Pelle the Conqueror — Complete

by Martin Andersen Nexø

“It’s really devilish queer,” he said, “for suppose there should be anything in it? And then the pastor is so old, he ought rather to be thinking of himself.” The master lay there and looked thoughtful; he was staring up at the ceiling. He would lie all day like that; he did not care about reading now. “Jens was really a good boy,” he would say suddenly. “I could never endure him, but he really had a good disposition. And do you believe that I shall ever be a man again?”

“Yes, when once the warm weather comes,” said Pelle.

From time to time the crazy Anker would come to ask after Master Andres. Then the master would knock on the wall. “Let him come in, then,” he said to Pelle. “I find myself so terribly wearisome.” Anker had quite given up the marriage with the king’s eldest daughter, and had now taken matters into his own hands. He was now working at a clock which would be the “new time” itself, and which would go in time with the happiness of the people. He brought the wheels and spring and the whole works with him, and explained them, while his gray eyes, fixed out-of-doors, wandered from one object to another. They were never on the thing he was exhibiting. He, like all the others, had a blind confidence in the young master, and explained his invention in detail. The clock would be so devised that it would show the time only when every one in the land had what he wanted. “Then one can always see and know if anybody is suffering need—there’ll be no excuse then! For the time goes and goes, and they get nothing to eat; and one day their hour comes, and they go hungry into the grave.” In his temples that everlasting thing was beating which seemed to Pelle like the knocking of a restless soul imprisoned there; and his eyes skipped from one object to another with their vague, indescribable expression.

The master allowed himself to be quite carried away by Anker’s talk as long as it lasted; but as soon as the watchmaker was on the other side of the door he shook it all off. “It’s only the twaddle of a madman,” he said, astonished at himself.

Then Anker repeated his visit, and had something else to show. It was a cuckoo; every ten-thousandth year it would appear to the hour and cry “Cuckoo!” The time would not be shown any longer—only the long, long course of time—which never comes to an end—eternity. The master looked at Anker bewildered. “Send him away, Pelle!” he whispered, wiping the sweat from his forehead: “he makes me quite giddy; he’ll turn me crazy with his nonsense!”

Pelle ought really to have spent Christmas at home, but the master would not let him leave him. “Who will chat with me all that time and look after everything?” he said. And Pelle himself was not so set on going; it was no particular pleasure nowadays to go home. Karna was ill, and Father Lasse had enough to do to keep her in good spirits. He himself was valiant enough, but it did not escape Pelle that as time went on he was sinking deeper into difficulties. He had not paid the latest instalment due, and he had not done well with the winter stone-breaking, which from year to year had helped him over the worst. He had not sufficient strength for all that fell to his lot. But he was plucky. “What does it matter if I’m a few hundred kroner in arrears when I have improved the property to the tune of several thousand?” he would say.

Pelle was obliged to admit the truth of that. “Raise a loan,” he advised.

Lasse did try to do so. Every time he was in the town he went to the lawyers and the savings-banks. But he could not raise a loan on the land, as on paper it belonged to the commune, until, in a given number of years, the whole of the sum to which Lasse had pledged himself should be paid up. On Shrove Tuesday he was again in town, and then he had lost his cheerful humor. “Now we know it, we had better give up at once,” he said despondently, “for now Ole Jensen is haunting the place—you know, he had the farm before me and hanged himself because he couldn’t fulfill his engagements. Karna saw him last night.”

“Nonsense!” said Pelle. “Don’t believe such a thing!” But he could not help believing in it just a little himself.

“You think so? But you see yourself that things are always getting more difficult for us—and just now, too, when we have improved the whole property so far, and ought to be enjoying the fruit of our labor. And Karna can’t get well again,” he added despondently.