Pelle the Conqueror — Complete

by Martin Andersen Nexø

“And we haven’t even a bad year,” Morten continued, “the circumstances are as they always are at this time of year. Yesterday a poor man stole a loaf from the counter and ran off with it; now he’ll be branded all his life. ‘My God, that he should want to make himself a thief for so little!’ said the master’s wife—it was a twopenny-ha’penny roll. It’s not easy to grasp—branded for his whole life for a roll of bread!”

“He was starving,” said Pelle stupidly.

“Starving? Yes, of course he was starving! But to me it’s insanity, I tell you—I can’t take it in; and every one else thinks it’s so easy to understand. Why do I tell you this, you ask? You know it as well as I do. No, but you don’t know it properly, or you’d have to rack your brains till you were crazy over the frightful insanity of the fact that these two words—bread and crime—can belong together! Isn’t it insane, that the two ends should bend together and close in a ring about a human life? That a man should steal bread of all things—bread, do you understand? Bread ought not to be stolen. What does any man want with thieving who eats enough? In the mornings, long before six o’clock, the poor people gather outside our shop, and stand there in rows, in order to be the first to get the stale bread that is sold at half-price. The police make them stand in a row, just as they do outside the box-office at the theater, and some come as early as four, and stand two hours in the cold, in order to be sure of their place. But besides those who buy there is always a crowd of people still poorer; they have no money to buy with, but they stand there and stare as though it interested them greatly to see the others getting their bread cheap. They stand there waiting for a miracle in the shape of a slice of bread. One can see that in the way their eyes follow every movement, with the same desperate hope that you see in the eyes of the dogs when they stand round the butcher’s cart and implore Heaven that the butcher may drop a bit of meat. They don’t understand that no one will pity them. Not we human beings—you should see their surprise when we give them anything!—but chance, some accident. Good God, bread is so cheap, the cheapest of all the important things in this world—and yet they can’t for once have enough of it! This morning I slipped a loaf into an old woman’s hand— she kissed it and wept for joy! Do you feel that that’s endurable?” He stared at Pelle with madness lurking in his gaze.

“You do me an injustice if you think I don’t feel it too,” said Pelle quietly. “But where is there a quick way out of this evil? We must be patient and organize ourselves and trust to time. To seize on our rights as they’ve done elsewhere won’t do for us.”

“No, that’s just it! They know it won’t do for us—that’s why justice never goes forward. The people get only what’s due to them if the leaders know that if the worst comes to the worst they can provide for themselves.”

“I don’t believe that any good would come of a revolution,” said Pelle emphatically. He felt the old longing to fight within him.

“You can’t understand about that unless you’ve felt it in yourself,” replied Morten passionately. “Revolution is the voice of God, which administers right and justice, and it cannot be disputed. If the poor were to rise to see that justice was done it would be God’s judgment, and it would not be overthrown. The age has surely the right to redeem itself when it has fallen into arrears in respect of matters so important; but it could do so only by a leap forward. But the people don’t rise, they are like a damp powder! You must surely some time have been in the cellar of the old iron merchant under the ‘Ark,’ and have seen his store of rags and bones and old iron rubbish? They are mere rakings of the refuse-heap, things that human society once needed and then rejected. He collects them again, and now the poor can buy them. And he buys the soldiers’ bread too, when they want to go on the spree, and throws it on his muck-heap; he calls it fodder for horses, but the poor buy it of him and eat it. The refuse-heap is the poor man’s larder —that is, when the pigs have taken what they want. The Amager farmers fatten their swine there, and the sanitary commission talks about forbidding it; but no one has compassion on the Copenhagen poor.”

Pelle shuddered. There was something demoniacal in Morten’s hideous knowledge—he knew more of the “Ark” than Pelle himself. “Have you, too, been down in that loathsome rubbish-store?” he asked, “or how do you know all this?”

“No, I’ve not been there—but I can’t help knowing it—that’s my curse! Ask me even whether they make soup out of the rotten bones they get there. And not even the poison of the refuse-heap will inflame them; they lap it up and long for more! I can’t bear it if nothing is going to happen! Now you’ve pulled yourself out of the mire—and it’s the same with everybody who has accomplished anything—one after another—either because they are contented or because they are absorbed in their own pitiful affairs. Those who are of any use slink away, and only the needy are left.”

“I have never left you in the lurch,” said Pelle warmly. “You must realize that I haven’t.”