Pelle the Conqueror — Complete

by Martin Andersen Nexø

“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.