Often enough did Pelle regret that he had wasted five years as apprentice. During his apprenticeship he had seen a hundred, nay, two hundred youths pass into the ranks of the journeymen; and then they were forthwith turned into the streets, while new apprentices from the country filled up the ranks again. There they were, and they had to stand on their own legs. In most cases they had learned nothing properly; they had only sat earning their master’s daily bread, and now they suddenly had to vindicate their calling. Emil had gone to the dogs; Peter was a postman and earned a krone a day, and had to go five miles to do that. When he got home he had to sit over the knee-strap and waxed-end, and earn the rest of his livelihood at night. Many forsook their calling altogether. They had spent the best years of their youth in useless labor.
Jens had done no better than the majority. He sat all day over repairs, and had become a small employer, but they were positively starving. The girl had recently had a miscarriage, and they had nothing to eat. When Pelle went to see them they were usually sitting still and staring at one another with red eyes; and over their heads hung the threat of the police, for they were not yet married. “If I only understood farm work!” said Jens. “Then I’d go into the country and serve with a farmer.”
Despite all his recklessness, Pelle could not help seeing his own fate in theirs; only his attachment to Master Andres had hindered him from taking to his heels and beginning something else.
Now everything suddenly came to an end; old Jeppe sold the business, with apprentices and all. Pelle did not wish to be sold. Now was his opportunity; now, by a sudden resolve, he might bring this whole chapter to an end.
“You don’t go!” said Jeppe threateningly; “you have still a year of your apprenticeship before you! I shall give information to the police about you—and you’ve learned what that means.” But Pelle went. Afterward they could run to the police as often as they liked.
With a light and cheerful mind he rented an attic on the hill above the harbor, and removed his possessions thither. He felt as though he was stretching himself after his years of slavery; he no longer had any one over him, and he had no responsibilities, and no burdens. Year by year he had fought against a continual descent. It had by no means fortified his youthful courage vainly to pit his energies, day after day, against the decline of the workshop; he was only able to hold back the tide a little, and as for the rest, he must perforce sink with the business.
A good share of resignation and a little too much patience with regard to his eighteen years—this was for the moment his net profit from the process of going downhill.
Now it all lay at the foot of the hill, and he could stand aside and draw himself up a little. His conscience was clear, and he felt a somewhat mitigated delight in his freedom; that was all he had won. He had no money for traveling, and his clothes were in a sad case; but that did not trouble him at first. He breathed deeply, and considered the times. The death of the master had left a great void within him; he missed that intelligent glance, which had given him the feeling that he was serving an idea; and the world was a terribly desolate and God-forsaken place now that this glance no longer rested on him, half lucid and half unfathomable, and now that the voice was silent which had always gone to his heart—when it was angry just as much as when it was infinitely mild or frolicsome. And where he was used to hear that voice his ear encountered only solitude.
He did nothing to arouse himself; he was for the present idle. This or that employer was after him, truly, for they all knew that he was a quick and reliable worker, and would willingly have taken him as apprentice, for a krone a week and his food. But Pelle would have none of them; he felt that his future did not lie in that direction. Beyond that he knew nothing, but only waited, with a curious apathy, for something to happen—something, anything. He had been hurried out of his settled way of life, yet he had no desire to set to work. From his window he could look out over the harbor, where the extensive alterations that had been interrupted by the winter were again in full swing. And the murmur of the work rose up to him; they were hewing, boring and blasting; the tip-wagons wandered in long rows up the slipway, threw their contents out on the shore, and returned. His limbs longed for strenuous work with pick and shovel, but his thoughts took another direction.
If he walked along the street the industrious townsfolk would turn to look after him, exchanging remarks which were loud enough to reach his ear. “There goes Master Jeppe’s apprentice, loafing along,” they would tell one another; “young and strong he is, but he doesn’t like work. He’ll turn into a loafer if you give him time— that you can see. Yes, wasn’t it he who got a beating at the town hall, for his brutal behavior? What else can you expect of him?”
So then Pelle kept the house. Now and again he got a little work from comrades, and poor people of his acquaintance; he did his best without proper implements, or if he could not manage otherwise he would go to Jens. Jens had lasts and an anvil. At other times he sat at the window, freezing, and gazed out over the harbor and the sea. He saw the ships being rigged and fitted, and with every ship that went gliding out of the harbor, to disappear below the horizon, it seemed to him that a last possibility had escaped him; but although he had such a feeling it did not stir him. He shrank from Morten, and did not mix with other people. He was ashamed to be so idle when every one else was working.
As for food, he managed fairly well; he lived on milk and bread, and needed only a few öre a day. He was able to avoid extreme hunger. As for firing, it was not to be thought of. Sitting idly in his room, he enjoyed his repose, apart from a certain feeling of shame; otherwise he was sunk in apathy.
On sunny mornings he got up early and slipped out of the town. All day long he would stroll in the great pine-woods or lie on the dunes by the shore, with the murmur of the sea sounding through his half- slumber. He ate like a dog whatever he could get that was eatable, without particularly thinking of what it consisted. The glitter of the sun on the water, and the poignant scent of the pine-trees, and the first rising of the sluggish sap which came with spring, made him dizzy, and filled his brain with half-wild imaginations. The wild animals were not afraid of him, but only stood for a moment inhaling his scent; then they would resume their daily life before his eyes. They had no power to disturb his half-slumber; but if human beings approached, he would hide himself, with a feeling of hostility, almost of hatred. He experienced a kind of well-being out in the country. The thought often occurred to him that he would give up his dwelling in the town, and creep at night under the nearest tree.
Only when the darkness hid him did he return to his room. He would throw himself, fully dressed, on his bed, and lie there until he fell asleep. As though from a remote distance he could hear his next-door neighbor, Ström the diver, moving about his room with tottering steps, and clattering with his cooking utensils close at hand. The smell of food, mingled with tobacco smoke and the odor of bedding, which crept through the thin board partition, and hovered, heavy and suffocating, above his head, became even more overpowering. His mouth watered. He shut his eyes and forced himself to think of other things, in order to deaden his hunger. Then a light, well-known step sounded on the stairs and some one knocked on the door—it was Morten. “Are you there, Pelle?” he asked. But Pelle did not move.
Pelle could hear Ström attacking his bread with great bites, and chewing it with a smacking sound; and suddenly in the intervals of mastication, another sound was audible; a curious bellowing, which was interrupted every time the man took a bite; it sounded like a child eating and crying simultaneously. That another person should cry melted something in Pelle, and filled him with a feeble sense of something living; he raised himself on his elbows and listened to Ström struggling with terror, while cold shudders chased one another down his back.
People said that Ström lived here because in his youth he had done something at home. Pelle forgot his own need and listened, rigid with terror, to this conflict with the powers of evil. Patiently, through his clenched teeth, in a voice broken by weeping, Ström attacked the throng of tiny devils with words from the Bible. “I’ll do something to you at last that’ll make you tuck your tails between your legs!” he cried, when he had read a little. There was a peculiar heaviness about his speech, which seemed charged with a craving for peace. “Ah!” he cried presently, “you want some more, you damned rascals, do you? Then what have you got to say to this —‘I, the Lord thy God, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob’”—Ström hurled the words at them, anger crept into his voice, and suddenly he lost patience. He took the Bible and flung it on the floor. “Satan take you, then!” he shouted, laying about him with the furniture.
Pelle lay bathed in sweat, listening to this demoniac struggle; and it was with a feeling of relief that he heard Ström open the window and drive the devils out over the roofs. The diver fought the last part of the battle with a certain humor. He addressed the corner of the room in a wheedling, flattering tone. “Come, you sweet, pretty little devil! What a white skin you have—Ström would so like to stroke you a little! No, you didn’t expect that! Are we getting too clever for you? What? You’d still bite, would you, you devil’s brat? There, don’t scowl like that!”—Ström shut the window with an inward chuckle.
For a while he strolled about amusing himself. “Ström is still man enough to clear up Hell itself!” he said, delighted.
Pelle heard him go to bed, and he himself fell asleep. But in the night he awoke; Ström was beating time with his head against the board partition, while he lay tearfully singing “By the waters of Babylon!” But halfway through the psalm the diver stopped and stood up. Pelle heard him groping to and fro across the floor and out on the landing. Seized with alarm, he sprang out of bed and struck a light. Outside stood Ström, in the act of throwing a noose over the rafters. “What do you want here?” he said fiercely. “Can I never get any peace from you?”
“Why do you want to lay hands on yourself?” asked Pelle quietly.
“There’s a woman and a little child sitting there, and she’s forever and forever crying in my ear. I can’t stand it any longer!” answered Ström, knotting his rope.
“Think of the little child, then!” said Pelle firmly, and he tore down the rope. Ström submitted to be led back into his room, and he crawled into bed. But Pelle must stay with him; he dared not put out the light and lie alone in the darkness.
“Is it the devils?” asked Pelle.
“What devils?” Ström knew nothing of any devils. “No, it’s remorse,” he replied. “The child and its mother are continually complaining of my faithlessness.”
But next moment he would spring out of bed and stand there whistling as though he was coaxing a dog. With a sudden grip he seized something by the throat, opened the window, and threw it out. “So, that was it!” he said, relieved; “now there’s none of the devil’s brood left!” He reached after the bottle of brandy.
“Leave it alone!” said Pelle, and he took the bottle away from him. His will increased in strength at the sight of the other’s misery.
Ström crept into bed again. He lay there tossing to and fro, and his teeth chattered. “If I could only have a mouthful!” he said pleadingly; “what harm can that do me? It’s the only thing that helps me! Why should a man always torment himself and play the respectable when he can buy peace for his soul so cheaply? Give me a mouthful!” Pelle passed him the bottle. “You should take one yourself—it sets a man up! Do you think I can’t see that you’ve suffered shipwreck, too? The poor man goes aground so easily, he has so little water under the keel. And who d’you think will help him to get off again if he’s betrayed his own best friend? Take a swallow, then—it wakes the devil in us and gives us courage to live.”
No, Pelle wanted to go to bed.
“Why do you want to go now? Stay here, it is so comfortable. If you could, tell me about something, something that’ll drive that damned noise out of my ears for a bit! There’s a young woman and a little child, and they’re always crying in my ears.”
Pelle stayed, and tried to distract the diver. He looked into his own empty soul, and he could find nothing there; so he told the man of Father Lasse and of their life at Stone Farm, with everything mixed up just as it occurred to him. But his memories rose up within him as he spoke of them, and they gazed at him so mournfully that they awakened his crippled soul to life. Suddenly he felt utterly wretched about himself, and he broke down helplessly.
“Now, now!” said Ström, raising his head. “Is it your turn now? Have you, too, something wicked to repent of, or what is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? That’s almost like the women—crying is one of their pleasures. But Ström doesn’t hang his head; he would like to be at peace with himself, if it weren’t for a pair of child’s eyes that look at him so reproachfully, day in and day out, and the crying of a girl! They’re both at home there in Sweden, wringing their hands for their daily bread. And the one that should provide for them is away from them here and throws away his earnings in the beer-houses. But perhaps they’re dead now because I’ve forsaken them. Look you, that is a real grief; there’s no child’s talk about that! But you must take a drink for it.”
But Pelle did not hear; he sat there gazing blindly in front of him. All at once the chair began to sail through air with him; he was almost fainting with hunger. “Give me just one drink—I’ve had not a mouthful of food to-day!” He smiled a shamefaced smile at the confession.
With one leap, Ström was out of bed. “No, then you shall have something to eat,” he said eagerly, and he fetched some food. “Did one ever see the like—such a desperate devil! To take brandy on an empty stomach! Eat now, and then you can drink yourself full elsewhere! Ström has enough on his conscience without that…. He can drink his brandy himself! Well, well, then, so you cried from hunger! It sounded like a child crying to me!”
Pelle often experienced such nights. They enlarged his world in the direction of the darkness. When he came home late and groped his way across the landing he always experienced a secret terror lest he should rub against Ström’s lifeless body; and he only breathed freely when he heard him snoring or ramping round his room. He liked to look in on him before he went to bed.
Ström was always delighted to see him, and gave him food; but brandy he would not give him. “It’s not for fellows as young as you! You’ll get the taste for it early enough, perhaps.”
“You drink, yourself,” said Pelle obstinately.
“Yes, I drink to deaden remorse. But that’s not necessary in your case.”
“I’m so empty inside,” said Pelle. “Really brandy might set me up a little. I feel as if I weren’t human at all, but a dead thing, a table, for instance.”
“You must do something—anything—or you’ll become a good-for- nothing. I’ve seen so many of our sort go to the dogs; we haven’t enough power of resistance!”
“It’s all the same to me what becomes of me!” replied Pelle drowsily. “I’m sick of the whole thing!”