Pelle the Conqueror — Complete

by Martin Andersen Nexø

“And what then? What do you gain by striking the policemen? They are only the tool, and there are plenty of them!”

Peter laughed bitterly. “No,” he said, “it’s not the policemen, nor the assistant, nor the chief of police! It’s no one! That’s so convenient, no one can help it! They’ve always stolen a march upon us in that way; the evil always dives and disappears when you want to catch it. ‘It wasn’t me!’ Now the workman’s demanding his right, the employer finds it to his advantage to disappear, and the impersonal joint stock company appears. Oh, this confounded sneaking out of a thing! Where is one to apply? There’s no one to take the blame! But something shall be done now! If I hit the hand, I hit what stands behind it too; you must hit what you can see. I’ve got a revolver to use against the police; to carry arms against one’s own people shall not be made a harmless means of livelihood unchallenged.”

XVII

One Saturday evening Pelle came home by train from a provincial town where he had been helping to start a coöperative undertaking.

It was late, but many shops were still open and sent their brilliant light out into the drizzling rain, through which the black stream of the streets flowed as fast as ever. It was the time when the working women came from the center of the city—pale typists, cashiers with the excitement of the cheap novel still in their eyes, seamstresses from the large businesses. Some hurried along looking straight before them without taking any notice of the solitary street-wanderers; they had something waiting for them—a little child perhaps. Others had nothing to hurry for, and looked weariedly about them as they walked, until perhaps they suddenly brightened up at sight of a young man in the throng.

Charwomen were on their way home with their basket on their arm. They had had a long day, and dragged their heavy feet along. The street was full of women workers—a changed world! The bad times had called the women out and left the men at home. On their way home they made their purchases for Sunday. In the butchers’ and provision-dealers’ they stood waiting like tired horses for their turn. Shivering children stood on tiptoe with their money clasped convulsively in one hand, and their chin supported on the edge of the counter, staring greedily at the eatables, while the light was reflected from their ravenous eyes.

Pelle walked quickly to reach the open country. He did not like these desolate streets on the outskirts of the city, where poverty rose like a sea-birds’ nesting-place on both sides of the narrow cleft, and the darkness sighed beneath so much. When he entered an endless brick channel such as these, where one- and two-roomed flats, in seven stories extended as far as he could see, he felt his courage forsaking him. It was like passing through a huge churchyard of disappointed hopes. All these thousands of families were like so many unhappy fates; they had set out brightly and hopefully, and now they stood here, fighting with the emptiness.

Pelle walked quickly out along the field road. It was pitch-dark and raining, but he knew every ditch and path by heart. Far up on the hill there shone a light which resembled a star that hung low in the sky. It must be the lamp in Brun’s bedroom. He wondered at the old man being up still, for he was soon tired now that he had given up the occupation of a long lifetime, and generally went to bed early. Perhaps he had forgotten to put out the lamp.

Pelle had turned his coat-collar up about his ears, and was in a comfortable frame of mind. He liked walking alone in the dark. Formerly its yawning emptiness had filled him with a panic of fear, but the prison had made his mind familiar with it. He used to look forward to these lonely night walks home across the fields. The noises of the city died away behind him, and he breathed the pure air that seemed to come straight to him out of space. All that a man cannot impart to others arose in him in these walks. In the daily struggle he often had a depressing feeling that the result depended upon pure chance. It was not easy to obtain a hearing through the thousand-voiced noise. A sensation was needed in order to attract attention, and he had presented himself with only quite an ordinary idea, and declared that without stopping a wheel it could remodel the world. No one took the trouble to oppose him, and even the manufacturers in his trade took his enterprise calmly and seemed to have given up the war against him. He had expected great opposition, and had looked forward to overcoming it, and this indifference sometimes made him doubt himself. His invincible idea would simply disappear in the motley confusion of life!

But out here in the country, where night lay upon the earth like great rest, his strength returned to him. All the indifference fell away, and he saw that like the piers of a bridge, his reality lay beneath the surface. Insignificant though he appeared, he rested upon an immense foundation. The solitude around him revealed it to him and made him feel his own power. While they overlooked his enterprise he would make it so strong that they would run their head against it when they awoke.