Pelle the Conqueror, Vol. 2 by Martin Anderson Nexo

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Pelle worked away at his cobbler's wax, kneading the pitch and
mixing grease with it. When the black lump was on the point of
stiffening, he had to plunge both hands into hot water, so that he
got hangnails. Old Jeppe came tripping in from the yard, and Master
Andres quickly laid the cutting-board over his book and diligently
stropped his knife.

"That's right!" said Jeppe; "warm the wax, then it binds all
the better."

Pelle had rolled the wax into balls, and had put them in the
soaking-tub, and now stood silent; for he had not the courage
of his own accord to say, "I am ready." The others had magnified
the "ordeal by wax" into something positively terrible; all sorts
of terrors lurked in the mystery that was now awaiting him; and if
he himself had not known that he was a smart fellow--why--yes, he
would have left them all in the lurch. But now he meant to submit to
it, however bad it might be; he only wanted time to swallow first.
Then at last he would have succeeded in shaking off the peasant, and
the handicraft would be open to him, with its song and its wandering
life and its smart journeyman's clothes. The workshop here was no
better than a stuffy hole where one sat and slaved over smelly
greasy boots, but he saw that one must go through with it in order
to reach the great world, where journeymen wore patent-leather shoes
on workdays and made footwear fit for kings. The little town had
given Pelle a preliminary foreboding that the world was almost
incredibly great, and this foreboding filled him with impatience.
He meant to conquer it all!

"Now I am ready!" he said resolutely; now he would decide whether
he and the handicraft were made for one another.

"Then you can pull a waxed end--but make it as long as a bad year!"
said the journeyman.

The old master was all on fire at the idea. He went over and watched
Pelle closely, his tongue hanging out of his mouth; he felt quite
young again, and began to descant upon his own apprenticeship in
Copenhagen, sixty years ago. Those were times! The apprentices
didn't lie in bed and snore in those days till six o'clock in the
morning, and throw down their work on the very stroke of eight,
simply to go out and run about. No; up they got at four, and stuck
at it as long as there was work to do. Then fellows _could_
work--and then they still learned something; they were told things
just once, and then--the knee-strap! Then, too, the manual crafts
still enjoyed some reputation; even the kings had to learn a
handicraft. It was very different to the present, with its bungling
and cheap retailing and pinching and paring everywhere.

The apprentices winked at one another. Master Andres and the
journeyman were silent. You might as well quarrel with the
sewing-machine because it purred. Jeppe was allowed to spin his
yarn alone.

"Are you waxing it well?" said little Nikas. "It's for pigskin."

The others laughed, but Pelle rubbed the thread with a feeling as
though he were building his own scaffold.

"Now I am ready!" he said, in a low voice.

The largest pair of men's lasts was taken down from the shelf, and
these were tied to one end of the waxed-end and were let right down
to the pavement. People collected in the street outside, and stood
there staring. Pelle had to lean right out of the window, and bend
over as far as he could, while Emil, as the oldest apprentice,
laid the waxed-end over his neck. They were all on their feet now,
with the exception of the young master; he took no part in this
diversion.

"Pull, then!" ordered the journeyman, who was directing the solemn
business. "Pull them along till they're right under your feet!"

Pelle pulled, and the heavy lasts joggled over the pavement, but he
paused with a sigh; the waxed-end was slipping over his warm neck.
He stood there stamping, like an animal which stamps its feet on the
ground, without knowing why; he lifted them cautiously and looked at
them in torment.

"Pull, pull!" ordered Jeppe. "You must keep the thing moving or it
sticks!" But it was too late; the wax had hardened in the hairs of
his nape--Father Lasse used to call them his "luck curls," and
prophesied a great future for him on their account--and there he
stood, and could not remove the waxed-end, however hard he tried.
He made droll grimaces, the pain was so bad, and the saliva ran
out of his mouth.

"Huh! He can't even manage a pair of lasts!" said Jeppe jeeringly.
"He'd better go back to the land again and wash down the cows'
behinds!"

Then Pelle, boiling with rage, gave a jerk, closing his eyes and
writhing as he loosed himself. Something sticky and slippery slipped
through his fingers with the waxed-end; it was bloody hair, and
across his neck the thread had bitten its way in a gutter of lymph
and molten wax. But Pelle no longer felt the pain, his head was
boiling so, and he felt a vague but tremendous longing to pick up
a hammer and strike them all to the ground, and then to run through
the street, banging at the skulls of all he met. But then the
journeyman took the lasts off him, and the pain came back to him,
and his whole miserable plight. He heard Jeppe's squeaky voice,
and looked at the young master, who sat there submissively, without
having the courage to express his opinion, and all at once he felt
terribly sorry for himself.

"That was right," buzzed old Jeppe, "a shoemaker mustn't be afraid
to wax his hide a little. What? I believe it has actually brought
the water to his eyes! No, when I was apprentice we had a real
ordeal; we had to pass the waxed-end twice round our necks before we
were allowed to pull. Our heads used to hang by a thread and dangle
when we were done. Yes, those were times!"

Pelle stood there shuffling, in order to fight down his tears; but
he had to snigger with mischievous delight at the idea of Jeppe's
dangling head.

"Then we must see whether he can stand a buzzing head," said the
journeyman, getting ready to strike him.

"No, you can wait until he deserves it," said Master Andres hastily.
"You will soon find an occasion."

"Well, he's done with the wax," said Jeppe, "but the question is,
can he sit? Because there are some who never learn the art of
sitting."

"That must be tested, too, before we can declare him to be useful,"
said little Nikas, in deadly earnest.

"Are you done with your tomfoolery now?" said Master Andres angrily,
and he went his way.

But Jeppe was altogether in his element; his head was full of the
memories of his boyhood, a whole train of devilish tricks, which
completed the ordination. "Then we used to brand them indelibly
with their special branch, and they never took to their heels, but
they considered it a great honor as long as they drew breath. But
now these are weakly times and full of pretences; the one can't
do this and the other can't do that; and there's leather colic and
sore behinds and God knows what. Every other day they come with
certificates that they're suffering from boils from sitting down,
and then you can begin all over again. No, in my time we behaved
very different--the booby got held naked over a three-legged stool
and a couple of men used to go at him with knee-straps! That was
leather on leather, and like that they learned, damn and blast it
all! how to put up with sitting on a stool!"

The journeyman made a sign.

"Now, is the seat of the stool ready consecrated, and prayed over?
Yes, then you can go over there and sit down."

Pelle went stupidly across the room and sat down--it was all the
same to him. But he leaped into the air with a yell of pain, looked
malevolently about him, and in a moment he had a hammer in his hand.
But he dropped it again, and now he cried--wept buckets of tears.

"What the devil are you doing to him now?"

The young master came out of the cutting-out room. "What dirty
tricks are you hatching now?" He ran his hand over the seat of the
stool; it was studded with broken awl-points. "You are barbarous
devils; any one would think he was among a lot of savages!"

"What a weakling!" sneered Jeppe. "In these days a man can't take
a boy as apprentice and inoculate him a bit against boils! One ought
to anoint the boobies back and front with honey, perhaps, like the
kings of Israel? But you are a freethinker!"

"You get out of this, father!" shouted Master Andres, quite beside
himself. "You get out of this, father!" He trembled, and his face
was quite gray. And then he pushed the old man out of the room
before he had struck Pelle on the shoulder and received him properly
into the handicraft.

Pelle sat there and reflected. He was altogether disillusioned. All
the covert allusions had evoked something terrifying, but at the
same time impressive. In his imagination the ordeal had grown into
something that constituted the great barrier of his life, so that
one passed over to the other side as quite a different being; it
was something after the fashion of the mysterious circumcision in
the Bible, a consecration to new things. And now the whole thing
was just a spitefully devised torture!

The young master threw him a pair of children's shoes, which had to
be soled. So he was admitted to that department, and need no longer
submit to preparing waxed-ends for the others! But the fact did
not give him any pleasure. He sat there struggling with something
irrational that seemed to keep on rising deep within him; when no
one was looking he licked his fingers and drew them over his neck.
He seemed to himself like a half-stupefied cat which had freed
itself from the snare and sat there drying its fur.

Out of doors, under the apple-trees, the sunlight lay green and
golden, and a long way off, in the skipper's garden, three brightly
dressed girls were walking and playing; they seemed to Pelle like
beings out of another world. "Fortune's children on the sunbright
shore," as the song had it. From time to time a rat made its
appearance behind the pigsty, and went clattering over the great
heap of broken glass that lay there. The pig stood there gobbling
down its spoiled potatoes with that despairing noise that put an end
to all Pelle's proud dreams of the future, while it filled him with
longing--oh, such a mad longing!

And everything that possibly could do so made its assault upon him
at this moment when he was feeling particularly victorious; the
miseries of his probation here in the workshop, the street urchins,
the apprentices, who would not accept him as one of themselves, and
all the sharp edges and corners which he was continually running
up against in this unfamiliar world. And then the smelly workshop
itself, where never a ray of sunlight entered. And no one here
seemed to respect anything.

When the master was not present, little Nikas would sometimes
indulge in tittle-tattle with the older apprentices. Remarks were
made at such times which opened new spheres of thought to Pelle, and
he had to ask questions; or they would talk of the country, which
Pelle knew better than all of them put together, and he would chime
in with some correction. _Smack!_ came a box on his ears that
would send him rolling into the corner; he was to hold his tongue
until he was spoken to. But Pelle, who was all eyes and ears, and
had been accustomed to discuss everything in heaven or earth with
Father Lasse, could not learn to hold his tongue.

Each exacted with a strong hand his quantum of respect, from
the apprentices to the old master, who was nearly bursting with
professional pride in his handicraft; only Pelle had no claim to any
respect whatever, but must pay tribute to all. The young master was
the only one who did not press like a yoke on the youngster's neck.
Easygoing as he was, he would disregard the journeyman and the rest,
and at times he would plump himself down beside Pelle, who sat there
feeling dreadfully small.

Outside, when the sun was shining through the trees in a particular
way, and a peculiar note came into the twittering of the birds,
Pelle knew it was about the time when the cows began to get on their
feet after their midday chewing of the cud. And then a youngster
would come out from among the little fir-trees, lustily cracking his
whip; he was the general of the whole lot--Pelle, the youngster--who
had no one set over him. And the figure that came stumbling across
the arable yonder, in order to drive the cows home--why, that was
Lasse!

Father Lasse!

He did not know why, but it wrung a sob from him; it took him so
unawares. "Hold your row!" cried the journeyman threateningly. Pelle
was greatly concerned; he had not once made the attempt to go over
and see Lasse.

The young master came to get something off the shelf above his head,
and leaned confidentially on Pelle's shoulder, his weak leg hanging
free and dangling. He stood there loitering for a time, staring at
the sky outside, and this warm hand on Pelle's shoulder quieted him.

But there could be no talk of enjoyment when he thought where
good Father Lasse was. He had not seen his father since that sunny
morning when he himself had gone away and left the old man to his
loneliness. He had not heard of him; he had scarcely given a thought
to him. He had to get through the day with a whole skin, and to
adapt himself to the new life; a whole new world was before him,
in which he had to find his feet. Pelle had simply had no time;
the town had swallowed him.

But at this moment his conduct confronted him as the worst example
of unfaithfulness the world had ever known. And his neck continued
to hurt him--he must go somewhere or other where no one would look
at him. He made a pretence of having to do something in the yard
outside; he went behind the washhouse, and he crouched down by the
woodpile beside the well.

There he lay, shrinking into himself, in the blackest despair at
having left Father Lasse so shamelessly in the lurch, just for the
sake of all these new strange surroundings. Yes, and then, when they
used to work together, he had been neither as good nor as heedful
as he should have been. It was really Lasse who, old as he was, had
sacrificed himself for Pelle, in order to lighten his work and take
the worst of the burden off him, although Pelle had the younger
shoulders. And he had been a little hard at times, as over that
business between his father and Madame Olsen; and he had not always
been very patient with his good-humored elderly tittle-tattle,
although if he could hear it now he would give his life to listen.
He could remember only too plainly occasions when he had snapped at
Lasse, so unkindly that Lasse had given a sigh and made off; for
Lasse never snapped back--he was only silent and very sad.

But how dreadful that was! Pelle threw all his high-and-mighty airs
to the winds and gave himself up to despair. What was he doing here,
with Father Lasse wandering among strangers, and perhaps unable to
find shelter? There was nothing with which he could console himself,
no evasion or excuse was possible; Pelle howled at the thought of
his faithlessness. And as he lay there despairing, worrying over
the whole business and crying himself into a state of exhaustion,
quite a manful resolve began to form within him; he must give up
everything of his own--the future, and the great world, and all,
and devote his days to making the old man's life happy. He must go
back to Stone Farm! He forgot that he was only a child who could
just earn his own keep. To protect the infirm old man at every point
and make his life easy--that was just what he wanted. And Pelle was
by no means disposed to doubt that he could do it. In the midst of
his childish collapse he took upon himself all the duties of a
strong man.

As he lay there, woe-begone, playing with a couple of bits of
firewood, the elder-boughs behind the well parted, and a pair of
big eyes stared at him wonderingly. It was only Manna.

"Did they beat you--or why are you crying?" she asked earnestly.

Pelle turned his face away.

Manna shook her hair back and looked at him fixedly. "Did they beat
you? What? If they did, I shall go in and scold them hard!"

"What is it to you?"

"People who don't answer aren't well-behaved."

"Oh, hold your row!"

Then he was left in peace; over at the back of the garden Manna and
her two younger sisters were scrambling about the trellis, hanging
on it and gazing steadfastly across the yard at him. But that was
nothing to him; he wanted to know nothing about them; he didn't want
petticoats to pity him or intercede for him. They were saucy jades,
even if their father had sailed on the wide ocean and earned a lot
of money. If he had them here they would get the stick from him!
Now he must content himself with putting out his tongue at them.

He heard their horrified outcry--but what then? He didn't want to
go scrambling about with them any more, or to play with the great
conch-shells and lumps of coral in their garden! He would go back
to the land and look after his old father! Afterward, when that was
done, he would go out into the world himself, and bring such things
home with him--whole shiploads of them!

They were calling him from the workshop window. "Where in the
world has that little blighter got to?" he heard them say. He
started, shrinking; he had quite forgotten that he was serving
his apprenticeship. He got on his feet and ran quickly indoors.

Pelle had soon tidied up after leaving off work. The others had run
out in search of amusement; he was alone upstairs in the garret.
He put his worldly possessions into his sack. There was a whole
collection of wonderful things--tin steamboats, railway-trains, and
horses that were hollow inside--as much of the irresistible wonders
of the town as he had been able to obtain for five white krone
pieces. They went in among the washing, so that they should not
get damaged, and then he threw the bag out of the gable-window into
the little alley. Now the question was how he himself should slip
through the kitchen without arousing the suspicions of Jeppe's old
woman; she had eyes like a witch, and Pelle had a feeling that every
one who saw him would know what he was about.

But he went. He controlled himself, and sauntered along, so that
the people should think he was taking washing to the laundrywoman;
but he could only keep it up as far as the first turning; then
he started off as fast as he could go. He was homesick. A few
street-boys yelled and threw stones after him, but that didn't
matter, so long as he only got away; he was insensible to everything
but the remorse and homesickness that filled his heart.

It was past midnight when he at last reached the outbuildings of
Stone Farm. He was breathless, and had a stitch in his side. He
leaned against the ruined forge, and closed his eyes, the better to
recover himself. As soon as he had recovered his breath, he entered
the cowshed from the back and made for the herdsman's room. The
floor of the cowshed felt familiar to his feet, and now he came in
the darkness to the place where the big bull lay. He breathed in
the scent of the creature's body and blew it out again--ah, didn't
he remember it! But the scent of the cowherd's room was strange to
him. "Father Lasse is neglecting himself," he thought, and he pulled
the feather-bed from under the sleeper's head. A strange voice began
to upbraid him. "Then isn't this Lasse?" said Pelle. His knees were
shaking under him.

"Lasse?" cried the new cowherd, as he sat upright. "Do you say Lasse?
Have you come to fetch that child of God, Mr. Devil? They've been
here already from Hell and taken him with them--in the living body
they've taken him there with them--he was too good for this world,
d'ye see? Old Satan was here himself in the form of a woman and took
him away. You'd better go there and look for him. Go straight on
till you come to the devil's great-grandmother, and then you've only
got to ask your way to the hairy one."

Pelle stood for a while in the yard below and considered. So Father
Lasse had gone away! And wanted to marry, or was perhaps already
married. And to Karna, of course. He stood bolt-upright, sunk in
intimate memories. The great farm lay hushed in moonlight, in
deepest slumber, and all about him rose memories from their sleep,
speaking to him caressingly, with a voice like that contented
purring, remembered from childhood, when the little kittens used
to sleep upon his pillow, and he would lay his cheek against their
soft, quivering bodies.

Pelle's memory had deep roots. Once, at Uncle Kalle's, he had laid
himself in the big twins' cradle and had let the other children rock
him--he was then fully nine years old--and as they rocked him a
while the surroundings began to take hold of him, and he saw a smoky,
raftered ceiling, which did not belong to Kalle's house, swaying
high over his head, and he had a feeling that a muffled-up old woman,
wrapped in a shawl, sat like a shadow at the head of the cradle, and
rocked it with her foot. The cradle jolted with the over-vigorous
rocking, and every time the rocking foot slipped from the footboard
it struck on the floor with the sound of a sprung wooden shoe. Pelle
jumped up--"she bumped so," he said, bewildered. "What? No, you
certainly dreamed that!" Kalle looked, smiling, under the rockers.
"Bumped!" said Lasse. "That ought to suit you first-rate! At one
time, when you were little, you couldn't sleep if the cradle didn't
bump, so we had to make the rockers all uneven. It was almost
impossible to rock it. Bengta cracked many a good wooden shoe in
trying to give you your fancy."

The farmyard here was like a great cradle, which swayed and swayed
in the uncertain moonlight, and now that Pelle had once quite
surrendered himself to the past, there was no end to the memories
of childhood that rose within him. His whole existence passed before
him, swaying above his head as before, and the earth itself seemed
like a dark speck in the abysm of space.

And then the crying broke out from the house--big with destiny, to
be heard all over the place, so that Kongstrup slunk away shamefaced,
and the other grew angry and ungovernable. ... And Lasse ... yes,
where was Father Lasse?

With one leap, Pelle was in the brew-house, knocking on the door
of the maid's room.

"Is that you, Anders?" whispered a voice from within, and then the
door opened, and a pair of arms fastened themselves about him and
drew him in. Pelle felt about him, and his hands sank into a naked
bosom--why, it was yellow-haired Marie!

"Is Karna still here?" he asked. "Can't I speak to Karna a moment?"

They were glad to see him again; and yellow-haired Marie patted his
cheeks quite affectionately, and just before that she kissed him too.
Karna could scarcely recover from her surprise; he had acquired such
a townsman's air. "And now you are a shoemaker too, in the biggest
workshop in the town! Yes, we've heard; Butcher Jensen heard about
it on the market. And you have grown tall and townified. You do hold
yourself well!" Karna was dressing herself.

"Where is Father Lasse?" said Pelle; he had a lump in his throat
only from speaking of him.

"Give me time, and I'll come out with you. How fine you dress now!
I should hardly have known you. Would you, Marie?"

"He's a darling boy--he always was," said Marie, and she pushed
at him with her arched foot--she was now in bed again.

"It's the same suit as I always had," said Pelle.

"Yes, yes; but then you held yourself different--there in town they
all look like lords. Well, shall we go?"

Pelle said good-by to Marie affectionately; it occurred to him that
he had much to thank her for. She looked at him in a very odd way,
and tried to draw his hand under the coverlet.

"What's the matter with father?" said Pelle impatiently, as soon
as they were outside.

Well, Lasse had taken to his heels too! He couldn't stand it when
Pelle had gone. And the work was too heavy for one. Where he was
just at the moment Karna could not say. "He's now here, now there,
considering farms and houses," she said proudly. "Some fine day
he'll be able to take you in on his visit to town."

"And how are things going here?" inquired Pelle.

"Well, Erik has got his speech back and is beginning to be a man
again--he can make himself understood. And Kongstrup and his wife,
they drink one against the other."

"They drink together, do they, like the wooden shoemaker and his
old woman?"

"Yes, and so much that they often lie in the room upstairs soaking,
and can't see one another for the drink, they're that foggy.
Everything goes crooked here, as you may suppose, with no master.
'Masterless, defenceless,' as the old proverb says. But what can you
say about it--they haven't anything else in common! But it's all the
same to me--as soon as Lasse finds something I'm off!"

Pelle could well believe that, and had nothing to say against it.
Karna looked at him from head to foot in surprise as they walked on.
"They feed you devilish well in the town there, don't they?"

"Yes--vinegary soup and rotten greaves. We were much better fed
here."

She would not believe it--it sounded too foolish. "But where are
all the things they have in the shop windows--all the meats and
cakes and sweet things? What becomes of all them?"

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