Pelle the Conqueror — Complete

by Martin Andersen Nexø

He and Morten had just been to Madam Johnsen’s funeral. She had not succeeded in seeing Jutland. Out of a whole life of toil there had never been ten krones (10s.) over for a ticket home; and the trains ran day after day with hundreds of empty places. With chilling punctuality they whirled away from station to station. Heaven knows how many thousand empty seats the trains had run with to Jutland during the years in which the old woman longed to see her home! And if she had trudged to the railway-station and got into the train, remorseless hands would have removed her at the first station. What had she to do with Jutland? She longed to go there, it was true, but she had no money!

Was it malice or heartless indifference? A more fiendish sport can at any rate hardly be imagined than this running with empty places. It was they that made the journey so terribly vivid—as though the devil himself were harnessed to the train and, panting with wantonness, dragging it along through the country to places that people were longing to see. It must be dreadful to be the guard and call the names of the stations in to those seats for the people left behind!

And Sister walked about the floor so pale and thin! There was no strength in her fair hair, and when she was excited, her breath whistled in her windpipe with that painful sound that was practically inseparable from the children of the poor neighborhoods. It was always the vitiated air of the back-yards that had something to say now—depressing, like almost everything his understanding mastered. All she wanted was sunshine, and all the summer it had been poured down in open-handed generosity, only it went over the heads of poor people like everything else. It had been a splendid year for strawberries, but the large gardeners had decided to let half of them rot on their stalks in order to keep up the prices and save the money spent on picking them. And here were the children hungering for fruit, and ailing for want of it! Why? No, there was no possible answer to be given to that question.

And again—everywhere the same! Whenever he thought of some social institution or other, the same melancholy spectacle presented itself—an enormous rolling stock, only meant for a few, and to a great extent running empty; and from the empty places accusing eyes gazed out, sick and sad with hunger and want and disappointed hope. If one had once seen them, it was impossible to close one’s eyes to them again.

Sometimes his imagination took another direction, and he found himself planning, for instance, kingdoms in which trains were used according to the need for them, and not according to the purse, where the food was eaten by those who were hungry, and the only poor people were those who grudged others things.

But he pulled himself up there; it was too idiotic! A voice from the unseen had called him and his out into the day, and then nothing had happened! It had only been to fool them.

Brun often came down to see him. The old librarian missed his young friend.

“Why do you never come in to us now?” he asked.

“What should I do there?” answered Pelle shortly. “The poor man has no use for knowledge; he’s everlastingly damned.”

He had broken with all that and did not care either about the librarian’s visits. It was best for every one to look after himself; the great were no company for such as he. He made no attempt to conceal his ill humor, but Brun took no notice. The latter had moved out into Frederiksberg Avenue in October, and dropped in almost every afternoon on his way home from the library. The children took care to be down there at that time, for he always brought something for them.