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

“I only advise people to think for themselves.”

“That advice may be dangerous enough too, if it’s followed.”

“Oh, yes. The mean thing is that the police pursue me financially. As soon as I’ve got work with any master, a policeman appears and advises him to discharge me. It’s their usual tactics! They aim at the stomach, for that’s where they themselves have their heart.”

“Then it must be very hard for you to get on,” said Pelle sympathetically.

“Oh, I get along somehow. Now and then they put me in prison for no lawful reason, and when a certain time has passed they let me out again⁠—the one with just as little reason as the other. They’ve lost their heads. It doesn’t say much for machinery that’s exclusively kept going to look after us. I’ve a feeling that they’d like to put me out of the way, if it could be done; but the country’s not large enough to let anyone disappear in. But I’m not going to play the hunted animal any longer. Although I despise our laws, which are only a mask for brute force, I’m very careful to be on the right side; and if they use violence against me again, I’ll not submit to it.”

“The conditions are so unequal,” said Pelle, looking seriously at him.

“No one need put up with more than he himself likes. But there’s something wanting in us here at home⁠—our own extreme consequence, self-respect; and so they treat us as ignominiously as they please.”

They went on together. On the pavement outside one of the large cafés stood an anaemic woman with a child upon her arm, offering for sale some miserable stalks which were supposed to represent flowers. Peter Dreyer pointed silently from her to the people in the café. His face was distorted.

“I’ve no objection to people enjoying life,” said Pelle; “on the contrary, I’m glad to see that there are some who are happy. I hate the system, but not the people, you see, unless it were those who grudge us all anything, and are only really happy in the thought that others are in want.”

“And do you believe there’s anyone in there who seriously doesn’t grudge others anything? Do you believe any of them would say: ‘I’m fortunate enough to earn twenty-five thousand krones a year and am not allowed to use more than five thousand, so the rest belongs to the poor’? No, they’re sitting there abusing the poor man while they drink up the surplus of his existence. The men abuse the workmen, and their wives the servant girls. Just go in among the tables and listen! The poor are bestial, unreliable, ungrateful in spite of everything that is done for them; they are themselves to blame for their misery. It gives a spice to the feast to some of them, others dull their uneasy conscience with it. And yet all they eat and drink has been made by the poor man; even the choicest dainties have passed through his dirty hands and have a piquant flavor of sweat and hunger. They look upon it as a matter of course that it should be so; they are not even surprised that nothing is ever done in gratitude for kind treatment⁠—something to disagree with them, a little poison, for instance. Just think! There are millions of poor people daily occupied in making dainties for the rich man, and it never occurs to any of them to revenge themselves, they are so good-natured. Capital literally sleeps with its head in our lap, and abuses us in its sleep; and yet we don’t cut its throat!”

At Victoria Street they stopped. The policeman had followed them and stopped on the other side of the street when they stopped. Pelle drew the other’s attention to the fact.

Peter looked across carelessly. “He’s like an English bloodhound,” he said quietly⁠—“a ferocious mouth and no brain! What vexes me most is that we ourselves produce the dogs that are to hunt us; but we shall soon begin to agitate among the military.” He said good night and turned toward Enghave Road, where he lived.

Ellen met Pelle at the top of the street. “How did you get on?” she asked eagerly. “Did you get the place?”

He quietly explained matters to her. She had put her arm round him. “You great big man,” she said, looking up at him with a happy face. “If you only knew how proud I am of you! Why, we’re rich now, Pelle⁠—thirty-five krones a week! Aren’t you glad yourself?”

“Yes, I’m glad that you and the children will be a little comfortable for once.”

“Yes, but you yourself⁠—you don’t seem to be very delighted, and yet it’s a good place you’re getting.”

“It won’t be an easy place for me, but I must make the best of it,” he answered.

“I don’t see why not. You’re to be on the side of the manufacturer, but that’s always the way with that kind of position; and he’s got a right too to have his interests looked after.”

When they got in Ellen brought him his supper, which had been standing on the stove to keep warm. Now and then she looked at him in wonder; there was something about him today that she did not understand. He had on the whole become a little peculiar in his views about things in the prison, and it was not to be wondered at. She went to him and stroked his hair.

“You’ll be satisfied on your own account too, soon,” she said. “It’s fortunate for us that he can’t be bothered to look after things himself.”

“He’s taken up with politics,” answered Pelle absently. “At present he’s thinking of getting into the Town Council by the help of the workingmen’s votes.”

“Then it’s very wise of him to take you,” Ellen exclaimed vivaciously. “You understand these matters and can help him. If we save, we may perhaps have so much over that we could buy the business