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Pelle the Conqueror, Vol 3 by Martin Anderson Nexo

M >> Martin Anderson Nexo >> Pelle the Conqueror, Vol 3




One day Pelle stood in a doorway with some other young people,
discussing the aspect of affairs; it was a cold meeting-place, but they
had not sufficient means to call a meeting in the usual public room. The
discussion was conducted in a very subdued tune; their voices were
bitter and sullen. A well-dressed citizen went by. "There's a fine
overcoat," cried one; "I should like to have one like that! Shall we
fetch him into the doorway and pull his coat off?" He spoke loudly, and
was about to run out into the street.

"No stupidity!" said Pelle sadly, seizing him by the arm. "We should
only do ourselves harm! Remember the authorities are keeping their eyes
on us!"

"Well, what's a few weeks in prison?" the man replied. "At least one
would get board and lodging for so long." There was a look that
threatened mischief in his usually quiet and intelligent eyes.




XXIV


There were rumors that the city authorities intended to intervene in
order to remedy the condition of the unemployed, and shortly before
Christmas large numbers of navvies were given employment. Part of the
old ramparts was cleared away, and the space converted into parks and
boulevards. Pelle applied among a thousand others and had the good
fortune to be accepted. The contractor gave the preference to youthful
energy.

Every morning the workers appeared in a solid phalanx; the foreman of
the works chose those he had need of, and the rest were free to depart.
At home sat their wives and children, cheered by the possibility of
work; the men felt no inclination to go home with bad news, so they
loafed about in the vicinity.

They came there long before daybreak in order to be the first, although
there was not much hope. There was at least an excuse to leave one's
bed; idleness was burning like hell fire in their loins. When the
foreman came they thronged silently about him, with importunate eyes.
One woman brought her husband; he walked modestly behind her, kept his
eyes fixed upon her, and did precisely as she did. He was a great
powerful fellow, but he did nothing of his own accord--did not even blow
his nose unless she nudged him. "Come here, Thorvald!" she said, cuffing
him so hard as to hurt him. "Keep close behind me!" She spoke in a harsh
voice, into the empty air, as though to explain her behavior to the
others; but no one looked at her. "He can't speak for himself properly,
you see," she remarked at random. Her peevish voice made Pelle start;
she was from Bornholm. Ah, those smart young girls at home, they were a
man's salvation! "And the children have got to live too!" she continued.
"We have eight. Yes, eight."

"Then he's some use for something," said a workman who looked to be
perishing with the cold.

The woman worked her way through them, and actually succeeded in getting
her man accepted. "And now you do whatever they tell you, nicely, and
don't let them tempt you to play the fool in any way!" she said, and she
gave him a cuff which set him off working in his place. She raised her
head defiantly as contemptuous laughter sounded about her.

The place was like a slave-market. The foreman, went to and fro, seeking
out the strongest, eyeing them from head to foot and choosing them for
their muscular development and breadth of back. The contractor too was
moving about and giving orders. "One of them rich snobs!" said the
laborers, grumbling; "all the laborers in town have to march out here so
that he can pick himself the best. And he's beaten down the day's wages
to fifty ore. He's been a navvy himself, too; but now he's a man who
enjoys his hundred thousand a year. A regular bloodsucker, he is!"

The crowd continued to stand there and to loaf about all the day, in the
hope that some one would give up, or fall ill--or go crazy--so that
some one could take his place. They could not tear themselves away; the
mere fact that work was being done chained them to the spot. They looked
as though they might storm the works at any moment, and the police
formed a ring about the place. They stood pressing forward, absorbed by
their desire for work, with a sick longing in their faces. When the
crowd had pressed forward too far it hesitatingly allowed itself to be
pushed back again. Suddenly there was a break in the ranks; a man leaped
over the rail and seized a pickaxe. A couple of policemen wrested the
tool from his hand and led him away.

And as they stood there a feeling of defiance rose within them, a fierce
contempt for their privations and the whole shameless situation. It
expressed itself in an angry half-suppressed growl. They followed the
contractor with curious eyes as though they were looking for something
in him but could not conceive what it was.

In his arrogance at receiving such an excessive offer of labor, he
decided to go further, and to lengthen the working day by an hour. The
workers received an order to that effect one morning, just as they had
commenced work. But at the same moment the four hundred men, all but
two, threw down their implements and returned to their comrades. They
stood there discussing the matter, purple with rage. So now their
starving condition was to be made use of, in order to enrich the
contractor by a further hundred thousand! "We must go to the city
authorities," they cried. "No, to the newspaper!" others replied. "The
paper! The paper is better!"

"It's no use going to the city council--not until we have elected
members of our own party to it," cried Pelle. "Remember that at the
elections, comrades! We must elect men of our party everywhere, their
encroachments will never be stopped until then. And now we must stand
together and be firm! If it's got to be, better starve to death at once
than do it slowly!"

They did not reply, but pressed closely about him, heavily listening.
There was something altogether too fierce and profound in their
attention. These men had declared a strike in midwinter, as their only
remedy. What were they thinking of doing now? Pelle looked about him and
was daunted by their dumb rage. This threatening silence wouldn't do;
what would it lead to? It seemed as though something overwhelming, and
uncontrollable, would spring from this stony taciturnity. Pelle sprang
upon a heap of road-metal.

"Comrades!" he cried, in a powerful voice. "This is merely a change, as
the fox said when they flayed his skin off. They have deprived us of
clothes and food and drink, and comfort at home, and now they want to
find a way of depriving us of our skins too! The question to-day is--
forward or back? Perhaps this is the great time of trial, when we shall
enter into possession of all we have desired! Hold together, comrades!
Don't scatter and don't give way! Things are difficult enough now, but
remember, we are well on in the winter, and it promises to break up
early. The night is always darkest before daybreak! And shall we be
afraid to suffer a little--we, who have suffered and been patient for
hundreds of years? Our wives are sitting at home and fretting--perhaps
they will be angry with us. We might at least have accepted what was
offered us, they may say. But we can't go on seeing our dear ones at
home fading away in spite of our utmost exertions! Hitherto the poor
man's labor has been like an aimless prayer to Heaven: Deliver us from
hunger and dirt, from misery, poverty, and cold, and give us bread, and
again bread! Deliver our children from our lot--let not their limbs
wither and their minds lapse into madness! That has been our prayer, but
there is only one prayer that avails, and that is, to defy the wicked!
We are the chosen people, and for that reason we must cry a halt! We
will no longer do as we have done--for our wives' sakes, and our
children's, and theirs again! Ay, but what is posterity to us? Of course
it is something to us--precisely to us! Were your parents as you are?
No, they were ground down into poverty and the dust, they crept
submissively before the mighty. Then whence did we get all that makes us
so strong and causes us to stand together? Time has stood still,
comrades! It has placed its finger on our breast and he said, 'Thus you
shall do!' Here where we stand, the old time ceases and the new time
begins; and that is why we have thrown down our tools, with want staring
us in the face--such a thing as has never been seen before! We want to
revolutionize life--to make it sweet for the poor man! And for all time!
You, who have so often staked your life and welfare for a florin--you
now hold the whole future in your hands! You must endure, calmly and
prudently! And you will never be forgotten, so long as there are workers
on the earth! This winter will be the last through which we shall have
to endure--for yonder lies the land toward which we have been wandering!
Comrades! Through us the day shall come!"

Pelle himself did not know what words he uttered. He felt only that
something was speaking through him--something supremely mighty, that
never lies. There was a radiant, prophetic ring in his voice, which
carried his hearers off their feet; and his eyes were blazing. Before
their eyes a figure arose from the hopeless winter, towering in
radiance, a figure that was their own, and yet that of a young god. He
rose, new-born, out of misery itself, struck aside the old grievous idea
of fate, and in its place gave them a new faith--the radiant faith in
their own might! They cried up to him--first single voices, then all. He
gathered up their cries into a mighty cheer, a paean in honor of the new
age!

Every day they stationed themselves there, not to work, but to stand
there in dumb protest. When the foreman called for workers they stood
about in silent groups, threatening as a gloomy rock. Now and again they
shouted a curse at those who had left them in the lurch. The city did
nothing. They had held out a helping hand to the needy, and the latter
had struck it away--now they must accept the consequences. The
contractor had received permission to suspend the work entirely, but he
kept it going with a few dozen strike-breakers, in order to irritate the
workers.

All over the great terrace a silence as of death prevailed, except in
that corner where the little gang was at work, a policeman beside it, as
though the men had been convicts. The wheelbarrows lay with their legs
in the air; it was as though the pest had swept over the works.

The strike-breakers were men of all callings; a few of the unemployed
wrote down their names and addresses, in order to insert them in _The
Working Man_. One of Stolpe's fellow-unionists was among them; he was
a capable pater-familias, and had taken part in the movement from its
earliest days. "It's a pity about him," said Stolpe; "he's an old mate
of mine, and he's always been a good comrade till now. Now they'll give
it him hard in the paper--we are compelled to. It does the trade no good
when one of its representatives goes and turns traitor."

Madame Stolpe was unhappy. "It's such a nice family," she said; "we have
always been on friendly terms with them; and I know they were hungry a
long time. He has a young wife, father; it's not easy to stand out."

"It hurts me myself," replied Stolpe. "But one is compelled to do it,
otherwise one would be guilty of partisanship. And no one shall come to
me and say that I'm a respecter of persons."

"I should like to go and have a talk with them," said Pelle. "Perhaps
they'd give it up then."

He got the address and went there after working hours. The home had been
stripped bare. There were four little children. The atmosphere was
oppressive. The man, who was already well on in years, but was still
powerful, sat at the table with a careworn expression eating his supper,
while the children stood round with their chins on the edge of the
table, attentively following every bite he took. The young wife was
going to and fro; she brought him his simple food with a peculiarly
loving gesture.

Pelle broached the question at issue. It was not pleasant to attack this
old veteran. But it must be done.

"I know that well enough," said the man, nodding to himself. "You
needn't begin your lecture--I myself have been in the movement since the
first days, and until now I've kept my oath. But now it's done with, for
me. What do you want here, lad? Have you a wife and children crying for
bread? Then think of your own!"

"We don't cry, Hans," said the woman quietly.

"No, you don't, and that makes it even worse! Can I sit here and look
on, while you get thinner day by day, and perish with the cold? To hell
with the comrades and their big words--what have they led to? Formerly
we used to go hungry just for a little while, and now we starve
outright--that's the difference! Leave me alone, I tell you! Curse it,
why don't they leave me in peace?"

He took a mouthful of brandy from the bottle. His wife pushed a glass
toward him, but he pushed it violently away.

"You'll be put in the paper to-morrow," said Pelle, hesitating. "I only
wanted to tell you that."

"Yes, and to write of me that I'm a swine and a bad comrade, and perhaps
that I beat my wife as well. You know yourself it's all lies; but what
is that to me? Will you have a drink?"

No, Pelle wouldn't take anything. "Then I will myself," said the man,
and he laughed angrily. "Now you can certify that I'm a hog--I drink out
of the bottle! And another evening you can come and listen at the
keyhole--perhaps then you'll hear me beating my wife!"

The woman began to cry.

"Oh, damn it all, they might leave me in peace!" said the man defiantly.

Pelle had to go with nothing effected.




XXV


The "Ark" was now freezing in the north wind; all outward signs of life
were stripped from it. The sounds that in summer bubbled up from its
deep well-like shaft were silent now; the indistinguishable dripping of
a hundred waste-pipes, that turned the court into a little well with
green slimy walls, was silent too. The frost had fitted them all with
stoppers; and where the toads had sat gorging themselves in the cavities
of the walls--fantastic caverns of green moss and slimy filaments--a
crust of ice hung over all; a grimy glacier, which extended from the
attics right down to the floor of the court.

Where were they now, the grimy, joyful children? And what of the evening
carouse of the hearse-driver, for which his wife would soundly thrash
him? And the quarrelsome women's voices, which would suddenly break out
over this or that railing, criticizing the whole court, sharp as so many
razors?

The frost was harder than ever! It had swept all these things away and
had locked them up as closely as might be. The hurdy-gurdy man lay down
below in his cellar, and had as visitor that good friend of the north
wind, the gout; and down in the deserted court the draught went
shuffling along the dripping walls. Whenever any one entered the tunnel-
entry the draught clutched at his knees with icy fingers, so that the
pain penetrated to the very heart.

There stood the old barrack, staring emptily out of its black windows.
The cold had stripped away the last shred of figured curtain, and sent
it packing to the pawn-shop. It had exchanged the canary for a score of
firewood, and had put a stop to the day-long, lonely crying of the
little children behind the locked doors--that hymn of labor, which had
ceased only in the evening, when the mothers returned from the
factories. Now the mothers sat with their children all day long, and no
one but the cold grudged them this delight. But the cold and its sister,
hunger, came every day to look in upon them.

On the third floor, away from the court, Widow Johnsen sat in the corner
by the stove. Hanne's little girl lay cowering on the floor, on a
tattered patchwork counterpane. Through the naked window one saw only
ice, as though the atmosphere were frozen down to the ground.
Transparent spots had formed on the window-panes every time the child
had breathed on them in order to look out, but they had soon closed up
again. The old woman sat staring straight into the stove with big, round
eyes; her little head quivered continually; she was like a bird of ill
omen, that knew a great deal more than any one could bear to hear.

"Now I'm cold again, grandmother," said the child quietly.

"Don't keep from shivering, then you'll be warm," said the old woman.

"Are you shivering?"

"No, I'm too old and stiff for it--I can't shiver any more. But the cold
numbs my limbs, so that I can't feel them. I could manage well enough if
it wasn't for my back."

"You lean your back against the cold stove too!"

"Yes, the cold grips my poor back so."

"But that's stupid, when the stove isn't going."

"But if only my back would get numb too!" said the old woman piteously.

The child was silent, and turned her head away.

Over the whole of the wall were tiny glittering crystals. Now and again
there was a rustling sound under the wall-paper.

"Grandmother, what's that funny noise?" asked the child.

"That's the bugs--they are coming down," said the old woman. "It's too
cold for them up there in the attics, and they don't like it here. You
should see them; they go to Olsen's with the warm wall; they stay there
in the cold."

"Is the wall at Olsen's always warm, then?"

"Yes, when there's fire in the boiler of the steam mill."

Then the child was silent a while, wearily turning her head from side to
side. A dreadful weariness was stamped on her face. "I'm cold," she
complained after a time.

"See if you can't shiver!"

"Hadn't I better jump a bit?"

"No, then you'd just swallow down the cold--the air is like ice. Just
keep still, and soon mother will be here, and she'll bring something!"

"She never gets anything," said the child. "When she gets there it's
always all over."

"That's not true," said Madam Johnsen severely. "There's food enough in
the soup kitchens for all; it's just a matter of understanding how to go
about it. The poor must get shame out of their heads. She'll bring
something to-day!"

The child stood up and breathed a hole in the ice on the window-pane.

"Look now, whether it isn't going to snow a little so that the poor man
can get yet another day's employment," said the old woman.

No, the wind was still blowing from the north, although it commonly
shuffled along the canal; but now, week after week, it blew from the
Nicolai tower, and played the flute on the hollow bones of poverty. The
canals were covered with ice, and the ground looked horribly hard. The
naked frost chased the people across it like withered leaves. With a
thin rustling sound they were swept across the bridges and disappeared.

A great yellow van came driving by. The huge gates of the prison opened
slowly and swallowed it. It was the van containing the meat for the
prisoners. The child followed it with a desolate expression.

"Mother isn't coming," she said. "I am so hungry."

"She will soon come--you just wait! And don't stand in the light there;
come here in the corner! The light strikes the cold right through one."

"But I feel colder in the dark."

"That's just because you don't understand. I only long now for the pitch
darkness."

"I long for the sun!" retorted the child defiantly.

There was a creaking of timber out in the yard. The child ran out and
opened the door leading to the gallery. It was only the people opposite,
who were tearing a step away.

But then came mother, with a tin pail in her hand, and a bundle under
her arm; and there was something in the pail--it looked heavy. Tra-la-
la! And the bundle, the bundle! What was in that? "Mother, mother!" she
cried shrilly, leaning far over the rickety rail.

Hanne came swiftly up the stairs, with open mouth and red cheeks; and a
face peeped out of every little nest.

"Now Widow Hanne has taken the plunge," they said. They knew what a
point of honor it had been with her to look after her mother and her
child unaided. She was a good girl.

And Widow Hanne nodded to them all, as much as to say, "Now it's done,
thank God!"

She stood leaning over the table, and lifted the cover off the pail.
"Look!" she said, as she stirred the soup with a ladle: "there's pearl
barley and pot-herbs. If only we had something we could warm it up
with!"

"We can tear away a bit of the woodwork like other people," said the
mother.

"Yes," replied Hanne breathlessly, "yes, why not? If one can beg one can
do that!"

She ran out onto the gallery and tore away a few bits of trellis, so
that the sound re-echoed through the court. People watched her out of
all the dark windows. Widow Hanne had knocked off the head of her pride!

Then they sat down to their soup, the old woman and the child. "Eat!"
said Hanne, standing over them and looking on with glowing eyes. Her
cheeks were burning. "You look like a flower in the cold!" said her
mother. "But eat, yourself, or you'll starve to death."

No, Hanne would not eat. "I feel so light," she said, "I don't need any
food." She stood there fingering her bundle; all her features were
quivering, and her mouth was like that of a person sick of a fever.

"What have you there?" asked Madam Johnsen.

"Clothes for you and little Marie. You were so cold. I got them
downstairs from the old clothes woman--they were so cheap."

"Do you say you bought them?"

"Yes--I got them on credit."

"Well, well, if you haven't given too much for them! But it will do one
good to have something warm on one's back!"

Hanne undid the bundle, while the others looked on in suspense. A light
summer dress made its appearance, pleated and low-necked, blue as little
Marie's eyes, and a pair of thin kid shoes. The child and the old woman
gazed wonderingly at the dress. "How fine!" they said. They had
forgotten everything, and were all admiration. But Hanne stood staring
with horror, and suddenly burst into sobs.

"Come, come, Hanne!" said her mother, clapping her on the back. "You
have bought a dress for yourself--that's not so dreadful! Youth will
have its rights."

"No, mother, no, I didn't buy it at all! I knew you both needed
something to keep you warm, so I went into a fine house and asked if
they hadn't any cast-off things, and there was a young lady--she gave me
this--and she was so kind. No, I didn't know at all what was in the
bundle--I really didn't know, dear mother!"

"Well, well, they are fine enough!" said the old woman, spreading the
dress out in front of her. "They are fine things!" But Hanne put the
things together and threw them into the corner by the stove.

"You are ill!" said her mother, gazing at her searchingly; "your eyes
are blazing like fire."

The darkness descended, and they went to bed. People burned no useless
lights in those days, and it was certainly best to be in bed. They had
laid the feather-bed over themselves cross-wise, when it comfortably
covered all three; their daytime clothes they laid over their feet.
Little Marie lay in the middle. No harm could come to her there. They
talked at random about indifferent matters. Hanne's voice sounded loud
and cheerful in the darkness as though it came from a radiant
countryside.

"You are so restless," said the mother. "Won't you try to sleep a
little? I can feel the burning in you from here!"

"I feel so light," replied Hanne; "I can't lie still." But she did lie
still, gazing into space and humming inaudibly to herself, while the
fever raged in her veins.

After a time the old woman awoke; she was cold. Hanne was standing in
the middle of the room, with open mouth; and was engaged in putting on
her fine linen underclothing by the light of a candle-end.

Her breath came in short gasps and hung white on the air.

"Are you standing there naked in the cold?" said Madam Johnsen
reproachfully. "You ought to take a little care of yourself."

"Why, mother, I'm so warm! Why, it's summer now!"

"What are you doing, child?"

"I am only making myself a little bit smart, mother dear!"

"Yes, yes--dance, my baby. You've still got the best of your youth
before you, poor child! Why didn't you get a husband where you got the
child from?"

Hanne only hummed a tune to herself, and proceeded to don the bright
blue summer costume. It was a little full across the chest, but the
decolletage sat snugly over her uncovered bosom. A faint cloud of vapor
surrounded her person like a summer haze.

Her mother had to hook up the dress at the back. "If only we don't wake
Marie!" she whispered, entirely absorbed by the dress. "And the fine
lace on the chemise--you can always let that peep out of the dress a
little--it looks so pretty like that. Now you really look like a summer
girl!"

"I'll just run down and show it to Madam Olsen," said Hanne, pressing
her hand to her glowing cheeks.

"Yes, do--poor folks' joys must have their due," replied the old woman,
turning over to the wall.

Hanne ran down the steps and across the yard and out into the street.
The ground was hard and ringing in the frost, the cold was angry and
biting, but the road seemed to burn Hanne through her thin shoes. She
ran through the market, across the bridge, and into the less crowded
quarter of the city-right into Pelle's arms. He was just going to see
Father Lasse.

John Crace digests High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
Review: The Thin Blue Line: How Humanitarianism Went to War by Conor FoleyAid worker Foley conducts a fascinating and important analysis of recent wars and disasters around the world, says Steven Poole

Review: Under Two Dictators: Prisoner of Stalin and Hitler by Margarete Buber-Neumann

He might be almost 90 years old in real terms, but Christopher Robin and his bear of very little brain are set to make a literary comeback after the estate of AA Milne agreed to authorise the first-ever official sequel to the much-loved children's books.

Return to the Hundred Acre Wood by author David Benedictus picks up from the poignant ending of Milne's last Pooh book, The House at Pooh Corner, in which Christopher Robin is growing up and heading away to school. "Pooh, promise you won't forget about me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred," he tells the bear, and they leave together.

The estates of Milne and EH Shepard, who provided the simple but enduring illustrations for the books, said they had been searching for a sequel that would do justice to the original stories for "a good many years".

Although Disney has franchised the characters in a number of films, there has not previously been an authorised literary sequel to Milne's books, Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, first published in 1926 and 1928. Milne wrote the books for his son Christopher Robin, naming Pooh after his teddy bear.

The sequel, to be published by Egmont Publishing in Britain and Penguin imprint Dutton Children's Books in the US, is due out on 5 October, illustrated by Mark Burgess. Benedictus, who is familiar with the world of Winnie the Pooh after adapting and producing audio versions of the books starring Judi Dench, Stephen Fry and Jane Horrocks, did not reveal any more details, but promised that the book would both "complement and maintain Milne's idea that whatever happens, a little boy and his bear will always be playing".

Michael Brown, chairman of Pooh Properties, which manages the affairs of the Milne and Shepard estates, said the sequel would capture "the spirit and quality" of the original books.

Benedictus said all Milne's well-loved characters, from Tigger to Eeyore, would be making an appearance in his sequel, which features 10 stories and around 150 illustrations. The stories retain their original 1920s setting.

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Review: The Error World: An Affair with Stamps by Simon Garfield

One might say that Margarete Buber-Neumann had a charmed life, had it not been so horrible. She was fortunate - if that is the word - to be sent to a Soviet labour camp in 1939, during a momentary lull in the mass shooting of prisoners. Handed over to the Nazis in 1940, she was similarly lucky to be released from an SS concentration camp in 1945, just days before the remaining prisoners were forced on evacuation marches ending in death. It is a measure of the dismal times she lived through that such events marked her as fortunate, and it is a testament to her skill as a writer that this thoughtful, humane memoir (published in English in 1949) became an international bestseller. From the very first page we are with her, scurrying through Moscow surrounded by images of Stalin. We accompany her throughout the gruelling years ahead, encountering a host of characters, good and bad, and share in her dogged attempt to make sense of the madness of totalitarianism. This revised text is the definitive edition.

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