Pelle the Conqueror, Vol. 1 by Martin Anderson Nexo

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

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He was sitting with the third supplement of his newspaper before
him, but was not reading; his eyes were closed, and his head moved
gently to the rhythm.

The children babbled on ceaselessly, almost without stopping for
breath; they were hypnotized by the monotonous flow of words. They
were like the geese that had been given leave by the fox to say a
prayer before they were eaten, and now went on praying and praying
forever and ever. When they came to the end of the three hymns, they
began again by themselves. The mill kept getting louder, they kept
the time with their feet, and it was like the stroke of a mighty
piston, a boom! Fris nodded with them, and a long tuft of hair
flapped in his face; he fell into an ecstasy, and could not sit
still upon his chair.

"And were this world all devils o'er,
And watching to devour--us,
We lay it not to heart so sore;
Not they can overpower us."

It sounded like a stamping-mill; some were beating their slates upon
the tables, and others thumping with their elbows. Fris did not hear
it; he heard only the mighty tramp of advancing hosts.

"And let the prince of ill
Look grim as e'er he will,"--

Suddenly, at a preconcerted signal, the whole school stopped
singing. Fris was brought to earth again with a shock. He opened
his eyes, and saw that he had once more allowed himself to be taken
by surprise. "You little devils! You confounded brats!" he roared,
diving into their midst with his cane. In a moment the whole school
was in a tumult, the boys fighting and the girls screaming. Fris
began hitting about him.

He tried to bring them back to the patter. "Who puts his trust in
God alone!" he shouted in a voice that drowned the clamor; but they
did not take it up--the little devils! Then he hit indiscriminately.
He knew quite well that one was just as good as another, and was not
particular where the strokes fell. He took the long-haired ones by
the hair and dragged them to the table, and thrashed them until the
cane began to split. The boys had been waiting for this; they had
themselves rubbed onion into the cane that morning, and the most
defiant of them had on several pairs of trousers for the occasion.

When the cracked sound proclaimed that the cane was in process of
disintegration, the whole school burst into deafening cheers. Fris
had thrown up the game, and let them go on. He walked up and down
the middle passage like a suffering animal, his gall rising. "You
little devils!" he hissed; "You infernal brats!" And then, "Do sit
still, children!" This last was so ridiculously touching in the
midst of all the rest, that it had to be imitated.

Pelle sat farthest away, in the corner. He was fairly new at this
sort of thing, but did his best. Suddenly he jumped on to the table,
and danced there in his stockinged feet. Fris gazed at him so
strangely, Pelle thought; he was like Father Lasse when everything
went wrong; and he slid down, ashamed. Nobody had noticed his action,
however; it was far too ordinary.

It was a deafening uproar, and now and then an ill-natured remark
was hurled out of the seething tumult. Where they came from it was
difficult to say; but every one of them hit Fris and made him cower.
False steps made in his youth on the other side of the water fifty
years ago, were brought up again here on the lips of these ignorant
children, as well as some of his best actions, that had been so
unselfish that the district put the very worst interpretation upon
them. And as if that were not enough--but hush! He was sobbing.

"Sh--sh! Sh--sh!" It was Henry Bodker, the biggest boy in the school,
and he was standing on a bench and sh--ing threateningly. The girls
adored him, and became quiet directly; but some of the boys would
not obey the order; but when Henry held his clenched fist up to one
eye, they too became quiet.

Fris walked up and down the middle passage like a pardoned offender.
He did not dare to raise his eyes, but they could all see that he
was crying. "It's a shame!" said a voice in an undertone. All eyes
were turned upon him, and there was perfect silence in the room.
"Play-time!" cried a boy's voice in a tone of command: it was
Nilen's. Fris nodded feebly, and they rushed out.

Fris remained behind to collect himself. He walked up and down with
his hands behind his back, swallowing hard. He was going to send in
his resignation. Every time things went quite wrong, Fris sent in
his resignation, and when he had come to himself a little, he put
it off until the spring examinations were over. He would not leave
in this way, as a kind of failure. This very winter he had worked
as he had never done before, in order that his resignation might
have somewhat the effect of a bomb, and that they might really feel
it as a loss when he had gone. When the examination was held, he
would take the hymn-book for repetition in chorus--right from the
beginning. Some of the children would quickly drop behind, but there
were some of them, into whom, in the course of time, he had hammered
most of its contents. Long before they had run out, the clergyman
would lift his hand to stop them, and say: "That's enough, my dear
clerk! That's enough!" and would thank him in a voice of emotion;
while the school committee and the parents would whisper together
in awed admiration.

And then would be the time to resign!

The school lay on the outskirts of the fishing-village, and the
playground was the shore. When the boys were let out after a few
hours' lessons, they were like young cattle out for the first time
after the long winter. They darted, like flitting swallows, in all
directions, threw themselves upon the fresh rampart of sea-wrack
and beat one another about the ears with the salt wet weeds. Pelle
was not fond of this game; the sharp weed stung, and sometimes
there were stones hanging to it, grown right in.

But he dared not hold himself aloof, for that would attract
attention at once. The thing was to join in it and yet not be in
it, to make himself little and big according to the requirements
of the moment, so as to be at one time unseen, and at another to
exert a terrifying effect. He had his work cut out in twisting
and turning, and slipping in and out.

The girls always kept together in one corner of the playground,
told tittle-tattle and ate their lunch, but the boys ran all over
the place like swallows in aimless flight. A big boy was standing
crouching close to the gymnastic apparatus, with his arm hiding his
face, and munching. They whirled about him excitedly, now one and
now another making the circle narrower and narrower. Peter Kofod
--Howling Peter--looked as if the world were sailing under him; he
clung to the climbing-pole and hid his face. When they came close
up to him, they kicked up behind with a roar, and the boy screamed
with terror, turned up his face and broke into a long-drawn howl.
Afterward he was given all the food that the others could not eat.

Howling Peter was always eating and always howling. He was a pauper
child and an orphan; he was big for his age, but had a strangely
blue and frozen look. His frightened eyes stood half out of his head,
and beneath them the flesh was swollen and puffy with crying. He
started at the least sound, and there was always an expression of
fear on his face. The boys never really did him any harm, but they
screamed and crouched down whenever they passed him--they could not
resist it. Then he would scream too, and cower with fear. The girls
would sometimes run up and tap him on the back, and then he screamed
in terror. Afterward all the children gave him some of their food.
He ate it all, roared, and was as famished as ever.

No one could understand what was wrong with him. Twice he had made
an attempt to hang himself, and nobody could give any reason for
it, not even he himself. And yet he was not altogether stupid.
Lasse believed that he was a visionary, and saw things that others
could not see, so that the very fact of living and drawing breath
frightened him. But however that might be, Pelle must on no account
do anything to him, not for all the world.

The crowd of boys had retired to the shore, and there, with little
Nilen at their head, suddenly threw themselves upon Henry Bodker.
He was knocked down and buried beneath the swarm, which lay in a
sprawling heap upon the top of him, pounding down with clenched
fists wherever there was an opening. But then a pair of fists began
to push upward, tchew, tchew, like steam punches, the boys rolled
off on all sides with their hands to their faces, and Henry Bodker
emerged from the heap, kicking at random. Nilen was still hanging
like a leech to the back of his neck, and Henry tore his blouse in
getting him thrown off. To Pelle he seemed to be tremendously big as
he stood there, only breathing a little quickly. And now the girls
came up, and fastened his blouse together with pins, and gave him
sweets; and he, by way of thanking them, seized them by their
pigtails and tied them together, four or five of them, so that they
could not get away from one another. They stood still and bore it
patiently, only gazing at him with eyes of devotion.

Pelle had ventured into the battle and had received a kick, but he
bore no malice. If he had had a sweet, he, like the girls, would
have given it to Henry Bodker, and would have put up with ungentle
treatment too. He worshipped him. But he measured himself by Nilen
--the little bloodthirsty Nilen, who had no knowledge of fear, and
attacked so recklessly that the others got out of his way! He was
always in the thickest of the crowd, jumped right into the worst of
everything, and came safely out of it all. Pelle examined himself
critically to find points of resemblance, and found them--in his
defence of Father Lasse the first summer, when he kicked a big boy,
and in his relations with the mad bull, of which he was not in the
least afraid. But in other points it failed. He was afraid of the
dark, and he could not stand a thrashing, while Nilen could take
his with his hands in his pockets. It was Pelle's first attempt at
obtaining a general survey of himself.

Fris had gone inland, probably to the church, so it would be a
playtime of some hours. The boys began to look about for some
more lasting ways of passing the time. The "bulls" went into the
schoolroom, and began to play about on the tables and benches, but
the "blennies" kept to the shore. "Bulls" and "blennies" were the
land and the sea in conflict; the division came naturally on every
more or less serious occasion, and sometimes gave rise to regular
battles.

Pelle kept with the shore boys; Henry Bodker and Nilen were among
them, and they were something new! They did not care about the
land and animals, but the sea, of which he was afraid, was like
a cradle to them. They played about on the water as they would in
their mother's parlor, and had much of its easy movement. They were
quicker than Pelle, but not so enduring; and they had a freer manner,
and made less of the spot to which they belonged. They spoke of
England in the most ordinary way and brought things to school that
their fathers and brothers had brought home with them from the other
side of the world, from Africa and China. They spent nights on the
sea on an open boat, and when they played truant it was always to
go fishing. The cleverest of them had their own fishing-tackle and
little flat-bottomed prams, that they had built themselves and
caulked with oakum. They fished on their own account and caught
pike, eels, and tench, which they sold to the wealthier people in
the district.

Pelle thought he knew the stream thoroughly, but now he was brought
to see it from a new side. Here were boys who in March and April--in
the holidays--were up at three in the morning, wading barefoot at
the mouth of the stream to catch the pike and perch that went up
into the fresh water to spawn. And nobody told the boys to do it;
they did it because they liked it!

They had strange pleasures! Now they were standing "before the sea"
--in a long, jubilant row. They ran out with the receding wave to
the larger stones out in the water, and then stood on the stones
and jumped when the water came up again, like a flock of sea birds.
The art consisted in keeping yourself dryshod, and yet it was the
quickest boys who got wettest. There was of course a limit to the
time you could keep yourself hovering. When wave followed wave in
quick succession, you had to come down in the middle of it, and then
sometimes it went over your head. Or an unusually large wave would
come and catch all the legs as they were drawn up in the middle of
the jump, when the whole row turned beautifully, and fell splash
into the water. Then with, a deafening noise they went up to the
schoolroom to turn the "bulls" away from the stove.

Farther along the shore, there were generally some boys sitting with
a hammer and a large nail, boring holes in the stones there. They
were sons of stone-masons from beyond the quarries. Pelle's cousin
Anton was among them. When the holes were deep enough, powder was
pressed into them, and the whole school was present at the
explosion.

In the morning, when they were waiting for the master, the big boys
would stand up by the school wall with their hands in their pockets,
discussing the amount of canvas and the home ports of vessels
passing far out at sea. Pelle listened to them open-mouthed. It was
always the sea and what belonged to the sea that they talked about,
and most of it he did not understand. All these boys wanted the same
thing when they were confirmed--to go to sea. But Pelle had had
enough of it when he crossed from Sweden; he could not understand
them.

How carefully he had always shut his eyes and put his fingers in
his ears, so that his head should not get filled with water when he
dived in the stream! But these boys swam down under the water like
proper fish, and from what they said he understood that they could
dive down in deep water and pick up stones from the bottom.

"Can you see down there, then?" he asked, in wonder.

"Yes, of course! How else would the fish be able to keep away from
the nets? If it's only moonlight, they keep far outside, the whole
shoal!"

"And the water doesn't run into your head when you take your fingers
out of your ears?"

"Take your fingers out of your ears?"

"Yes, to pick up the stone."

A burst of scornful laughter greeted this remark, and they began to
question him craftily; he was splendid--a regular country bumpkin!
He had the funniest ideas about everything, and it very soon came
out that he had never bathed in the sea. He was afraid of the water
--a "blue-bag"; the stream could not do away with that.

After that he was called Blue-bag, notwithstanding that he one day
took the cattle-whip to school with him and showed them how he could
cut three-cornered holes in a pair of trousers with the long lash,
hit a small stone so that it disappeared into the air, and make
those loud reports. It was all excellent, but the name stuck to him
all the same; and all his little personality smarted under it.

In the course of the winter, some strong young men came home to the
village in blue clothes and white neck-cloths. They had laid up, as
it was called, and some of them drew wages all through the winter
without doing anything. They always came over to the school to see
the master; they came in the middle of lessons, but it did not
matter; Fris was joy personified. They generally brought something
or other for him--a cigar of such fine quality that it was enclosed
in glass, or some other remarkable thing. And they talked to Fris
as they would to a comrade, told him what they had gone through, so
that the listening youngsters hugged themselves with delight, and
quite unconcernedly smoked their clay pipes in the class--with the
bowl turned nonchalantly downward without losing its tobacco. They
had been engaged as cook's boys and ordinary seamen, on the Spanish
main and the Mediterranean and many other wonderful places. One of
them had ridden up a fire-spouting mountain on a donkey. And they
brought home with them lucifer matches that were as big, almost,
as Pomeranian logs, and were to be struck on the teeth.

The boys worshipped them and talked of nothing else; it was a great
honor to be seen in the company of such a man. For Pelle it was not
to be thought of.

And then it came about that the village was awaiting the return of
one such lad as this, and he did not come. And one day word came
that bark so-and-so had gone to the bottom with all on board. It
was the winter storms, said the boys, spitting like grown men. The
brothers and sisters were kept away from school for a week, and when
they came back Pelle eyed them curiously: it must be strange to have
a brother lying at the bottom of the sea, quite young! "Then you
won't want to go to sea?" he asked them. Oh, yes, they wanted to go
to sea, too!

Another time Fris came back after an unusually long playtime in low
spirits. He kept on blowing his nose hard, and now and then dried
his eyes behind his spectacles. The boys nudged one another. He
cleared his throat loudly, but could not make himself heard, and
then beat a few strokes on his desk with the cane.

"Have you heard, children?" he asked, when they had become more
or less quiet.

"No! Yes! What?" they cried in chorus; and one boy said: "That the
sun's fallen into the sea and set it on fire!"

The master quietly took up his hymn-book. "Shall we sing 'How
blessed are they'?" he said; and they knew that something must have
happened, and sang the hymn seriously with him.

But at the fifth verse Fris stopped; he could not go on any longer.
"Peter Funck is drowned!" he said, in a voice that broke on the last
word. A horrified whisper passed through the class, and they looked
at one another with uncomprehending eyes. Peter Funck was the most
active boy in the village, the best swimmer, and the greatest scamp
the school had ever had--and he was drowned!

Fris walked up and down, struggling to control himself. The children
dropped into softly whispered conversation about Peter Funck, and
all their faces had grown old with gravity. "Where did it happen?"
asked a big boy.

Fris awoke with a sigh. He had been thinking about this boy, who
had shirked everything, and had then become the best sailor in the
village; about all the thrashings he had given him, and the pleasant
hours they had spent together on winter evenings when the lad was
home from a voyage and had looked in to see his old master. There
had been much to correct, and things of grave importance that Fris
had had to patch up for the lad in all secrecy, so that they should
not affect his whole life, and--

"It was in the North Sea," he said. "I think they'd been in
England."

"To Spain with dried fish," said a boy. "And from there they went
to England with oranges, and were bringing a cargo of coal home."

"Yes, I think that was it," said Fris. "They were in the North Sea,
and were surprised by a storm; and Peter had to go aloft."

"Yes, for the _Trokkadej_ is such a crazy old hulk. As soon
as there's a little wind, they have to go aloft and take in sail,"
said another boy.

"And he fell down," Fris went on, "and struck the rail and fell into
the sea. There were the marks of his sea-boats on the rail. They
braced--or whatever it's called--and managed to turn; but it took
them half-an-hour to get up to the place. And just as they got there,
he sank before their eyes. He had been struggling in the icy water
for half-an-hour--with sea-boots and oilskins on--and yet--"

A long sigh passed through the class. "He was the best swimmer on
the whole shore!" said Henry. "He dived backward off the gunwale of
a bark that was lying in the roads here taking in water, and came
up on the other side of the vessel. He got ten rye rusks from the
captain himself for it."

"He must have suffered terribly," said Fris. "It would almost have
been better for him if he hadn't been able to swim."

"That's what my father says!" said a little boy. "He can't swim,
for he says it's better for a sailor not to be able to; it only
keeps you in torture."

"My father can't swim, either!" exclaimed another. "Nor mine,
either!" said a third. "He could easily learn, but he won't." And
they went on in this way, holding up their hands. They could all
swim themselves, but it appeared that hardly any of their fathers
could; they had a superstitious feeling against it. "Father says you
oughtn't to tempt Providence if you're wrecked," one boy added.

"Why, but then you'd not be doing your best!" objected a little
faltering voice. Fris turned quickly toward the corner where Pelle
sat blushing to the tips of his ears.

"Look at that little man!" said Fris, impressed. "And I declare if
he isn't right and all the rest of us wrong! God helps those that
help themselves!"

"Perhaps," said a voice. It was Henry Bodker's.

"Well, well, I know He didn't help here, but still we ought always
to do what we can in all the circumstances of life. Peter did his
best--and he was the cleverest boy I ever had."

The children smiled at one another, remembering various things.
Peter Funck had once gone so far as to wrestle with the master
himself, but they had not the heart to bring this up. One of the
bigger boys, however, said, half for the purpose of teasing: "He
never got any farther than the twenty-seventh hymn!"

"Didn't he, indeed?" snarled Fris. "Didn't he, indeed? And you think
perhaps you're clever, do you? Let's see how far you've got, then!"
And he took up the hymn-book with a trembling hand. He could not
stand anything being said against boys that had left.

The name Blue-bag continued to stick to Pelle, and nothing had ever
stung him so much; and there was no chance of his getting rid of it
before the summer came, and that was a long way off.

One day the fisher-boys ran out on to the breakwater in playtime.
A boat had just come in through the pack-ice with a gruesome cargo
--five frozen men, one of whom was dead and lay in the fire-engine
house, while the four others had been taken into various cottages,
where they were being rubbed with ice to draw the frost out of them.
The farmer-boys were allowed no share in all this excitement, for
the fisher-boys, who went in and out and saw everything, drove them
away if they approached--and sold meagre information at extortionate
prices.

The boat had met a Finnish schooner drifting in the sea, covered
with ice, and with frozen rudder. She was too heavily laden, so that
the waves went right over her and froze; and the ice had made her
sink still deeper. When she was found, her deck was just on a level
with the water, ropes of the thickness of a finger had become as
thick as an arm with ice, and the men who were lashed to the rigging
were shapeless masses of ice. They were like knights in armor with
closed visor when they were taken down, and their clothes had to be
hacked off their bodies. Three boats had gone out now to try and
save the vessel; there would be a large sum of money to divide if
they were successful.

Pelle was determined not to be left out of all this, even if he got
his shins kicked in, and so kept near and listened. The boys were
talking gravely and looked gloomy. What those men had put up with!
And perhaps their hands or feet would mortify and have to be cut off.
Each boy behaved as if he were bearing his share of their sufferings,
and they talked in a manly way and in gruff voices. "Be off with you,
bull!" they called to Pelle. They were not fond of Blue-bags for the
moment.

The tears came to Pelle's eyes, but he would not give in, and
wandered away along the wharf.

"Be off with you!" they shouted again, picking up stones in a
menacing way. "Be off to the other bumpkins, will you!" They came
up and hit at him. "What are you standing there and staring into
the water for? You might turn giddy and fall in head first! Be off
to the other yokels, will you! Blue-bag!"

Pelle turned literally giddy, with the strength of the determination
that seized upon his little brain. "I'm no more a blue-bag than you
are!" he said. "Why, you wouldn't even dare to jump into the water!"

"Just listen to him! He thinks you jump into the water for fun in
the middle of winter, and get cramp!"

Pelle just heard their exultant laughter as he sprang off the
breakwater, and the water, thick with ground-up ice, closed above
his head. The top of his head appeared again, he made two or three
strokes with his arms like a dog, and sank.

The boys ran in confusion up and down and shouted, and one of them
got hold of a boat-hook. Then Henry Bodker came running up, sprang
in head first without stopping, and disappeared, while a piece of
ice that he had struck with his forehead made ducks and drakes over
the water. Twice his head appeared above the ice-filled water, to
snatch a breath of air, and then he came up with Pelle. They got him
hoisted up on to the breakwater, and Henry set to work to give him
a good thrashing.

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