High up, out of Pipman’s garret, a young man stepped out onto the
platform. He stood there a moment turning his smiling face toward the
bright heavens overhead. Then he lowered his head and ran down the
break-neck stairs, without holding on by the rope. Under his arm he
carried something wrapped in a blue cloth.
“Just look at the clown! Laughing right into the face of the sun as
though there was no such thing as blindness!” said the women, thrusting
their heads out of window. “But then, of course, he’s from the country.
And now he’s going to deliver his work. Lord, how long is he going to
squat up there and earn bread for that sweater? The red’ll soon go from
his cheeks if he stops there much longer!” And they looked after him
anxiously.
The children down in the courtyard raised their heads when they heard
his steps above them.
“Have you got some nice leather for us to-day, Pelle?” they cried,
clutching at his legs.
He brought out of his pockets some little bits of patent-leather and
red imitation morocco.
“That’s from the Emperor’s new slippers,” he said, as he shared the
pieces among the children. Then the youngsters laughed until their
throats began to wheeze.
Pelle was just the same as of old, except that he was more upright and
elastic in his walk, and had grown a little fair moustache. His
protruding ears had withdrawn themselves a little, as though they were
no longer worked so hard. His blue eyes still accepted everything as
good coin, though they now had a faint expression that seemed to say
that all that happened was no longer to their liking. His “lucky curls”
still shone with a golden light.
The narrow streets lay always brooding in a dense, unbearable
atmosphere that never seemed to renew itself. The houses were grimy and
crazy; where a patch of sunlight touched a window there were stained
bed- clothes hung out to dry. Up one of the side streets was an
ambulance wagon, surrounded by women and children who were waiting
excitedly for the bearers to appear with their uneasy burden, and Pelle
joined them; he always had to take part in everything.
It was not quite the shortest way which he took. The capital was quite
a new world to him; nothing was the same as at home; here a hundred
different things would happen in the course of the day, and Pelle was
willing enough to begin all over again; and he still felt his old
longing to take part in it all and to assimilate it all.
In the narrow street leading down to the canal a thirteen-year-old girl
placed herself provocatively in his way. “Mother’s ill,” she said,
pointing up a dark flight of steps. “If you’ve got any money, come
along!” He was actually on the point of following her, when he
discovered that the old women who lived in the street were flattening
their noses against their windowpanes. “One has to be on one’s guard
here!” he told himself, at least for the hundredth time. The worst of
it was that it was so easy to forget the necessity.
He strolled along the canal-side. The old quay-wall, the apple-barges,
and the granaries with the high row of hatchways overhead and the
creaking pulleys right up in the gables awakened memories of home.
Sometimes, too, there were vessels from home lying here, with cargoes
of fish or pottery, and then he was able to get news. He wrote but
seldom. There was little success to be reported; just now he had to
make his way, and he still owed Sort for his passage-money.
But it would soon come…. Pelle hadn’t the least doubt as to the future.
The city was so monstrously large and incalculable; it seemed to have
undertaken the impossible; but there could be no doubt of such an
obvious matter of course as that he should make his way. Here wealth
was simply lying in great heaps, and the poor man too could win it if
only he grasped at it boldly enough. Fortune here was a golden bird,
which could be captured by a little adroitness; the endless chances
were like a fairy tale. And one day Pelle would catch the bird; when
and how he left confidingly to chance.
In one of the side streets which ran out of the Market Street there was
a crowd; a swarm of people filled the whole street in front of the
iron- foundry, shouting eagerly to the blackened iron-workers, who
stood grouped together by the gateway, looking at one another
irresolutely.
“What’s up here?” asked Pelle.
“This is up—that they can’t earn enough to live on,” said an old man.
“And the manufacturers won’t increase their pay. So they’ve taken to
some new-fangled fool’s trick which they say has been brought here from
abroad, where they seem to have done well with it. That’s to say, they
all suddenly chuck up their work and rush bareheaded into the street
and make a noise, and then back to work again, just like school
children in play-time. They’ve already been in and out two or three
times, and now half of them’s outside and the others are at work, and
the gate is locked. Nonsense! A lot that’s going to help their wages!
No; in my time we used to ask for them prettily, and we always got
something, too. But, anyhow, we’re only working-folks, and where’s it
going to come from? And now, what’s more, they’ve lost their whole
week’s wages!”
The workmen were at a loss as to what they should do; they stood there
gazing mechanically up at the windows of the counting-house, from which
all decisions were commonly issued. Now and again an impatient shudder
ran through the crowd, as it made threats toward the windows and
demanded what was owing it. “He won’t give us the wages that we’ve
honestly earned, the tyrant!” they cried. “A nice thing, truly, when
one’s got a wife and kids at home, and on a Saturday afternoon, too!
What a shark, to take the bread out of their mouths! Won’t the gracious
gentleman give us an answer—just his greeting, so that we can take it
home with us?—just his kind regards, or else they’ll have to go hungry
to bed!” And they laughed, a low, snarling laugh, spat on the pavement,
and once more turned their masterless faces up to the counting-house
windows.
Proposals were showered upon them, proposals of every kind; and they
were as wise as they were before. “What the devil are we to do if
there’s no one who can lead us?” they said dejectedly, and they stood
staring again. That was the only thing they knew how to do.
“Choose a few of your comrades and send them in to negotiate with the
manufacturer,” said a gentleman standing by.
“Hear, hear! Forward with Eriksen! He understands the deaf-and-dumb
alphabet!” they shouted. The stranger shrugged his shoulders and
departed.
A tall, powerful workman approached the group. “Have you got your
killer with you, Eriksen?” cried one, and Eriksen turned on the
staircase and exhibited his clenched fist.
“Look out!” they shouted at the windows. “Look out we don’t set fire to
the place!” Then all was suddenly silent, and the heavy house-door was
barred.
Pelle listened with open mouth. He did not know what they wanted, and
they hardly knew, themselves; none the less, there was a new note in
all this! These people didn’t beg for what they wanted; they preferred
to use their fists in order to get it, and they didn’t get drunk first,
like the strong man Eriksen and the rest at home. “This is the
capital!” he thought, and again he congratulated himself for having
come thither.
A squad of policemen came marching up. “Room there!” they cried, and
began to hustle the crowd in order to disperse it. The workmen would
not be driven away. “Not before we’ve got our wages!” they said, and
they pressed back to the gates again. “This is where we work, and we’re
going to have our rights, that we are!” Then the police began to drive
the onlookers away; at each onset they fell back a few steps,
hesitating, and then stood still, laughing. Pelle received a blow in
the back; he turned quickly round, stared for a moment into the red
face of a policeman, and went his way, muttering and feeling his back.
“Did he hit you?” asked an old woman. “Devil take him, the filthy lout!
He’s the son of the mangling-woman what lives in the house here, and
now he takes up the cudgels against his own people! Devil take him!”
“Move on!” ordered the policeman, winking, as he pushed her aside with
his body. She retired to her cellar, and stood there using her tongue
to such purpose that the saliva flew from her toothless mouth.
“Yes, you go about bullying old people who used to carry you in their
arms and put dry clouts on you when you didn’t know enough to ask…. Are
you going to use your truncheon on me, too? Wouldn’t you like to,
Fredrik? Take your orders from the great folks, and then come yelping
at us, because we aren’t fine enough for you!” She was shaking with
rage; her yellowish gray hair had become loosened and was tumbling
about her face; she was a perfect volcano.
The police marched across the Knippel Bridge, escorted by a swarm of
street urchins, who yelled and whistled between their fingers. From
time to time a policeman would turn round; then the whole swarm took to
its heels, but next moment it was there again. The police were nervous:
their fingers were opening and closing in their longing to strike out.
They looked like a party of criminals being escorted to the court-house
by the extreme youth of the town, and the people were laughing.
Pelle kept step on the pavement. He was in a wayward mood. Somewhere
within him he felt a violent impulse to give way to that absurd longing
to leap into the air and beat his head upon the pavement which was the
lingering result of his illness. But now it assumed the guise of
insolent strength. He saw quite plainly how big Eriksen ran roaring at
the bailiff, and how he was struck to the ground, and thereafter
wandered about an idiot. Then the “Great Power” rose up before him,
mighty in his strength, and was hurled to his death; they had all been
like dogs, ready to fall on him, and to fawn upon everything that smelt
of their superiors and the authorities. And he himself, Pelle, had had
a whipping at the court-house, and people had pointed the finger at
him, just as they pointed at the “Great Power.” “See, there he goes
loafing, the scum of humanity!” Yes, he had learned what righteousness
was, and what mischief it did. But now he had escaped from the old
excommunication, and had entered a new world, where respectable men
never turned to look after the police, but left such things to the
street urchins and old women. There was a great satisfaction in this;
and Pelle wanted to take part in this world; he longed to understand
it.
It was Saturday, and there was a crowd of journeymen and seamstresses
in the warehouse, who had come to deliver their work. The foreman went
round as usual, grumbling over the work, and before he paid for it he
would pull at it and crumple it so that it lost its shape, and then he
made the most infernal to-do because it was not good enough. Now and
again he would make a deduction from the week’s wages, averring that
the material was ruined; and he was especially hard on the women, who
stood there not daring to contradict him. People said he cheated all
the seamstresses who would not let him have his way with them.
Pelle stood there boiling with rage. “If he says one word to me, we
shall come to blows!” he thought. But the foreman took the work without
glancing at it—ah, yes, that was from Pipman!
But while he was paying for it a thick-set man came forward out of a
back room; this was the court shoemaker, Meyer himself. He had been a
poor young man with barely a seat to his breeches when he came to
Copenhagen from Germany as a wandering journeyman. He did not know much
about his craft, but he knew how to make others work for him! He did
not answer the respectful greetings of the workers, but stationed
himself before Pelle, his belly bumping against the counter, wheezing
loudly through his nose, and gazing at the young man.
“New man?” he asked, at length. “That’s Pipman’s assistant,” replied
the foreman, smiling. “Ah! Pipman—he knows the trick, eh? You do the
work and he takes the money and drinks it, eh?” The master shoemaker
laughed as at an excellent joke.
Pelle turned red. “I should like to be independent as soon as
possible,” he said.
“Yes, yes, you can talk it over with the foreman; but no unionists
here, mind that! We’ve no use for those folks.”
Pelle pressed his lips together and pushed the cloth wrapper into the
breast of his coat in silence. It was all he could do not to make some
retort; he couldn’t approve of that prohibition. He went out quickly
into Kobmager Street and turned out of the Coal Market into Hauser
Street, where, as he knew, the president of the struggling Shoemakers’
Union was living. He found a little cobbler occupying a dark cellar.
This must be the man he sought; so he ran down the steps. He had not
understood that the president of the Union would be found in such a
miserable dwelling-place.
Under the window sat a hollow-cheeked man bowed over his bench, in the
act of sewing a new sole on to a worn-out shoe. The legs of the
passers- by were just above his head. At the back of the room a woman
stood cooking something on the stove; she had a little child on her
arm, while two older children lay on the ground playing with some
lasts. It was frightfully hot and oppressive.
“Good day, comrade!” said Pelle. “Can I become a member of the Union?”
The man looked up, astonished. Something like a smile passed over his
mournful face.
“Can you indulge yourself so far?” he asked slowly. “It may prove a
costly pleasure. Who d’you work for, if I may ask?”
“For Meyer, in Kobmager Street.”
“Then you’ll be fired as soon as he gets to know of it!”
“I know that sure enough; all the same, I want to join the Union. He’s
not going to tell me what I can and what I can’t do. Besides, we’ll
soon settle with him.”
“That’s what I thought, too. But there’s too few of us. You’ll be
starved out of the Union as soon as you’ve joined.”
“We must see about getting a bit more numerous,” said Pelle cheerfully,
“and then one fine day we’ll shut up shop for him!”
A spark of life gleamed in the tired eyes of the president. “Yes, devil
take him, if we could only make him shut up shop!” he cried, shaking
his clenched fist in the air. “He tramples on all those hereabouts that
make money for him; it’s a shame that I should sit here now and have
come down to cobbling; and he keeps the whole miserable trade in
poverty! Ah, what a revenge, comrade!” The blood rushed into his hollow
cheeks until they burned, and then he began to cough. “Petersen!” said
the woman anxiously, supporting his back. “Petersen!” She sighed and
shook her head, while she helped him to struggle through his fit of
coughing. “When the talk’s about the Court shoemaker Petersen always
gets like one possessed,” she said, when he had overcome it. “He really
don’t know what he’s doing. No—if everybody would only be as clever as
Meyer and just look after his own business, then certain people would
be sitting there in good health and earning good money!”
“Hold your tongue!” said Petersen angrily. “You’re a woman—you know
nothing about the matter.” At which the woman went back to her cooking.
Petersen filled out a paper, and Pelle signed his name to it and paid
his subscription for a week. “And now you must try to break away from
that bloodsucker as soon as possible!” said Petersen earnestly. “A
respectable workman can’t put up with such things!”
“I was forced into it,” said Pelle. “And I learned nothing of this at
home. But now that’s over and done with.”
“Good, comrade! There’s my hand on it—and good luck to you! We must
work the cause up, and perhaps we shall succeed yet; I tell you, you’ve
given me back my courage! Now you persuade as many as you can, and
don’t miss the meetings; they’ll be announced in _The Working Man_.” He
shook Pelle’s hand eagerly. Pelle took a brisk walk out to the
northward. He felt pleased and in the best of spirits.
It was about the time when the workers are returning home; they drifted
along singly and in crowds, stooping and loitering, shuffling a little
after the fatigue of the day. There was a whole new world out here,
quite different from that of the “Ark.” The houses were new and
orderly, built with level and plumb-line; the men went their appointed
ways, and one could see at a glance what each one was.
This quarter was the home of socialism and the new ideas. Pelle often
strolled out thither on holidays in order to get a glimpse of these
things; what they were he didn’t know, and he hadn’t dared to thrust
himself forward, a stranger, as he still felt himself to be there; but
it all attracted him powerfully. However, to-day he forgot that he was
a stranger, and he went onward with a long, steady stride that took him
over the bridge and into North Bridge Street. Now he himself was a
trades unionist; he was like all these others, he could go straight up
to any one if he wished and shake him by the hand. There was a strong
and peculiar appeal about the bearing of these people, as though they
had been soldiers. Involuntarily he fell into step with them, and felt
himself stronger on that account, supported by a feeling of community.
He felt solemnly happy, as on his birthday; and he had a feeling as
though he must do something. The public houses were open, and the
workmen were entering them in little groups. But he had no desire to
sit there and pour spirits down his throat. One could do that sort of
thing when everything had gone to the dogs.
He stationed himself in front of a pastry cook’s window, eagerly
occupied in comparing the different kinds of cakes. He wanted to go
inside and expend five and twenty öre in celebration of the day. But
first of all the whole affair must be properly and methodically planned
out, so that he should not be disappointed afterward. He must, of
course, have something that he had never eaten before, and that was
just the difficult part. Many of the cakes were hollow inside too, and
the feast would have to serve as his evening meal.
It was by no means easy, and just as Pelle was on the point of solving
the difficulty he was startled out of the whole affair by a slap on the
shoulder. Behind him was Morten, smiling at him with that kindly smile
of his, as though nothing had gone wrong between them. Pelle was
ashamed of himself and could not find a word to say. He had been
unfaithful to his only friend; and it was not easy for him to account
for his behavior. But Morten didn’t want any explanations; he simply
shook Pelle by the hand. His pale face was shining with joy. It still
betrayed that trace of suffering which was so touching, and Pelle had
to surrender at discretion. “Well, to think we should meet here!” he
cried, and laughed good-naturedly.
Morten was working at the pastry cook’s, and had been out; now he was
going in to get some sleep before the night’s work. “But come in with
me; we can at least sit and talk for half an hour; and you shall have a
cake too.” He was just the same as in the old days.
They went in through the gate and up the back stairs; Morten went into
the shop and returned with five “Napoleons.” “You see I know your
taste,” he said laughing.
Morten’s room was right up under the roof; it was a kind of turret-room
with windows on both sides. One could look out over the endless mass of
roofs, which lay in rows, one behind the other, like the hotbeds in a
monstrous nursery garden. From the numberless flues and chimneys rose a
thin bluish smoke, which lay oppressively over all. Due south lay the
Kalvebod Strand, and further to the west the hill of Frederiksberg with
its castle rose above the mist. On the opposite side lay the Common,
and out beyond the chimneys of the limekilns glittered the Sound with
its many sails. “That’s something like a view, eh?” said Morten
proudly.
Pelle remained staring; he went from one window to another and said
nothing. This was the city, the capital, for which he and all other
poor men from the farthest corners of the land, had longed so
boundlessly; the Fortunate Land, where they were to win free of
poverty!
He had wandered through it in all directions, had marvelled at its
palaces and its treasures, and had found it to be great beyond all
expectation. Everything here was on the grand scale; what men built one
day they tore down again on the morrow, in order to build something
more sumptuous. So much was going on here, surely the poor man might
somehow make his fortune out of it all!
And yet he had had no true conception of the whole. Now for the first
time he saw the City! It lay there, a mighty whole, outspread at his
feet, with palaces, churches, and factory chimneys rising above the
mass of houses. Down in the street flowed a black, unending stream, a
stream of people continually renewed, as though from a mighty ocean
that could never be exhausted. They all had some object; one could not
see it, but really they were running along like ants, each bearing his
little burden to the mighty heap of precious things, which was gathered
together from all the ends of the earth.
“There are millions in all this!” said Pelle at last, drawing a deep
breath. “Yes,” said Morten standing beside him. “And it’s all put
together by human hands—by the hands of working people!”
Pelle started. That was a wonderful idea. But it was true enough, if
one thought about it.
“But now it has fallen into very different hands!” he exclaimed,
laughing. “Yes, they’ve got it away from us by trickery, just as one
wheedles a child out of a thing,” cried Morten morosely. “But there’s
no real efficiency in anything that children do—and the poor have never
been anything more than children! Only now they are beginning to grow
up, look you, and one fine day they’ll ask for their own back.”
“It would go ill with us if we went and tried to take it for
ourselves,” said Pelle.
“Not if we were united about it—but we are only the many.”
Pelle listened; it had never occurred to him that the question of
organization was so stupendous. Men combined, sure enough, but it was
to secure better conditions in their trade.
“You are like your father!” he said. “He always had big ideas, and
wanted to get his rights. I was thinking about him a little while ago,
how he never let himself be trampled on. Then you used to be ashamed of
him; but….”
Morten hung his head. “I couldn’t bear the contempt of respectable
folks,” he said half under his breath. “I understood nothing beyond the
fact that he was destroying our home and bringing disgrace on us. And I
was horribly afraid, too, when he began to lay about him; I wake up
sometimes now quite wet and cold with sweat, when I’ve been dreaming of
my childhood. But now I’m proud that I’m the son of the ‘Great Power.’
I haven’t much strength myself; yet perhaps I’ll do something to
surprise the city folks after all.”
“And I too!”
Power! It was really extraordinary that Morten should be the son of the
giant stone-cutter, so quiet and delicate was he. He had not yet quite
recovered the strength of which Bodil had robbed him in his early
boyhood; it was as though that early abuse was still wasting him.
He had retained his girlish love of comfort. The room was nicely kept;
and there were actually flowers in a vase beneath the looking-glass.
Flowers, good Lord! “How did you get those?” asked Pelle.
“Bought them, of course!”
Pelle had to laugh. Was there another man in the world who would pay
money for flowers?
But he did not laugh at the books. There seemed to be a sort of
mysterious connection between them and Morten’s peculiar, still energy.
He had now a whole shelf full. Pelle took a few down and looked into
them.
“What sort of stuff is this, now?” he asked doubtfully. “It looks like
learning!”
“Those are books about us, and how the new conditions are coming, and
how we must make ready for them.”
“Ah, you’ve got the laugh of me,” said Pelle. “In a moment of
depression you’ve got your book-learning to help you along. But we
other chaps can just sit where we are and kick our heels.” Morten
turned to him hastily.
“That’s the usual complaint!” he cried irritably. “A man spits on his
own class and wants to get into another one. But that’s not the point
at stake, damn it all! We want to stay precisely where we are,
shoemakers and bakers, all together! But we must demand proper
conditions! Scarcely one out of thousands can come out on top; and then
the rest can sit where they are and gape after him! But do you believe
he’d get a chance of rising if it wasn’t that society needs him—wants
to use him to strike at his own people and keep them down? ‘Now you can
see for yourself what a poor man can do if he likes!’ That’s what they
tell you. There’s no need to blame society.
“No, the masses themselves are to blame if they aren’t all rich men!
Good God! They just don’t want to be! So they treat you like a fool,
and you put up with it and baa after them! No, let them all together
demand that they shall receive enough for their work to live on
decently. I say a working man ought to get as much for his work as a
doctor or a barrister, and to be educated as well. That’s my Lord’s
Prayer!”
“Now I’ve set you off finely!” said Pelle good-naturedly. “And it’s
just the same as what your father was raving about when he lay dying in
the shed. He lay there delirious, and he believed the ordinary workman
had got pictures on the wall and a piano, just like the fine folks.”
“Did he say that?” cried Morten, and he raised his head. Then he fell
into thought. For he understood that longing. But Pelle sat there
brooding. Was this the “new time” all over again? Then there was really
some sense in banding people together—yes, and as many as possible.
“I don’t rightly understand it,” he said at last. “But to-day I joined
the trade union. I shan’t stand still and look on when there’s anything
big to be done.”
Morten nodded, faintly smiling. He was tired now, and hardly heard what
Pelle was saying. “I must go to bed now so that I can get up at one.
But where do you live? I’ll come and see you some time. How queer it is
that we should have run across one another here!”
“I live out in Kristianshavn—in the ‘Ark,’ if you know where that is!”
“That’s a queer sort of house to have tumbled into! I know the ‘Ark’
very well, it’s been so often described in the papers. There’s all
sorts of people live there!”
“I don’t know anything about that,” said Pelle, half offended. “I like
the people well enough…. But it’s capital that we should have run into
one another’s arms like this! What bit of luck, eh? And I behaved like
a clown and kept out of your way? But that was when I was going to the
dogs, and hated everybody! But now nothing’s going to come between us
again, you may lay to that!”
“That’s good, but now be off with you,” replied Morten, smiling; he was
already half-undressed.
“I’m going, I’m going!” said Pelle, and he picked up his hat, and stood
for a moment gazing out over the city. “But it’s magnificent, what you
were saying about things just now!” he cried suddenly. “If I had the
strength of all us poor folks in me, I’d break out right away and
conquer the whole of it! If such a mass of wealth were shared out
there’d never be any poverty any more!” He stood there with his arms
uplifted, as though he held it all in his hands. Then he laughed
uproariously. He looked full of energy. Morten lay half asleep, staring
at him and saying nothing. And then he went.
Pipman scolded Pelle outrageously when at last he returned. “Curse it
all, what are you thinking of? To go strolling about and playing the
duke while such as we can sit here working our eyes out of our heads!
And we have to go thirsty too! Now don’t you dream of being insolent to
me, or there’ll be an end of the matter. I am excessively annoyed!”
He held out his hand in pathetic expostulation, although Pelle had no
intention of answering him. He no longer took Pipman seriously. “Devil
fry me, but a man must sit here and drink the clothes off his body
while a lout like you goes for a stroll!”
Pelle was standing there counting the week’s earnings when he suddenly
burst into a loud laugh as his glance fell upon Pipman. His blue naked
shanks, miserably shivering under his leather apron, looked so
enormously ridiculous when contrasted with the fully-dressed body and
the venerable beard.
“Yes, you grin!” said Pipman, laughing too. “But suppose it was you had
to take off your trousers in front of the old clothes’ man, and wanted
to get upstairs respectably! Those damned brats! ‘Pipman’s got D. T.,’
they yell. ‘Pipman’s got D. T. And God knows I haven’t got D. T., but I
haven’t got any trousers, and that’s just the trouble! And these
accursed open staircases! Olsen’s hired girl took the opportunity, and
you may be sure she saw all there was to see! You might lend me your
old bags!”
Pelle opened his green chest and took out his work-day trousers.
“You’d better put a few more locks on that spinach-green lumber-chest
of yours,” said Pipman surlily. “After all, there might be a thief
here, near heaven as we are!”
Pelle apparently did not hear the allusion, and locked the chest up
again. Then, his short pipe in his hand, he strolled out on to the
platform. Above the roofs the twilight was rising from the Sound. A few
doves were flying there, catching the last red rays of the sun on their
white pinions, while down in the shaft the darkness lay like a hot
lilac mist. The hurdy-gurdy man had come home and was playing his
evening tune down there to the dancing children, while the inhabitants
of the “Ark” were gossiping and squabbling from gallery to gallery. Now
and again a faint vibrating note rose upward, and all fell silent. This
was the dwarf Vinslev, who sat playing his flute somewhere in his den
deep within the “Ark.” He always hid himself right away when he played,
for at such times he was like a sick animal, and sat quaking in his
lair. The notes of his flute were so sweet, as they came trickling out
of his hiding place, that they seemed like a song or a lament from
another world. And the restless creatures in the “Ark” must perforce be
silent and listen. Now Vinslev was in one of his gentle moods, and one
somehow felt better for hearing him. But at times, in his dark moods,
the devil seemed to enter into him, and breathed such music into his
crazy mind that all his hearers felt a panic terror. Then the decaying
timbers of the “Ark” seemed to expand and form a vast monstrous,
pitch-black forest, in which all terror lay lurking, and one must
strike out blindly in order to avoid being trampled on. The
hearse-driver in the fourth story, who at other times was so gentle in
his cups, would beat his wife shamefully, and the two lay about in
their den drinking and fighting in self-defence. And Vinslev’s devilish
flute was to blame when Johnsen vainly bewailed his miserable life and
ended it under the sewer-grating. But there was nothing to be said
about the matter; Vinslev played the flute, and Johnsen’s suicide was a
death like any other.
Now the devil was going about with a ring in his nose; Vinslev’s
playing was like a gentle breeze that played on people’s hearts, so
that they opened like flowers. This was his good time.
Pelle knew all this, although he had not long been here; but it was
nothing to him. For he wore the conqueror’s shirt of mail, such as
Father Lasse had dreamed of for him.
Down in the third story, on the built-out gallery, another sort of
magic was at work. A climbing pelargonium and some ivy had wound
themselves round the broken beams and met overhead, and there hung a
little red paper lantern, which cast a cheerful glow over it all.
It was as though the summer night had found a sanctuary in the heart of
this wilderness of stone. Under the lantern sat Madam Johnsen and her
daughter sewing; and Hanne’s face glowed like a rose in the night, and
every now and then she turned it up toward Pelle and smiled, and made
an impatient movement of her head. Then Pelle turned away a little, re-
crossed his leg, and leant over on the other side, restless as a horse
in blinkers.
Close behind him his neighbor, Madam Frandsen, was bustling about her
little kitchen. The door stood open on to the platform, and she
chattered incessantly, half to herself and half to Pelle, about her
gout, her dead husband, and her lout of a son. She needed to rest her
body, did this old woman. “My God, yes; and here I have to keep slaving
and getting his food ready for Ferdinand from morning to night and from
night to morning again. And he doesn’t even trouble himself to come
home to it. I can’t go looking into his wild ways; all I can do is to
sit here and worry and keep his meals warm. Now that’s a tasty little
bit; and he’ll soon come when he’s hungry, I tell myself. Ah, yes, our
young days, they’re soon gone. And you stand there and stare like a
baa-lamb and the girl down there is nodding at you fit to crick her
neck! Yes, the men are a queer race; they pretend they wouldn’t
dare—and yet who is it causes all the misfortunes?”
“She doesn’t want anything to do with me!” said Pelle grumpily; “she’s
just playing with me.”
“Yes, a girl goes on playing with a white mouse until she gets it! You
ought to be ashamed to stand there hanging your head! So young and
well- grown as you are too! You cut her tail-feathers off, and you’ll
get a good wife!” She nudged him in the side with her elbow.
Then at last Pelle made up his mind to go clattering down the stairs to
the third story, and along the gallery.
“Why have you been so stand-offish to-day?” said Madam Johnsen, making
room for him. “You know you are always very welcome. What are all these
preliminaries for?”
“Pelle is short-sighted; he can’t see as far as this,” said Hanne,
tossing her head. She sat there turning her head about; she gazed at
him smiling, her head thrown back and her mouth open. The light fell on
her white teeth.
“Shall we get fine weather to-morrow?” asked the mother.
Pelle thought they would; he gazed up at the little speck of sky in a
weather-wise manner. Hanne laughed.
“Are you a weather-prophet, Pelle? But you haven’t any corns!”
“Now stop your teasing, child!” said the mother, pretending to slap
her. “If it’s fine to-morrow we want to go into the woods. Will you
come with us?”
Pelle would be glad to go; but he hesitated slightly before answering.
“Come with us, Pelle,” said Hanne, and she laid her hand invitingly on
his shoulder. “And then you shall be my young man. It’s so tedious
going to the woods with the old lady; and then I want to be able to do
as I like.” She made a challenging movement with her head.
“Then we’ll go from the North Gate by omnibus; I don’t care a bit about
going by train.”
“From the North Gate? But it doesn’t exist any longer, mummy! But there
are still omnibuses running from the Triangle.”
“Well then, from the Triangle, you clever one! Can I help it if they go
pulling everything down? When I was a girl that North Gate was a
splendid place. From there you could get a view over the country where
my home was, and the summer nights were never so fine as on the wall.
One didn’t know what it was to feel the cold then. If one’s clothes
were thin one’s heart was young.”
Hanne went into the kitchen to make coffee. The door stood open. She
hummed at her task and now and again joined in the conversation. Then
she came out, serving Pelle with a cracked tea-tray. “But you look very
peculiar tonight!” She touched Pelle’s face and gazed at him
searchingly.
“I joined the trade union to-day,” answered Pelle; he still had the
feeling that of something unusual, and felt as though everybody must
notice something about him.
Hanne burst out laughing. “Is that where you got that black sign on
your forehead? Just look, mother, just look at him! The trade mark!”
She turned her head toward the old woman.
“Ah, the rogue!” said the old woman, laughing. “Now she’s smeared soot
over your face!” She wetted her apron with her tongue and began to rub
the soot away, Hanne standing behind him and holding his head in both
hands so that he should not move. “Thank your stars that Pelle’s a
good- natured fellow,” said the old woman, as she rubbed. “Or else he’d
take it in bad part!”
Pelle himself laughed shamefacedly.
The hearse-driver came up through the trap in the gallery and turned
round to mount to the fourth story. “Good evening!” he said, in his
deep bass voice, as he approached them; “and good digestion, too, I
ought to say!” He carried a great ham under his arm.
“Lord o’ my body!” whispered Madam Johnsen. “There he is again with his
ham; that means he’s wasted the whole week’s wages again. They’ve
always got more than enough ham and bacon up there, poor things, but
they’ve seldom got bread as well.”
Now one sound was heard in the “Ark,” now another. The crying of
children which drifted so mournfully out of the long corridors whenever
a door was opened turned to a feeble clucking every time some belated
mother came rushing home from work to clasp the little one to her
breast. And there was one that went on crying whether the mother was at
home or at work. Her milk had failed her.
From somewhere down in the cellars the sleepy tones of a cradle-song
rose up through the shaft; it was only “Grete with the child,” who was
singing her rag-doll asleep. The real mothers did not sing.
“She’s always bawling away,” said Hanne; “those who’ve got real
children haven’t got strength left to sing. But her brat doesn’t need
any food; and that makes a lot of difference when one is poor.”
“To-day she was washing and ironing the child’s things to make her fine
for to-morrow, when her father comes. He is a lieutenant,” said Hanne.
“Is he coming to-morrow, then?” asked Pelle naively.
Hanne laughed loudly. “She expects him every Sunday, but she has never
seen him yet!”
“Well, well, that’s hardly a thing to laugh about,” said the old woman.
“She’s happy in her delusions, and her pension keeps her from need.”