Pelle the Conqueror Martin Andersen Nexø (readict books TXT) 📖

that’ll be the end of it, I suppose. I’ve reflected a good deal upon politics and have come to the conclusion that we employers behaved like asses from the beginning. We oughtn’t to have struggled against the Movement; it only drove it to extremes. Just see how well-behaved it’s become since we began to take off our hats to it! You become what you’re treated as, let me tell you. You wouldn’t have acted so harshly if we others had been a little kinder to you. Don’t you allow that? You’re exactly like everyone else: you want to have good food and nice clothes⁠—be considered respectable people. So it was wise to cut off the lower end; you can’t rise when you’ve too much lumber as ballast. Fellows who pull up paving-stones and knock you down are no company for me. You must have patience and wait until the turn comes to your party to come in for a share: those are my politics. Well, what do you think about the job?”

“I don’t understand the machines,” said Pelle.

“You’ll soon get into that! But it’s not that that matters, if only you know how to treat the workmen, and that of course you do. I’ll pay you thirty-five krones a week⁠—that’s a good weekly wage⁠—and in return you’ll have an eye to my advantage of course. One doesn’t join the party to be bled⁠—you understand what I mean? Then you get a free house⁠—in the front building of course⁠—so as to be a kind of vice-landlord for the back building here; there are three stairs with one-roomed flats. I can’t be bothered having anything to do with that; there’s so much nonsense about the mob. They do damage and don’t pay if they can help it, and when you’re a little firm with them they fly to the papers and write spiteful letters. Of course I don’t run much risk of that, but all the same I like things to go smoothly, partly because I aspire to become a member of the management. So you get eighteen hundred krones a year and a flat at four hundred, which makes two thousand two hundred krones⁠—a good wage, though perhaps I oughtn’t to say so myself; but good pay makes good work. Well, is it a bargain?”

Pelle wanted to have till the next day to think it over.

“What do you want to think over? One ought never to think over things too much; our age requires action. As I said before, an expert knowledge is not the main thing; it’s your authority that I chiefly want. In other words, you’ll be my confidential man. Well, well, then you’ll give me your answer tomorrow.”

Pelle went slowly homeward. He did not know why he had asked time to think it over; the matter was settled. If you wanted to make a home, you must take the consequences of it and not sneak away the first time a prospect offered of making it a little comfortable for your wife and children. So now he was the dog set to watch his companions.

He went down the King’s New Market and into the fashionable quarter. It was bright and gay here, with the arc-lamps hanging like a row of light-birds above the asphalt, now and then beating their wings to keep themselves poised. They seemed to sweep down the darkness of night, and great shadows flickered through the street and disappeared. In the narrow side streets darkness lay, and insistent sounds forced their way out of it⁠—a girl’s laugh, the crying of a lonely child, the ceaseless bickering of a cowed woman. But people strolled, quietly conversing, along the pavement in couples and heard nothing. They had got out their winter coats, and were luxuriating in the first cold weather.

Music sounded from the large cafés, which were filled to overflowing. People were sitting close together in small select companies, and looked gay and happy. On the tables round which they sat, stood the wine-cooler with the champagne bottle pointing obliquely upward as though it were going to shoot down heaven itself to them. How secure they appeared to feel! Had they no suspicion that they were sitting upon a thin crust, with the hell of poverty right beneath them? Or was that perhaps why they were enjoying themselves⁠—today your turn, tomorrow mine? Perhaps they had become reconciled to the idea, and took what they could get without listening too carefully to the hoarse protests of the back streets!

Under one of the electric lampposts on the Town Hall Square a man was standing selling papers. He held one out to Pelle, saying: “A halfpenny if you can afford it, if not you can have it for nothing!” He was pale, with dark shadows under his eyes, and he had a dark beard. He looked as if he were suffering from some internal complaint which was slowly consuming him. Pelle looked at him, and saw to his surprise that it was Peter Dreyer, his comrade of long ago!

“Do you go about selling newspapers?” he exclaimed in astonishment, holding out his hand.

Peter Dreyer quietly returned his greeting. He had the same heavy, introspective look that he had had when Pelle met him in the garret in Jager Street, but looked even more perplexed.

“Yes, I’ve become a newspaper man,” he said, “but only after working hours. It’s a little paper that I write and print myself. It may perhaps do you good to read it.”

“What’s it about?”

“About you and me.”

“It’s anarchistic, I suppose?” said Pelle, looking at the title of the paper. “You were so strange last time I met you.”

“Well, you can read it. A halfpenny if you can afford it, if not gratis!” he cried, holding out a copy to the passersby. A policeman was standing a little way off observing him. He gradually drew nearer.

“I see you’re under observation!” said Pelle, drawing his attention to the policeman.

“I’m used to that. Once or twice they’ve seized my inoffensive little paper.”

“Then