Pelle the Conqueror, Martin Andersen Nexø [best fantasy books to read .TXT] 📗

a door and bellowing at the top of his voice, his arms over his face, while a couple of smaller boys were thrashing him; it was Howling Peter, who was cook’s boy on a vessel. Everything flowed into the town!

But Father Lasse⁠—he was not here!

IV

There was something about the town that made it hard to go to bed and hard to get up. In the town there was no sunrise shining over the earth and waking everybody. The open face of morning could not be seen indoors. And the dying day poured no evening weariness into one’s limbs, driving them to repose; life seemed here to flow in the reverse direction, for here people grew lively at night!

About half-past six in the morning the master, who slept downstairs, would strike the ceiling with his stick. Pelle, whose business it was to reply, would mechanically sit up and strike the side of the bedstead with his clenched fist. Then, still sleeping, he would fall back again. After a while the process was repeated. But then the master grew impatient. “Devil take it! aren’t you going to get up today?” he would bellow. “Is this to end in my bringing you your coffee in bed?” Drunken with sleep, Pelle would tumble out of bed. “Get up, get up!” he would cry, shaking the others. Jens got nimbly on his feet; he always awoke with a cry of terror, guarding his head; but Emil and Peter, who were in the hobbledehoy stage, were terribly difficult to wake.

Pelle would hasten downstairs, and begin to set everything in order, filling the soaking-tub and laying a sand-heap by the window-bench for the master to spit into. He bothered no further about the others; he was in a morning temper himself. On the days when he had to settle right away into the cobbler’s hunch, without first running a few early errands or doing a few odd tasks, it took hours to thaw him.

He used to look round to see whether on the preceding evening he had made a chalk-mark in any conspicuous place; for then there must be something that he had to remember. Memory was not his strong point, hence this ingenious device. Then it was only a matter of not forgetting what the mark stood for; if he forgot, he was no better off than before.

When the workshop was tidy, he would hurry downstairs and run out for Madame, to fetch morning rolls “for themselves.” He himself was given a wheaten biscuit with his coffee, which he drank out in the kitchen, while the old woman went grumbling to and fro. She was dry as a mummy and moved about bent double, and when she was not using her hands she carried one forearm pressed against her midriff. She was discontented with everything, and was always talking of the grave. “My two eldest are overseas, in America and Australia; I shall never see them again. And here at home two menfolk go strutting about doing nothing and expecting to be waited on. Andres, poor fellow, isn’t strong, and Jeppe’s no use any longer; he can’t even keep himself warm in bed nowadays. But they know how to ask for things, that they do, and they let me go running all over the place without any help; I have to do everything myself. I shall truly thank God when at last I lie in my grave. What are you standing there for with your mouth and your eyes wide open? Get away with you!” Thereupon Pelle would finish his coffee⁠—it was sweetened with brown sugar⁠—out of doors, by the workshop window.

In the mornings, before the master appeared, there was no great eagerness to work; they were all sleepy still, looking forward to a long, dreary day. The journeyman did not encourage them to work; he had a difficulty in finding enough for himself. So they sat there woolgathering, striking a few blows with the hammer now and then for appearance’s sake, and one or another would fall asleep again over the table. They all started when three blows were struck on the wall as a signal for Pelle.

“What are you doing? It seems to me you are very idle in there!” the master would say, staring suspiciously at Pelle. But Pelle had remarked what work each was supposed to have in hand, and would run over it all. “What day’s this⁠—Thursday? Damnation take it! Tell that Jens he’s to put aside Manna’s uppers and begin on the pilot’s boots this moment⁠—they were promised for last Monday.” The master would struggle miserably to get his breath: “Ah, I’ve had a bad night, Pelle, a horrible night; I was so hot, with such a ringing in my ears. New blood is so devilishly unruly; it’s all the time boiling in my head like soda-water. But it’s a good thing I’m making it, God knows; I used to be so soon done up. Do you believe in Hell? Heaven, now, that’s sheer nonsense; what happiness can we expect elsewhere if we can’t be properly happy here? But do you believe in Hell? I dreamed I’d spat up the last bit of my lungs and that I went to Hell. ‘What the devil d’you want here, Andres?’ they asked me; ‘your heart is still whole!’ And they wouldn’t have me. But what does that signify? I can’t breathe with my heart, so I’m dying. And what becomes of me then? Will you tell me that?

“There’s something that bids a man enter again into his mother’s womb; now if only a man could do that, and come into the world again with two sound legs, you’d see me disappear oversea double-quick, whoop! I wouldn’t stay messing about here any longer.⁠ ⁠… Well, have you seen your navel yet today? Yes, you ragamuffin, you laugh; but I’m in earnest. It would pay you well if you always began the day by contemplating your navel.”

The master was half serious,