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

for I can see it in her. Didn’t you notice how eager she was to have a look at you? Try to find out about it, will you?”

Pelle promised, but it was more easily said than done. When his thoughts searched the wide world of poverty to which he had drawn so close during the great lockout, he realized that there were hundreds of children who might have suffered Johanna’s fate.

V

Pelle had got out his old tools and started as shoemaker to the dwellers in his street. He no longer went about seeking for employment, and to Ellen it appeared as if he had given up all hope of getting any. But he was only waiting and arming himself: he was as sanguine as ever. The promise of the inconceivable was still unfulfilled in his mind.

There was no room for him up in the small flat with Ellen doing her washing there, so he took a room in the high basement, and hung up a large placard in the window, on which he wrote with shoemaker’s ink, “Come to me with your shoes, and we will help one another to stand on our feet.” When Lasse Frederik was not at work or at school, he was generally to be found downstairs with his father. He was a clever fellow and could give a hand in many ways. While they worked they talked about all sorts of things, and the boy related his experiences to his father.

He was changing very rapidly and talked sensibly about everything. Pelle was afraid he was getting too little out of his childhood. “Aren’t you going up to play with them?” he asked, when the boys of the neighborhood rushed shouting past the basement window; but Lasse Frederik shook his head. He had played at being everything, from a criminal to a king, so there was nothing more to be had in that direction. He wanted something real now, and in the meantime had dreams of going to sea.

Although they all three worked, they could only just make ends meet; there was never anything over for extras. This was a sorrow to Ellen especially; Pelle did not seem to think much about it. If they only put something eatable before him, he was contented and did not mind what it was.

It was Ellen’s dream that they should still, by toiling early and late, be able to work themselves up into another stratum; but Pelle was angry when she worked on after the time for leaving off. He would rather they were a little poor, if only they could afford to be human beings. Ellen did not understand it, but she saw that his mind was turned in another direction; he who had hitherto always fallen asleep over books would now become so absorbed in them that he did not hear the children playing round him. She had actually to rouse him when there was anything she wanted; and she began to fear this new power which had come in place of the old. It seemed like a curse that something should always work upon him to take him beyond her. And she dared not oppose it; she had bitter experience from former times.

“What are you looking for in those books?” she asked, sitting down beside him. Pelle looked up absently. His thoughts were in far-off regions where she had never been. What was he looking for? He tried to tell her, but could not explain it. “I’m looking for myself!” he said suddenly, striking boldly through everything. Ellen gazed at him, wondering and disappointed.

But she tried again. This time nothing should come between them and destroy her world. She no longer directly opposed anything; she meant to go with him and be where he was. “Tell me what you are doing and let me take part in it,” she said.

Pelle had been prepared to some extent to go into this by himself, and was glad to meet with a desire for development in her too. For the present the intellectual world resembled more or less a wilderness, and it was good to have a companion with him in traversing it.

He explained to her the thoughts that occupied him, and discussed them with her; and Ellen observed wonderingly that it was all about things that did not concern their own little well-being. She took great pains to comprehend this flight away from the things that mattered most; it was like children who always wanted what they ought not to have.

In the evening, when Boy Comfort and Sister had been put to bed, Pelle would take a book and read aloud. Ellen was occupied with some mending or other, and Lasse Frederik, his ears standing out from his head, hung over a chair-back with his eyes fixed upon his father. Although he did not understand the half of it, he followed it attentively until Nature asserted herself, and he fell asleep.

Ellen understood this very well, for she had great difficulty herself in keeping her eyes open. They were not stories that Pelle read. Sometimes he would stop to write something down or to discuss some question or other. He would have the most extraordinary ideas, and see a connection between things that seemed to Ellen to be as far apart as the poles; she could not help thinking that he might very well have studied to be a pastor. It suited him, however; his eyes became quite black when he was explaining some subject that he was thoroughly interested in, and his lips assumed an expression that made her long to kiss them. She had to confess to herself that in any case it was a very harmless evening occupation, and was glad that what was interesting him this time kept him at home at any rate.

One day Pelle became aware that she was not following him. She did not even believe in what he was doing; she had never believed in him blindly.