Pelle the Conqueror, Vol. 2 by Martin Anderson Nexo

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He had sent in the lowest tender for the work on the South Bridge.
They could not disregard it; so they sought to lay every obstacle
in his path; they enticed his workmen away from him and made it
difficult for him to obtain materials. The district judge, who was
in the conspiracy, demanded that the contract should be observed;
so the "Great Power" had to work day and night with the few men left
to him in order to complete the work in time. A finer bridge no one
had ever seen. But he had to sell the shirt off his body in order
to meet his engagements.

He lived at that time in a pretty little house that was his own
property. It lay out on the eastern highway, and had a turret on the
mansard--Jens and Morten had spent their early childhood there. A
little garden, with tidy paths, and a grotto which was like a heap
of rocks, lay in front of it. Jorgenson had planned it all himself.
It was taken from him, and he had to remove to a poor quarter of
the town, to live among the people to whom he rightly belonged, and
to rent a house there. But he was not yet broken. He was cheerful
in spite of his downfall, and more high-and-mighty than ever in his
manners. It was not easy to hit him! But then he sent in a tender
for the new crane-platform. They could have refused him the contract
on the pretext that he had no capital at his disposal. But now he
_should_ be struck down! He got credit from the savings-bank,
in order to get well under way, and workers and material were his
to dispose of. And then, as he was in the midst of the work, the
same story was repeated--only this time he was to break his neck!
Rich and poor, the whole town was at one in this matter. All
demanded the restoration of the old certainty, high and low,
appointed by God Himself. The "Great Power" was of the humblest
descent; now he could quietly go back to the class he was born in!

He failed! The legal proprietor took over a good piece of work
and got it for nothing, and Stonemason Jorgensen stood up in a pair
of cracked wooden shoes, with a load of debts which he would never
be able to shake off. Every one rejoiced to see him return to the
existence of a day-laborer. But he did not submit quietly. He took
to drink. From time to time he broke out and raged like the devil
himself. They could not get rid of him; he weighed upon the minds
of all, like an angry rumbling; even when he was quietly going about
his work they could not quite forget him. Under these conditions he
squandered his last possessions, and he moved into the cottage by
the refuse-heaps, where formerly no one had dwelt.

He had become another man since the grant for the great harbor
project had been approved. He no longer touched any brandy; when
Pelle went out to see his friends, the "Great Power" would be
sitting at the window, busying himself with sketches and figures.
His wife was moving about and weeping quietly to herself; the old
woman was scolding. But Jorgensen turned his broad back upon them
and pored silently over his own affairs. He was not to be shaken
out of his self-sufficiency.

The mother received them out in the kitchen, when she heard their
noisy approach. "You must move quietly--Father is calculating and
calculating, poor fellow! He can get no peace in his head since
the harbor plans have been seriously adopted. His ideas are always
working in him. That must be so, he says, and that so! If he would
only take life quietly among his equals and leave the great people
to worry over their own affairs!"

He sat in the window, right in the sunlight, adding up some
troublesome accounts; he whispered half to himself, and his
mutilated forefinger, whose outer joint had been blown off, ran up
and down the columns. Then he struck the table. "Oh, if only a man
had learned something!" he groaned. The sunlight played on his dark
beard; his weary labors had been powerless to stiffen his limbs or
to pull him down. Drink had failed to hurt him--he sat there like
strength personified; his great forehead and his throat were deeply
bronzed by the sun.

"Look here, Morten!" he cried, turning to the boys. "Just look at
these figures!"

Morten looked. "What is it, father?"

"What is it? Our earnings during the last week! You can see they
are big figures!"

"No, father; what are they?" Morten twined his slender hand in his
father's beard.

The "Great Power's" eyes grew mild under this caress.

"It's a proposed alteration--they want to keep the channel in the
old place, and that is wrong; when the wind blows in from the sea,
one can't get into the harbor. The channel must run out there, and
the outer breakwater must curve like this"--and he pointed to his
sketches. "Every fisherman and sailor will confirm what I say--but
the big engineer gentlemen are so clever!"

"But are you going--again--to send in a tender?" Morten looked at
his father, horrified. The man nodded.

"But you aren't good enough for them--you know you aren't! They
just laugh at you!"

"This time I shall be the one to laugh," retorted Jorgensen, his
brow clouding at the thought of all the contempt he had had to
endure.

"Of course they laugh at him," said the old woman from the chimney-
corner, turning her hawk-like head toward them; "but one must play
at something. Peter must always play the great man!"

Her son did not reply.

"They say you know something about sketching, Pelle?" he said
quietly. "Can't you bring this into order a bit? This here is the
breakwater--supposing the water isn't there--and this is the basin
--cut through the middle, you understand? But I can't get it to
look right--yet the dimensions are quite correct. Here above the
water-line there will be big coping-stones, and underneath it's
broken stone."

Pelle set to work, but he was too finicking.

"Not so exact!" said Jorgensen. "Only roughly!"

He was always sitting over his work when they came. From his wife
they learned that he did not put in a tender, after all, but took
his plans to those who had undertaken the contract and offered them
his cooperation. She had now lost all faith in his schemes, and was
in a state of continual anxiety. "He's so queer--he's always taken
up with only this one thing," she said, shuddering. "He never drinks
--and he doesn't go raging against all the world as he used to do."

"But that's a good thing," said Morten consolingly.

"Yes, you may talk, but what do you know about it? If he looks after
his daily bread, well, one knows what that means. But now, like
this.... I'm so afraid of the reaction if he gets a set-back. Don't
you believe he's changed--it's only sleeping in him. He's the same
as ever about Karen; he can't endure seeing her crooked figure; she
reminds him always too much of everything that isn't as it should
be. She mustn't go to work, he says, but how can we do without her
help? We must live! I daren't let him catch sight of her. He gets
so bitter against himself, but the child has to suffer for it. And
he's the only one she cares anything about."

Karen had not grown during the last few years; she had become even
more deformed; her voice was dry and shrill, as though she had
passed through a frozen desert on her way to earth. She was glad
when Pelle was there and she could hear him talk; if she thought he
would come in the evening, she would hurry home from her situation.
But she never joined in the conversation and never took part in
anything. No one could guess what was going on in her mind. Her
mother would suddenly break down and burst into tears if her glance
by chance fell upon her.

"She really ought to leave her place at once," said her mother over
and again. "But the doctor's wife has one child after another, and
then they ask so pleadingly if she can't stay yet another half-year.
They think great things of her; she is so reliable with children."

"Yes, if it was Pelle, he'd certainly let them fall." Karen laughed
--it was a creaking laugh. She said nothing more; she never asked to
be allowed to go out, and she never complained. But her silence was
like a silent accusation, destroying all comfort and intimacy.

But one day she came home and threw some money on the table. "Now
I needn't go to Doctor's any more."

"What's the matter? Have you done something wrong?" asked the
mother, horrified.

"The doctor gave me a box on the ear because I couldn't carry
Anna over the gutter--she's so heavy."

"But you can't be sent away because he has struck you! You've
certainly had a quarrel--you are so stubborn!"

"No; but I accidentally upset the perambulator with little Erik
in it--so that he fell out. His head is like a mottled apple."
Her expression was unchanged.

The mother burst into tears. "But how could you do such a thing?"
Karen stood there and looked at the other defiantly. Suddenly her
mother seized hold of her. "You didn't do it on purpose? Did you
do it on purpose?"

Karen turned away with a shrug of the shoulders and went up to the
garret without saying good night. Her mother wanted to follow her.

"Let her go!" said the old woman, as though from a great distance.
"You have no power over her! She was begotten in wrath."

XV

All the winter Jens had smeared his upper lip with fowl's dung
in order to grow a moustache; now it was sprouting, and he found
himself a young woman; she was nurse-maid at the Consul's. "It's
tremendous fun," he said; "you ought to get one yourself. When she
kisses me she sticks out her tongue like a little kid." But Pelle
wanted no young woman--in the first place, no young woman would have
him, branded as he was; and then he was greatly worried.

When he raised his head from his work and looked out sideways over
the manure-sheds and pigsties, he saw the green half-twilight of the
heart of the apple-tree, and he could dream himself into it. It was
an enchanted world of green shadows and silent movement; countless
yellow caterpillars hung there, dangling to and fro, each on its
slender thread; chaffinches and yellow-hammers swung themselves
impetuously from bough to bough, and at every swoop snapped up a
caterpillar; but these never became any fewer. Without a pause they
rolled themselves down from the twigs, and hung there, so enticingly
yellow, swinging to and fro in the gentle breath of the summer day,
and waited to be gobbled up.

And deeper still in the green light--as though on the floor of a
green sea--three brightly-clad maidens moved and played. Now and
again the two younger would suddenly look over at Pelle, but they
turned their eyes away again the moment he looked at them; and Manna
was as grown-up and self-controlled as though he had never existed.
Manna had been confirmed a long time now; her skirts were halfway to
the ground, and she walked soberly along the street, arm-in-arm with
her girl friends. She no longer played; she had long been conscious
of a rapidly-increasing certainty that it wouldn't do to play any
longer. In a few days she went over from Pelle's side to the camp of
the grown-ups. She no longer turned to him in the workshop, and if
he met her in the street she looked in another direction. No longer
did she leap like a wild cat into the shop, tearing Pelle from his
stool if she wanted something done; she went demurely up to the
young master, who wrapped up her shoes in paper. But in secret she
still recognized her playmate; if no one was by she would pinch his
arm quite hard, and gnash her teeth together as she passed him.

But Pelle was too clumsy to understand the transition, and too much
of a child to be shy of the light himself. He hung hack, lonely, and
pondered, uncomprehending, over the new condition of affairs.

But now she did not know him in secret even--he simply did not exist
for her any longer. And Dolores and Aina too had withdrawn their
favor; when he looked out, they averted their heads and shrugged
their shoulders. They were ashamed that they had ever had anything
to do with such a person, and he knew very well why that was.

It had been a peculiar and voluptuous delight to be handled by those
delicate and generous hands. It had been really splendid to sit
there with open mouth and let all three stuff him with delicacies,
so that he was in danger of choking! He wasn't allowed to swallow
them down--they wanted to see how much his mouth would hold; and
then they would laugh and dance round him, and their plump girlish
hands would take hold of his head, one on each side, and press his
jaws together. Now Pelle had gradually added quite an ell to his
stature as a worldly wise citizen; he knew very well that he was of
coarser clay than his companions, and that there must have been an
end of it all, even without the town hall.

But it hurt him; he felt as though he had been betrayed; properly
he oughtn't to touch his food. For was not Manna his betrothed? He
had never thought of that! These were the pains of love! So this was
what they were like! Did those who took their lives on account of
unhappy love feel any different? His grief, to be sure, was not very
stupendous; when the young master made a joke or cursed in his funny
way he could laugh quite heartily still. That, with his disgrace,
was the worst of all.

"You ought to get yourself a young woman," said Jens. "She's as
soft as a young bird, and she warms you through your clothes and
everything!"

But Pelle had something else on hand. He wanted to learn to swim.
He wanted to know how to do everything that the town boys did, and
to win back his place among them. He no longer dreamed of leading
them. So he went about with the "gang"; he drew back a little if
they teased him too brutally, and then crept back again; finally
they grew accustomed to him.

Every evening he ran down to the harbor. To the south of the big
basin, which was now being pumped dry, there was always, in the
twilight, a crowd of apprentices; they leaped naked among the rocks
and swam in chattering shoals toward the west, where the sky still
glowed after the sunset. A long way out a reef lay under the water,
and on this they could just touch bottom; there they would rest
before they swam back, their dark heads brooding on the water like
chattering sea-birds.

Pelle swam out with them in order to accustom himself to deep water,
although they always tried to pull him under by his legs. When the
sea blushed it was as though one was swimming amid roses; and the
light, slippery, shining fronds which the deep-lying weed-beds had
thrown up gleamed in the evening light and slid gently across his
shoulders, and far out in the west lay the land of Fortune, beyond
the vast radiant portals of the sunset; or it showed its golden
plains stretching out into infinity. There it lay, shining with a
strange enticing radiance, so that Pelle forgot the limits of his
strength, and swam out farther than his powers justified. And when
he turned round, parting the floating weed with vigorous strokes,
the water stared at him blackly, and the terror of the depths seized
upon him.

One evening the boys had been hostile in their attitude, and one
of them maintained that the marks of the whip could still be seen
on Pelle's back. "Pelle has never been beaten with a whip!" cried
Morten, in a rage. Pelle himself made no reply, but followed the
"squadron"; his whole nature felt somehow embittered.

There was a slight swell, and this perhaps washed the swimmers out
of their proper course; they could not find the reef on which they
were used to rest. For a time they splashed about, trying to find
it, and wasting their strength; then they turned back to the shore.
Pelle looked after them with wondering eyes.

"Lie on your back and rest!" they cried, as they passed him, and
then they made for the beach; a touch of panic had fallen on them.
Pelle tried to rest, but he had had no practice in floating; the
waves broke over his face; so he labored after the others. On the
shore there was great excitement; he wondered what it meant. Morten,
who had never bathed with the others, was standing on a rock and
was shouting.

Some of the foremost swimmers were already in safety. "You can touch
bottom here!" they shouted, standing with outstretched arms, the
water up to their chins. Pelle labored on indefatigably, but he
was quite convinced that it was useless. He was making hardly any
progress, and he was sinking deeper and deeper. Every moment a wave
washed over him and filled him with water. The stronger swimmers
came out again; they swam round him and tried to help him, but they
only made matters worse. He saw Morten run shouting into the water
with all his clothes on, and that gave him a little strength. But
then suddenly his arms became paralyzed; he went round and round in
the same spot, and only his eyes were above water. Pelle had often
flown in his dreams, and something had always clutched his legs
and hampered his flight. But now this had become reality; he was
floating in the blue sky and poised on his outspread pinions; and
out of the darkness below he heard voices. "Pelle!" they cried,
"little Pelle!" "Yes, Father Lasse!" he answered, and with a sense
of relief he folded his weary wings; he sank in whirling haste,
and a surging sounded in his ears.

Then of a sudden he felt a violent pain in his shins. His hands
clutched at growing plants. He stood up with a leap, and light and
air flowed over him as from a new existence. The boys were running
about, frightened, one leg in their trousers, and he was standing
on the submarine reef, up to the breast in the sea, vomiting salt
water. Round about him swimmers were splashing, diving in every
direction to fetch him up from the bottom of the sea. It was all
really rather funny, and Pelle raised his arms high above his head
as a greeting to life, and took the water with a long dive. Some
distance farther in he appeared again, and swam to shore, parting
the waves like a frolicsome porpoise. But on the beach he fell down
as God had made him, in a profound sleep; he had just pulled one
stocking over his big toe.

Since that day the boys recognized him again. He had certainly
performed no heroic deed, but Destiny had for a moment rested upon
his head--that was enough! Pelle always took the steel sharpener
with him after that; and laid it on the beach with the point toward
the land; he wanted after all to live a little longer. He did not
allow himself to be intimidated, but plunged headlong into the
water.

If the sea was so rough that they could not swim, they would lie
on the brink of the water and let the waves roll them over and over.
Then the waves would come in sweeping flight from the west, as
though to spring upon them; the herds of white horses drove onward,
their grayish manes streaming obliquely behind them. Rearing they
came, sweeping the sea with their white tails, striking out wildly
with their hooves and plunging under the surface. But others sprang
up and leaped over them in serried ranks. They lay flat on the water
and rushed toward the land. The storm whipped the white foam out of
their mouths and drove it along the beach, where it hung gleaming
on the bushes, and then vanished into nothingness. Right up to the
shore they dashed, and then fell dead. But fresh hordes stormed
shoreward from the offing, as though the land must be over-run by
them; they reared, foaming, and struck at one another; they sprang,
snorting and quivering, high in the air; they broke asunder in
panic; there was never an end to it all. And far out in the distance
the sun went down in a flame-red mist. A streak of cloud lay across
it, stretching far out into infinity. A conflagration like a glowing
prairie fire surrounded the horizon, and drove the hordes before it
in panic-stricken flight, and on the beach shouted the naked swarm
of boys. Now and again they sprang up with outspread arms, and,
shouting, chased the wild horses back into the sea.

XVI

Things were not going well in the brothers' home. Jorgensen had done
nothing with his plans. He was the only person who had not known
that such would be the case. The people knew, too, on very good
authority, that the engineer had offered him a hundred kroner for
them, and as he would not take them, but demanded a share in the
undertaking and the honor of executing it, he was shown to the door.

He had never before taken anything so quietly. He did not burst out
roaring with violent words; he simply betook himself to his usual
day-laborer's work in the harbor, like any other worker. He did not
mention his defeat, and allowed no one else to do so. He treated
his wife as though she did not exist. But she had to watch him wrap
himself up in silence, without knowing what was going on in his mind.
She had a foreboding of something terrible, and spoke of her trouble
to the boys. He made no scenes, although now and again he got drunk;
he ate in silence and went to bed. When he was not working, he slept.

But as he himself had so far revealed his plans that they were
known to all, it was all up with his work. The engineer had taken
from Jorgensen's plans as much as he could use--every one could see
that--and now the "Great Power" stood with his mouth empty, simply
because he had put more in his spoon than his mouth would hold. Most
people were far from envying his position, and they took plenty of
time to talk about it; the town was quite accustomed to neglect its
own affairs in order to throw its whole weight on his obstinate back.
But now he was down in the dust all had been to the harbor to watch
the "Great Power" working there--to see him, as a common laborer,
carting the earth for his own wonderful scheme. They marvelled
only that he took it all so quietly; it was to some extent a
disappointment that he did not flinch under the weight of his
burden and break out into impotent raving.

He contented himself with drinking; but that he did thoroughly. He
went about it as it were in the midst of a cloud of alcoholic vapor,
and worked only just enough to enable him to go on drinking. "He has
never yet been like this," said his wife, weeping. "He doesn't storm
and rage, but he is angry all the time so that one can't bear him
at home any longer. He breaks everything in his anger, and he scolds
poor Karen so that it's wretched. He has no regard for anybody,
only for his old mother, and God knows how long that will last. He
doesn't work, he only drinks. He steals my hard-earned money out of
my dress-pocket and buys brandy with it. He has no shame left in him,
although he always used to be so honorable in his way of life. And
he can't stand his boozing as he used to; he's always falling about
and staggering. Lately he came home all bloody--he'd knocked a hole
in his head. What have we ever done to the dear God that he should
punish us like this?"

The old woman said nothing, but let her glance sweep from one to
the other, and thought her own thoughts.

So it went on, week after week. The boys became weary of listening
to their mother's complaints, and kept away from home.

One day, when Karen had been sent on an errand for her mother, she
did not return. Neither had she returned on the following day. Pelle
heard of it down at the boat-harbor, where she had last been seen.
They were dragging the water with nets in the hope of finding her,
but no one dared tell Jorgensen. On the following afternoon they
brought her to the workshop; Pelle knew what it was when he heard
the many heavy footsteps out in the street. She lay on a stretcher,
and two men carried her; before her the autumn wind whirled the
first falling leaves, and her thin arms were hanging down to the
pavement, as though she sought to find a hold there. Her disordered
hair was hanging, too, and the water was dripping from her. Behind
the stretcher came the "Great Power." He was drunk. He held one hand
before his eyes, and murmured as though in thought, and at every
moment he raised his forefinger in the air. "She has found peace,"
he said thickly, trying to look intelligent.

"Peace--the higher it is----" He could not find the word he wanted.

Jens and Pelle replaced the men at the stretcher, and bore it home.
They were afraid of what was before them. But the mother stood at
the door and received them silently, as though she had expected them;
she was merely pale. "She couldn't bear it!" she whispered to them,
and she kneeled down beside the child.

She laid her head on the little crippled body, and whispered
indistinctly; now and again she pressed the child's fingers into
her mouth, in order to stifle her sobs. "And you were to have run
an errand for mother," she said, and she shook her head, smilingly.
"You are a nice sort of girl to me--not to be able to buy me two
skeins of thread; and the money I gave you for it--have you thrown
it away?" Her words came between smiles and sobs, and they sounded
like a slow lament. "Did you throw the money away? It doesn't matter
--it wasn't your fault. Dear child, dear little one!" Then her
strength gave way. Her firmly closed mouth broke open, and closed
again, and so she went on, her head rocking to and fro, while her
hands felt eagerly in the child's pocket. "Didn't you run that
errand for mother?" she moaned. She felt, in the midst of her grief,
the need of some sort of corroboration, even if it referred to
something quite indifferent. And she felt in the child's purse.
There lay a few ore and a scrap of paper.

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