Pelle the Conqueror, Vol. 1 by Martin Anderson Nexo

M >> Martin Anderson Nexo >> Pelle the Conqueror, Vol. 1

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24

Suddenly he stopped. "Won't you give me the half-krone, then? You
shall have ten krones when I grow up." Rud collected money--he was
avaricious already--and had a whole boxful of coins that he had
stolen from his mother.

Pelle considered a little. "No," he said. "Because you'll never grow
up; you're a dwarf!" The tone of his voice was one of sheer envy.

"That's what the Sow says too! But then I'll show myself for money
at the fairs and on Midsummer Eve on the common. Then I shall get
frightfully rich."

Pelle was inwardly troubled. Should he give him the whole fifty ores
for nothing at all? He had never heard of any one doing such a thing.
And perhaps some day, when Rud had become enormously rich, he would
get half of it. "Will you have it?" he asked, but regretted it
instantly.

Rud stretched out his hand eagerly, but Pelle spat into it. "It can
wait until we've had our dinner anyhow," he said, and went over to
the basket. For a little while they stood gazing into the empty
basket.

"The Sow's been here," said Rud, putting out his tongue.

Pelle nodded. "She _is_ a beast!"

"A thief," said Rud.

They took the sun's measure. Rud declared that if you could see it
when you bent down and looked between your legs, then it was five
o'clock. Pelle began to put on his clothes.

Rud was circling about him. "I say!" he said suddenly. "If I may
have it, I'll let you whip me with nettles."

"On your bare body?" asked Pelle.

Rud nodded.

In a second Pelle was out of his trousers again, and running to
a patch of nettles. He pulled them up with the assistance of a
dock-leak, as many as he could hold, and came back again. Rud lay
down, face downwards, on a little mound, and the whipping began.

The agreement was a hundred strokes, but when Rud had received ten,
he got up and refused to have any more.

"Then you won't get the money," said Pelle. "Will you or won't you?"
He was red with excitement and the exertion, and the perspiration
already stood in beads down his slender back, for he had worked with
a will. "Will you or won't you? Seventy-five strokes then!" Pelle's
voice quivered with eagerness, and he had to dilate his nostrils to
get air enough; his limbs began to tremble.

"No--only sixty--you hit so hard! And I must have the money first,
or you may cheat me."

"I don't cheat," said Pelle gloomily. But Rud held to his point.

Pelle's body writhed; he was like a ferret that has tasted blood.
With a jerk he threw the coin at Rud, and grumbling, pushed him
down. He wept inwardly because he had let him off forty strokes;
but he made up his mind to lay into him all the harder for it.

Then he beat, slowly and with all his might, while Rud burrowed with
his head in the grass and clasped the money tightly to keep up his
strength. There was hatred in every stroke that Pelle struck, and
they went like shocks through his playmate's body, but he never
uttered a cry. No, there was no point in his crying, for the coin
he held in his hand took away the pain. But about Pelle's body the
air burnt like fire, his arms began to give way with fatigue, and
his inclination diminished with every stroke. It was toil, nothing
but hard toil. And the money--the beautiful half-krone--was slipping
farther and farther away, and he would be poor once more; and Rud
was not even crying! At the forty-sixth stroke he turned his face
and put out his tongue, whereat Pelle burst into a roar, threw down
the frayed nettle-stalks, and ran away to the fir-plantation.

There he sat for the rest of the day under a dune, grieving over
his loss, while Rud lay under the bank of the stream, bathing his
blistered body with wet earth.

X

After all, Per Olsen was not the sort of man they had thought him.
Now that he had been set free in that way, the thing would have been
for him to have given a helping hand to that poor fellow, Long Ole;
for after all it was for his sake that Ole's misfortune had come
upon him. But did he do it? No, he began to amuse himself. It was
drinking and dissipation and petticoats all the summer through; and
now at Martinmas he left and took work at the quarry, so as to be
more his own master. There was not sufficient liberty for him at
Stone Farm. What good there was left in him would find something
to do up there.

Long Ole could not, of course, remain at Stone Farm, crippled as
he was. Through kindness on the part of the farmer, he was paid his
half-wage; that was more than he had any claim to, and enough at any
rate to take him home and let him try something or other. There were
many kinds of work that at a pinch could be performed with one hand;
and now while he had the money he ought to have got an iron hook; it
could be strapped to the wrist, and was not bad to hold tools with.

But Ole had grown weak and had great difficulty in making up his
mind. He continued to hang about the farm, notwithstanding all that
the bailiff did to get him away. At last they had to put his things
out, to the west of the farm; and there they lay most of the summer,
while he himself slept among the stacks, and begged food of the
workers in the fields. But this could not go on when the cold set
in.

But then one day in the autumn, his things were gone. Johanna Pihl
--commonly called the Sow--had taken him in. She felt the cold, too,
in spite of her fat, and as the proverb says: It's easier for two
to keep warm than one; but whatever was her reason for doing it, Long
Ole might thank his Maker for her. There was always bacon hanging in
her chimney.

Lasse and Pelle looked forward to term-day with anxiety. What
changes would it bring this time for people? So much depended on
that. Besides the head man, they were to have new second and third
men and some new maids. They were always changing at Stone Farm when
they could. Karna, poor soul, was bound to stay, as she had set her
mind upon youth, and would absolutely be where Gustav was! Gustav
stayed because Bodil stayed, so unnaturally fond was he of that
girl, although she was not worth it. And Bodil herself knew well
enough what she was doing! There must be more in it than met the eye
when a girl dressed, as she did, in expensive, town-bought clothes.

Lasse and Pelle _remained_, simply because there was no other
place in the world for them to go to. All through the year they
made plans for making a change, but when the time for giving notice
approached, Lasse became quiet and let it go past.

Of late he had given no little thought to the subject of marrying
again. There was something God-forsaken about this solitary
existence for a man of his age; you became old and worn out before
your time, when you hadn't a wife and a house. On the heath near
Brother Kalle's, there was a house that he could have without paying
anything down. He often discussed it with Pelle, and the boy was
ready for anything new.

It should be a wife who could look after everything and make the
house comfortable; and above all she must be a hard-working woman.
It would not come amiss either if she had a little of her own, but
let that be as it might, if only she was good-natured. Karna would
have suited in all respects, both Lasse and Pelle having always had
a liking for her ever since the day she freed Pelle from the pupil's
clutches; but it was nothing to offer her as long as she was so set
upon Gustav. They must bide their time; perhaps she would come to
her senses, or something else might turn up.

"Then there'd be coffee in bed on Sunday mornings!" said Pelle,
with rapture.

"Yes, and perhaps we'd get a little horse, and invite Brother Kalle
for a drive now and then," added Lasse solemnly.

At last it was really to be! In the evening Lasse and Pelle had
been to the shop and bought a slate and pencil, and Pelle was now
standing at the stable-door with a beating heart and the slate under
his arm. It was a frosty October morning, but the boy was quite hot
after his wash. He had on his best jacket, and his hair had been
combed with water.

Lasse hovered about him, brushing him here and there with his sleeve,
and was even more nervous than the boy. Pelle had been born to poor
circumstances, had been christened, and had had to earn his bread
from the time he was a little boy--all exactly as he had done
himself. So far there was no difference to be seen; it might very
well have been Lasse himself over again, from the big ears and the
"cow's-lick" on the forehead, to the way the boy walked and wore out
the bottoms of his trouser-legs. But this was something strikingly
new. Neither Lasse nor any of his family had ever gone to school;
it was something new that had come within the reach of his family,
a blessing from Heaven that had fallen upon the boy and himself.
It felt like a push upward; the impossible was within reach; what
might not happen to a person who had book-learning! You might become
master of a workshop, a clerk, perhaps even a schoolmaster.

"Now do take care of the slate, and see that you don't break it!"
he said admonishingly. "And keep out of the way of the big boys
until you can hold your own with them. But if any of them simply
won't let you alone, mind you manage to hit first! That takes the
inclination out of most of them, especially if you hit hard; he who
hits first hits twice, as the old proverb says. And then you must
listen well, and keep in mind all that your teacher says; and if
anyone tries to entice you into playing and larking behind his back,
don't do it. And remember that you've got a pocket-handkerchief,
and don't use your fingers, for that isn't polite. If there's no one
to see you, you can save the handkerchief, of course, and then it'll
last all the longer. And take care of your nice jacket. And if the
teacher's lady invites you in to coffee, you mustn't take more than
one piece of cake, mind."

Lasse's hands trembled while he talked.

"She's sure not to do that," said Pelle, with a superior air.

"Well, well, now go, so that you don't get there too late--the very
first day, too. And if there's some tool or other wanting, you must
say we'll get it at once, for we aren't altogether paupers!" And
Lasse slapped his pocket; but it did not make much noise, and Pelle
knew quite well that they had no money; they had got the slate and
pencil on credit.

Lasse stood looking after the boy as long as he was in sight, and
then went to his work of crushing oilcakes. He put them into a
vessel to soak, and poured water on them, all the while talking
softly to himself.

There was a knock at the outside stable-door, and Lasse went to open
it. It was Brother Kalle.

"Good-day, brother!" he said, with his cheerful smile. "Here comes
his Majesty from the quarries!" He waddled in upon his bow legs,
and the two exchanged hearty greetings. Lasse was delighted at the
visit.

"What a pleasant time we had with you the other evening!" said
Lasse, taking his brother by the hand.

"That's a long time ago now. But you must look in again one evening
soon. Grandmother looks upon both of you with a favorable eye!"
Kalle's eyes twinkled mischievously.

"How is she, poor body? Has she at all got over the hurt to her eye?
Pelle came home the other day and told me that the children had been
so unfortunate as to put a stick into her eye. It quite upset me.
You had to have the doctor, too!"

"Well, it wasn't quite like that," said Kalle. "I had moved
grandmother's spinning-wheel myself one morning when I was putting
her room to rights, and then I forgot to put it back in its place.
Then when she was going to stoop down to pick up something from the
floor, the spindle went into her eye; of course she's used to have
everything stand exactly in its place. So really the honor's due
to me." He smiled all over his face.

Lasse shook his head sympathetically. "And she got over it fairly
well?" he asked.

"No; it went altogether wrong, and she lost the sight of that eye."

Lasse looked at him with disapproval.

Kalle caught himself up, apparently very much horrified. "Eh, what
nonsense I'm talking! She lost the _blindness_ of that eye,
I ought to have said. _Isn't_ that all wrong, too? You put
somebody's eye out, and she begins to see! Upon my word, I think
I'll set up as an eye-doctor after this, for there's not much
difficulty in it."

"What do you say? She's begun to--? Now you're too merry! You
oughtn't to joke about everything."

"Well, well, joking apart, as the prophet said when his wife
scratched him--she can really see with that eye now."

Lasse looked suspiciously at him for a little while before he
yielded. "Why, it's quite a miracle!" he then said.

"Yes, that's what the doctor said. The point of the spindle had
acted as a kind of operation. But it might just as easily have taken
the other direction. Yes, we had the doctor to her three times; it
was no use being niggardly." Kalle stood and tried to look important;
he had stuck his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets.

"It cost a lot of money, I suppose?"

"That's what I thought, too, and I wasn't very happy when I asked
the doctor how much it would be. Twenty-five krones, he said, and
it didn't sound anything more than when any of us ask for a piece
of bread-and-dripping. 'Will the doctor be so kind as to wait a few
days so that I can get the cow property sold?' I asked. 'What!' he
says, and glares at me over his spectacles. 'You don't mean to sell
the cow so as to pay me? You mustn't do that on any account; I'll
wait till times are better.' 'We come off easily, even if we get rid
of the cow,' I said. 'How so?' he asks, as we go out to the carriage
--it was the farmer of Kaase Farm that was driving for me. So I told
him that Maria and I had been thinking of selling everything so that
grandmother might go over and be operated. He said nothing to that,
but climbed up into the carriage; but while I was standing like this,
buttoning up his foot-bag, he seizes me by the collar and says:
'Do you know, you little bow-legged creature!' (Kalle imitated the
doctor's town speech), 'You're the best man I've ever met, and you
don't owe me a brass farthing! For that matter, it was you yourself
that performed the operation.' 'Then I ought almost to have had the
money,' I said. Then he laughed and gave me a box on the ears with
his fur cap. He's a fine man, that doctor, and fearfully clever;
they say that he has one kind of mixture that he cures all kinds
of illness with."

They were sitting in the herdsman's room upon the green chest, and
Lasse had brought out a little gin. "Drink, brother!" he said again
and again. "It takes something to keep out this October drizzle."

"Many thanks, but you must drink! But I was going to say, you should
see grandmother! She goes round peeping at everything with her one
eye; if it's only a button, she keeps on staring at it. So that's
what that looks like, and that! She's forgotten what the things look
like, and when she sees a thing, she goes to it to feel it afterward
--to find out what it is, she actually says. She would have nothing
to do with us the first few days; when she didn't hear us talk or
walk, she thought we were strangers, even though she saw us there
before her eyes."

"And the little ones?" asked Lasse.

"Thank you, Anna's is fat and well, but our own seems to have come
to a standstill. After all, it's the young pigs you ought to breed
with. By the bye"--Kalle took out his purse--"while we're at it,
don't let me forget the ten krones I got from you for the
christenings."

Lasse pushed it away. "Never mind that," he said. "You may have a
lot to go through yet. How many mouths are there now? Fourteen or
fifteen, I suppose?"

"Yes; but two take their mother's milk, like the parson's wife's
chickens; so that's all saved. And if things became difficult, one's
surely man enough to wring a few pence out of one's nose?" He seized
his nose and gave it a rapid twist, and held out his hand. A folded
ten-krone note lay in it.

Lasse laughed at the trick, but would not hear of taking the money;
and for a time it passed backward and forward between them. "Well,
well!" said Kalle at last, keeping the note; "thank you very much,
then! And good-bye, brother! I must be going." Lasse went out with
him, and sent many greetings.

"We shall come and look you up very soon," he called out after
his brother.

When after a little while he returned to his room, the note lay
upon the bed. Kalle must have seen his opportunity to put it there,
conjurer that he was. Lasse put it aside to give to Kalle's wife,
when an occasion presented itself.

Long before the time, Lasse was on the lookout for Pelle. He found
the solitude wearisome, now that he was used to having the boy about
him from morning till night. At last he came, out of breath with
running, for he had longed to get home too.

Nothing either terrible or remarkable had happened at school. Pelle
had to give a circumstantial account, point by point, "Well, what
can you do?" the master had asked, taking him by the ear--quite
kindly, of course. "I can pull the mad bull to the water without
Father Lasse helping at all," Pelle had answered, and then the whole
class had laughed.

"Yes, yes, but can you read?"

No, Pelle could not do that--"or else I shouldn't have come here,"
he was on the point of adding. "It was a good thing you didn't
answer that," said Lasse; "but what more then?" Well, then Pelle was
put upon the lowest bench, and the boy next him was set to teach him
his letters.

"Do you know them, then?"

No, Pelle did not know them that day, but when a couple of weeks had
passed, he knew most of them, and wrote them with chalk on the posts.
He had not learned to write, but his hand could imitate anything he
had seen, and he drew the letters just as they stood in print in the
spelling-book.

Lasse went and looked at them during his work, and had them repeated
to him endlessly; but they would not stick properly. "What's that
one there?" he was perpetually asking.

Pelle answered with a superior air: "That? Have you forgotten it
already? I knew that after I'd only seen it once! That's M."

"Yes, of course it is! I can't think where my head is to-day.
M, yes--of course it's M! Now what can that be used for, eh?"

"It's the first letter in the word 'empty,' of course!" said Pelle
consequentially.

"Yes, of course! But you didn't find that out for yourself; the
master told you."

"No, I found it out by myself."

"Did you, now? Well, you've become clever--if only you don't become
as clever as seven fools."

Lasse was out of spirits; but very soon he gave in, and fell into
whole-hearted admiration of his son. And the instruction was
continued while they worked. It was fortunate for Pelle that his
father was so slow, for he did not get on very fast himself, when
once he had mastered all that was capable of being picked up
spontaneously by a quick intelligence. The boy who had to teach
him--Sloppy, he was called--was the dunce of the class and had
always been bottom until now Pelle had come and taken his place.

Two weeks of school had greatly changed Pelle's ideas on this
subject. On the first few days he arrived in a state of anxious
expectation, and all his courage forsook him as he crossed the
threshold of the school. For the first time in his life he felt
that he was good for nothing. Trembling with awe, he opened his
perceptions to this new and unfamiliar thing that was to unveil for
him all the mysteries of the world, if only he kept his ears open;
and he did so. But there was no awe-inspiring man, who looked at
them affectionately through gold-rimmed spectacles while he told
them about the sun and the moon and all the wonders of the world.
Up and down the middle passage walked a man in a dirty linen coat
and with gray bristles projecting from his nostrils. As he walked
he swung the cane and smoked his pipe; or he sat at the desk and
read the newspaper. The children were noisy and restless, and when
the noise broke out into open conflict, the man dashed down from
his desk, and hit out indiscriminately with his cane. And Pelle
himself, well he was coupled--for good, it appeared--to a dirty boy,
covered with scrofulous sores, who pinched his arm every time he
read his b-a--ba, b-e--be wrong. The only variation was an hour's
daily examination in the tedious observations in the class-book,
and the Saturday's uncouth hymn-repeating.

For a time Pelle swallowed everything whole, and passed it on
faithfully to his father; but at last he tired of it. It was not
his nature to remain long passive to his surroundings, and one fine
day he had thrown aside all injunctions and intentions, and dived
into the midst of the fun.

After this he had less information to impart, but on the other hand
there were the thousands of knavish tricks to tell about. And father
Lasse shook his head and comprehended nothing; but he could not help
laughing.

XI

"A safe stronghold our God is still,
A trusty shield and wea--pon;
He'll help us clear from all the ill
That hath us now o'erta--ken.
The ancient prince of hell
Hath risen with purpose fell;
Strong mail of craft and power
He weareth in this hour;
On earth is not his fel--low."

The whole school sat swaying backward and forward in time to the
rhythm, grinding out hymns in endless succession. Fris, the master,
was walking up and down the middle passage, smoking his pipe; he was
taking exercise after an hour's reading of the paper. He was using
the cane to beat time with, now and then letting it descend upon the
back of an offender, but always only at the end of a line--as a kind
of note of admiration. Fris could not bear to have the rhythm broken.
The children who did not know the hymn were carried along by the
crowd, some of them contenting themselves with moving their lips,
while others made up words of their own. When the latter were too
dreadful, their neighbors laughed, and then the cane descended.

When one verse came to an end, Fris quickly started the next; for
the mill was hard to set in motion again when once it had come to
a standstill. "With for--!" and the half-hundred children carried
it on--

"With force of arms we nothing can,
Full soon were we downrid--den;"

Then Fris had another breathing-space in which to enjoy his pipe
and be lulled by this noise that spoke of great and industrious
activity. When things went as they were now going, his exasperation
calmed down for a time, and he could smile at his thoughts as he
paced up and down, and, old though he was, look at the bright side
of life. People in passing stopped to rejoice over the diligence
displayed, and Fris beat more briskly with the cane, and felt a
long-forgotten ideal stirring within him; he had this whole flock
of children to educate for life, he was engaged in creating the
coming generation.

When the hymn came to an end, he got them, without a pause, turned
on to "Who puts his trust in God alone," and from that again to
"We all, we all have faith in God." They had had them all three
the whole winter through, and now at last, after tremendous labor,
he had brought them so far that they could say them more or less
together.

The hymn-book was the business of Fris's life, and his forty years
as parish-clerk had led to his knowing the whole of it by heart.
In addition to this he had a natural gift. As a child Fris had been
intended for the ministry, and his studies as a young man were in
accordance with that intention. Bible words came with effect from
his lips, and his prospects were of the best, when an ill-natured
bird came all the way from the Faroe Islands to bring trouble upon
him. Fris fell down two flights from spiritual guide to parish-clerk
and child-whipper. The latter office he looked upon as almost too
transparent a punishment from Heaven, and arranged his school as
a miniature clerical charge.

The whole village bore traces of his work. There was not much
knowledge of reading and writing, but when it was a question of
hymns and Bible texts, these fishermen and little artisans were
bad to beat. Fris took to himself the credit for the fairly good
circumstances of the adults, and the receipt of proper wages by the
young men. He followed each one of them with something of a father's
eyes, and considered them all to be practically a success. And he
was on friendly terms with them once they had left school. They
would come to the old bachelor and have a chat, and relieve their
minds of some difficulty or other.

But it was always another matter with the confounded brood that sat
upon the school benches for the time being; it resisted learning
with might and main, and Fris prophesied it no good in the future.

Fris hated the children. But he loved these squarely built hymns,
which seemed to wear out the whole class, while he himself could
give them without relaxing a muscle. And when it went as it was
doing to-day, he could quite forget that there were such things as
children, and give himself up to this endless procession, in which
column after column filed past him, in the foot-fall of the rhythm.
It was not hymns, either; it was a mighty march-past of the strong
things of life, in which there stretched, in one endless tone, all
that Fris himself had failed to attain. That was why he nodded so
happily, and why the loud tramp of feet rose around him like the
acclamations of armies, an _Ave Caesar_.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24