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

“Then Per Olsen is set free,” said Lasse, heaving a deep sigh. “What a good thing it has been⁠—quite providential!”

That was Pelle’s opinion too.

The farmer himself drove the doctor home, and a little while after he had gone, Pelle was sent for, to go on an errand for the mistress to the village-shop.

It was nothing for Pelle; if he were vanquished on one point, he rose again on two others: he was invincible. And he had the child’s abundant capacity for forgiving; had he not he would have hated all grown-up people with the exception of Father Lasse. But disappointed he certainly was.

It was not easy to say who had expected most⁠—the boy, whose childish imagination had built, unchecked, upon all that he had heard, or the old man, who had once been here himself.

But Pelle managed to fill his own existence with interest, and was so taken up on all sides that he only just had time to realize the disappointment in passing. His world was supersensual like that of the fakir; in the course of a few minutes a little seed could shoot up and grow into a huge tree that overshadowed everything else. Cause never answered to effect in it, and it was governed by another law of gravitation: events always bore him up.

However hard reality might press upon him, he always emerged from the tight place the richer in some way or other; and no danger could ever become overwhelmingly great as long as Father Lasse stood reassuringly over and behind everything.

But Lasse had failed him at the decisive moment more than once, and every time he used him as a threat, he was only laughed at. The old man’s omnipotence could not continue to exist side by side with his increasing decrepitude; in the boy’s eyes it crumbled away from day to day. Unwilling though he was, Pelle had to let go his providence, and seek the means of protection in himself. It was rather early, but he looked at circumstances in his own way. Distrust he had already acquired⁠—and timidity! He daily made clumsy attempts to get behind what people said, and behind things. There was something more behind everything! It often led to confusion, but occasionally the result was conspicuously good.

There were some thrashings that you could run away from, because in the meantime the anger would pass away, and other thrashings where it answered best to shed as many tears as possible. Most people only beat until the tears came, but the bailiff could not endure a blubberer, so with him the thing was to set your teeth and make yourself hard. People said you should speak the truth, but most thrashings could be avoided by making up a white lie, if it was a good one and you took care of your face. If you told the truth, they thrashed you at once.

With regard to thrashing, the question had a subjective side as well as an objective one. He could beat Rud whenever he liked, but with bigger boys it was better to have right on his side, as, for instance, when his father was attacked. Then God helped him. This was a case in which the boy put the omnipotence quite aside, and felt himself to be the old man’s protector.

Lasse and Pelle were walking through life hand in hand, and yet each was going his own way. Lasse felt it to be so. “We’ve each got hold of an end,” he sometimes said to himself despondently, when the difference was all too marked. “He’s rising, the laddie!”

This was best seen in the others. In the long run they had to like the boy, it could not be otherwise. The men would sometimes give him things, and the girls were thoroughly kind to him. He was in the fairest period of budding youth; they would often take him on their knees as he passed, and kiss him.

“Ah, he’ll be a lady’s man, he will!” Lasse would say. “He’s got that from his father.” But they would laugh at that.

There was always laughter when Lasse wanted to join the elders. Last time⁠—yes, then he was good enough. It was always “Where’s Lasse?” when gin was going round, or tricks were being played, or demonstrations made. “Call Lasse Karlsson!” He had no need to push himself forward; it was a matter of course that he was there. The girls were always on the lookout for him, married man though he was, and he had fun with them⁠—all quite proper, of course, for Bengta was not good to quarrel with if she heard anything.

But now! Yes⁠—well, yes⁠—he might fetch the gin for the others and do their work for them when they had a holiday, without their doing anything in exchange! “Lasse! Where’s Lasse? Can you feed the horses for me this evening? Can you take my place at the chaff-cutting tomorrow evening?”

There was a difference between then and now, and Lasse had found out the reason for himself: he was getting old. The very discovery brought further proof of its correctness, laid infirmity upon him, and removed the tension from his mind, and what was left of it from his body. The hardest blow of all was when he discovered that he was of no importance to the girls, had no place at all in their thoughts of men. In Lasse’s world there was no word that carried such weight as the word “man”; and in the end it was the girls who decided whether you were one or not. Lasse was not one; he was not dangerous! He was only a few poor relics of a man, a comical remnant of some bygone thing; they laughed at him when he tried to pay them attention.

Their laughter crushed him, and he withdrew into his old-man’s world, and despondently adapted himself to it. The only thing that kept life in him was his concern for the boy, and he