Pelle read no more and no longer went to the library. He had enough to
do to keep things going. There was no question now of trying to get a
place; winter was at the door, and the army of the unemployed grew
larger every day. He stayed at home, worked when there was anything to
do, and for the rest minded the children for Ellen while she washed. He
talked to Lasse Frederik as he would to a comrade, but it was nice to
have to look after the little ones too. They were grateful for it, and
he discovered that it gave him much pleasure. Boy Comfort he was very
fond of now, his only sorrow being that the boy could not talk yet. His
dumbness was always a silent accusation.
“Why don’t you bring books home?” Ellen would say when she came up from
the wash-house to look after them, with her arms bare and tiny drops in
her hair from the steam down there. “You’ve plenty of time now.”
No, what did he want with books? They did perhaps widen his horizon a
little, but what lay behind it became so very much greater again; and
he himself only grew smaller by reading. It was impossible in any case
to obtain any reassuring view of the whole. The world followed its own
crooked course in defiance of all wisdom. There was little pleasure in
absorbing knowledge about things that one could not remedy; poor people
had better be dull.
He and Morten had just been to Madam Johnsen’s funeral. She had not
succeeded in seeing Jutland. Out of a whole life of toil there had
never been ten krones (10s.) over for a ticket home; and the trains ran
day after day with hundreds of empty places. With chilling punctuality
they whirled away from station to station. Heaven knows how many
thousand empty seats the trains had run with to Jutland during the
years in which the old woman longed to see her home! And if she had
trudged to the railway-station and got into the train, remorseless
hands would have removed her at the first station. What had she to do
with Jutland? She longed to go there, it was true, but she had no
money!
Was it malice or heartless indifference? A more fiendish sport can at
any rate hardly be imagined than this running with empty places. It was
they that made the journey so terribly vivid—as though the devil
himself were harnessed to the train and, panting with wantonness,
dragging it along through the country to places that people were
longing to see. It must be dreadful to be the guard and call the names
of the stations in to those seats for the people left behind!
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 back-yards 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
open-handed 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 every one 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 money-lender, and they were no nearer the end. On the one
hundred and eighty krones (£10) that Pelle had received they had now in
all paid off one hundred and twenty (£7), and yet they still owed two
hundred and forty (more than £13). 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 money-lender’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 money-lender,” 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 money-lender 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 teeth in a low tone as he moved toward the door. He did not
hurry, but went with lowered head, not looking at any one.
Brun seized him by the arm and stopped him.
“You forget that there’s something called Prison!” he said with
peculiar emphasis.
Pelle gazed at him in astonishment, and for a moment it looked as if he
were going to strike the old man; then the hammer dropped from his hand
and he broke down.