PELLE THE CONQUEROR 33 page

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XIV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Date: 2016-01-03; view: 402