Martin Andersen Nexø

“ 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. ”

“ The old philosopher came almost daily. Pelle had become a part of his life, and he watched his young friend’s condition with anxiety. Was it the prison life—or was it perhaps the books—that had transformed this young man, who had once gone ahead with tempestuous recklessness, into a hesitating doubter who could not come to a decision? Personality was of doubtful value when it grew at the expense of energy. It had been the old man’s hope that it would have developed greater energy through being replanted in fresh, untouched soil, and he tried to rouse Pelle out of his lethargy. ”

“ Pelle’s face had become ashen gray; all the blood had left it, and the bones stood out sharply as in a dead face. He gulped two or three times to obtain control over his voice.
“I wonder if you understand what it means to get a thrashing!” he said hoarsely. “Fire’s nothing; I’d rather be burnt alive than have it again. The fellow doesn’t beat; he’s not the least angry; nobody’s angry with you; they’re all so seriously grieved on your account. He places the strokes carefully down over your back as if he were weighing out food, almost as if he were fondling you. ”

“ He now understood Uncle Kalle’s smile on all occasions; he had armed himself with it in order that life should not draw too deep furrows in his gentle nature. The poor man had been obliged to dull himself; he would simply bleed to death if he gave himself up to stern reality. The dullness had been like a hard shell that protected the poor; and now they came with their heart quite safe in spite of everything. They could very well lead when times were good.
Pelle had always a vague feeling of being chosen. ”

“ How many thousand children are there not standing behind her and Johanna! They call this the children’s century, and the children’s blood is crying out from the earth! They’re happy when they can steal away. Fancy if Johanna had lived on with her burden! The shadows of childhood stretch over the whole of life.”
“Yes, and so does the sunshine of childhood!” exclaimed Pelle. “That’s why we mustn’t fail the poor little ones. We shall need a race with warm hearts.”
“That’s just what I’ve thought,” said Morten sadly. ”

“ Isn’t it a wonder that Nature obstinately lets the poor men’s children be born just as naked as the king’s, in spite of all that we’ve gone through of want and hardship? If you exchange the prince’s and the beggar’s new-born babies, no one can say which is which. It’s as if Providence was never tired of holding our stamp of nobility up before us.”
“Do you really think then that the world can be transformed?” said Ellen, looking affectionately at him. It seemed so wonderful that this Pelle, whom she could take in her arms, occupied himself with such great matters. ”

“ It was very early and the working-men had not yet turned out; at the morning coffee-rooms the shutters were just being taken down; warmly- clad tram-men were tramping through the streets in their wooden-soled boots; slipshod, tired women ran stumbling along to their early jobs, shivering with cold and weary of life, weary before they had begun their day. Here and there a belated woman toiled along the street carrying a clothes-basket, a mother taking her baby to the crêche before she went to her work.
Suddenly the feeling of rebellion came over Pelle, hot, almost suffocating him. ”

“ It makes me want to say something to you, Pelle, for my day was like this before I knew you—endlessly long and gray! When you are the last member of a dying family, you have to bear the gray existence of the others too.
“I have often thought how wonderful the hidden force of life is. Intercourse with you has been like a lever to me, although I knew well that I should not accomplish anything more, and had no one to come after me. I feel, nevertheless, through you, in alliance with the future. ”

“ Capital always preached contentment to the poor; he would go the other way, and conquer production by a great flanking movement.
He was not afraid now of using the librarian’s money. All doubt had been chased away. He was perfectly clear and saw in broad outlines a world- wide, peaceful revolution which was to subvert all existing values. Pelle knew that poverty is not confined to any country. He had once before brought forward an invincible idea. His system of profit-sharing must be the starting-point for a world-fight between Labor and Capital! ”

“ It was nothing new to Sister; she talked every day to the fowls and rabbits, and knew how wise they were.
“I wonder if flowers can think too,” said Lasse Frederik. He was busy drawing a flower from memory, and it would look like a face: hence the remark.
Pelle thought they could.
“No, no, Pelle!” said Ellen. “You’re going too far now! It’s only us people who can think.”
“They can feel at any rate, and that’s thinking in a way, I suppose, only with the heart. They notice at once if you’re fond of them; if you aren’t they don’t thrive.” ”

“ Pelle was glad he lived in the country, and it was a dream of his to move the workmen out there again some day. He disliked the town more and more, and never became quite familiar with it. It was always just as strange to go about in this humming hive, where each seemed to buzz on his own account, and yet all were subject to one great will—that of hunger. The town exerted a dull power over men’s minds, it drew the poor to it with lies about happiness, and when it once had them, held them fiendishly fast. The poisonous air was like opium; the most miserable beings dream they are happy in it ”

“ He was in a solemn mood, and felt as though, after an absence of many years, he had once more entered the land of his childhood. There was a familiar feeling in the soft pressure of the earth beneath his feet; it was like a caress that made him strong and gave him new life. Here, with his feet on the soil, he felt himself invincible.
“You’re so silent!” said Ellen, taking his arm so as to walk beside him upon the dike. ”

“ He had been sitting moping in the dark mountain like Prince Fortune, while Eternity sang to him of the great wonder. The spirits of evil had carried him away into the mountains; that was all. And now they had set him free again, believing that he had become a troll like all his predecessors. But Pelle was not bewitched. He had already consumed many things in his growth, and this was added to the rest. What did a little confinement signify as compared with the slow drip, drip, of centuries? Had he not been born with a caul, upon which neither steel nor poison made any impression? ”

“ Haven’t the thousands who have suffered and died in silence a still greater claim to be followed? They have gone down peacefully for the sake of the development, and have the strongest right to demand our belief in a peaceable development. It is just we that come from the lowest stratum who must preserve the historic development; never has any movement had so long and sad a previous history as ours! Suffering and want have taught us to accept the leadership, when the good has justice done to it; and you want to throw the whole thing overboard by an act of violence. ”

“ Crowds of men and women were on their way out, and met other crowds whose homes were in the opposite quarter. On the outskirts of the town the factory whistles were crowing like a choir of giant cocks, a single one beginning, the others all joining in. Sooty workmen poured out of the gates, with beer-bottles sticking out of coat-pockets and dinner handkerchiefs dangling from a finger. Women who had been at work or out making purchases, stood with their baskets on their arms, waiting for their husbands at the corner of the street. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the pavement outside one of the large cafés stood an anaemic woman with a child upon her arm, offering for sale some miserable stalks which were supposed to represent flowers. Peter Dreyer pointed silently from her to the people in the café. His face was distorted.
“I’ve no objection to people enjoying life,” said Pelle; “on the contrary, I’m glad to see that there are some who are happy. I hate the system, but not the people, you see, unless it were those who grudge us all anything, and are only really happy in the thought that others are in want.” ”

“ Thus voices were raised. At first it was only whiners about whom nobody needed to trouble—frequenters of public-houses, who sat and grumbled in their cups; but gradually it became talk that passed from mouth to mouth; the specter of unemployment haunted every home and made men think over matters once more on their own account; no one could know when his turn would come to sweep the pavement.
Pelle had no difficulty in catching the tone of all this; it was his own settlement with the advance on coming out of prison that was now about to become every one’s. But now he was another man! ”

“ The ever-increasing unemployment began to spread panic in men’s minds. It was no longer only the young, hot-headed men who lost patience. Out of the great compact mass of organization, in which it had hitherto been impossible to distinguish the individual beings, simple-minded men suddenly emerged and made themselves ridiculous by bearing the truth of the age upon their lips. Poor people, who understood nothing of the laws of life, nevertheless awakened, disappointed, out of the drowsiness into which the rhythm had lulled them, and stirred impatiently. ”

“ Why does the very sewer give birth to bright beings?”
“Yes, the poor people warm one another, but they’re blue with cold all the same! And shouldn’t one rather wish that they had no heart to be burdened with in a community that’s frozen to the very bottom? I envy those who can look at misery from a historical point of view and comfort themselves with the future. I think myself that the good will some day conquer, but it’s nevertheless fearfully unreasonable that millions shall first go joyless to the grave in the battle to overcome a folly. ”

“ He had spent his time among the stacks of books during the greater part of his life; the dust of the books had attacked his chest, and every minute his dry cough sounded through the room.
Librarian Brun was a bachelor and was said to be very rich. He was not particularly neat or careful in his dress, but there was something unspoiled about his person that made one think he could never have been subjected to the world’s rough handling. In his writings he was a fanatical worshipper of the ego, and held up the law of conscience as the only one to which men should be subject. ”

“ It had been the same terrifying Doomsday that he had dreaded in the days of his childhood, when the lightning zig-zagged among the rocks at home; and yet it was nothing but the noise of the first farm-carts as they passed from the highroad onto the stone paving of the town. It was the solitude brooding in his imagination, making it start in fear at every sound. ”

“ He lived on the South Boulevard, up in an attic as usual, with a view over Kalvebod Strand and Amager.
“Why, is that you?” he said, taking Pelle’s hands in his and gazing into his stern, furrowed face until the tears filled his eyes. “I say, how you have changed!” he whispered half tearfully, and led him into his room.
“I suppose I have,” Pelle answered gloomily. “I’ve had good reason to, anyhow. And how have you been? Are you married?”
“No, I’m as solitary as ever. The one I want still doesn’t care about me, and the others I don’t want. ”

“ Free! No gaoler was coming like a bad spirit to shatter the night’s happy dream of freedom. He was free! His pallet had not to be hooked up to the wall at a certain hour; he could lie as long as he wanted to, the whole day, if he liked. But now he had more important things to do; life was waiting. He hastily put on his clothes.
In the street the lamplighter was lighting every other lamp. An endless procession of carts was pouring in from the country to supply the town. Pelle threw open the window and looked out over the wakening city while he dressed himself. ”

“ His inability to be as naturally kind to the child as she was tormented him; and when, on Saturday evening, she had bathed Boy Comfort and then sat with him on her lap, putting on his clean clothes, Pelle was overwhelmed with self-accusation. He had thoughtlessly trodden little Marie of the “Ark” underfoot, and she whom he had cast off when she most needed him, in return passed her beneficent hand over his wrong-doing. As though she were aware of his gloomy thoughts, she went to him and placed the warm, naked child in his arms, saying with a gentle smile: “Isn’t he a darling?” ”

“ Although I despise our laws, which are only a mask for brute force, I’m very careful to be on the right side; and if they use violence against me again, I’ll not submit to it.”
“The conditions are so unequal,” said Pelle, looking seriously at him.
“No one need put up with more than he himself likes. But there’s something wanting in us here at home—our own extreme consequence, self- respect; and so they treat us as ignominiously as they please.” ”

“ One day Brun brought him a book. “This book,” he said with a peculiar smile, “has satisfied many who were seeking for the truth. Let’s see whether it can satisfy you too!” It was Darwin’s “Origin of Species.”
Pelle read as in a mist. The point lay here—the whole thing powerfully put into one sentence! His brain was in a ferment, he could not lay the book down, but went on reading all night, bewitched and horrified at this merciless view. When Ellen in surprise came down with his morning coffee, he had finished the book. ”