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

across the cornfields came a big, stout woman. She wore a skirt, a chemise, and a handkerchief on her head, and she shaded her eyes with her hand and looked about. She crossed the meadow obliquely, found Pelle’s dinner-basket, took out its contents and put them in under her chemise upon her bare, perspiring bosom, and then turned in the direction of the sea.

There was a sudden break in the edge of the fir-plantation, and out came Rud with Pelle hanging upon his back. Rud’s inordinately large head hung forward and his knees gave way; his forehead, which receded above the eyes and projected just below the line of the hair, was a mass of bruises and scars, which became very visible now with his exertions. Both the boys had marks all over their bodies from the poison of the pine-needles. Pelle dropped on to the grass, and lay there on his face, while Rud went slowly to fetch the half-krone, and handed it reluctantly to its owner. He stooped like one vanquished, but in his eye the thought of a new battle lay awaiting its opportunity.

Pelle gazed lovingly at the coin. He had had it now ever since April, from the time when he was sent to buy birch-fat. He had purchased with it everything that was desirable, and he had lost it twice: he loved that piece of money. It made his fingers itch, his whole body; it was always urging him on to spend it, now in one way and now in another. Roll, roll! That was what it was longing to do; and it was because it was round, Father Lasse said. But to become rich⁠—that meant stopping the money as it rolled. Oh, Pelle meant to be rich! And then he was always itching to spend it⁠—spend it in such a way that he got everything for it, or something he could have all his life.

They sat upon the bank of the stream and wrangled in a small way. Rud did his best to inspire awe, and bragged to create an impression. He bent his fingers backward and moved his ears; he could move them forward in a listening position like a horse. All this irritated Pelle intensely.

Suddenly he stopped. “Won’t you give me the half-krone, then? You shall have ten krones when I grow up.” Rud collected money⁠—he was avaricious already⁠—and had a whole boxful of coins that he had stolen from his mother.

Pelle considered a little. “No,” he said. “Because you’ll never grow up; you’re a dwarf!” The tone of his voice was one of sheer envy.

“That’s what the Sow says too! But then I’ll show myself for money at the fairs and on Midsummer Eve on the common. Then I shall get frightfully rich.”

Pelle was inwardly troubled. Should he give him the whole fifty öres for nothing at all? He had never heard of anyone doing such a thing. And perhaps some day, when Rud had become enormously rich, he would get half of it. “Will you have it?” he asked, but regretted it instantly.

Rud stretched out his hand eagerly, but Pelle spat into it. “It can wait until we’ve had our dinner anyhow,” he said, and went over to the basket. For a little while they stood gazing into the empty basket.

“The Sow’s been here,” said Rud, putting out his tongue.

Pelle nodded. “She is a beast!”

“A thief,” said Rud.

They took the sun’s measure. Rud declared that if you could see it when you bent down and looked between your legs, then it was five o’clock. Pelle began to put on his clothes.

Rud was circling about him. “I say!” he said suddenly. “If I may have it, I’ll let you whip me with nettles.”

“On your bare body?” asked Pelle.

Rud nodded.

In a second Pelle was out of his trousers again, and running to a patch of nettles. He pulled them up with the assistance of a dock-leak, as many as he could hold, and came back again. Rud lay down, face downwards, on a little mound, and the whipping began.

The agreement was a hundred strokes, but when Rud had received ten, he got up and refused to have any more.

“Then you won’t get the money,” said Pelle. “Will you or won’t you?” He was red with excitement and the exertion, and the perspiration already stood in beads down his slender back, for he had worked with a will. “Will you or won’t you? Seventy-five strokes then!” Pelle’s voice quivered with eagerness, and he had to dilate his nostrils to get air enough; his limbs began to tremble.

“No⁠—only sixty⁠—you hit so hard! And I must have the money first, or you may cheat me.”

“I don’t cheat,” said Pelle gloomily. But Rud held to his point.

Pelle’s body writhed; he was like a ferret that has tasted blood. With a jerk he threw the coin at Rud, and grumbling, pushed him down. He wept inwardly because he had let him off forty strokes; but he made up his mind to lay into him all the harder for it.

Then he beat, slowly and with all his might, while Rud burrowed with his head in the grass and clasped the money tightly to keep up his strength. There was hatred in every stroke that Pelle struck, and they went like shocks through his playmate’s body, but he never uttered a cry. No, there was no point in his crying, for the coin he held in his hand took away the pain. But about Pelle’s body the air burnt like fire, his arms began to give way with fatigue, and his inclination diminished with every stroke. It was toil, nothing but hard toil. And the money⁠—the beautiful half-krone⁠—was slipping farther and farther away, and he would be poor once more; and Rud was not even crying! At the forty-sixth stroke he turned his face and put out his tongue, whereat Pelle burst into a roar, threw down the frayed nettle-stalks, and ran away to the fir-plantation.

There he sat for