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

And Sister walked about the floor so pale and thin! There was no strength in her fair hair, and when she was excited, her breath whistled in her windpipe with that painful sound that was practically inseparable from the children of the poor neighborhoods. It was always the vitiated air of the backyards that had something to say now⁠—depressing, like almost everything his understanding mastered. All she wanted was sunshine, and all the summer it had been poured down in openhanded generosity, only it went over the heads of poor people like everything else. It had been a splendid year for strawberries, but the large gardeners had decided to let half of them rot on their stalks in order to keep up the prices and save the money spent on picking them. And here were the children hungering for fruit, and ailing for want of it! Why? No, there was no possible answer to be given to that question.

And again⁠—everywhere the same! Whenever he thought of some social institution or other, the same melancholy spectacle presented itself⁠—an enormous rolling stock, only meant for a few, and to a great extent running empty; and from the empty places accusing eyes gazed out, sick and sad with hunger and want and disappointed hope. If one had once seen them, it was impossible to close one’s eyes to them again.

Sometimes his imagination took another direction, and he found himself planning, for instance, kingdoms in which trains were used according to the need for them, and not according to the purse, where the food was eaten by those who were hungry, and the only poor people were those who grudged others things.

But he pulled himself up there; it was too idiotic! A voice from the unseen had called him and his out into the day, and then nothing had happened! It had only been to fool them.

Brun often came down to see him. The old librarian missed his young friend.

“Why do you never come in to us now?” he asked.

“What should I do there?” answered Pelle shortly. “The poor man has no use for knowledge; he’s everlastingly damned.”

He had broken with all that and did not care either about the librarian’s visits. It was best for everyone to look after himself; the great were no company for such as he. He made no attempt to conceal his ill humor, but Brun took no notice. The latter had moved out into Frederiksberg Avenue in October, and dropped in almost every afternoon on his way home from the library. The children took care to be down there at that time, for he always brought something for them.

Neither Pelle nor Ellen demanded much of life now. They had settled down in resignation side by side like a pair of carthorses that were accustomed to share manger and toil. It would have been a great thing now to have done with that confounded loan, so that they need not go about with their lives in their hands continually; but even that was requiring too much! All that could be scraped together went every month to the moneylender, and they were no nearer the end. On the one hundred and eighty krones that Pelle had received they had now in all paid off one hundred and twenty, and yet they still owed two hundred and forty. It was the “punishment interest” that made it mount up whenever they came only a day or two too late with the instalments or whatever it might be. In any case it was an endless screw that would go on all their life pumping out whatever they could scrape together into the moneylender’s pocket.

But now Pelle meant to put an end to this. He had not paid the last instalment and meant to pay no more, but let things go as they liked. “You ought to borrow of Herr Brun and pay off that moneylender,” said Ellen, “or else he’ll only come down on us and take our furniture.” But Pelle was obstinate and would not listen to reason. The consciousness that a parasite had fastened upon him and sucked him dry in spite of all his resistance, made him angry. He would like to see them touching his things!

When the moneylender came to fetch his instalment, Pelle shut the door in his face. For the rest he took everything with the calmness of resignation; but when the subject cropped up, he fired up and did not know what he said. Ellen had to keep silence and let his mood work itself out.

One afternoon he sat working at the basement window. The librarian was sitting on the chair by the door, with a child on each knee, feeding them with dates. Pelle was taking no notice, but bent over his work with the expression of a madman who is afraid of being spoken to. His work did not interest him as it had formerly done, and progressed slowly; a disturbing element had entered, and whenever he could not instantly find a tool, he grew angry and threw the things about.

Brun sat watching him anxiously, though apparently taken up with the children. A pitying expression would have made Pelle furious. Brun guessed that there was some money trouble, but dared not offer his assistance; every time he tried to begin a conversation Pelle repelled him with a cunning look which said: “You’re seeking for an opportunity to come with your money, but you won’t get it!” Something or other had gone wrong with him, but it would all come right in the end.

A cab stopped outside the door, and three men stepped out and went into the house. A little while after Ellen burst into the workshop. “Pelle!” she cried, without noticing Brun, “they’ve come to take away our things!” She broke into a fit of weeping, and seeing their mother crying, the children began to cry too.

Pelle rose and seized a hammer. “I’ll soon get them out!” he said between his