Pelle the Conqueror, Vol. 2 by Martin Anderson Nexo

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The middle-class society of the town was still, as far as he was
concerned, a foreign world. Most of the townsfolk were as poor as
church mice, but they concealed the fact skilfully, and seemed to
have no other desire than to preserve appearances. "Money!" said
Master Andres; "here there's only one ten-kroner note among all the
employers in the town, and that goes from hand to hand. If it were
to stop too long with one of them all the rest of us would stop
payment!" The want of loose capital weighed on them oppressively,
but they boasted of Shipowner Monsen's money--there were still rich
people in the town! For the rest, each kept himself going by means
of his own earnings; one had sent footwear to the West Indies, and
another had made the bride-bed for the burgomaster's daughter; they
maintained themselves as a caste and looked down with contempt upon
the people.

Pelle himself had honestly and honorably intended to follow the same
path; to keep smiles for those above him and harsh judgments for
those below him; in short, like Alfred, to wriggle his way upward.
But in the depths of his being his energies were working in another
direction, and they continually thrust him back where he belonged.
His conflict with the street-urchins stopped of itself, it was so
aimless; Pelle went in and out of their houses, and the boys, so
soon as they were confirmed, became his comrades.

The street boys sustained an implacable conflict with those who
attended the town school and the grammar-school. They called them
pigs, after the trough-like satchels which they carried on their
backs. Pelle found himself between a double fire, although he
accepted the disdain and the insult of those above him, as Lasse
had taught him, as something that was inherent in the nature of
things. "Some are born to command and some to obey," as Lasse said.

But one day he came to blows with one of them. And having thrashed
the postmaster's son until not a clean spot was left on him, he
discovered that he now had a crow to pluck with the sons of all
the fine folks, or else they would hold him up to ridicule. It was
as though something was redeemed at his hands when he managed to
plant them in the face of one of these lads, and there seemed to
be a particular charm connected with the act of rolling their fine
clothes in the mire. When he had thrashed a "pig" he was always in
the rosiest of tempers, and he laughed to think how Father Lasse
would have crossed himself!

One day he met three grammar-school students, who fell upon him
then and there, beating him with their books; there was repayment
in every blow. Pelle got his back against the wall, and defended
himself with his belt, but could not manage the three of them; so
he gave the biggest of them a terrific kick in the lower part of
the body and took to his heels. The boy rolled on the ground and
lay there shrieking; Pelle could see, from the other end of the
street, how the other two were toiling to set him on his legs
again. He himself had got off with a black eye.

"Have you been fighting again, you devil's imp?" said the young
master.

No! Pelle had fallen and bruised himself.

In the evening he went round the harbor to see the steamer go out
and to say good-bye to Peter. He was in a bad temper; he was
oppressed by a foreboding of evil.

The steamer was swarming with people. Over the rail hung a swarm
of freshly-made journeymen of that year's batch--the most courageous
of them; the others had already gone into other trades, had become
postmen or farm servants. "There is no employment for us in the
shoe trade," they said dejectedly as they sank. As soon as their
journeyman's test-work was done they took to their heels, and new
apprentices were taken all along the line. But these fellows here
were crossing to the capital; they wanted to go on working at their
own trade. The hundreds of apprentices of the little town were there,
shouting "Hurrah!" every other moment, for those departing were the
heroes who were going forth to conquer the land of promise for them
all. "We are coming after you!" they cried. "Find me a place, you!
Find me a place!"

Emil stood by the harbor shed, with some waterside workers, looking
on. His time was long ago over. The eldest apprentice had not had
the pluck to leave the island; he was now a postman in Sudland
and cobbled shoes at night in order to live. Now Peter stood on
the deck above, while Jens and Pelle stood below and looked up at
him admiringly. "Good-bye, Pelle!" he cried. "Give Jeppe my best
respects and tell him he can kiss my bootsoles!"

Some of the masters were strolling to and fro on the quay, in order
to note that none of their apprentices were absconding from the town.

Jens foresaw the time when he himself would stand there penniless.
"Send me your address," he said, "and find me something over there."

"And me too," said Pelle.

Peter spat. "There's a bit of sour cabbage soup--take it home and
give it to Jeppe with my love and I wish him good appetite! But give
my very best respects to Master Andres. And when I write, then come
over--there's nothing to be done in this hole."

"Don't let the Social Democrats eat you up!" cried some one from
among the spectators. The words "Social Democrat" were at this time
in every mouth, although no one knew what they meant; they were used
as terms of abuse.

"If they come to me with their damned rot they'll get one on the
mouth!" said Peter, disdainfully. And then the steamer began to
move; the last cheers were given from the outer breakwater. Pelle
could have thrown himself into the sea; he was burning with desire
to turn his back on it all. And then he let himself drift with the
crowd from the harbor to the circus-ground. On the way he heard a
few words of a conversation which made his ears burn. Two townsmen
were walking ahead of him and were talking.

"They say he got such a kick that he brought up blood," said
the one.

"Yes, it's terrible, the way that scum behaves! I hope they'll
arrest the ruffian."

Pelle crept along behind the tent until he came to the opening.
There he stood every evening, drinking everything in by his sense
of smell. He had no money to pay his way in; but he could catch a
glimpse of a whole host of magnificent things when the curtain was
drawn up in order to admit a late-comer. Albinus came and went at
will--as always, when jugglers were in the town. He was acquainted
with them almost before he had seen them. When he had seen some
clever feat of strength or skill he would come crawling out from
under the canvas in order to show his companions that he could do
the same thing. Then he was absolutely in his element; he would walk
on his hands along the harbor railings and let his body hang over
the water.

Pelle wanted to go home and sleep on the day's doings, but a happy
pair came up to him--a woman who was dancing as she walked, and a
timid young workman, whom she held firmly by the arm. "Here, Hans!"
she said, "this is Pelle, whose doing it is that we two belong to
each other!"

Then she laughed aloud for sheer delight, and Hans, smiling, held
out his hand to Pelle. "I ought to thank you for it," he said.

"Yes, it was that dance," she said. "If my dancing-shoes hadn't
been mended Hans would have run off with somebody else!" She seized
Pelle's arm. And then they went on, very much pleased with one
another, and Pelle's old merriment returned for a time. He too
could perform all sorts of feats of strength.

On the following day Pelle was hired by Baker Jorgensen to knead
some dough; the baker had received, at short notice, a large order
for ship's biscuit for the _Three Sisters_.

"Keep moving properly!" he would cry every moment to the two boys,
who had pulled off their stockings and were now standing up in the
great kneading-trough, stamping away, with their hands gripping the
battens which were firmly nailed to the rafters. The wooden ceiling
between the rafters was black and greasy; a slimy paste of dust and
dough and condensed vapor was running down the walls. When the boys
hung too heavily on the battens the baker would cry: "Use your
whole weight! Down into the dough with you--then you'll get a foot
like a fine young lady!"

Soren was pottering about alone, with hanging head as always; now
and again he sighed. Then old Jorgen would nudge Marie in the side,
and they would both laugh. They stood close together, and as they
were rolling out the dough their hands kept on meeting; they laughed
and jested together. But the young man saw nothing of this.

"Don't you see?" whispered his mother, striking him sharply in the
ribs; her angry eyes were constantly fixed on the pair.

"Oh, leave me alone!" the son would say, moving a little away from
her. But she moved after him. "Go and put your arm round her waist--
that's what she wants! Let her feel your hands on her hips! Why do
you suppose she sticks out her bosom like that? Let her feel your
hands on her hips! Push the old man aside!"

"Oh, leave me alone!" replied Soren, and he moved further away from
her again.

"You are tempting your father to sin--you know what he is! And she
can't properly control herself any longer, now that she claims to
have a word in the matter. Are you going to put up with that? Go and
take her round the waist--strike her if you can't put up with her,
but make her feel that you're a man!"

"Well, are you working up there?" old Jorgen cried to the boys,
turning his laughing countenance from Marie. "Tread away! The dough
will draw all the rottenness out of your bodies! And you, Soren--get
a move on you!"

"Yes, get a move on--don't stand there like an idiot!" continued
his mother.

"Oh, leave me alone! I've done nothing to anybody; leave me
in peace!"

"Pah!" The old woman spat at him. "Are you a man? Letting another
handle your wife! There she is, obliged to take up with a gouty old
man like that! Pah, I say! But perhaps you are a woman after all? I
did once bring a girl into the world, only I always thought she was
dead. But perhaps you are she? Yes, make long ears at me!" she cried
to the two boys, "you've never seen anything like what's going on
here! There's a son for you, who leaves his father to do all the
work by himself!"

"Now then, what's the matter with you?" cried old Jorgen jollily.
"Is mother turning the boys' heads?" Marie broke into a loud laugh.

Jeppe came to fetch Pelle. "Now you'll go to the Town Hall and get
a thrashing," he said, as they entered the workshop. Pelle turned
an ashen gray.

"What have you been doing now?" asked Master Andres, looking sadly
at him.

"Yes, and to one of our customers, too!" said Jeppe. "You've
deserved that, haven't you?"

"Can't father get him let off the beating?" said Master Andres.

"I have proposed that Pelle should have a good flogging here in the
workshop, in the presence of the deputy and his son. But the deputy
says no. He wants justice to run its course."

Pelle collapsed. He knew what it meant when a poor boy went to the
town hall and was branded for life. His brain sought desperately for
some way of escape. There was only one--death! He could secretly
hide the knee-strap under his blouse and go into the little house
and hang himself. He was conscious of a monotonous din; that was
Jeppe, admonishing him; but the words escaped him; his soul had
already began its journey toward death. As the noise ceased he
rose silently.

"Well? What are you going out for?" asked Jeppe.

"I'm going to the yard." He spoke like a sleepwalker.

"Perhaps you want to take the knee-strap out with you?"

Jeppe and the master exchanged a look of understanding. Then Master
Andres came over to him. "You wouldn't be so silly?" he said, and
looked deep into Pelle's eyes. Then he made himself tidy and went
into the town.

"Pelle, you devil's imp," he said, as he came home, "I've been
running from Herod to Pilate, and I've arranged matters so that you
can get off if you will ask for pardon. You must go to the grammar-
school about one o'clock. But think it over first, as to what you
are going to say, because the whole class will hear it."

"I won't ask for pardon." It sounded like a cry.

The master looked at Pelle hesitatingly. "But that is no disgrace--
if one has done wrong."

"I have not done wrong. They began it, and they have been making
game of me for a long time."

"But you thrashed him, Pelle, and one mustn't thrash fine folks like
that; they have got a doctor's certificate that might be your ruin.
Is your father a friend of the magistrate's? They can dishonor you
for the rest of your life. I think you ought to choose the lesser
evil."

No, Pelle could not do that. "So let them flog me instead!"
he said morosely.

"Then it will be about three o'clock at the town hall," said
the master, shortly, and he turned red about the eyes.

Suddenly Pelle felt how obstinacy must pain the young master, who,
lame and sick as he was, had of his own accord gone running about
the town for him. "Yes, I'll do it!" he said; "I'll do it!"

"Yes, yes!" replied Master Andres quietly; "for your own sake as
well. And I believe you ought to be getting ready now."

Pelle slunk away; it was not his intention to apologize, and he
had plenty of time. He walked as though asleep; everything was dead
within him. His thoughts were busy with all sorts of indifferent
matters, as though he sought to delay something by chattering;
Crazy Anker went by with his bag of sand on his back, his thin legs
wobbling under him. "I will help him to carry it," thought Pelle
dejectedly, as he went onward; "I will help him to carry it."

Alfred came strolling down the street; he was carrying his best
walking-stick and was wearing gloves, although it was in the midst
of working hours. "If he sees me now he'll turn down the corner by
the coal-merchant's," thought Pelle bitterly. "Oughtn't I to ask
him to say a good word for me? He is such an important person! And
he still owes me money for soling a pair of boots."

But Alfred made straight for him. "Have you seen anything of
Albinus? He has disappeared!" he said; and his pretty face seemed
somehow unusually moved. He stood there chewing at his moustache,
just as fine folk do when they are musing over something.

"I've got to go to the town hall," said Pelle.

"Yes, I know--you've got to be flogged. But don't you know anything
of Albinus?" Alfred had drawn him into the coal-merchant's doorway,
in order not to be seen in his company.

"Yes, Albinus, Albinus--" Something was dawning in Pelle's mind.
"Wait a minute--he--he--I'm sure he has run away with the circus.
At least, I believe he has!" Whereat Alfred turned about and ran--
ran in his best clothes!

Of course Albinus had run away with the circus. Pelle could
understand the whole affair perfectly well. The evening before he
had slipped on board Ole Hansen's yacht, which during the night was
to have taken the trick-rider across to Sweden, and now he would
live a glorious life and do what he liked. To run away--that was
the only clear opening in life. Before Pelle knew it, he was down
by the harbor, staring at a ship which was on the point of sailing.
He followed up his inspiration, and went about inquiring after a
vacancy on board some vessel, but there was none.

He sat down by the waterside, and played with a chip of wood. It
represented a three-master, and Pelle gave it a cargo; but every
time it should have gone to sea it canted over, and he had to begin
the loading all over again. All round him carpenters and stone-
cutters were working on the preparations for the new harbor; and
behind them, a little apart, stood the "Great Power," at work, while,
as usual, a handful of people were loitering near him; they stood
there staring, in uneasy expectation that something would happen.
Pelle himself had a feeling of something ominous as he sat there
and plashed in the water to drive his ship out to sea; he would have
accepted it as a manifestation of the most sacred principle of life
had Jorgensen begun to rage before his eyes.

But the stone-cutter only laid down his hammer, in order to take
his brandy-bottle from under the stone and swallow a mouthful; with
that exception, he stood there bowed over the granite as peacefully
as though there were no other powers in the world save it and him.
He did not see the onlookers who watched him in gaping expectation,
their feet full of agility, ready to take to flight at his slightest
movement.

He struck so that the air moaned, and when he raised himself again
his glance swept over them. Gradually Pelle had concentrated all his
expectations upon this one man, who endured the hatred of the town
without moving an eyelash, and was a haunting presence in every mind.
In the boy's imagination he was like a loaded mine; one stood there
not knowing whether or not it was ignited, and in a moment the whole
might leap into the air. He was a volcano, and the town existed from
day to day by his mercy. And from time to time Pelle allowed him to
shake himself a little--just enough to make the town rock.

But now, moreover, there was a secret between them; the "Great Power"
had been punished too for beating the rich folks. Pelle was not
slow in deducing the consequences--was there not already a townsman
standing and watching him at play? He too was the terror of the
people. Perhaps he would join himself to the "Great Power"; there
would be little left of the town then! In the daytime they would lie
hidden among the cliffs, but at night they came down and plundered
the town.

They fell upon all who had earned their living as bloodsuckers;
people hid themselves in their cellars and garrets when they heard
that Pelle and the "Great Power" were on the march. They hanged the
rich shipowner Monsen to the church steeple, and he dangled there
a terror and a warning to all. But the poor folk came to them as
trustingly as lambs and ate out of their hands. They received all
they desired; so poverty was banished from the world, and Pelle
could proceed upon his radiant, onward way without a feeling of
betrayal.

His glance fell upon the clock on the harbor guard-house; it was
nearly three. He sprang up and looked irresolutely about him; he
gazed out over the sea and down into the deep water of the harbor,
looking for help. Manna and her sisters--they would disdainfully
turn their backs upon the dishonored Pelle; they would no longer
look at him. And the people would point their fingers at him, or
merely look at him, and think: "Ha, there goes the boy who was
flogged at the town hall!" Wherever he went in the world it would
follow him like a shadow, that he had been flogged as a child;
such a thing clings visibly to a man. He knew men and maids and old
white-headed men who had come to Stone Farm from places where no one
else had ever been. They might come as absolute strangers, but there
was something in their past which in spite of all rose up behind
them and went whispering from mouth to mouth.

He roamed about, desperately in his helplessness, and in the course
of his wanderings came to stone-cutter Jorgensen.

"Well," said the "Great Power," as he laid down his hammer, "you've
quarrelled nicely with the big townsfolk! Do you think you can keep
a stiff upper-lip?" Then he reached for his hammer again. But Pelle
took his bearings and ran despondently to the town-hall.

XIV

The punishment itself was nothing. It was almost laughable, those
few strokes, laid on through his trousers, by the stick of the
old gaoler; Pelle had known worse thrashings. But he was branded,
an outcast from the society even of the very poorest; he read as
much into the compassion of the people to whom he carried boots and
shoes. "Good Lord, this miserable booby! Has it gone as far as that
with him!" This was what he read in their eyes. Everybody would
always stare at him now, and when he went down the street he saw
faces in the "spy" mirrors fixed outside the windows. "There goes
that shoemaker boy!"

The young master was the only one who treated him precisely as
before; and Pelle repaid him for that with the most limitless
devotion. He bought on credit for him and saved him from blows
where only he could. If the young master in his easy-going way
had promised to have something completed and had then forgotten
it, Pelle would sit in his place and work overtime on it. "What's
it matter to us?" Jens used to say. But Pelle would not have the
customers coming to scold Master Andres, nor would he allow him
to suffer the want of anything that would keep him on his feet.

He became more intimate than ever with Jens and Morten; they all
suffered from the same disgrace; and he often accompanied them home,
although no pleasure awaited them in their miserable cottage. They
were among the very poorest, although the whole household worked.
It was all of no avail.

"Nothing's any use," the "Great Power" himself would say when he was
disposed to talk; "poverty is like a sieve: everything goes straight
through it, and if we stop one hole, it's running through ten others
at the same time. They say I'm a swine, and why shouldn't I be? I
can do the work of three men--yes, but do I get the wages of three?
I get my day's wages and the rest goes into the pockets of those who
employ me. Even if I wanted to keep myself decent, what should we
gain by it? Can a family get decent lodging and decent food and
decent clothing for nine kroner a week? Will the means of a laborer
allow him to live anywhere but by the refuse-heaps, where only the
pigs used to be kept? Why should I be housed like a pig and live
like a pig and yet be no pig--is there any sense in that? My wife
and children have to work as well as me, and how can things be
decent with us when wife and children have to go out and make things
decent for other people? No, look here! A peg of brandy, that makes
everything seem decent, and if that doesn't do it, why, then, a
bottle!" So he would sit talking, when he had been drinking a little,
but otherwise he was usually silent.

Pelle knew the story of the "Great Power" now, from the daily gossip
of the townsfolk, and his career seemed to him sadder than all the
rest; it was as though a fairy-tale of fortune had come to a sudden
end.

Among the evil reports which were continually in circulation
respecting Stone-cutter Jorgensen--it seemed that there was never an
end of them--it was said that in his youth he had strolled into town
from across the cliffs, clad in canvas trousers, with cracked wooden
shoes on his feet, but with his head in the clouds as though the
whole town belonged to him. Brandy he did not touch. He had a better
use for his energies, he said: he was full of great ideas of himself
and would not content himself with ordinary things. And he was
thoroughly capable--he was quite absurdly talented for a poor man.
And at once he wanted to begin turning everything topsy-turvy. Just
because he was begotten among the cliffs and crags by an old toil-
worn stone-cutter, he behaved like a deity of the rocks; he brushed
long-established experience aside, and introduced novel methods of
work which he evolved out of his own mind. The stone was as though
bewitched in his hands. If one only put a sketch before him, he
would make devils' heads and subterranean monsters and sea-serpents
--the sort of thing that before his time had to be ordered from the
sculptors in Copenhagen. Old deserving stone-masons saw themselves
suddenly set aside and had then and there to take to breaking stones;
and this young fellow who had strayed into the town straightway
ignored and discounted the experience of their many years. They
tried, by the most ancient of all methods, to teach the young man
modesty. But they gave it up. Peter Jorgensen had the strength of
three men and the courage of ten. It was not good to meddle with
one who had stolen his capacities from God himself, or perhaps was
in league with Satan. So they resigned themselves, and avenged
themselves by calling him the "Great Power"--and they put their
trust in misfortune. To follow in his footsteps meant to risk a
broken neck. And whenever the brave townsfolk made the journey,
something of its dizzy quality remained with them.

In the night he would sit sketching and calculating, so that no one
could understand when he slept; and on Sundays, when decent people
went to church, he would stop at home and cut the queerest things
out of stone--although he never got a penny for it.

It was at this time that the famous sculptor came from the capital
of Germany to hew a great lion out of granite, in honor of Liberty.
But he could not get forward with his toolbox full of butter-knives;
the stone was too hard for one who was accustomed to stand
scratching at marble. And when for once he really did succeed in
knocking off a bit of granite, it was always in the wrong place.

Then the "Great Power" asserted himself, and undertook to hew the
lion out of granite, according to a scale model of some sort which
the sculptor slapped together for him! All were persuaded that he
would break down in this undertaking, but he negotiated it so
cleverly that he completed the work to the utmost satisfaction of
those concerned. He received a good sum of money for this, but it
was not enough for him; he wanted half the honor, and to be spoken
of in the newspapers like the sculptor himself; and as nothing came
of it he threw down his tools and refused to work any more for other
people. "Why should I do the work and others have the honor of it?"
he asked, and sent in a tender for a stone-cutting contract. In his
unbounded arrogance he sought to push to one side those who were
born to ride on the top of things. But pride comes before a fall;
his doom was already hanging over him.

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