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

raise his head with a listening expression. But Ellen was familiar with the remoteness that came into his eyes at such times, and she knew how to dispel it with a kiss.

One day he met Morten in the street. Pelle was delighted, but there was a sceptical expression in Morten’s eyes. “Why don’t you ever come to see me now?” asked Pelle. “I often long to see you, but I can’t well get away from home.”

“I’ve found a sweetheart⁠—which is quite an occupation.”

“Are you engaged?” said Pelle vivaciously. “Tell me something about her!”

“Oh, there’s not much to tell,” said Morten, with a melancholy smile. “She is so ragged and decayed that no one else would have her⁠—that’s why I took her.”

“That is truly just like you!” Pelle laughed. “But seriously, who is the girl and where does she live?”

“Where does she live?” Morten stared at him for a moment uncomprehendingly. “Yes, after all you’re right. If you know where people live you know all about them. The police always ask that question.”

Pelle did not know whether Morten was fooling him or whether he was speaking in good faith; he could not understand him in the least today. His pale face bore signs of suffering. There was a curious glitter in his eyes. “One has to live somewhere in this winter cold.”

“Yes, you are right! And she lives on the Common, when the policeman doesn’t drive her away. He’s the landlord of the unfortunate, you know! There has been a census lately⁠—well, did you observe what happened? It was given out that everybody was to declare where he lodged on a particular night. But were the census-papers distributed among the homeless? No⁠—all those who live in sheds and outhouses, or on the Common, or in newly erected buildings, or in the disused manure-pits of the livery stables⁠—they have no home, and consequently were not counted in the census. That was cleverly managed, you know; they simply don’t exist! Otherwise there would be a very unpleasant item on the list⁠—the number of the homeless. Only one man in the city here knows what it is; he’s a street missionary, and I’ve sometimes been out with him at night; it’s horrifying, what we’ve seen! Everywhere, wherever there’s a chink, they crowd into it in order to find shelter; they lie under the iron staircases even, and freeze to death. We found one like that⁠—an old man⁠—and called up a policeman; he stuck his red nose right in the corpse’s mouth and said, ‘Dead of drink.’ And now that’s put down, where really it ought to say, ‘Starved to death!’ It mustn’t be said that anyone really suffers need in this country, you understand. No one freezes to death here who will only keep moving; no one starves unless it’s his own fault. It must necessarily be so in one of the most enlightened countries in the world; people have become too cultivated to allow Want to stalk free about the streets; it would spoil their enjoyment and disturb their night’s rest. And they must be kept at a distance too; to do away with them would be too troublesome; but the police are drilled to chase them back into their holes and corners. Go down to the whaling quay and see what they bring ashore in a single day at this time of the year⁠—it isn’t far from your place. Accidents, of course! The ground is so slippery, and people go too near the edge of the quay. The other night a woman brought a child into the world in an open doorway in North Bridge Street⁠—in ten degrees of frost. People who collected were indignant; it was unpardonable of her to go about in such a condition⁠—she ought to have stopped at home. It didn’t occur to them that she had no home. Well then, she could have gone to the police; they are obliged to take people in. On the other hand, as we were putting her in the cab, she began to cry, in terror, ‘Not the maternity hospital⁠—not the maternity hospital!’ She had already been there some time or other. She must have had some reason for preferring the doorstep⁠—just as the others preferred the canal to the workhouse.”

Morten continued, regardless of Pelle, as though he had to ease some inward torment. Pelle listened astounded to this outburst of lacerating anguish with a shamed feeling that he himself had a layer of fat round his heart. As Morten spoke poverty once more assumed a peculiar, horrible, living glimmer.

“Why do you tell me all this as if I belonged to the upper classes?” he said. “I know all this as well as you do.”

“And we haven’t even a bad year,” Morten continued, “the circumstances are as they always are at this time of year. Yesterday a poor man stole a loaf from the counter and ran off with it; now he’ll be branded all his life. ‘My God, that he should want to make himself a thief for so little!’ said the master’s wife⁠—it was a twopenny-ha’penny roll. It’s not easy to grasp⁠—branded for his whole life for a roll of bread!”

“He was starving,” said Pelle stupidly.

“Starving? Yes, of course he was starving! But to me it’s insanity, I tell you⁠—I can’t take it in; and everyone else thinks it’s so easy to understand. Why do I tell you this, you ask? You know it as well as I do. No, but you don’t know it properly, or you’d have to rack your brains till you were crazy over the frightful insanity of the fact that these two words⁠—bread and crime⁠—can belong together! Isn’t it insane, that the two ends should bend together and close in a ring about a human life? That a man should steal bread of all things⁠—bread, do you understand? Bread ought not to be stolen. What does any man want with thieving who eats enough? In the mornings, long before six o’clock, the poor people