Martin Andersen Nexø

“ Warmth lies like fleeting summer upon her bare shoulders, although she has come straight out of the terrible winter, and she steps with boldly moving limbs, like a daughter of joy. How proudly she carries her bosom, as though she were the bride of fortune—and how she burns! Who is she? Can no one say?
Oh, that is Widow Hanne, a respectable girl, who for seven long years faithfully trod her way to and from the factory, in order to keep her old mother and her child!
But how comes it then that she has the discreet Pelle on her arm? ”

“ Pelle was going through a peculiar change at this time. He had seen enough need and poverty in his life; and the capital was simply a battlefield on which army upon army had rushed forward and had miserably been defeated. Round about him lay the fallen. The town was built over them as over a cemetery; one had to tread upon them in order to win forward and harden one’s heart. Such was life in these days; one shut one’s eyes—like the sheep when they see their comrades about to be slaughtered—and waited until one’s own turn came. ”

“ Ach, what a plump little devil! He’s got something to begin life on, he has! He’ll surely be an important citizen, Pelle! Just look how plump and round he is! Perhaps a merchant or a manufacturer or something of that sort! To see him in his power and greatness—but that won’t be granted to Father Lasse.” He sighed. “Yes, yes, here he is, and how he notices one already! Perhaps the rascal’s wondering, who is this wrinkled old man standing there and coming to see me in his old clothes? Yes, it’s Father Lasse, so look at him well, he’s won his magnificence by fair means!” ”

“ Many of them made their living where they could; but however down in the world they were, let the slightest ray of sunlight flicker down to them, and all was forgotten. Of the labor movement and other new things they gossiped as frivolously as so many chattering starlings, who had snapped up the news on the wind.
But Pelle went so confidently out into the world, and set his shoulders against it, and then came back home to them. He had no fear; he could look Life straight in the face, he grappled boldly with the future, before which they shudderingly closed their eyes. ”

“ Pelle marches in the front rank beside the standard-bearer. He sees and hears nothing, but his luminous gaze sweeps over the heads of the crowd. His skin is still blackened by the smoke of the fire; it is peeling off his hands; his hair and moustache seem to have been cropped very strangely; and the skin is drawn round the burn on his cheek. He is conscious of one thing only: the rhythmic tread of fifty thousand men! As a child he has known it in dreams, heard it like a surging out of doors when he laid his head upon his pillow. ”

“ Pelle sat there heavily pondering; Morten’s words always forced his thoughts to follow paths they had never before known. But now he understood him; and a dark shadow passed over his face, which left its traces behind it. “This business has cost me my home,” he said quietly. “Ellen cares nothing for me now, and my children are being neglected, and are drifting away from me. I have given up splendid prospects for the future; I go hungry every day, and I have to see my old father in want and wretchedness! I believe no one can feel as homeless and lonely and forsaken as I do! ”

“ The Pipman stared at him uncomprehending, his drowsy features working in the effort to disinter some memory or other. Suddenly he whistled. “Trousers, did you say, young man? What, what? Did you really say trousers? And you ask me where your trousers have got to? Then you might have said so at once! Because, d’you see, your bags ... I’ve ... yes ... why, I’ve pawned them!”
“You’ve pawned my best trousers?” cried Pelle, so startled that he loosed his hold.
“Yes, by God, that’s what I did! You can look for yourself—there’s no need to get so hot about it! You can’t eat me, you know. ”

“ Standing on the level ground, quite apart from the crowd, stood a tall, handsome man, astonishingly like the owner of Stone Farm in his best days; the sunlight was coming and going over his brown skin and his soft beard. Now that he turned his face toward Pelle his big, open features reminded him of the sea.
Hanne started, as though awakening from a deep sleep, and noticed Pelle.
“He is a sailor!” she said, in a curious, remote voice, although Pelle had not questioned her. God knows, thought Pelle, vexedly, how is it she knows him; and he drew his arm from hers. ”

“ Pelle went. His mind was oppressed; all that day fresh responsibilities had heaped themselves upon him; a burden heavy for one man to bear. Was he to accept the responsibility for all that the Movement destroyed as it progressed, simply because he had placed all his energies and his whole fortune at its disposal? And now Father Lasse was going about as a scavenger. He blushed for shame—yet how could he have prevented it? Was he to be made responsible for the situation? And now they were spitting upon Ellen—that was the thanks he got! ”

“ Her eyes are like sparks in the darkness; her silent demeanor excites them; they swing her round more and more wildly. Those who cannot dance with her must slake the fire within them with drink. The terrible winter is put to flight, and it is warm as in Hell itself. The blood is seething in their brains; it injects the whites of their eyes, and expresses itself in wanton frolic, in a need to dance till they drop, or to fight.
“Hanne is wild to-night—she has got her second youth,” says Elvira and the other girls maliciously.
Hold your tongues. No one shall criticize Hanne’s behavior! ”

“ Pelle must always be the lucky man!
“Pelle, why don’t you dance with me oftener? Why do you sit in the corner there always and sulk? Are you angry with me as you used to be, and why are you so hard and cold? And your clothes are quite stiff!”
“I come from outside all this—from the terrible winter, Hanne, where the children are crying for bread, and the women dying of starvation, and the men go about with idle hands and look on the ground because they are ashamed of their unemployment!”
“But why? It is still summer. Only look how cheerful every one is! Take me, then, Pelle!” ”

“ When he went into a tavern the others would stand away from him, and the landlord had to ask him to go. But he had more sense of honor than you! ‘I’m infected with the plague!’ he said, and one morning he hanged himself. Ah, if I could pray the good God to smite you!” She was tearless; her voice was dry and hoarse.
“You have no need to do that,” replied Pelle bitterly. “He has smitten me! But I never wished your husband any harm; both times, when I met him, I tried to help him. We have to suffer for the benefit of all—my own happiness is shattered into fragments.” ”

“ This accident was branded on Pelle’s soul, and it aroused his slumbering resentment. Chance had given him the three orphans in the place of brothers and sisters, and he felt Peter’s fate as keenly as if it had been his own. It was a scandal that young children should be forced to earn their living by work that endangered their lives, in order to keep the detested Poor Law guardians at bay. What sort of a social order was this? He felt a suffocating desire to strike out, to attack it. ”

“ Happiness—pooh! He wanted to be a master, at all costs—for what can a journeyman earn! And more than once we had scraped a little together, and thought things would be easier now; but misfortune always fell on us and took it all away. It’s always hovering like a great bird over the poor man’s home; and you must have a long stick if you want to drive it away! It was always the same story whenever we managed to get on a little. A whole winter he was ill. We only kept alive by pawning all we’d got, stick by stick. And when the last thing had gone to the devil we borrowed a bit on the pawn-ticket. ”

“ God Himself has given you talent; even as a child you used to practise it; no one will gain by your remaining poor. Choose your own path!”
Yes, Pelle had chosen readily enough! He knew very well that he must accept this good fortune, whatever the world might say to it. Only it hurt him to leave the others behind! He was bound to poverty by such intimate ties; he felt the solidarity of the poor so keenly that it hurt him to tear himself away. Common cares had made him a man, and the struggle had given him a peculiar and effective strength. ”

“ The factory was in full swing now; they were working alternate shifts, day and night, with the help of interned strike-breakers, the “locked- in” workers, as the popular wit called them.
The iron-masters had followed up their victory and had managed to set yet another industry in motion again. If this sort of thing went much further the entire iron industry would one day be operated without the locked-out workers, who could stand outside and look on. But now a blow was about to be struck! Pelle’s heart was full of warmth and joy as he left home, and he felt equal for anything. ”

“ Pelle sprang up out of his half-slumber; the horrible catastrophe of his own home was blindingly clear now! “So it’s come to that!” he cried. “Now capital has laid its fingers on our wives—now they are to turn whore! We must fight on, fight, fight! We must strike one last blow—and it must be a heavy one!”
“But how?” they asked.
Pelle was white with enforced calm. His mind had never been so radiantly clear. Now Ellen should be revenged on those who took everything, even the poor man’s one ewe lamb! ”

“ Beck was a man of the old school; his clientele consisted principally of night watchmen, pilots, and old seamen, who lived out in Kristianshavn. Although he was born and had grown up in Copenhagen, he was like a country shoemaker to look at, going about in canvas slippers which his daughter made for him, and in the mornings he smoked his long pipe at the house-door. He had old-fashioned views concerning handwork, and was delighted with Pelle, who could strain any piece of greased leather and was not afraid to strap a pair of old dubbin’d boots with it. ”

“ It is intoxicating to walk in the ranks, to be permitted to bear the Union banners; even to look on fills one with strength and joy. Mothers and children accompany the men, although they have for the most part to walk in the gutters. It is great sport to fall out and watch the whole mighty procession go by, and then, by taking a short cut, again to station one’s self at the head. Stand at a street-corner, and it will take hours for the whole to pass you. Trapp, trapp! Trapp, trapp! It gets into one’s blood, and remains there, like an eternal rhythm. ”

“ We want to revolutionize life—to make it sweet for the poor man! And for all time! You, who have so often staked your life and welfare for a florin—you now hold the whole future in your hands! You must endure, calmly and prudently! And you will never be forgotten, so long as there are workers on the earth! This winter will be the last through which we shall have to endure—for yonder lies the land toward which we have been wandering! Comrades! ”

“ A peculiar sense of energy was exhaled by this dense crowd of men, this thinking and feeling crowd. It produced a singular feeling of strength. Pelle was no longer the poor journeyman shoemaker, who found it difficult enough to make his way. He became one, as he stood there, with that vast being; he felt its strength swelling within him; the little finger shares in the strength of the whole body. A blind certainty of irresistibility went out from this mighty gathering, a spur to ride the storm with. ”

“ The shutters were up in all the basement windows, excepting that of the bread-woman. Before the door of her shop stood a crowd of grimy little children, smearing themselves with dainties; every moment one of them slipped down into the cellar to spend an öre. One little girl, dressed in her Sunday best, with a tightly braided head, was balancing herself on the edge of the curbstone with a big jug of cream in her hand; and in a doorway opposite stood a few young fellows meditating some mischief or other.
“Shall we go anywhere to-day?” asked Ellen, when Pelle and young Lasse got home. ”