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

“Sit down!” she said kindly. “My husband’ll be here directly.”

“Why, I’m your husband!” he exclaimed, hardly able to keep back his tears; but she looked at him coldly and without recognition, and moved toward the door.

“I’m Pelle!” he said, holding out his hand beseechingly. “Don’t you know me?”

Ellen opened her lips to cry out, and at that moment the husband appeared threateningly in the doorway. From behind him Lasse Frederik and Sister peeped out in alarm, and Pelle saw with a certain amount of satisfaction that there were only the two. The terrible thing, however, was that the man was himself, the true Pelle with the good, fair moustache, the lock of hair on his forehead and the go-ahead expression. When he discovered this, it all collapsed and he sank down in despair.

Pelle awoke with a start, bathed in perspiration, and saw with thankfulness the fields and the bright atmosphere: he was at any rate still alive! He rose and walked on with heavy steps while the spring breeze cooled his brow.

His road led him to Nörrebro. The sun was setting behind him; it must be about the time for leaving off work, and yet no hooter sounded from the numerous factories, no stream of begrimed human beings poured out of the side streets. In the little tea-gardens in the Frederikssund Road sat workmen’s families with perambulator and provision-basket; they were dressed in their best and were enjoying the spring day. Was there after all something in his dream? If so, it would be splendid to come back! He asked people what was going on, and was told that it was the elections. “We’re going to take the city today!” they said, laughing triumphantly.

From the square he turned into the churchyard, and went down the somber avenue of poplars to Chapel Road. Opposite the end of the avenue he saw the two little windows in the second floor; and in his passionate longing he seemed to see Ellen standing there and beckoning. He ran now, and took the stairs three or four at a time.

Just as he was about to pull the bell-cord, he heard strange voices within, and paused as though paralyzed. The door looked cold and as if it had nothing to do with him; and there was no doorplate. He went slowly down the stairs and asked in the greengrocer’s cellar below whether a woman who sewed uppers did not live on the second floor to the left. She had been forsaken by her husband and had two children⁠—three, he corrected himself humbly; what had become of them?

The deputy-landlord was a new man and could give him no information; so he went up into the house again, and asked from door to door but without any result. Poor people do not generally live long in one place.

Pelle wandered about the streets at haphazard. He could think of no way of getting Ellen’s address, and gave it up disheartened; in his forlorn condition he had the impression that people avoided him, and it discouraged him. His soul was sick with longing for a kind word and a caress, and there was no one to give them. No eyes brightened at seeing him out again, and he hunted in vain in house after house for someone who would sympathize with him. A sudden feeling of hatred arose in him, an evil desire to hit out at everything and go recklessly on.

Twilight was coming on. Below the churchyard wall some newspaper-boys were playing “touch last” on their bicycles. They managed their machines like circus-riders, and resembled little gauchos, throwing them back and running upon the back wheel only, and bounding over obstacles. They had strapped their bags on their backs, and their blue cap-bands flapped about their ears like pennons.

Pelle seated himself upon a bench, and absently followed their reckless play, while his thoughts went back to his own careless boyhood. A boy of ten or twelve took the lead in breakneck tricks, shouting and commanding; he was the chief of the band, and maintained the leadership with a high hand. His face, with its snub nose, beamed with lively impudence, and his cap rested upon two exceptionally prominent ears.

The boys began to make of the stranger a target for their exuberant spirits. In dashing past him they pretended to lose control of their machine, so that it almost went over his foot; and at last the leader suddenly snatched off his cap. Pelle quietly picked it up, but when the boy came circling back with measured strokes as though pondering some fresh piece of mischief he sprang up and seized him by the collar.

“Now you shall have a thrashing, you scamp!” he said, lifting him off his bicycle. “But it’ll be just as well if you get it from your parents. What’s your father’s name?”

“He hasn’t got a father!” cried the other boys, flocking round them threateningly. “Let him go!”

The boy opened his lips to give vent to a torrent of bad language, but stopped suddenly and gazed in terror at Pelle, struggling like a mad thing to get away. Pelle let him go in surprise, and saw him mount his bicycle and disappear howling. His companions dashed after him like a flight of swallows. “Wait a little, Lasse Frederik!” they cried. Pelle stood a little while gazing after them, and then with bent head walked slowly into Nörrebro Street.

It was strange to be walking again in this street, which had played so great a part in his life. The traffic was heavier here than in other places, and the stone paving made it more so. A peculiar adamantine self-dependence was characteristic of this district where every step was weighted with the weight of labor.

The shops were the same, and he also recognized several of the shopkeepers. He tried to feel at home in the crowd, and looked into people’s faces, wondering whether anyone would recognize him. He both wished and feared