the streets, challenging the
petty envy of the town. There are women, too, on every boat, to mend
and clean the gear, and they pass the workshop in crowds, searching
for their old lodgings in the poor part of the town near the "Great
Power's" home. Pelle's heart leaps at the sight of these young women,
with pretty slippers on their feet, black shawls round their oval
faces, and many fine colors in their dress. His mind is full of
shadowy memories of his childhood, which have lain as quiet as
though they were indeed extinguished; vague traditions of a time
that he has experienced but can no longer remember; it is like a
warm breath of air from another and unknown existence.

If it happens that one or another of these girls has a little
child on her arm, then the town has something to talk about. Is it
Merchant Lund again, as it was last year? Lund, who since then had
been known only as "the Herring Merchant"? Or is it some sixteen-
year-old apprentice, a scandal to his pastor and schoolmaster,
whose hands he has only just left?

Then Jens goes forth with his concertina, and Pelle makes haste with
his tidying up, and he and Morten hurry up to Gallows Hill, hand-in-
hand, for Morten finds it difficult to run so quickly. All that the
town possesses of reckless youth is there; but the Swedish girls
take the lead. They dance and whirl until their slippers fly off,
and little battles are fought over them. But on Saturdays the boats
do not go to sea; then the men turn up, with smouldering brows, and
claim their women, and then there is great slaughter.

Pelle enters into it all eagerly; here he finds an opportunity of
that exercise of which his handicraft deprives his body. He hungers
for heroic deeds, and presses so close to the fighters that now and
again he gets a blow himself. He dances with Morten, and plucks up
courage to ask one of the girls to dance with him; he is shy, and
dances like a leaping kid in order to banish his shyness; and in
the midst of the dance he takes to his heels and leaves the girl
standing there. "Damned silly!" say the onlookers, and he hears them
laughing behind him. He has a peculiar manner of entering into all
this recklessness which lets the body claim its due without thought
for the following day and the following year. If some man-hunting
young woman tries to capture his youth he lashes out behind, and
with a few wanton leaps he is off and away. But he loves to join in
the singing when the men and women go homeward with closely-twined
arms, and he and Morten follow them, they too with their arms about
each other. Then the moon builds her bridge of light across the sea,
and in the pinewood, where a white mist lies over the tree-tops,
a song rises from every path, heard as a lulling music in the haunts
of the wandering couples; insistently melancholy in its meaning,
but issuing from the lightest hearts. It is just the kind of song
to express their happiness.

"Put up, put up thy golden hair;
A son thou'lt have before a year--
No help in thy clamor and crying!
In forty weeks may'st look for me.
I come to ask how it fares with thee.
The forty weeks were left behind.
And sad she was and sick of mind,
And fell to her clamor and crying--"

And the song continues as they go through the town, couple after
couple, wandering as they list. The quiet winding closes ring with
songs of love and death, so that the old townsfolk lift their heads
from their pillows, and, their nightcaps pushed to one side, wag
gravely at all this frivolity. But youth knows nothing of this;
it plunges reveling onward, with its surging blood. And one day
the old people have the best of it; the blood surges no longer, but
there they are, and there are the consequences, and the consequences
demand paternity and maintenance. "Didn't we say so?" cry the
old folk; but the young ones hang their heads, and foresee a long,
crippled existence, with a hasty marriage or continual payments
to a strange woman, while all through their lives a shadow of
degradation and ridicule clings to them; both their wives and their
company must be taken from beneath them. They talk no longer of
going out into the world and making their way; they used to strut
arrogantly before the old folk and demand free play for their youth,
but now they go meekly in harness with hanging heads, and blink
shamefacedly at the mention of their one heroic deed. And those who
cannot endure their fate must leave the country secretly and by
night, or swear themselves free.

The young master has his own way of enjoying himself. He takes no
part in the chase after the girls; but when the sunlight is really
warm, he sits before the workshop window and lets it warm his back.
"Ah, that's glorious!" he says, shaking himself. Pelle has to feel
his fur jacket to see how powerful the sun is. "Thank God, now we
have the spring here!"

Inside the workshop they whistle and sing to the hammer-strokes;
there are times when the dark room sounds like a bird-shop. "Thank
God, now we have the spring!" says Master Andres over and over again,
"but the messenger of spring doesn't seem to be coming this year."

"Perhaps he is dead," says little Nikas.

"Garibaldi dead? Good Lord! he won't die just yet. All the years I
can remember he has looked just as he does now and has drunk just as
hard. Lord of my body! but how he has boozed in his time, the rascal!
But you won't find his equal as a shoemaker all the world over."

One morning, soon after the arrival of the steamer, a thin, tall,
sharp-shouldered man comes ducking through the workshop door. His
hands and face are blue with the cold of the morning and his cheeks
are rather baggy, but in his eyes burns an undying fire. "Morning,
comrades!" he says, with a genial wave of the hand. "Well, how's
life treating us? Master well?" He dances into the workshop, his hat
pressed flat under his left arm. His coat and trousers flap against
his body, revealing the fact that he is wearing nothing beneath
them; his feet are thrust bare into his shoes, and he wears a thick
kerchief round his neck. But such a manner and a carriage in a
craftsman Pelle has never seen in all his days; and Garibaldi's
voice alone is like a bell.

"Now, my son," he says, and strikes Pelle lightly on the shoulder,
"can you fetch me something to drink? Just a little, now at once,
for I'm murderously thirsty. The master has credit! Pst! We'll have
the bottleful--then you needn't go twice."

Pelle runs. In half a minute he is back again. Garibaldi knows how
to do things quickly; he has already tied his apron, and is on the
point of passing his opinion on the work in the workshop. He takes
the bottle from Pelle, throws it over his shoulder, catches it with
the other hand, sets his thumb against the middle of the bottle,
and drinks. Then he shows the bottle to the others. "Just to the
thumbnail, eh?"

"I call that smart drinking!" says little Nikas.

"It can be done though the night is black as a crow"; Garibaldi
waves his hand in a superior manner. "And old Jeppe is alive still?
A smart fellow!"

Master Andres strikes on the wall. "He has come in--he is there!"
he says, with his wide-opened eyes. After a time he slips into his
clothes and comes out into the workshop; he hangs about gossiping,
but Garibaldi is sparing of his words; he is still rusty after the
night voyage.

A certain feverishness has affected them all; an anxiety lest
anything should escape them. No one regards his daily work with
aversion to-day; everybody exerts his capacities to the utmost.
Garibaldi comes from the great world, and the spirit of adventure
and the wandering life exhales from his flimsy clothes.

"If he'll only begin to tell us about it," whispers Pelle to Jens;
he cannot sit still. They hang upon his lips, gazing at him; if he
is silent it is the will of Providence. Even the master does not
bother him, but endures his taciturnity and little Nikas submits
to being treated like an apprentice.

Garibaldi raises his head. "Well, one didn't come here to sit
about and idle!" he cries gaily. "Plenty to do, master?"

"There's not much doing here, but we've always work for you,"
replies Master Andres. "Besides, we've had an order for a pair of
wedding-shoes, white satin with yellow stitching; but we haven't
properly tackled it." He gives little Nikas a meaning glance.

"No yellow stitching with white satin, master; white silk,
of course, and white edges."

"Is that the Paris fashion?" asks Master Andres eagerly. Garibaldi
shrugs his shoulders. "Don't let us speak of Paris, Master Andres;
here we have neither the leather nor the tools to make Parisian
shoes; and we haven't the legs to put into them, either."

"The deuce! Are they so fashionable?"

"Fashionable! I should say so! I can hold the foot of a well-grown
Parisian woman in the hollow of my hand. And when they walk they
don't touch the pavement! You could make shoes for a Parisian girl
out of whipped cream, and they'd hold together! If you were to fit
her with a pair of ordinary woman's beetle-crushers she'd jump
straight into the sewer!"

"Well, I'm damned!" The master is hastily cutting some leather
to shape. "The devil she would!"

Never did any one make himself at home more easily; Garibaldi draws
a seat up to the table and is at once in full swing. No rummaging
about after tools; his hand finds his way to the exact spot where
the thing required lies, as though an invisible track lay between
them. These hands do everything of themselves, quietly, with gentle
movements, while the eyes are elsewhere; gazing out into the garden,
or examining the young master, or the work of the apprentices. To
Pelle and the others, who always have to look at everything from
every side in turn, this is absolutely marvelous. And before they
have had time to look round Garibaldi has put everything in order,
and is sitting there working and looking across the room at the
master, who is himself sewing to-day.

And then Jeppe comes tumbling in, annoyed that no one has told him
of Garibaldi's arrival. "'Day, master--'day, craft-master!" says
Garibaldi, who stands up and bows.

"Yes," says Jeppe self-consciously, "if there were craft-masters
still, I should be one. But manual work is in a wretched case to-day;
there's no respect for it, and where shall a man look for respect if
he doesn't respect himself?"

"That's meant for the young master, eh?" says Garibaldi laughing.
"But times have altered, Master Jeppe; knee-straps and respect have
given out; yes, those days are over! Begin at seven, and at six off
and away! So it is in the big cities!"

"Is that this sosherlism?" says Jeppe disdainfully.

"It's all the same to me what it is--Garibaldi begins and leaves
off when it pleases him! And if he wants more for his work he asks
for it! And if that doesn't please them--then adieu, master, adieu!
There are slaves enough, said the boy, when he got no bread."

The others did not get very much done; they have enough to do to
watch Garibaldi's manner of working. He has emptied the bottle,
and now his tongue is oiled; the young master questions him,
and Garibaldi talks and talks, with continual gestures. Not for
a moment do his hands persist at their work; and yet the work
progresses so quickly it is a revelation to watch it; it is as
though it were proceeding of itself. His attention is directed
upon their work, and he always interferes at the right moment;
he criticizes their way of holding their tools, and works out the
various fashions of cut which lend beauty to the heel and sole. It
is as though he feels it when they do anything wrongly; his spirit
pervades the whole workshop. "That's how one does it in Paris," he
says, or "this is Nuremberg fashion." He speaks of Vienna and Greece
in as matter-of-fact a way as though they lay yonder under Skipper
Elleby's trees. In Athens he went to the castle to shake the king
by the hand, for countrymen should always stand by one another in
foreign parts.

"He was very nice, by the by; but he had had his breakfast already.
And otherwise it's a damned bad country for traveling; there are
no shoemakers there. No, there I recommend you Italy--there are
shoemakers there, but no work; however, you can safely risk it and
beg your way from place to place. They aren't like those industrious
Germans; every time you ask them for a little present they come
and say, 'Come in, please, there is some work you can do!' And it
is so warm there a man can sleep on the bare ground. Wine flows in
every gutter there, but otherwise it's no joke." Garibaldi raises
the empty bottle high in the air and peeps wonderingly up at the
shelves; the young master winks at Pelle, and the latter fetches
another supply of drink at the gallop.

The hot blood is seething in Pelle's ears. He must go away, far
away from here, and live the wandering life, like Garibaldi, who
hid himself in the vineyards from the gendarmes, and stole the bacon
from the chimneys while the people were in the fields. A spirit is
working in him and the others; the spirit of their craft. They touch
their tools and their material caressingly with their fingers;
everything one handles has an inward color of its own; which tells
one something. All the dustiness and familiarity of the workshop is
swept away; the objects standing on the shelves glow with interest;
the most tedious things contain a radiant life of their own.

The world rises before them like a cloudy wonder, traversed by
endless highways deep in white dust, and Garibaldi treads them all.
He has sold his journeyman's pass to a comrade for a slice of bread
and butter, and is left without papers; German policemen give chase
to him, and he creeps through the vineyards for fourteen days, on
hands and knees, getting nothing for his pains but grapes and a
shocking attack of summer cholera. Finally his clothes are so very
much alive that he no longer needs to move of himself; he simply
lies quiet, and lets himself be carried along until he comes to a
little town. "An inn?" asks Garibaldi. Yes, there is an inn. There
he tells a story to the effect that he has been robbed; and the
good people put him to bed, and warm and dry his clothes. Garibaldi
snores, and pushes the chair nearer the stove; snores, and pushes it
a little further; and as his clothes burst into a blaze he starts up
roaring and scolding and weeping, and is inconsolable. So then he is
given fine new clothes and new papers, and is out on the road again,
and the begging begins afresh; mountains rise and pass him by, and
great cities too, cities with wide rivers. There are towns in which
the wandering journeyman can get no money, but is forced to work;
damnable places, and there are German hostels where one is treated
like a prisoner; all clothes must be taken off in a long corridor,
even to one's shirt; a handful of men examine them, and then
everything is put safely away. Thirty or forty naked men are
admitted, one after another, to the great bare dormitory.

Paris--the name is like a bubble bursting in one's ear! There
Garibaldi has worked for two years, and he has been there a score
of times on passing visits. Paris is the glory of the whole world
massed together, and all the convenient contrivances of the world
brought to a state of perfection. Here in the town no respectable
shoemaker will mend the dirty shoes of the "Top-galeass"; she goes
about in down-trodden top-boots, or, if the snipping season has
been poor, she wears wooden shoes. In Paris there are women who
wear shoes at twenty guineas a pair, who carry themselves like
queens, earn forty thousand pounds a year, and are yet nothing
but prostitutes. Forty thousand! If another than Garibaldi had
said it he would have had all the lasts thrown at his head!

Pelle does not hear what the master says to him, and Jens is in a
great hurry for the cobbler's wax; he has cut the upper of the shoe
he is soling. They are quite irresponsible; as though bewitched by
this wonderful being, who goes on pouring brandy down his throat,
and turning the accursed drink into a many-colored panorama of the
whole world, and work that is like a miracle.

The news has soon spread, and people come hurrying in to see
Garibaldi, and perhaps to venture to shake him by the hand; Klausen
wants to borrow some pegs, and Marker, quite unabashed, looks in to
borrow the biggest last. The old cobbler Drejer stands modestly in
a corner and says "Yes, yes!" to the other's remarks. Garibaldi has
reached him his hand, and now he can go home to his gloomy shop and
his dirty stock and his old man's solitude. The genius of the craft
has touched him, and for the rest of his days has shed a light upon
his wretched work of patching and repairing; he has exchanged a
handshake with the man who made the cork-soled boots for the Emperor
of Germany himself when he went out to fight the French. And the
crazy Anker is there too; but does not come in, as he is shy of
strangers. He walks up and down the yard before the workshop window,
and keeps on peeping in. Garibaldi points his finger to his forehead
and nods, and Anker does the same; he is shaking with suppressed
laughter, as over some excellent joke, and runs off like a child who
must hide himself in a corner in order to savor his delight. Baker
Jorgen is there, bending down with his hands on his thighs, and his
mouth wide open. "Lor' Jiminy!" he cries from time to time; "did
ever one hear the like!" He watches the white silk run through the
sole and form itself into glistening pearls along the edge. Pearl
after pearl appears; Garibaldi's arms fly about him, and presently
he touches the baker on the hip. "Am I in the way?" asks old Jorgen.
"No, God forbid--stay where you are!" And his arms fly out again,
and the butt of the bodkin touches the baker with a little click.
"I'm certainly in the way," says Jorgen, and moves a few inches.
"Not in the least!" replies Garibaldi, stitching away. Then out
fly his arms again, but this time the point of the bodkin is turned
toward the baker. "Now, good Lord, I can see I'm in the way!" says
Jorgen, rubbing himself behind. "Not at all!" replies Garibaldi
courteously, with an inviting flourish of his hand. "Pray come
nearer." "No, thank you! No, thank you!" Old Jorgen gives a forced
laugh, and hobbles away.

Otherwise Garibaldi lets them come and stare and go as they like.
It does not trouble him that he is an eminent and remarkable person;
quite unperturbed, he puts the brandy-bottle to his lips and drinks
just as long as he is thirsty. He sits there, playing thoughtlessly
with knife and leather and silk, as though he had sat on the stool
all his life, instead of having just fallen from the moon. And about
the middle of the afternoon the incomparable result is completed; a
pair of wonderful satin shoes, slender as a neat's tongue, dazzling
in their white brilliance, as though they had just walked out of the
fairy-tale and were waiting for the feet of the Princess.

"Look at them, damn it all!" says the master, and passes them to
little Nikas, who passes them round the circle. Garibaldi throws
back his close-cropped gray head.

"You need not say who has made them--everybody can see that. Suppose
now the shoes go to Jutland and are worn there and are thrown on
the rubbish-heap. One day, years hence, some porridge-eater goes
ploughing; a scrap of the instep comes to the surface; and a
wandering journeyman, who is sitting in the ditch nibbling at his
supper, rakes it toward him with his stick. That bit of instep, he
says, that, or the Devil may fry me else, was part of a shoe made
by Garibaldi--deuce take me, he says, but that's what it was. And
in that case the journeyman must be from Paris, or Nuremberg, or
Hamburg--one or the other, that's certain. Or am I talking nonsense,
master?"

No; Master Andres can asseverate this is no nonsense--he who from
childhood lived with Garibaldi on the highways and in great cities,
who followed him so impetuously with that lame leg of his that he
remembers Garibaldi's heroic feats better than Garibaldi himself.
"But now you will stay here," he says persuasively. "Now we'll work
up the business--we'll get all the fine work of the whole island."
Garibaldi has nothing against this; he has had enough of toiling
through the world.

Klausen will gladly make one of the company; in the eyes of all
those present this proposal is a dream which will once more raise
the craft to its proper level; will perhaps improve it until the
little town can compete with Copenhagen. "How many medals have you
really received?" says Jeppe, as he stands there with a great framed
diploma in his hand. Garibaldi shrugs his shoulders. "I don't know,
old master; one gets old, and one's hand gets unsteady. But what is
this? Has Master Jeppe got the silver medal?"

Jeppe laughs. "For this I have to thank a tramp by the name of
Garibaldi. He was here four years ago and won the silver medal for
me!" Well--that is a thing Garibaldi has long forgotten! But medals
are scattered about wherever he has been.

"Yes, there are a hundred masters knocking about who boast of their
distinctions: first-class workshop--you can see it for yourself--
'a silver medal.' But who did the work? Who got his day's wages and
an extra drop of drink and then--good-bye, Garibaldi! What has one
to show for it, master? There are plenty of trees a man can change
his clothes behind--but the shirt?" For a moment he seems dejected.
"Lorrain in Paris gave me two hundred francs for the golden medal
I won for him; but otherwise it was always--Look in my waistcoat
pocket! or--I've an old pair of trousers for you, Garibaldi! But now
there's an end to that, I tell you; Garibaldi has done with bringing
water to the mill for the rich townsfolk; for now he's a sosherlist!"
He strikes the table so that the glass scrapers jingle. "That last
was Franz in Cologne--gent's boots with cork socks. He was a stingy
fellow; he annoyed Garibaldi. I'm afraid this isn't enough for the
medal, master, I said; there's too much unrest in the air. Then he
bid me more and yet more--but it won't run to the medal--that's all
I will say. At last he sends Madame to me with coffee and Vienna
bread--and she was in other respects a lady, who drove with a
lackey on the box. But we were furious by that time! Well, it
was a glorious distinction--to please Madame."

"Had he many journeymen?" asks Jeppe.

"Oh, quite thirty or forty."

"Then he must have been somebody." Jeppe speaks in a reproving tone.

"Somebody--yes--he was a rascal! What did it matter to me that he
had a lot of journeymen? I didn't cheat them out of their wages!"

Now Garibaldi is annoyed; he takes off his apron, puts his hat on
sideways, and he goes into the town.

"Now he's going to look for a sweetheart!" says the young master;
"he has a sweetheart in every town."

At eight he comes sailing into the workshop again. "What, still
sitting here?" he says to the apprentices. "In other parts of the
world they have knocked off work two hours ago. What sort of slaves
are you to sit crouching here for fourteen hours? Strike, damn it
all!"

They look at one another stupidly. "Strike--what is that?"

Then comes the young master. "Now it would do one good to warm
one's eyes a bit," says Garibaldi.

"There's a bed made up for you in the cutting-out room," says the
master. But Garibaldi rolls his coat under his head and lies down on
the window-bench. "If I snore, just pull my nose," he says to Pelle,
and goes to sleep. Next day he makes two pairs of kid boots with
yellow stitching--for little Nikas this would be a three days' job.
Master Andres has all his plans ready--Garibaldi is to be a partner.
"We'll knock out a bit of wall and put in a big shop-window!"
Garibaldi agrees--he really does for once feel a desire to settle
down. "But we mustn't begin too big," he says: "this isn't Paris."
He drinks a little more and does not talk much; his eyes stray to
the wandering clouds outside.

John Crace digests High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
Review: The Thin Blue Line: How Humanitarianism Went to War by Conor FoleyAid worker Foley conducts a fascinating and important analysis of recent wars and disasters around the world, says Steven Poole

Review: Under Two Dictators: Prisoner of Stalin and Hitler by Margarete Buber-Neumann

He might be almost 90 years old in real terms, but Christopher Robin and his bear of very little brain are set to make a literary comeback after the estate of AA Milne agreed to authorise the first-ever official sequel to the much-loved children's books.

Return to the Hundred Acre Wood by author David Benedictus picks up from the poignant ending of Milne's last Pooh book, The House at Pooh Corner, in which Christopher Robin is growing up and heading away to school. "Pooh, promise you won't forget about me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred," he tells the bear, and they leave together.

The estates of Milne and EH Shepard, who provided the simple but enduring illustrations for the books, said they had been searching for a sequel that would do justice to the original stories for "a good many years".

Although Disney has franchised the characters in a number of films, there has not previously been an authorised literary sequel to Milne's books, Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, first published in 1926 and 1928. Milne wrote the books for his son Christopher Robin, naming Pooh after his teddy bear.

The sequel, to be published by Egmont Publishing in Britain and Penguin imprint Dutton Children's Books in the US, is due out on 5 October, illustrated by Mark Burgess. Benedictus, who is familiar with the world of Winnie the Pooh after adapting and producing audio versions of the books starring Judi Dench, Stephen Fry and Jane Horrocks, did not reveal any more details, but promised that the book would both "complement and maintain Milne's idea that whatever happens, a little boy and his bear will always be playing".

Michael Brown, chairman of Pooh Properties, which manages the affairs of the Milne and Shepard estates, said the sequel would capture "the spirit and quality" of the original books.

Benedictus said all Milne's well-loved characters, from Tigger to Eeyore, would be making an appearance in his sequel, which features 10 stories and around 150 illustrations. The stories retain their original 1920s setting.

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Review: The Error World: An Affair with Stamps by Simon Garfield

One might say that Margarete Buber-Neumann had a charmed life, had it not been so horrible. She was fortunate - if that is the word - to be sent to a Soviet labour camp in 1939, during a momentary lull in the mass shooting of prisoners. Handed over to the Nazis in 1940, she was similarly lucky to be released from an SS concentration camp in 1945, just days before the remaining prisoners were forced on evacuation marches ending in death. It is a measure of the dismal times she lived through that such events marked her as fortunate, and it is a testament to her skill as a writer that this thoughtful, humane memoir (published in English in 1949) became an international bestseller. From the very first page we are with her, scurrying through Moscow surrounded by images of Stalin. We accompany her throughout the gruelling years ahead, encountering a host of characters, good and bad, and share in her dogged attempt to make sense of the madness of totalitarianism. This revised text is the definitive edition.

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