Pelle the Conqueror

It was dawn on the first of May, 1877. From the sea the mist came sweeping in, in a gray trail that lay heavily on the water. Here and there there was a movement in it; it seemed about to lift, but closed in again, leaving only a strip of shore with two old boats lying keel uppermost upon it. The prow of a third boat and a bit of breakwater showed dimly in the mist a few paces off. At definite intervals a smooth, gray wave came gliding out of the mist up over the rustling shingle, and then withdrew again; it was as if some great animal lay hidden out there in the fog, and lapped at the land.

A little on one side stood an elderly, bent little man with a sack upon his back, holding a boy of eight or nine by the hand; beside them lay a green chest. They eagerly watched the proceedings, and each time a cart drove off with some of their countrymen, the boy pulled impatiently at the hand of the old man, who answered by a reassuring word. The old man examined the farmers one by one with an anxious air, moving his lips as he did so: he was thinking. His red, lashless eyes kept watering with the prolonged staring, and he wiped them with the mouth of the coarse dirty sack.

“Do you see that one there?” he suddenly asked the boy, pointing to a fat little farmer with apple-cheeks. “I should think he’d be kind to children. Shall we try him, laddie?”

The boy nodded gravely, and they made straight for the farmer. But when he had heard that they were to go together, he would not take them; the boy was far too little to earn his keep. And it was the same thing every time.

It was Lasse Karlsson from Tommelilla in the Ystad district, and his son Pelle.

It was not altogether strange to Lasse, for he had been on the island once before, about ten years ago; but he had been younger then, in full vigor it might be said, and had no little boy by the hand, from whom he would not be separated for all the world; that was the difference. It was the year that the cow had been drowned in the marl-pit, and Bengta was preparing for her confinement.

In the middle of his noisy joy, he looked up, and immediately burst into a roar of terror and dropped down on to the wood-shavings. On the top of the shed at the place where his father had left him stood a black man and two black, open-mouthed hellhounds; the man leaned half out over the ridge of the roof in a menacing attitude. It was an old figurehead, but Pelle thought it was Old Harry himself, come to punish him for his bold song, and he set off at a run up the hill. A little way up he remembered the sack and stopped. He didn’t care about the sack; and he wouldn’t get a thrashing if he did leave it behind, for Father Lasse never beat him. And that horrid devil would eat him up at the very least, if he ventured down there again; he could distinctly see how red the nostrils shone, both the devil’s and the dogs’.

But Pelle still hesitated. His father was so careful of that sack, that he would be sure to be sorry if he lost it⁠—he might even cry as he did when he lost Mother Bengta. For perhaps the first time, the boy was being subjected to one of life’s serious tests, and stood⁠—as so many had stood before him⁠—with the choice between sacrificing himself and sacrificing others. His love for his father, boyish pride, the sense of duty that is the social dower of the poor⁠—the one thing with the other⁠—determined his choice.

It went as busily and evenly as the ticking of a watch.

“Why, if that isn’t Brother Kalle sitting there!” said Lasse, in a voice of surprise as great as if the meeting were a miracle from heaven. “Good evening, Kalle Karlsson! How are you?”

The stone-breaker looked up.

“Oh, there you are, brother!” he said, rising with difficulty; and the two greeted one another as if they had met only the day before. Kalle collected his tools and laid the screen down upon them while they talked.

“So you break stones too? Does that bring in anything?” asked Lasse.

“Oh, not very much. We get twelve krones a ‘fathom’ and when I work with a lantern morning and evening, I can break half a fathom in a week. It doesn’t pay for beer, but we live anyhow. But it’s awfully cold work; you can’t keep warm at it, and you get so stiff with sitting fifteen hours on the cold stone⁠—as stiff as if you were the father of the whole world.” He was walking stiffly in front of the others across the heath toward a low, humpbacked cottage.

“Ah, there comes the moon, now there’s no use for it!” said Kalle, whose spirits were beginning to rise. “And, my word, what a sight the old dormouse looks! He must have been at a New Year’s feast in heaven.”

“You’re the same merry devil that you were in the old days,” said Lasse.

“Well, good spirits’ll soon be the only thing to be had without paying for.”

The largest pair of men’s lasts was taken down from the shelf, and these were tied to one end of the waxed-end and were let right down to the pavement. People collected in the street outside, and stood there staring. Pelle had to lean right out of the window, and bend over as far as he could, while Emil, as the oldest apprentice, laid the waxed-end over his neck. They were all on their feet now, with the exception of the young master; he took no part in this diversion.

“Pull, then!” ordered the journeyman, who was directing the solemn business. “Pull them along till they’re right under your feet!”

Pelle pulled, and the heavy lasts joggled over the pavement, but he paused with a sigh; the waxed-end was slipping over his warm neck. He stood there stamping, like an animal which stamps its feet on the ground, without knowing why; he lifted them cautiously and looked at them in torment.

“Pull, pull!” ordered Jeppe. “You must keep the thing moving or it sticks!” But it was too late; the wax had hardened in the hairs of his nape⁠—Father Lasse used to call them his “luck curls,” and prophesied a great future for him on their account⁠—and there he stood, and could not remove the waxed-end, however hard he tried. He made droll grimaces, the pain was so bad, and the saliva ran out of his mouth.

“Huh! He can’t even manage a pair of lasts!” said Jeppe jeeringly. “He’d better go back to the land again and wash down the cows’ behinds!”

Then Pelle, boiling with rage, gave a jerk, closing his eyes and writhing as he loosed himself.