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

“A good thing you reminded me.” She stared at him with an impenetrable expression and ran back to her room.

In there she moved about singing in her harsh voice. After a while she went out to make some purchases clad in a gray shawl, with her housewife’s basket on her arm. He could follow her individual step, which was light as a child’s, and yet sounded so old⁠—right to the end of the tunnel. Then he went into the children’s room and pulled out the third drawer in the chest of drawers. There she always hid her money-box, wrapped up in her linen. He still possessed two kroner, which he inserted in the box.

He used always to pay her in this way. When she counted out her money and found there was too much, she believed the good God had put the money in her box, and would come jubilantly into his room to tell him about it. The child believed blindly in Fortune, and accepted the money as a sign of election; and for her this money was something quite different to that which she herself had saved.

About noon she came to invite him into her room. “There’s fried herring, Pelle, so you can’t possibly say no,” she said persuasively, “for no Bornholmer could! Then you needn’t go and buy that stuffy food from the hawker, and throw away five and twenty öre.” She had bought half a score of the fish, and had kept back five for her brothers when they came home. “And there’s coffee after,” she said. She had set out everything delightfully, with a clean napkin at one end of the table.

The factory girl’s little Paul came in and was given a mouthful of food. Then he ran out into the gangway again and tumbled about there, for the little fellow was never a moment still from the moment his mother let him out in the morning; there was so much to make up for after his long imprisonment. From the little idiot whom his mother had to tie to the stove because he had water on the brain and wanted to throw himself out of the window, he had become a regular vagabond. Every moment he would thrust his head in at the door and look at Pelle; and he would often come right in, put his hand on Pelle’s knee, and say, “You’s my father!” Then he would rush off again. Marie helped him in all his infantile necessities⁠—he always appealed to her!

After she had washed up, she sat by Pelle with her mending, chattering away concerning her household cares. “I shall soon have to get jackets for the boys⁠—it’s awful what they need now they’re grown up. I peep in at the secondhand clothes shop every day. And you must have a new blouse, too, Pelle; that one will soon be done for; and then you’ve none to go to the wash. If you’ll buy the stuff, I’ll soon make it up for you⁠—I can sew! I made my best blouse myself⁠—Hanne helped me with it! Why, really, don’t you go to see Hanne any longer?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“Hanne has grown so peculiar. She never comes down into the courtyard now to dance with us. She used to. Then I used to watch out of the window, and run down. It was so jolly, playing with her. We used to go round and round her and sing! ‘We all bow to Hanne, we curtsy all to Hanne, we all turn round before her!’ And then we bowed and curtsied and suddenly we all turned round. I tell you, it was jolly! You ought to have taken Hanne.”

“But you didn’t like it when I took Ellen. Why should I have taken Hanne?”

“Oh, I don’t know⁠ ⁠… Hanne.⁠ ⁠…” Marie stopped, listened, and suddenly wrenched the window open.

Down in the “Ark” a door slammed, and a long hooting sound rose up from below, sounding just like a husky scream from the crazy Vinslev’s flute or like the wind in the long corridors. Like a strange, disconnected snatch of melody, the sound floated about below, trickling up along the wooden walls, and breaking out into the daylight with a note of ecstasy: “Hanne’s with child! The Fairy Princess is going to be confined!”

Marie went down the stairs like a flash. The half-grown girls were shrieking and running together in the court below; the women on the galleries were murmuring to others above and below. Not that this was in itself anything novel; but in this case it was Hanne herself, the immaculate, whom as yet no tongue had dared to besmirch. And even now they dared hardly speak of it openly; it had come as such a shock. In a certain sense they had all entered into her exaltation, and with her had waited for the fairytale to come true; as quite a child she had been elected to represent the incomprehensible; and now she was merely going to have a child! It really was like a miracle just at first; it was such a surprise to them all!

Marie came back with dragging steps and with an expression of horror and astonishment. Down in the court the grimy-nosed little brats were screeching, as they wheeled hand in hand round the sewer-grating⁠—it was splendid for dancing round⁠—

“Bro-bro-brille-brid
Hanne’s doin’ to have a tid!”

They couldn’t speak plainly yet.

And there was “Grete with the baby,” the madwoman, tearing her cellar-window open, leaning out of it backward, with her doll on her arm, and yelling up through the well, so that it echoed loud and shrill: “The Fairy Princess has got a child, and Pelle’s its father!”

Pelle bent over his work in silence. Fortunately he was not the king’s son in disguise in this case! But he wasn’t going to wrangle with women.

Hanne’s mother came storming out onto her gallery. “That’s a shameless lie!” she cried. “Pelle’s name ain’t going to be dragged into this⁠—the other