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

round behind a bar, always round. His one diversion was to keep count of the times he drove round, but that was a fatiguing employment and made you even duller than the everlasting going round, and you could not leave off. Time held nothing of interest, and short as it was the day seemed endless.

As a rule, Pelle awoke happy, but now every morning when he woke he was weary of everything; it was to be that everlasting trudging round behind the bar. After a time doing this for about an hour used to make him fall into a state of half-sleep. The condition came of itself, and he longed for it before it came. It was a kind of vacuity, in which he wished for nothing and took no interest in anything, but only staggered along mechanically at the back of the bar. The machine buzzed unceasingly, and helped to maintain the condition; the dust kept pouring out at the window, and the time passed imperceptibly. Generally now dinner or evening surprised him, and sometimes it seemed to him that the horses had only just been harnessed when someone came out to help him in with them. He had arrived at the condition of torpor that is the only mercy that life vouchsafes to condemned prisoners and people who spend their lives beside a machine. But there was a sleepiness about him even in his free time; he was not so lively and eager to know about everything; Father Lasse missed his innumerable questions and little devices.

Now and again he was roused for a moment out of his condition by the appearance at the window of a black, perspiring face, that swore at him because he was not driving evenly. He knew then that Long Ole had taken the place of Per Olsen, whose business it was to feed the machine. It sometimes happened, too, that the lash of the whip caught on the axle and wound round it, so that the whole thing had to be stopped and drawn backward; and that day he did not fall into a doze again.

In March the larks appeared and brought a little life. Snow still lay in the hollows, but their singing reminded Pelle warmly of summer and grazing cattle. And one day he was wakened in his tramp round and round by seeing a starling on the roof of the house, whistling and preening its feathers in delight. On that day the sun shone brightly, and all heaviness was gone from the air; but the sea was still a pale gray down there.

Pelle began to be a human being again. It was spring, and then, too, in a couple of days the threshing would be finished. But after all, the chief thing was that waistcoat-pocket of his; that was enough to put life into its owner. He ran round in a trot behind the bar; he had to drive quickly now in order to get done, for everyone else was in the middle of spring ploughing already. When he pressed his hand against his chest, he could distinctly feel the paper it was wrapped in. For it was still there, wasn’t it? It would not do to open the paper and look; he must find out by squeezing.

Pelle had become the owner of fifty öres⁠—a perfectly genuine fifty-öre piece. It was the first time he had ever possessed anything more than two and one öre pieces, and he had earned it by his own cleverness.

It was on Sunday, when the men had had a visit from some quarrymen, and one of them had hit upon the idea of sending for some birch-fat to have with their dram. Pelle was to run to the village shop for it, and he was given a half-krone and injunctions to go in the back way, as it was Sunday. Pelle had not forgotten his experience at Christmas, and kept watch upon their faces. They were all doing their best to smooth them out and busy themselves with one thing and another; and Gustav, who gave him the money, kept turning his face away and looking at something out in the yard.

When he stated his errand, the shopman’s wife broke into a laugh. “I say, don’t you know better than that?” she exclaimed. “Why, wasn’t it you who fetched the handle-turner too? You’ve all found that very useful, haven’t you?”

Pelle turned crimson. “I thought they were making fun of me, but I didn’t dare say no,” he said in a low voice.

“No, one has to play the fool sometimes, whether one is it or not,” said the woman.

“What is birch-fat, then?” asked Pelle.

“Why, my gracious! You must have had it many a time, you little imp! But it shows how often you have to put up with things you don’t know the name of.”

A light dawned upon Pelle. “Does it mean a thrashing with a birch-rod?”

“Didn’t I say you knew it?”

“No, I’ve only had it with a whip⁠—on my legs.”

“Well, well, you needn’t mind that; the one may be just as good as the other. But now sit down and drink a cup of coffee while I wrap up the article for them.” She pushed a cup of coffee with brown sugar toward him, and began ladling out soft soap on to a piece of paper. “Here,” she said. “You give them that: it’s the best birch-fat. And you can keep the money yourself.”

Pelle was not courageous enough for this arrangement.

“Very well, then,” she said. “I’ll keep the money for you. They shan’t make fools of us both. And then you can get it yourself. But now you must put on a bold face.”

Pelle did put on a bold face, but he was decidedly nervous. The men swore at the loss of the half-krone, and called him the “greatest idiot upon God’s green earth”; but he had the satisfaction of knowing that that was because he had not been stupid enough. And the half-krone was