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

that kindles all as it circles round; where she glides past the fire springs up and the blood runs warmly in the veins. They overturn the chairs in their eagerness to dance with her. “Hi, steward! Five kroner on my watch⁠—only be quick!”⁠—“Ach, Hanne, a dance with me!”⁠—“Do you remember we were at the factory together?”⁠—“We used to go to school together!”

Hanne does not reply, but she leaves Pelle and lays her naked arm upon their shoulders, and if they touch it with their cheeks the fire streams through them. They do not want to let her go again; they hold her fast embraced, gliding along with her to where the musicians are sitting, where all have to pay. No word passes her lips, but the fire within her is a promise to each of them, a promise of things most precious. “May I see you home tonight?” they whisper, hanging on her silent lips.

But to Pelle she speaks as they glide along. “Pelle, how strong you are! Why have you never taken me? Do you love me?” Her hand is clasping his shoulder as she whirls along beside him. Her breath burns in his ear.

“I don’t know!” he says uneasily. “But stop now⁠—you are ill.”

“Hold me like that! Why have you never been stronger than I? Do you want me, Pelle? I’ll be yours!”

Pelle shakes his head. “No, I love you only like a sister now.”

“And now I love you! Look⁠—you are so distant to me⁠—I don’t understand you⁠—and your hand is as hard as if you came from another world! You are heavy, Pelle! Have you brought me happiness from a foreign land with you?”

“Hanne, you are ill! Stop now and let me take you home!”

“Pelle, you were not the right one. What is there strange about you? Nothing! So let me alone⁠—I am going to dance with the others as well!”

Hitherto Hanne has been dancing without intermission. The men stand waiting for her; when one releases her ten spring forward, and this evening Hanne wants to dance with them all. Every one of them should be permitted to warm himself by her! Her eyes are like sparks in the darkness; her silent demeanor excites them; they swing her round more and more wildly. Those who cannot dance with her must slake the fire within them with drink. The terrible winter is put to flight, and it is warm as in Hell itself. The blood is seething in their brains; it injects the whites of their eyes, and expresses itself in wanton frolic, in a need to dance till they drop, or to fight.

“Hanne is wild tonight⁠—she has got her second youth,” says Elvira and the other girls maliciously.

Hold your tongues. No one shall criticize Hanne’s behavior! It is wonderful to touch her; the touch of her skin hurts one, as though she was not flesh and blood, but fire from Heaven! They say she has not had a bite of food for a week. The old woman and the child have had all there was. And yet she is burning! And see, she has now been dancing without a break for two whole hours! Can one understand such a thing? Hanne dances like a messenger from another world, where fire, not cold, is the condition of life. Every dancer leaves his partner in the lurch as soon as she is free! How lightly she dances! Dancing with her, one soars upward, far away from the cold. One forgets all misery in her eyes.

But she has grown paler and paler; she is dancing the fire out of her body while others are dancing it in! Now she is quite white, and Olsen’s Elvira comes up and tugs at her dress, with anxiety in her glance. “Hanne, Hanne!” But Hanne does not see her; she is only longing for the next pair of arms⁠—her eyes are closed. She has so much to make up for! And who so innocent as she? She does not once realize that she is robbing others of their pleasure. Is she suffering from vertigo or St. Vitus’s dance, in her widowhood?

Hold your tongue! How beautiful she is! Now she is growing rosy again, and opening her eyes. Fire darts from them; she has brought Pelle out of his corner and is whispering something to him, blushing as she does so; perhaps that precious promise that hitherto no one has been able to draw from her. Pelle must always be the lucky man!

“Pelle, why don’t you dance with me oftener? Why do you sit in the corner there always and sulk? Are you angry with me as you used to be, and why are you so hard and cold? And your clothes are quite stiff!”

“I come from outside all this⁠—from the terrible winter, Hanne, where the children are crying for bread, and the women dying of starvation, and the men go about with idle hands and look on the ground because they are ashamed of their unemployment!”

“But why? It is still summer. Only look how cheerful everyone is! Take me, then, Pelle!”

Hanne grows red, redder than blood, and leans her head on his shoulder. Only see how she surrenders herself, blissful in her unashamed ecstasy! She droops backward in his arms, and from between her lips springs a great rose of blood, that gushes down over the summer-blue dress.

Fastened to the spot by his terrible burden, Pelle stands there unable to move. He can only gaze at Hanne, until Cerberus takes her in his giant’s arms and bears her out. She is so light in her summer finery⁠—she weighs nothing at all!

“Mazurka!” he bellows, as he returns, and goes commandingly along the ranks of dancers.

XXVI

At the end of January, Pelle obtained a place as laborer in the “Denmark” machine works. He was badly paid, but Ellen rejoiced, none the less; with nothing one could only cry⁠—with a little one could grow strong again. She was still a little pale after her confinement,