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

sorry for her; she was going to have another child, and she looked so forsaken as she moved about the home. But it was impossible for him to stay at home.

“When do you think you’ll be back?”

“That I don’t know, Ellen. It is very possible it will take the whole day.”

Then she was silent and set out his food.

XXIII

That year was, if possible, worse than the preceding. As early as September the unemployed stood in long ranks beside the canals or in the marketplace, their feet in the wet. The bones of their wrists were blue and prominent and foretold a hard winter, of which the corns of the old people had long ago given warning; and sparks of fire were flying up from under poor folks’ kettles. “Now the hard winter is coming and bringing poverty with it,” said the people. “And then we shall have a pretty time!”

In October the frost appeared and began to put an end to all work that had not already been stopped by the hard times.

In the city the poor were living from hand to mouth; if a man had a bad day it was visible on his plate the next morning. Famine lay curled up beneath the table in ten thousand households; like a bear in its winter sleep it had lain there all summer, shockingly wasted and groaning in its evil dreams; but they were used to its society and took no notice of it so long as it did not lay its heavy paw upon the table. One day’s sickness, one day’s loss of work⁠—and there it was!

“Ach, how good it would be if we only had a brine-tub that we could go to!” said those who could still remember their life in the country. “But the good God has taken the brine-tub and given us the pawnbroker instead!” and then they began to pledge their possessions.

It was sad to see how the people kept together; the city was scattered to the winds in summer, but now it grew compacter; the homeless came in from the Common, and the great landowners returned to inhabit their winter palaces. Madam Rasmussen, in her attic, suddenly appeared with a husband; drunken Valde had returned⁠—the cold, so to speak, had driven him into her arms! At the first signs of spring he would be off again, into the arms of his summer mistress, Madam Grassmower. But as long as he was here, here he was! He stood lounging in the doorway downstairs, with feathers sticking in the shaggy hair of his neck and bits of bedstraw adhering to his flat back. His big boots were always beautifully polished; Madam Rasmussen did that for him before she went to work in the morning; after which she made two of herself, so that her big strong handsome protector should have plenty of time to stand and scratch himself.

Week by week the cold locked up all things more closely; it locked up the earth, so that the husbandmen could not get at it; and it closed the modest credit account of the poor. Already it had closed all the harbors round about. Foreign trade shrunk away to nothing; the stevedores and waterside workers might as well stop at home. It tightened the heartstrings⁠—and the strings of the big purse that kept everything going. The established trades began to work shorter hours, and the less stable trades entirely ceased. Initiative drew in its horns; people began nothing new, and did no work for the warehouses; fear had entered into them. All who had put out their feelers drew them back; they were frostbitten, so to speak. The earth had withdrawn its sap into itself and had laid a crust of ice over all; humanity did the same. The poor withdrew their scanty blood into their hearts, in order to preserve the germ of life. Their limbs were cold and bloodless, their skin gray. They withdrew into themselves, and into the darkest corners, packed closely together. They spent nothing. And many of those who had enough grudged themselves even food; the cold ate their needs away, and set anxiety in their place. Consumption was at a standstill.

One could not go by the thermometer, for according to that the frost had been much harder earlier in the year. “What, is it no worse!” said the people, taken aback. But they felt just as cold and wretched as ever. What did the thermometer know of a hard winter? Winter is the companion of hard times, and takes the same way whether it freezes or thaws⁠—and on this occasion it froze!

In the poor quarters of the city the streets were as though depopulated. A fall of snow would entice the dwellers therein out of their hiding-places; it made the air milder, and made it possible, too, to earn a few kroner for sweeping away the snow. Then they disappeared again, falling into a kind of numb trance and supporting their life on incredibly little⁠—on nothing at all. Only in the mornings were the streets peopled⁠—when the men went out to seek work. But everywhere where there was work for one man hundreds applied and begged for it. The dawn saw the defeated ones slinking home; they slept the time away, or sat all day with their elbows on the table, never uttering a word. The cold, that locked up all else, had an opposite effect upon the heart; there was much compassion abroad. Many whose wits had been benumbed by the cold, so that they did not attempt to carry on their avocations, had suffered no damage at heart, but expended their means in beneficence. Kindly people called the poor together, and took pains to find them out, for they were not easy to find.

But the Almighty has created beings that live upon the earth and creatures that live under the earth; creatures of the air and creatures of the water; even in the fire live creatures that