On Saturday, at noon, it was reported that the treaty of peace was
signed, and that the great strike was over. The rumor spread through
the capital with incredible speed, finding its way everywhere. “Have
you heard yet? Have you heard yet? Peace is concluded!” The poor were
busy again; they lay huddled together no longer, but came out into the
light of day, their lean faces full of sunlight. The women got out
their baskets and sent the children running to make a few purchases for
Sunday—for now the grocer would give them a little credit! People
smiled and chattered and borrowed a little happiness! Summer had come,
and a monstrous accumulation of work was waiting to be done, and at
last they were going to set to work in real earnest! The news was
shouted from one back door to the next; people threw down what they had
in their hands and ran on with the news. It occurred to no one to stand
still and to doubt; they were only too willing to believe!
Later in the afternoon _The Working Man_ issued a board-sheet
confirming the rumor. Yes, it was really true! And it was a victory;
the right of combination was recognized, and Capital had been taught to
respect the workers as a political factor. It would no longer be
possible to oppress them. And in other respects the _status quo_ was
confirmed.
“Just think—they’ve been taught to respect us, and they couldn’t refuse
to accept the _status quo!_” And they laughed all over their faces with
joy to think that it was confirmed, although no one knew what it was!
The men were in the streets; they were flocking to their organizations,
in order to receive orders and to learn the details of the victory. One
would hardly have supposed from their appearance that the victory was
theirs; they had become so accustomed to gloom that it was difficult to
shake it off.
There was a sound of chattering in backyards and on staircases. Work
was to be resumed—beautiful, glorious labor, that meant food and drink
and a little clothing for the body! Yes, and domestic security! No more
chewing the cud over an empty manger; now one could once more throw
one’s money about a little, and then, by skimping and saving, with
tears and hardship, make it suffice! To-night father would have
something really good with his bread and butter, and to-morrow,
perhaps, they could go out into the forest with the picnic-basket! Or
at all events, as soon as they had got their best clothes back from the
pawn-shop! They must have a bit of an airing before the winter came,
and they had to go back into pawn! They were so overjoyed at the mere
thought of peace that they quite forgot, for the moment, to demand
anything new!
Pelle had taken part in the concluding negotiations; after Father
Lasse’s burial he was himself again. Toward evening he was roaming
about the poor quarter of the city, rejoicing in the mood of the
people; he had played such an important part in the bitter struggle of
the poor that he felt the need to share their joy as well. From the
North Bridge he went by way of the Lakes to West Bridge; and everywhere
swarms of people were afoot. In the side-streets by West Bridge all the
families had emerged from their dwellings and established themselves on
the front steps and the pavements; there they sat, bare-headed in the
twilight, gossiping, smoking, and absorbing refreshments. It was the
first warm evening; the sky was a deep blue, and at the end of the
street the darkness was flooded with purple. There was something
extravagant about them all; joy urged their movements to exceed the
narrow every-day limits, and made them stammer and stagger as though
slightly intoxicated.
Now they could all make their appearance again, all those families that
had hidden themselves during the time of want; they were just as
ragged, but that was of no consequence now! They were beaming with
proud delight to think that they had come through the conflict without
turning to any one for help; and the battles fought out in the darkness
were forgotten.
Pelle had reached the open ground by the Gasworks Harbor; he wanted to
go over to see his old friends in the “Ark.” Yonder it lay, lifting its
glowing mass into the deep night of the eastern sky. The red of the
sinking sun fell over it. High overhead, above the crater of the mass,
hung a cloud of vapor, like a shadow on the evening sky. Pelle, as he
wandered, had been gazing at this streak of shadow; it was the dense
exhalation of all the creatures in the heart of the mass below, the
reek of rotting material and inferior fuel. Now, among other
consequences of victory, there would be a thorough cleansing of the
dens of poverty. A dream floated before him, of comfortable little
dwellings for the workers, each with its little garden and its
well-weeded paths. It would repay a man then to go home after the day’s
fatigue!
It seemed to him that the streak of smoke yonder was growing denser and
denser. Or were his eyes merely exaggerating that which was occupying
his thoughts? He stood still, gazing—then he began to run. A red light
was striking upward against the cloud of smoke—touched a moment, and
disappeared; and a fresh mass of smoke unrolled itself, and hung
brooding heavily overhead.
Pelle rushed across the Staple Square, and over the long bridge. Only
too well did he know the terrible bulk of the “Ark”—and there was no
other exit than the tunnel! And the timber-work, which provided the
sole access to the upper stories! As he ran he could see it all clearly
before his eyes, and his mind began to search for means of rescue. The
fire brigade was of course given the alarm at once, but it would take
time to get the engines here, and it was all a matter of minutes! If
the timber staging fell and the tunnel were choked all the inmates
would be lost—and the “Ark” did not possess a single emergency-ladder!
Outside, in front of the “Ark,” was a restless crowd of people, all
shouting together. “Here comes Pelle!” cried some one. At once they
were all silent, and turned their faces toward him. “Fetch the
fire-escape from the prison!” he shouted to some of the men in passing,
and ran to the tunnel-entry.
From the long corridors on the ground floor the inmates were rushing
out with their little children in their arms. Some were dragging
valueless possessions—the first things they could lay hands on. All
that was left of the timber-work after the wreckage of the terrible
winter was now brightly blazing. Pelle tried to run up the burning
stairs, but fell through. The inmates were hanging half out of their
windows, staring down with eyes full of madness; every moment they ran
out onto the platforms in an effort to get down, but always ran
shrieking back.
At her third-story window Widow Johnsen stood wailing, with her
grandchild and the factory-girl’s little Paul in her arms. Hanne’s
little daughter stared silently out of the window, with the deep,
wondering gaze of her mother. “Don’t be afraid,” Pelle shouted to the
old woman; “we are coming to help you now!” When little Paul caught
sight of Pelle he wrenched himself away from Madam Johnsen and ran out
onto the gallery. He jumped right down, lay for a moment on the
flagstones, turned round and round, quite confused, and then, like a
flash of lightning, he rushed by Pelle and out into the street.
Pelle sent a few of the men into the long corridor, to see whether all
were out. “Break in the closed doors,” he said; “there may possibly be
children or sick people inside.” The inmates of the first and second
stories had saved themselves before the fire had got a hold on the
woodwork.
Pelle himself ran up the main staircase up to the lofts and under the
roof, in order to go to the assistance of the inmates of the
outbuildings over the attics. But he was met by the inmates of the long
roof-walk. “You can’t get through any longer,” said the old rag-picker;
“Pipman’s whole garret is burning, and there are no more up here. God
in heaven have mercy on the poor souls over there!”
In spite of this, Pelle tried to find a way over the attics, but was
forced to turn back.
The men had fetched the fire-escape, and had with difficulty brought it
through the entry and had set it up! The burning timbers were beginning
to fall; fragments of burning woodwork lay all around, and at any
moment the whole building might collapse with a crash. But there was no
time to think of one’s self. The smoke was rolling out of Vinslev’s
corridor and filling the yard. There was need of haste.
“Of course, it was the lunatic who started the fire,” said the men, as
they held the ladder.
It reached only to the second story, but Pelle threw a rope up to Madam
Johnsen, and she fastened it to the window-frame, so that he was able
to clamber up. With the rope he lowered first the child and then the
old woman to his comrades below, who were standing on the ladder to
receive them. The smoke was smarting in his eyes and throat, and all
but stifled him; he could see nothing, but he heard a horrible
shrieking all about him.
Just above him a woman was wailing. “Oh, Pelle, help me!” she
whimpered, half choking. It was the timid seamstress, who had moved
thither; he recognized her emotional voice. “She loves me!” suddenly
flashed upon his mind.
“Catch the rope and fasten it well to the window-frame, and I’ll come
up and help you!” he said, and he swung the end of the rope up toward
the fourth story. But at the same moment a wild shriek rang out. A dark
mass flew past his head and struck the flagstones with a dull thud. The
flames darted hissing from the window, as though to reach after her,
and then drew back.
For a moment he hung stupefied over the window-sill. This was too
horrible. Was it not her gentle voice that he now heard singing with
him? And then the timbers fell with a long cracking sound, and a cloud
of hot ashes rose in the air and filled the lungs as with fire. “Come
down!” cried his comrades, “the ladder is burning!”
A deafening, long-drawn ringing told him that the fire-brigade was near
at hand.
But in the midst of all the uproar Pelle’s ears had heard a faint,
intermittent sound. With one leap he was in Madam Johnsen’s room; he
stood there listening; the crying of a child reached him from the other
side of the wall, where the rooms opened on to the inner corridor. It
was horrible to hear it and to stand there and be able to do nothing. A
wall lay between, and there was no thoroughfare on the other side. In
the court below they were shouting his name. Devil take them, he would
come when he was ready. There he stood, obstinate and apathetic, held
there by that complaining, childish voice. A blind fury arose in him;
sullenly he set his shoulder against that accursed wall, and prepared
himself for the shock. But the wall was giving! Yet again he charged it
—a terrible blow—and part of the barrier was down!
He was met by a rush of stifling heat and smoke; he had to hold his
breath and cover his face with his hands as he pressed forward. A
little child lay there in a cradle. He stumbled over to it and groped
his way back to the wall. The fire, now that it had access to the air,
suddenly leaped at him with an explosive force that made him stagger.
He felt as though a thirsty bull had licked his cheek. It bellowed at
his heels with a voice of thunder, but was silent when he slammed the
door. Half choking he found his way to the window and tried to shout to
those below, but he had no voice left; only a hoarse whisper came from
his throat.
Well, there he stood, with a child in his arms, and he was going to
die! But that didn’t matter—he had got through the wall! Behind him the
fire was pressing forward; it had eaten a small hole through the door,
and had thus created the necessary draught. The hole grew larger;
sparks rose as under a pair of bellows, and a dry, burning heat blew
through the opening. Small, almost imperceptible flames were dancing
over the polished surface; very soon the whole door would burst into a
blaze. His clothes smelt of singeing; his hands were curiously dry like
decaying wood, and he felt as if the hair at the back of his head was
curling. And down below they were shouting his name. But all that was
of no consequence; only his head was so heavy with the smoke and heat!
He felt that he was on the point of falling. Was the child still alive?
he wondered. But he dared not look to see; he had spread his jacket
over its face in order to protect it.
He clutched the window-frame, and directed his dying thoughts toward
Ellen and the children. Why was he not with them? What nonsense had it
been that induced him to leave them? He could no longer recollect; but
if it had not been all up with him now he would have hurried home to
them, to play with Young Lasse. But now he must die; in a moment he
would fall, suffocated—even before the flames could reach him.
There was some slight satisfaction in that—it was as though he had
played a trick on some one.
Suddenly something shot up before his dying gaze and called him back.
It was the end of a fire-escape, and a fireman rose out of the smoke
just in front of him, seized the child, and handed it down. Pelle stood
there wrestling with the idea that he must move from where he was; but
before it had passed through his mind a fireman had seized him by the
scruff of his neck and had run down the ladder with him.
The fresh air aroused him. He sprang up from the stretcher on which the
fireman had laid him and looked excitedly about him. At the same moment
the people began quite senselessly to shout his name and to clap their
hands, and Madam Johnsen pushed her way through the barrier and threw
herself upon him. “Pelle!” she cried, weeping; “oh, you are alive,
Pelle!”
“Yes, of course I’m alive—but that’s nothing to cry about.”
“No, but we thought you were caught in there. But how you look, you
poor boy!” She took him with her to a working-man’s home, and helped
him to set himself to rights. When he had once seen a looking-glass he
understood! He was unrecognizable, what with smoke and ashes, which had
burnt themselves into his skin and would not come off. And under the
grime there was a bad burn on one of his cheeks. He went to one of the
firemen and had a plaster applied.
“You really want a pair of eyebrows too,” said the fireman. “You’ve
been properly in the fire, haven’t you?”
“Why did the fire-engines take so long?” asked Pelle.
“Long? They were ten minutes getting here after the alarm was given. We
got the alarm at eight, and now it’s half-past.”
Pelle was silent; he was quite taken aback; he felt as though the whole
night must have gone by, so much had happened. Half an hour—and in that
time he had helped to snatch several people out of the claws of death
and had seen others fall into them. And he himself was singed by the
close passage of death! The knowledge was lurking somewhere at the back
of his mind, an accomplished but elusive fact; when he clenched his
fist cracks appeared in the skin, and his clothes smelt like burnt
horn. In the court the firemen were working unceasingly.
Some, from the tops of their ladders in the court, were pouring streams
of water upon the flames; others were forcing their way into the body
of the building and searching the rooms; and from time to time a
fireman made his appearance carrying a charred body. Then the inmates
of the “Ark” were called inside the barrier in order to identify the
body. They hurried weeping through the crowd, seeking one another; it
was impossible for the police to assemble them or to ascertain how many
had failed to escape.
Suddenly all eyes were directed toward the roof of the front portion of
the building, where the fire had not as yet entirely prevailed. There
stood the crazy Vinslev, playing on his flute; and when the cracking of
the fire was muffled for a moment one could hear his crazy music
“Listen! Listen! He is playing the march!” they cried. Yes, he was
playing the march, but it was interwoven with his own fantasies, so
that the well-known melody sounded quite insane on Vinslev’s flute.
The firemen erected a ladder and ran up to the roof in order to save
him, but he fled before them. When he could go no farther he leaped
into the sea of flame.
The market-place and the banks of the canal were thick with people;
shoulder to shoulder they stood there, gazing at the voluptuous
spectacle of the burning “Ark.” The grime and poverty and the reek of
centuries were going up in flames. How it rustled and blazed and
crackled! The crowd was in the best of spirits owing to the victory of
Labor; no one had been much inclined to sleep that night; and here was
a truly remarkable display of fireworks, a magnificent illumination in
honor of the victory of the poor! There were admiring cries of “Ah!”
people hissed in imitation of the sound of rockets and clapped their
hands when the flames leaped up or a roof crashed in.
Pelle moved about in the crowd, collecting the bewildered inmates of
the “Ark” by the gates of the prison, so that those who had relatives
could find them. They were weeping, and it was difficult to console
them. Alas, now the “Ark” was burnt, the beloved place of refuge for so
many ruined souls! “How can you take it to heart so?” said Pelle
consolingly. “You will be lodged overnight by the city, and afterward
you will move into proper dwelling-houses, where everything is clean
and new. And you needn’t cry over your possessions, I’ll soon get up a
collection, and you’ll have better things than you had before.”
Nevertheless they wept; like homeless wild beasts they whimpered and
rambled restlessly to and fro, seeking for they knew not what. Their
forest fastness, their glorious hiding-place, was burning! What was all
the rest of the city to them? It was not for them; it was as though
there was no place of refuge left for them in all the world! Every
moment a few of them slipped away, seeking again to enter the site of
the fire, like horses that seek to return to the burning stable. Pelle
might have spared his efforts at consolation; they were races apart, a
different species of humanity. In the dark, impenetrable entrails of
the “Ark” they had made for themselves a world of poverty and extremest
want; and they had been as fantastically gay in their careless
existence as though their world had been one of wealth and fortune. And
now it was all going up in flame!
The fire was unsparing; its purifying flames could not be withstood.
The flames tore off great sheets of the old wallpapers and flung them
out half-burned into the street. There were many layers pasted
together, many colors and patterns, one dimly showing through another,
making the most curious and fantastic pictures. And on the reverse side
of these sheets was a layer as of coagulated blood; this was the
charred remnant of the mysterious world of cupboards and
chimney-corners, the fauna of the fireplace, that had filled the
children’s sleep with dreams, and in the little mussel-shaped bodies
was contained the concentrated exhalation of the poor man’s night! And
now the “Ark” must have been hot right through to the ground, for the
rats were beginning to leave. They came in long, winding files from the
entry, and up out of the cellars of the old iron merchant and the old
clothes dealer, headed by the old, scabby males which used to visit the
dustbins in the middle of the day. The onlookers cheered and drove them
back again.
About ten o’clock the fire was visibly decreasing and the work of
clearance could begin. The crowd scattered, a little disappointed that
all was over so soon. The “Ark” was an extinct bonfire! There could not
have been a sackful of sound firewood in all that heap of lumber!
Pelle took Madam Johnsen and her little grand-daughter to his lodgings
with him. The old woman had been complaining all the time; she was
afraid of being given over to the public authorities. But when she
heard that she was to go with Pelle she was reassured.
On the High Bridge they met the first dust-carts on their way outward.
They were decked out with green garlands and little national flags.