Pelle the Conqueror by Martin Andersen Nexø (great novels to read .TXT) 📕

street toward the north, and then turning about and returning toward the south, and turning yet again, up and down the selfsame street⁠—well, there is nothing in it unless one has good warm clothes and a girl whose waist one can hold. And Morten too is no fresh-air disciple; he is freezing, and wants to sit in the warmth.

So they slink into the workshop as soon as it begins to grow dark, and they take out the key and hang it on the nail in the entry, in order to deceive Jeppe, and then they secretly make a fire in the stove, placing a screen in front of it, so that Jeppe shall not see the light from it when he makes his rounds past the workshop windows. They crouch together on the ledge at the bottom of the stove, each with an arm round the other’s shoulder, and Morten tells Pelle about the books he has read.

“Why do you do nothing but read those stupid books?” asks Pelle, when he has listened for a time.

“Because I want to know something about life and about the world,” answers Morten, out of the darkness.

“Of the world?” says Pelle, in a contemptuous tone. “I want to go out into the world and see things⁠—what’s in the books is only lies. But go on.”

And Morten goes on, good-natured as always. And in the midst of his narrative something suddenly occurs to him, and he pulls a paper packet from his breast-pocket: “That’s chocolate from Bodil,” he says, and breaks the stick in two.

“Where had she put it?” asks Pelle.

“Under the sheet⁠—I felt something hard under my back when I lay down.”

The boys laugh, while they nibble at the chocolate. Suddenly Pelle says: “Bodil, she’s a child-seducer! She enticed Hans Peter away from Stone Farm⁠—and he was only fifteen!”

Morten does not reply; but after a time his head sinks on Pelle’s shoulder⁠—his body is twitching.

“Well, you are seventeen,” says Pelle, consoling. “But it’s silly all the same; she might well be your mother⁠—apart from her age.” And they both laugh.

It can be still cozier on workday evenings. Then the fire is burning openly in the stove, even after eight o’clock, and the lamp is shining, and Morten is there again. People come from all directions and look in for a moment’s visit, and the cold, an impediment to everything else, awakens all sorts of notable reminiscences. It is as though the world itself comes creeping into the workshop. Jeppe conjures up his apprentice years in the capital, and tells of the great bankruptcy; he goes right back to the beginning of the century, to a wonderful old capital where the old people wore wigs, and the rope’s-end was always at hand and the apprentices just kept body and soul together, begging on Sundays before the doors of the townsfolk. Ah, those were times! And he comes home and wants to settle down as master, but the guild won’t accept him; he is too young. So he goes to sea as cook, and comes to places down south where the sun burns so fiercely that the pitch melts in the seams and the deck scorches one’s feet. They are a merry band, and Jeppe, little as he is, by no means lags behind the rest. In Malaga they storm a tavern, throw all the Spaniards out of the window, and sport with the girls⁠—until the whole town falls upon them and they have to fly to their boat. Jeppe cannot keep up with them, and the boat shoves off, so that he has to jump into the water and swim for it. Knives fall splashing about him in the water, and one sticks shivering in his shoulder-blades. When Jeppe comes to this he always begins to strip his back to show the scar, and Master Andres holds him back. Pelle and Morten have heard the story many a time, but they are willing always to hear it again.

And Baker Jörgen, who for the greater part of his life has been a seaman on the big vessels sailing the northern and southern oceans, talks about capstans and icebergs and beautiful black women from the West Indies. He sets the capstan turning, so that the great three-master makes sail out of the Havana roadstead, and all his hearers feel their hearts grow light.

“Heave ho, the capstan,
Waltz her well along!
Leave the girl a-weeping,
Strike up the song!”

So they walk round and round, twelve men with their breasts pressed against the heavy capstan-bars; the anchor is weighed, and the sail fills with the wind⁠—and behind and through his words gleam the features of a sweetheart in every port. Bjerregrav cannot help crossing himself⁠—he who has never accomplished anything, except to feel for the poor; but in the young master’s eyes everybody travels⁠—round and round the world, round and round the world. And Wooden-leg Larsen, who in winter is quite the well-to-do pensioner, in blue pilot-coat and fur cap, leaves his pretty, solidly-built cottage when the Spring comes, and sallies forth into the world as a poor organ-grinder⁠—he tells them of the Zoological Gardens on the hill, and the adventurous Holm-Street, and of extraordinary beings who live upon the dustbins in the backyards of the capital.

But Pelle’s body creaks whenever he moves; his bones are growing and seeking to stretch themselves; he feels growth and restlessness in every part and corner of his being. He is the first to whom the Spring comes; one day it announces itself in him in the form of a curiosity as to what his appearance is like. Pelle has never asked himself this question before; and the scrap of looking-glass which he begged from the glazier from whom he fetches the glass scrapers tells him nothing truly. He has at bottom a feeling that he is an impossible person.

He begins to give heed to the opinions of others respecting his outward appearance; now and again a girl looks after him, and his cheeks are