All the winter Jens had smeared his upper lip with fowl’s dung in order
to grow a moustache; now it was sprouting, and he found himself a young
woman; she was nurse-maid at the Consul’s. “It’s tremendous fun,” he
said; “you ought to get one yourself. When she kisses me she sticks out
her tongue like a little kid.” But Pelle wanted no young woman—in the
first place, no young woman would have him, branded as he was; and then
he was greatly worried.
When he raised his head from his work and looked out sideways over the
manure-sheds and pigsties, he saw the green half-twilight of the heart
of the apple-tree, and he could dream himself into it. It was an
enchanted world of green shadows and silent movement; countless yellow
caterpillars hung there, dangling to and fro, each on its slender
thread; chaffinches and yellow-hammers swung themselves impetuously
from bough to bough, and at every swoop snapped up a caterpillar; but
these never became any fewer. Without a pause they rolled themselves
down from the twigs, and hung there, so enticingly yellow, swinging to
and fro in the gentle breath of the summer day, and waited to be
gobbled up.
And deeper still in the green light—as though on the floor of a green
sea—three brightly-clad maidens moved and played. Now and again the two
younger would suddenly look over at Pelle, but they turned their eyes
away again the moment he looked at them; and Manna was as grown-up and
self-controlled as though he had never existed. Manna had been
confirmed a long time now; her skirts were halfway to the ground, and
she walked soberly along the street, arm-in-arm with her girl friends.
She no longer played; she had long been conscious of a
rapidly-increasing certainty that it wouldn’t do to play any longer. In
a few days she went over from Pelle’s side to the camp of the
grown-ups. She no longer turned to him in the workshop, and if he met
her in the street she looked in another direction. No longer did she
leap like a wild cat into the shop, tearing Pelle from his stool if she
wanted something done; she went demurely up to the young master, who
wrapped up her shoes in paper. But in secret she still recognized her
playmate; if no one was by she would pinch his arm quite hard, and
gnash her teeth together as she passed him.
But Pelle was too clumsy to understand the transition, and too much of
a child to be shy of the light himself. He hung hack, lonely, and
pondered, uncomprehending, over the new condition of affairs.
But now she did not know him in secret even—he simply did not exist for
her any longer. And Dolores and Aina too had withdrawn their favor;
when he looked out, they averted their heads and shrugged their
shoulders. They were ashamed that they had ever had anything to do with
such a person, and he knew very well why that was.
It had been a peculiar and voluptuous delight to be handled by those
delicate and generous hands. It had been really splendid to sit there
with open mouth and let all three stuff him with delicacies, so that he
was in danger of choking! He wasn’t allowed to swallow them down—they
wanted to see how much his mouth would hold; and then they would laugh
and dance round him, and their plump girlish hands would take hold of
his head, one on each side, and press his jaws together. Now Pelle had
gradually added quite an ell to his stature as a worldly wise citizen;
he knew very well that he was of coarser clay than his companions, and
that there must have been an end of it all, even without the town hall.
But it hurt him; he felt as though he had been betrayed; properly he
oughtn’t to touch his food. For was not Manna his betrothed? He had
never thought of that! These were the pains of love! So this was what
they were like! Did those who took their lives on account of unhappy
love feel any different? His grief, to be sure, was not very
stupendous; when the young master made a joke or cursed in his funny
way he could laugh quite heartily still. That, with his disgrace, was
the worst of all.
“You ought to get yourself a young woman,” said Jens. “She’s as soft as
a young bird, and she warms you through your clothes and everything!”
But Pelle had something else on hand. He wanted to learn to swim. He
wanted to know how to do everything that the town boys did, and to win
back his place among them. He no longer dreamed of leading them. So he
went about with the “gang”; he drew back a little if they teased him
too brutally, and then crept back again; finally they grew accustomed
to him.
Every evening he ran down to the harbor. To the south of the big basin,
which was now being pumped dry, there was always, in the twilight, a
crowd of apprentices; they leaped naked among the rocks and swam in
chattering shoals toward the west, where the sky still glowed after the
sunset. A long way out a reef lay under the water, and on this they
could just touch bottom; there they would rest before they swam back,
their dark heads brooding on the water like chattering sea-birds.
Pelle swam out with them in order to accustom himself to deep water,
although they always tried to pull him under by his legs. When the sea
blushed it was as though one was swimming amid roses; and the light,
slippery, shining fronds which the deep-lying weed-beds had thrown up
gleamed in the evening light and slid gently across his shoulders, and
far out in the west lay the land of Fortune, beyond the vast radiant
portals of the sunset; or it showed its golden plains stretching out
into infinity. There it lay, shining with a strange enticing radiance,
so that Pelle forgot the limits of his strength, and swam out farther
than his powers justified. And when he turned round, parting the
floating weed with vigorous strokes, the water stared at him blackly,
and the terror of the depths seized upon him.
One evening the boys had been hostile in their attitude, and one of
them maintained that the marks of the whip could still be seen on
Pelle’s back. “Pelle has never been beaten with a whip!” cried Morten,
in a rage. Pelle himself made no reply, but followed the “squadron”;
his whole nature felt somehow embittered.
There was a slight swell, and this perhaps washed the swimmers out of
their proper course; they could not find the reef on which they were
used to rest. For a time they splashed about, trying to find it, and
wasting their strength; then they turned back to the shore. Pelle
looked after them with wondering eyes.
“Lie on your back and rest!” they cried, as they passed him, and then
they made for the beach; a touch of panic had fallen on them. Pelle
tried to rest, but he had had no practice in floating; the waves broke
over his face; so he labored after the others. On the shore there was
great excitement; he wondered what it meant. Morten, who had never
bathed with the others, was standing on a rock and was shouting.
Some of the foremost swimmers were already in safety. “You can touch
bottom here!” they shouted, standing with outstretched arms, the water
up to their chins. Pelle labored on indefatigably, but he was quite
convinced that it was useless. He was making hardly any progress, and
he was sinking deeper and deeper. Every moment a wave washed over him
and filled him with water. The stronger swimmers came out again; they
swam round him and tried to help him, but they only made matters worse.
He saw Morten run shouting into the water with all his clothes on, and
that gave him a little strength. But then suddenly his arms became
paralyzed; he went round and round in the same spot, and only his eyes
were above water. Pelle had often flown in his dreams, and something
had always clutched his legs and hampered his flight. But now this had
become reality; he was floating in the blue sky and poised on his
outspread pinions; and out of the darkness below he heard voices.
“Pelle!” they cried, “little Pelle!” “Yes, Father Lasse!” he answered,
and with a sense of relief he folded his weary wings; he sank in
whirling haste, and a surging sounded in his ears.
Then of a sudden he felt a violent pain in his shins. His hands
clutched at growing plants. He stood up with a leap, and light and air
flowed over him as from a new existence. The boys were running about,
frightened, one leg in their trousers, and he was standing on the
submarine reef, up to the breast in the sea, vomiting salt water. Round
about him swimmers were splashing, diving in every direction to fetch
him up from the bottom of the sea. It was all really rather funny, and
Pelle raised his arms high above his head as a greeting to life, and
took the water with a long dive. Some distance farther in he appeared
again, and swam to shore, parting the waves like a frolicsome porpoise.
But on the beach he fell down as God had made him, in a profound sleep;
he had just pulled one stocking over his big toe.
Since that day the boys recognized him again. He had certainly
performed no heroic deed, but Destiny had for a moment rested upon his
head—that was enough! Pelle always took the steel sharpener with him
after that; and laid it on the beach with the point toward the land; he
wanted after all to live a little longer. He did not allow himself to
be intimidated, but plunged headlong into the water.
If the sea was so rough that they could not swim, they would lie on the
brink of the water and let the waves roll them over and over. Then the
waves would come in sweeping flight from the west, as though to spring
upon them; the herds of white horses drove onward, their grayish manes
streaming obliquely behind them. Rearing they came, sweeping the sea
with their white tails, striking out wildly with their hooves and
plunging under the surface. But others sprang up and leaped over them
in serried ranks. They lay flat on the water and rushed toward the
land. The storm whipped the white foam out of their mouths and drove it
along the beach, where it hung gleaming on the bushes, and then
vanished into nothingness. Right up to the shore they dashed, and then
fell dead. But fresh hordes stormed shoreward from the offing, as
though the land must be over-run by them; they reared, foaming, and
struck at one another; they sprang, snorting and quivering, high in the
air; they broke asunder in panic; there was never an end to it all. And
far out in the distance the sun went down in a flame-red mist. A streak
of cloud lay across it, stretching far out into infinity. A
conflagration like a glowing prairie fire surrounded the horizon, and
drove the hordes before it in panic-stricken flight, and on the beach
shouted the naked swarm of boys. Now and again they sprang up with
outspread arms, and, shouting, chased the wild horses back into the
sea.