PELLE THE CONQUEROR 24 page

"The master will soon be in his thirtieth year," said the journeyman; "then the dangerous time is over."

"Yes, deuce take it—if only I can hang together so long—only another six months," said the master eagerly, and he looked at Pelle, as though Pelle had it in his power to help him; "only another six months! Then the whole body renews itself—new lungs—everything new. But new legs, God knows, I shall never get."

A peculiar, secret understanding grew up between Pelle and the master; it did not manifest itself in words, but in glances, in tones of the voice, and in the whole conduct of each. When Pelle stood behind him, it was as though even the master's leather jacket emitted a feeling of warmth, and Pelle followed him with his eyes whenever and wherever he could, and the master's behavior to Pelle was different from his behavior to the others.

When, on his return from running errands in the town, he came to the corner, he was delighted to see the young master standing in the doorway, tightly grasping his stick, with his lame leg in an easy position. He stood there, sweeping his eyes from side to side, gazing longingly into the distance. This was his place when he was not indoors, sitting over some book of adventure. But Pelle liked him to stand there, and as he slipped past he would hang his head shyly, for it often happened that the master would clutch his shoulder, so hard that it hurt, and shake him to and fro, and would say affectionately: "Oh, you limb of Satan!" This was the only endearment that life had vouchsafed Pelle, and he sunned himself in it.

Pelle could not understand the master, nor did he understand his sighs and groans. The master never went out, save as an exception, when he was feeling well; then he would hobble across to the beerhouse and make up a party, but as a rule his travels ended at the house door. There he would stand, looking about him a little, and then he would hobble indoors again, with that infectious good humor which transformed the dark workshop into a grove full of the twittering of birds. He had never been abroad, and he felt no craving to go; but in spite of this his mind and his speech roamed over the whole wide world, so that Pelle at times felt like falling sick from sheer longing. He demanded nothing more than health of the future, and adventures hovered all about him; one received the impression that happiness itself had fluttered to earth and settled upon him. Pelle idolized him, but did not understand him. The master, who at one moment would make sport of his lame leg and the next moment forget that he had one, or jest about his poverty as though he were flinging good gold pieces about him—this was a man Pelle could not fathom. He was no wiser when he secretly looked into the books which Master Andres read so breathlessly; he would have been content with a much more modest adventure than a journey to the North Pole or the center of the earth, if only he himself could have been of the party.

He had no opportunity to sit still and indulge in fancies. Every moment it was, "Pelle, run and do something or other!" Everything was purchased in small quantities, although it was obtained on credit. "Then it doesn't run up so," Jeppe used to say; it was all the same to Master Andres. The foreman's young woman came running in; she absolutely must have her young lady's shoes; they were promised for Monday. The master had quite forgotten them. "They are in hand now," he said, undaunted. "To the devil with you, Jens!" And Jens had hastily thrust a pair of lasts into the shoes, while Master Andres went outside with the girl, and joked with her on the landing, in order to smooth her down. "Just a few nails, so that they'll hang together," said the master to Jens. And then, "Pelle, out you go, as quick as your legs will carry you! Say we'll send for them early to-morrow morning and finish them properly! But run as though the devil were at your heels!"

Pelle ran, and when he returned, just as he was slipping into his leather apron, he had to go out again. "Pelle, run out and borrow a few brass nails—then we needn't buy any to-day. Go to Klausen—no, go to Blom, rather; you've been to Klausen already this morning."

"Blom's are angry about the screw-block!" said Pelle.

"Death and all the devils! We must see about putting it in repair and returning it; remember that, and take it with you to the smith's. Well, what in the world shall we do?" The young master stared helplessly from one to another.

"Shoemaker Marker," suggested little Nikas.

"We don't borrow from Marker," and the master wrinkled his forehead. "Marker's a louse!" Marker had succeeded in stealing one of the oldest customers of the workshop.

"There isn't salt to eat an egg!"

"Well, what shall I do?" asked Pelle, somewhat impatiently.

The master sat for a while in silence. "Well, take it, then!" he cried, and threw a krone toward Pelle; "I have no peace from you so long as I've got a farthing in my pocket, you demon! Buy a packet and pay back Klausen and Blom what we've borrowed."

"But then they'd see we've got a whole packet," said Pelle.

"Besides, they owe us lots of other things that they've borrowed of us." Pelle showed circumspection in his dealings.

"What a rogue!" said the master, and he settled himself to read.
"Lord above us, what a gallows-bird!" He looked extremely contented.

And after a time it was once more, "Pelle, run out, etc."

The day was largely passed in running errands, and Pelle was not one to curtail them; he had no liking for the smelly workshop and its wooden chairs. There was so much to be fetched and carried, and Pelle considered these errands to be his especial duty; when he had nothing else to do he roved about like a young puppy, and thrust his nose into everything. Already the town had no more secrets from him.

There was in Pelle an honorable streak which subdued the whole. But hitherto he had suffered only defeat; he had again and again sacrificed his qualities and accomplishments, without so far receiving anything in return. His timidity and distrust he had stripped from him indoors, where it was of importance that he should open his defences on all sides, and his solid qualities he was on the point of sacrificing on the altar of the town as boorish. But the less protection he possessed the more he gained in intrepidity, so he went about out-of-doors undauntedly—the town should be conquered. He was enticed out of the safe refuge of his shell, and might easily be gobbled up.

The town had lured him from the security of his lair, but in other matters he was the same good little fellow—most people would have seen no difference in him, except that he had grown taller. But Father Lasse would have wept tears of blood to see his boy as he now walked along the streets, full of uncertainty and uneasy imitativeness, wearing his best coat on a workday, and yet disorderly in his dress.

Yonder he goes, sauntering along with a pair of boots, his fingers thrust through the string of the parcel, whistling with an air of bravado. Now and again he makes a grimace and moves cautiously—when his trousers rub the sensitive spots of his body. He has had a bad day. In the morning he was passing a smithy, and allowed the splendid display of energy within, half in the firelight and half in the shadow, to detain him. The flames and the clanging of the metal, the whole lively uproar of real work, fascinated him, and he had to go in and ask whether there was an opening for an apprentice. He was not so stupid as to tell them where he came from, but when he got home, Jeppe had already been told of it! But that is soon forgotten, unless, indeed, his trousers rub against his sore places. Then he remembers it; remembers that in this world everything has to be paid for; there is no getting out of things; once one begins anything one has to eat one's way through it, like the boy in the fairy-tale. And this discovery is, in the abstract, not so strikingly novel to Pelle.

He has, as always, chosen the longest way, rummaging about back yards and side streets, where there is a possibility of adventure; and all at once he is suddenly accosted by Albinus, who is now employed by a tradesman. Albinus is not amusing. He has no right to play and loiter about the warehouse in the aimless fashion that is possible out-of-doors; nor to devote himself to making a ladder stand straight up in the air while he climbs up it. Not a word can be got out of him, although Pelle does his best; so he picks up a handful of raisins and absconds.

Down at the harbor he boards a Swedish vessel, which has just arrived with a cargo of timber. "Have you anything for us to do?" he asks, holding one hand behind him, where his trousers have a hole in them.

"Klausen's apprentice has just been here and got what there was," replied the skipper.

"That's a nuisance—you ought to have given it to us," says Pelle.
"Have you got a clay pipe?"

"Yes—just you come here!" The skipper reaches for a rope's end, but Pelle escapes and runs ashore.

"Will you give me a thrashing now?" he cries, jeering.

"You shall have a clay pipe if you'll run and get me half a krone's worth of chewing 'bacca."

"What will it cost?" asks Pelle, with an air of simplicity. The skipper reaches for his rope's end again, but Pelle is off already.

"Five ore worth of chewing tobacco, the long kind," he cries, before he gets to the door even. "But it must be the very best, because it's for an invalid." He throws the money on the counter and puts on a cheeky expression.

Old Skipper Lau rises by the aid of his two sticks and hands Pelle the twist; his jaws are working like a mill, and all his limbs are twisted with gout. "Is it for some one lying-in?" he asks slyly.

Pelle breaks off the stem of the clay pipe, lest it should stick out of his pocket, boards the salvage steamer, and disappears forward. After a time he reappears from under the cabin hatchway, with a gigantic pair of sea-boots and a scrap of chewing tobacco. Behind the deck-house he bites a huge mouthful off the brown Cavendish, and begins to chew courageously, which makes him feel tremendously manly. But near the furnace where the ship's timbers are bent he has to unload his stomach; it seems as though all his inward parts are doing their very utmost to see how matters would be with them hanging out of his mouth. He drags himself along, sick as a cat, with thumping temples; but somewhere or other inside him a little feeling of satisfaction informs him that one has to undergo the most dreadful consequences in order to perform any really heroic deed.

In most respects the harbor, with its stacks of timber and its vessels on the slips, is just as fascinating as it was on the day when Pelle lay on the shavings and guarded Father Lasse's sack. The black man with the barking hounds still leans from the roof of the harbor warehouse, but the inexplicable thing is that one could ever have been frightened of him. But Pelle is in a hurry.

He runs a few yards, but he must of necessity stop when he comes to the old quay. There the "strong man," the "Great Power," is trimming some blocks of granite. He is tanned a coppery brown with wind and sun, and his thick black hair is full of splinters of granite; he wears only a shirt and canvas trousers, and the shirt is open on his powerful breast; but it lies close on his back, and reveals the play of his muscles. Every time he strikes a blow the air whistles— whew!—and the walls and timber-stacks echo the sound. People come hurrying by, stop short at a certain distance, and stand there looking on. A little group stands there all the time, newcomers taking the place of those that move on, like spectators in front of a cage of lions. It is as though they expect something to happen— something that will stagger everybody and give the bystanders a good fright.

Pelle goes right up to the "Great Power." The "strong man" is the father of Jens, the second youngest apprentice. "Good-day," he says boldly, and stands right in the giant's shadow. But the stonecutter pushes him to one side without looking to see who it is, and continues to hew at the granite: whew! whew!

"It is quite a long time now since he has properly used his strength," says an old townsman. "Is he quieting down, d'you think?"

"He must have quieted down for good," says another. "The town ought to see that he keeps quiet." And they move on, and Pelle must move on, too—anywhere, where no one can see him.

"Cobbler, wobbler, groats in your gruel,
Smack on your back goes the stick—how cruel!"

It is those accursed street-urchins. Pelle is by no means in a warlike humor; he pretends not to see them. But they come up close behind him and tread on his heels, and before he knows what is happening they are upon him. The first he knows about it is that he is lying in the gutter, on his back, with all three on top of him. He has fallen alongside of the curbstone and cannot move; he is faint, too, as a result of his indiscretion; the two biggest boys spread his arms wide open on the flagstones and press them down with all their might, while the third ventures to deal with his face. It is a carefully planned outrage, and all Pelle can do is to twist his head round under the blows—and for once he is thankful for his disgracefully fat cheeks.

Then, in his need, a dazzling apparition appears before him; standing in the doorway yonder is a white baker's boy, who is royally amused. It is no other than Nilen, the wonderful little devil Nilen, of his schooldays, who was always fighting everybody like a terrier and always came out of it with a whole skin. Pelle shuts his eyes and blushes for himself, although he knows perfectly well that this is only an apparition.

But then a wonderful thing happens; the apparition leaps down into the gutter, slings the boys to one side, and helps him to his feet. Pelle recognizes the grip of those fingers—even in his schooldays they were like claws of iron.

And soon he is sitting behind the oven, on Nilen's grimy bed. "So you've become a cobbler?" says Nilen, to begin with, compassionately, for he feels a deucedly smart fellow himself in his fine white clothes, with his bare arms crossed over his naked breast. Pelle feels remarkably comfortable; he has been given a slice of bread and cream, and he decides that the world is more interesting than ever. Nilen is chewing manfully, and spitting over the end of the bed.

"Do you chew?" asks Pelle, and hastens to offer him the leaf-tobacco.

"Yes, we all do; a fellow has to when he works all night."

Pelle cannot understand how people can keep going day and night.

"All the bakers in Copenhagen do—so that the people can get fresh bread in the morning—and our master wants to introduce it here. But it isn't every one can do it; the whole staff had to be reorganized. It's worst about midnight, when everything is turning round. Then it comes over you so that you keep on looking at the time, and the very moment the clock strikes twelve we all hold our breath, and then no one can come in or go out any more. The master himself can't stand the night shift; the 'baccy turns sour in his mouth and he has to lay it on the table. When he wakes up again he thinks it's a raisin and sticks it in the dough. What's the name of your girl?"

For a moment Pelle's thoughts caress the three daughters of old Skipper Elleby—but no, none of them shall be immolated. No, he has no girl.

"Well, you get one, then you needn't let them sit on you. I'm flirting a bit just now with the master's daughter—fine girl, she is, quite developed already—you know! But we have to look out when the old man's about!"

"Then are you going to marry her when you are a journeyman?" asks
Pelle, with interest.

"And have a wife and kids on my back? You are a duffer, Pelle! No need to trouble about that! But a woman—well, that's only for when a man's bored. See?" He stretches himself, yawning.

Nilen has become quite a young man, but a little crude in his manner of expressing himself. He sits there and looks at Pelle with a curious expression in his eyes. "Cobbler's patch!" he says contemptuously, and thrusts his tongue into his cheek so as to make it bulge. Pelle says nothing; he knows he cannot thrash Nilen.

Nilen has lit his pipe and is lying on his back in bed—with his muddy shoes on—chattering. "What's your journeyman like? Ours is a conceited ass. The other day I had to fetch him a box on the ears, he was so saucy. I've learned the Copenhagen trick of doing it; it soon settles a man. Only you want to keep your head about it." A deuce of a fellow, this Nilen, he is so grown up! Pelle feels smaller and smaller.

But suddenly Nilen jumps up in the greatest hurry. Out in the bakery a sharp voice is calling. "Out of the window—to the devil with you!" he yelps—"the journeyman!" And Pelle has to get through the window, and is so slow about it that his boots go whizzing past him. While he is jumping down he hears the well-known sound of a ringing box on the ear.

When Pelle returned from his wanderings he was tired and languid; the stuffy workshop did not seem alluring. He was dispirited, too; for the watchmaker's clock told him that he had been three hours away. He could not believe it.

The young master stood at the front door, peeping out, still in his leather jacket and apron of green baize; he was whistling softly to himself, and looked like a grown fledgling that did not dare to let itself tumble out of the nest. A whole world of amazement lay in his inquiring eyes.

"Have you been to the harbor again, you young devil?" he asked, sinking his claws into Pelle.

"Yes." Pelle was properly ashamed.

"Well, what's going on there? What's the news?"

So Pelle had to tell it all on the stairs; how there was a Swedish timber ship whose skipper's wife was taken with childbirth out at sea, and how the cook had to deliver her; of a Russian vessel which had run into port with a mutiny on board; and anything else that might have happened. To-day there were only these boots. "They are from the salvage steamer—they want soling."

"H'm!" The master looked at them indifferently. "Is the schooner Andreas ready to sail?"

But that Pelle did not know.

"What sort of a sheep's head have you got, then? Haven't you any eyes in it? Well, well, go and get me three bottles of beer! Only stick them under your blouse so that father don't see, you monster!" The master was quite good-tempered again.

Then Pelle got into his apron and buckled on the knee-strap. Everybody was bending over his work, and Master Andres was reading; no sound was to be heard but those produced by the workers, and now and again a word of reprimand from the journeyman.

Every second afternoon, about five o'clock, the workshop door would open slightly, and a naked, floury arm introduced the newspaper and laid it on the counter. This was the baker's son, Soren, who never allowed himself to be seen; he moved about from choice like a thief in the night. If the master—as he occasionally did—seized him and pulled him into the workshop, he was like a scared faun strayed from his thickets; he would stand with hanging head, concealing his eyes, and no one could get a word from him; and when he saw an opportunity, he would slip away.

The arrival of the newspaper caused quite a small commotion in the workshop. When the master felt inclined, he would read aloud—of calves with two heads and four pairs of legs; of a pumpkin that weighed fifty pounds; of the fattest man in the world; of fatalities due to the careless handling of firearms, or of snakes in Martinique. The dazzling wonder of the whole world passed like a pageant, filling the dark workshop; the political news was ignored. If the master happened to be in one of his desperate humors, he would read the most damnable nonsense: of how the Atlantic Ocean had caught fire, so that the people were living on boiled codfish; or how the heavens had got torn over America, so that angels fell right on to somebody's supper-tray. Things which one knew at once for lies—and blasphemous nonsense, too, which might at any time have got him into trouble. Rowing people was not in the master's line, he was ill the moment there was any unpleasantness; but he had his own way of making himself respected. As he went on reading some one would discover that he was getting a wigging, and would give a jump, believing that all his failings were in the paper.

When the time drew near for leaving off work, a brisker note sounded in the workshop. The long working-day was coming to an end, and the day's weariness and satiety were forgotten, and the mind looked forward—filling with thoughts of the sand-hills or the woods, wandering down a road that was bright with pleasure. Now and again a neighbor would step in, and while away the time with his gossip; something or other had happened, and Master Andres, who was so clever, must say what he thought about it. Sounds that had been confused during the day now entered the workshop, so that those within felt that they were participating in the life of the town; it was as though the walls had fallen.

About seven o'clock a peculiar sound was heard in the street without, approaching in very slowly tempo; there was a dull thump and then two clacking sounds; and then came the thump again, like the tread of a huge padded foot, and once more the clack-clack. This was old Bjerregrav, swinging toward the workshop on his crutches; Bjerregrav, who moved more slowly than anybody, and got forward more quickly. If Master Andres happened to be in one of his bad humors, he would limp away, in order not to remain in the same room with a cripple; at other times he was glad to see Bjerregrav.

"Well, you are a rare bird, aren't you?" he would cry, when Bjerregrav reached the landing and swung himself sideways through the door; and the old man would laugh—he had paid this visit daily now for many years. The master took no further notice of him, but went on reading; and Bjerregrav sank into his dumb pondering; his pale hands feeling one thing after another, as though the most everyday objects were unknown to him. He took hold of things just as a newborn child might have done; one had to smile at him and leave him to sit there, grubbing about like the child he really was. It was quite impossible to hold a continuous conversation with him; for even if he did actually make an observation it was sure to be quite beside the mark; Bjerregrav was given to remarking attributes which no one else noticed, or which no one would have dwelt upon.

When he sat thus, pondering over and fingering some perfectly familiar object, people used to say, "Now Bjerregrav's questioning fit is coming on!" For Bjerregrav was an inquirer; he would ask questions about the wind and the weather, and even the food that he ate. He would ask questions about the most laughable subjects— things that were self-evident to any one else—why a stone was hard, or why water extinguished fire. People did not answer him, but shrugged their shoulders compassionately. "He is quite all there," they would say; "his head's all right. But he takes everything the wrong way round!"

The young master looked up from his book. "Now, shall I inherit
Bjerregrav's money?" he asked mischievously.

"No—you've always been good to me; I don't want to cause you any misfortune."

"Worse things than that might befall me, don't you think?"

"No, for you've got a fair competence. No one has a right to more, so long as the many suffer need."

"Certain people have money in the bank themselves," said Master
Andres allusively.

"No, that's all over," answered the old man cheerfully. "I'm now exactly as rich as you."

"The devil! Have you run through the lot?" The young master turned round on his chair.

"You and your 'run through it all'! You always sit over me like a judge and accuse me of things! I'm not conscious of having done anything wrong; but it's true that the need gets worse every winter. It's a burden to have money, Andres, when men are hungry all about you; and if you help them then you learn afterward that you've done the man injury; they say it themselves, so it must be true. But now I've given the money to the Charity Organization Society, so now it will go to the right people."

"Five thousand kroner!" said the master, musing. "Then there ought to be great rejoicing among the poor this winter."

"Well, they won't get it direct in food and firing," said Bjerregrav, "but it will come to them just as well in other ways. For when I'd made my offer to the Society, Shipowner Monsen—you know him—came to me, and begged me to lend him the money at one year. He would have gone bankrupt if he hadn't had it, and it was terrible to think of all the poor people who would have gone without bread if that great business of his had come to a standstill. Now the responsibility falls on me. But the money is safe enough, and in that way it does the poor twice as much good."

Master Andres shook his head. "Suppose Bjerregrav has just sat himself down in the nettles?"

"Why? But what else could I have done?" said the old man uneasily.

"The devil knows it won't be long before he's bankrupt. He's a frothy old rogue," murmured the master. "Has Bjerregrav got a note of hand?"

The old man nodded; he was quite proud of himself.

"And interest? Five per cent.?"

"No, no interest. For money to stand out and receive interest—I don't like that. It has to suck the interest somewhere or other, and of course it's from the poor. Interest is blood-money, Andres —and it's a new-fangled contrivance, too. When I was young we knew nothing about getting interest on our money."

"Yes, yes:

'Who gives to other folks his bread
And after suffers in their stead,
Why club him, club him, club him dead!'"

said the master, and went on reading.

Bjerregrav sat there sunk in his own thoughts. Suddenly he looked up.

"Can you, who are so well read, tell me what keeps the moon from falling? I lay overnight puzzling over it, so as I couldn't sleep. She wanders and wanders through the sky, and you can see plainly there's nothing but air under her."

"The devil may know," said Master Andres thoughtfully. "She must have strength of her own, so that she holds herself up."

"I've thought that myself—for obligation isn't enough. Now we can do that—we walk and walk where we are put down, but then we've the earth under us to support us. And you are always studying, aren't you? I suppose you have read nearly all the books in the world?" Bjerregrav took the master's book and felt it thoroughly. "That's a good book," he said, striking his knuckles against the cover and holding the book to his ear; "good material, that. Is it a lying story or a history book?"

"It's a travel book. They go up to the North Pole, and they get frozen in, and they don't know if they'll ever get home alive again."

"But that's terrible—that people should risk their lives so. I've often thought about that—what it's like at the end of the world—but to go and find out—no, I should never have had the courage. Never to get home again!" Bjerregrav, with an afflicted expression, looked first at one, then at another.

"And they get frost-bite in their feet—and their toes have to be amputated—in some cases, the whole foot."

"No, be quiet! So they lose their health, poor fellows!—I don't want to hear any more!" The old man sat rocking himself to and fro, as though he felt unwell. But a few moments later he asked inquisitively: "Did the king send them up there to make war?"

"No; they went to look for the Garden of Eden. One of the people who investigate writings has discovered that it is said to lie behind the ice," declared the master solemnly.

"The Garden of Eden—or they call it Paradise, too—but that lies where the two rivers fall into a third, in the East! That is quite plainly written. Consequently what you read there is false teaching."

"It's at the North Pole, God's truth it is!" said the master, who was inclined to be a free-thinker; "God's truth, I tell you! The other's just a silly superstition."

Bjerregrav maintained an angry silence. He sat for some time bending low in his chair, his eyes roaming anywhere so that they did not meet another's. "Yes, yes," he said, in a low voice; "everybody thinks something new in order to make himself remarkable, but no one can alter the grave."

Date: 2016-01-03; view: 350