High up, out of Pipman’s garret, a young man stepped out onto the platform. He stood there a moment turning his smiling face toward the bright heavens overhead. Then he lowered his head and ran down the break-neck stairs, without holding on by the rope. Under his arm he carried something wrapped in a blue cloth.
“Just look at the clown! Laughing right into the face of the sun as though there was no such thing as blindness!” said the women, thrusting their heads out of window. “But then, of course, he’s from the country. And now he’s going to deliver his work. Lord, how long is he going to squat up there and earn bread for that sweater? The red’ll soon go from his cheeks if he stops there much longer!” And they looked after him anxiously.
The children down in the courtyard raised their heads when they heard his steps above them.
“Have you got some nice leather for us to-day, Pelle?” they cried, clutching at his legs.
He brought out of his pockets some little bits of patent-leather and red imitation morocco.
“That’s from the Emperor’s new slippers,” he said, as he shared the pieces among the children. Then the youngsters laughed until their throats began to wheeze.
Pelle was just the same as of old, except that he was more upright and elastic in his walk, and had grown a little fair moustache. His protruding ears had withdrawn themselves a little, as though they were no longer worked so hard. His blue eyes still accepted everything as good coin, though they now had a faint expression that seemed to say that all that happened was no longer to their liking. His “lucky curls” still shone with a golden light.
The narrow streets lay always brooding in a dense, unbearable atmosphere that never seemed to renew itself. The houses were grimy and crazy; where a patch of sunlight touched a window there were stained bed- clothes hung out to dry. Up one of the side streets was an ambulance wagon, surrounded by women and children who were waiting excitedly for the bearers to appear with their uneasy burden, and Pelle joined them; he always had to take part in everything.
It was not quite the shortest way which he took. The capital was quite a new world to him; nothing was the same as at home; here a hundred different things would happen in the course of the day, and Pelle was willing enough to begin all over again; and he still felt his old longing to take part in it all and to assimilate it all.
In the narrow street leading down to the canal a thirteen-year-old girl placed herself provocatively in his way. “Mother’s ill,” she said, pointing up a dark flight of steps. “If you’ve got any money, come along!” He was actually on the point of following her, when he discovered that the old women who lived in the street were flattening their noses against their windowpanes. “One has to be on one’s guard here!” he told himself, at least for the hundredth time. The worst of it was that it was so easy to forget the necessity.
He strolled along the canal-side. The old quay-wall, the apple-barges, and the granaries with the high row of hatchways overhead and the creaking pulleys right up in the gables awakened memories of home. Sometimes, too, there were vessels from home lying here, with cargoes of fish or pottery, and then he was able to get news. He wrote but seldom. There was little success to be reported; just now he had to make his way, and he still owed Sort for his passage-money.
But it would soon come…. Pelle hadn’t the least doubt as to the future. The city was so monstrously large and incalculable; it seemed to have undertaken the impossible; but there could be no doubt of such an obvious matter of course as that he should make his way. Here wealth was simply lying in great heaps, and the poor man too could win it if only he grasped at it boldly enough. Fortune here was a golden bird, which could be captured by a little adroitness; the endless chances were like a fairy tale. And one day Pelle would catch the bird; when and how he left confidingly to chance.
In one of the side streets which ran out of the Market Street there was a crowd; a swarm of people filled the whole street in front of the iron- foundry, shouting eagerly to the blackened iron-workers, who stood grouped together by the gateway, looking at one another irresolutely.
“What’s up here?” asked Pelle.
“This is up—that they can’t earn enough to live on,” said an old man. “And the manufacturers won’t increase their pay. So they’ve taken to some new-fangled fool’s trick which they say has been brought here from abroad, where they seem to have done well with it. That’s to say, they all suddenly chuck up their work and rush bareheaded into the street and make a noise, and then back to work again, just like school children in play-time. They’ve already been in and out two or three times, and now half of them’s outside and the others are at work, and the gate is locked. Nonsense! A lot that’s going to help their wages! No; in my time we used to ask for them prettily, and we always got something, too. But, anyhow, we’re only working-folks, and where’s it going to come from? And now, what’s more, they’ve lost their whole week’s wages!”
The workmen were at a loss as to what they should do; they stood there gazing mechanically up at the windows of the counting-house, from which all decisions were commonly issued. Now and again an impatient shudder ran through the crowd, as it made threats toward the windows and demanded what was owing it. “He won’t give us the wages that we’ve honestly earned, the tyrant!” they cried. “A nice thing, truly, when one’s got a wife and kids at home, and on a Saturday afternoon, too! What a shark, to take the bread out of their mouths! Won’t the gracious gentleman give us an answer—just his greeting, so that we can take it home with us?—just his kind regards, or else they’ll have to go hungry to bed!” And they laughed, a low, snarling laugh, spat on the pavement, and once more turned their masterless faces up to the counting-house windows.
Proposals were showered upon them, proposals of every kind; and they were as wise as they were before. “What the devil are we to do if there’s no one who can lead us?” they said dejectedly, and they stood staring again. That was the only thing they knew how to do.
“Choose a few of your comrades and send them in to negotiate with the manufacturer,” said a gentleman standing by.
“Hear, hear! Forward with Eriksen! He understands the deaf-and-dumb alphabet!” they shouted. The stranger shrugged his shoulders and departed.
A tall, powerful workman approached the group. “Have you got your killer with you, Eriksen?” cried one, and Eriksen turned on the staircase and exhibited his clenched fist.
“Look out!” they shouted at the windows. “Look out we don’t set fire to the place!” Then all was suddenly silent, and the heavy house-door was barred.
Pelle listened with open mouth. He did not know what they wanted, and they hardly knew, themselves; none the less, there was a new note in all this! These people didn’t beg for what they wanted; they preferred to use their fists in order to get it, and they didn’t get drunk first, like the strong man Eriksen and the rest at home. “This is the capital!” he thought, and again he congratulated himself for having come thither.
A squad of policemen came marching up. “Room there!” they cried, and began to hustle the crowd in order to disperse it. The workmen would not be driven away. “Not before we’ve got our wages!” they said, and they pressed back to the gates again. “This is where we work, and we’re going to have our rights, that we are!” Then the police began to drive the onlookers away; at each onset they fell back a few steps, hesitating, and then stood still, laughing. Pelle received a blow in the back; he turned quickly round, stared for a moment into the red face of a policeman, and went his way, muttering and feeling his back.
“Did he hit you?” asked an old woman. “Devil take him, the filthy lout! He’s the son of the mangling-woman what lives in the house here, and now he takes up the cudgels against his own people! Devil take him!”
“Move on!” ordered the policeman, winking, as he pushed her aside with his body. She retired to her cellar, and stood there using her tongue to such purpose that the saliva flew from her toothless mouth.
“Yes, you go about bullying old people who used to carry you in their arms and put dry clouts on you when you didn’t know enough to ask…. Are you going to use your truncheon on me, too? Wouldn’t you like to, Fredrik? Take your orders from the great folks, and then come yelping at us, because we aren’t fine enough for you!” She was shaking with rage; her yellowish gray hair had become loosened and was tumbling about her face; she was a perfect volcano.
The police marched across the Knippel Bridge, escorted by a swarm of street urchins, who yelled and whistled between their fingers. From time to time a policeman would turn round; then the whole swarm took to its heels, but next moment it was there again. The police were nervous: their fingers were opening and closing in their longing to strike out. They looked like a party of criminals being escorted to the court-house by the extreme youth of the town, and the people were laughing.
Pelle kept step on the pavement. He was in a wayward mood. Somewhere within him he felt a violent impulse to give way to that absurd longing to leap into the air and beat his head upon the pavement which was the lingering result of his illness. But now it assumed the guise of insolent strength. He saw quite plainly how big Eriksen ran roaring at the bailiff, and how he was struck to the ground, and thereafter wandered about an idiot. Then the “Great Power” rose up before him, mighty in his strength, and was hurled to his death; they had all been like dogs, ready to fall on him, and to fawn upon everything that smelt of their superiors and the authorities. And he himself, Pelle, had had a whipping at the court-house, and people had pointed the finger at him, just as they pointed at the “Great Power.” “See, there he goes loafing, the scum of humanity!” Yes, he had learned what righteousness was, and what mischief it did. But now he had escaped from the old excommunication, and had entered a new world, where respectable men never turned to look after the police, but left such things to the street urchins and old women. There was a great satisfaction in this; and Pelle wanted to take part in this world; he longed to understand it.
It was Saturday, and there was a crowd of journeymen and seamstresses in the warehouse, who had come to deliver their work. The foreman went round as usual, grumbling over the work, and before he paid for it he would pull at it and crumple it so that it lost its shape, and then he made the most infernal to-do because it was not good enough. Now and again he would make a deduction from the week’s wages, averring that the material was ruined; and he was especially hard on the women, who stood there not daring to contradict him. People said he cheated all the seamstresses who would not let him have his way with them.
Pelle stood there boiling with rage. “If he says one word to me, we shall come to blows!” he thought. But the foreman took the work without glancing at it—ah, yes, that was from Pipman!
But while he was paying for it a thick-set man came forward out of a back room; this was the court shoemaker, Meyer himself. He had been a poor young man with barely a seat to his breeches when he came to Copenhagen from Germany as a wandering journeyman. He did not know much about his craft, but he knew how to make others work for him! He did not answer the respectful greetings of the workers, but stationed himself before Pelle, his belly bumping against the counter, wheezing loudly through his nose, and gazing at the young man.
“New man?” he asked, at length. “That’s Pipman’s assistant,” replied the foreman, smiling. “Ah! Pipman—he knows the trick, eh? You do the work and he takes the money and drinks it, eh?” The master shoemaker laughed as at an excellent joke.
Pelle turned red. “I should like to be independent as soon as possible,” he said.
“Yes, yes, you can talk it over with the foreman; but no unionists here, mind that! We’ve no use for those folks.”
Pelle pressed his lips together and pushed the cloth wrapper into the breast of his coat in silence. It was all he could do not to make some retort; he couldn’t approve of that prohibition. He went out quickly into Kobmager Street and turned out of the Coal Market into Hauser Street, where, as he knew, the president of the struggling Shoemakers’ Union was living. He found a little cobbler occupying a dark cellar. This must be the man he sought; so he ran down the steps. He had not understood that the president of the Union would be found in such a miserable dwelling-place.
Under the window sat a hollow-cheeked man bowed over his bench, in the act of sewing a new sole on to a worn-out shoe. The legs of the passers- by were just above his head. At the back of the room a woman stood cooking something on the stove; she had a little child on her arm, while two older children lay on the ground playing with some lasts. It was frightfully hot and oppressive.
“Good day, comrade!” said Pelle. “Can I become a member of the Union?”
The man looked up, astonished. Something like a smile passed over his mournful face.
“Can you indulge yourself so far?” he asked slowly. “It may prove a costly pleasure. Who d’you work for, if I may ask?”
“For Meyer, in Kobmager Street.”
“Then you’ll be fired as soon as he gets to know of it!”
“I know that sure enough; all the same, I want to join the Union. He’s not going to tell me what I can and what I can’t do. Besides, we’ll soon settle with him.”
“That’s what I thought, too. But there’s too few of us. You’ll be starved out of the Union as soon as you’ve joined.”
“We must see about getting a bit more numerous,” said Pelle cheerfully, “and then one fine day we’ll shut up shop for him!”
A spark of life gleamed in the tired eyes of the president. “Yes, devil take him, if we could only make him shut up shop!” he cried, shaking his clenched fist in the air. “He tramples on all those hereabouts that make money for him; it’s a shame that I should sit here now and have come down to cobbling; and he keeps the whole miserable trade in poverty! Ah, what a revenge, comrade!” The blood rushed into his hollow cheeks until they burned, and then he began to cough. “Petersen!” said the woman anxiously, supporting his back. “Petersen!” She sighed and shook her head, while she helped him to struggle through his fit of coughing. “When the talk’s about the Court shoemaker Petersen always gets like one possessed,” she said, when he had overcome it. “He really don’t know what he’s doing. No—if everybody would only be as clever as Meyer and just look after his own business, then certain people would be sitting there in good health and earning good money!”
“Hold your tongue!” said Petersen angrily. “You’re a woman—you know nothing about the matter.” At which the woman went back to her cooking.
Petersen filled out a paper, and Pelle signed his name to it and paid his subscription for a week. “And now you must try to break away from that bloodsucker as soon as possible!” said Petersen earnestly. “A respectable workman can’t put up with such things!”
“I was forced into it,” said Pelle. “And I learned nothing of this at home. But now that’s over and done with.”
“Good, comrade! There’s my hand on it—and good luck to you! We must work the cause up, and perhaps we shall succeed yet; I tell you, you’ve given me back my courage! Now you persuade as many as you can, and don’t miss the meetings; they’ll be announced in The Working Man.” He shook Pelle’s hand eagerly. Pelle took a brisk walk out to the northward. He felt pleased and in the best of spirits.
It was about the time when the workers are returning home; they drifted along singly and in crowds, stooping and loitering, shuffling a little after the fatigue of the day. There was a whole new world out here, quite different from that of the “Ark.” The houses were new and orderly, built with level and plumb-line; the men went their appointed ways, and one could see at a glance what each one was.
This quarter was the home of socialism and the new ideas. Pelle often strolled out thither on holidays in order to get a glimpse of these things; what they were he didn’t know, and he hadn’t dared to thrust himself forward, a stranger, as he still felt himself to be there; but it all attracted him powerfully. However, to-day he forgot that he was a stranger, and he went onward with a long, steady stride that took him over the bridge and into North Bridge Street. Now he himself was a trades unionist; he was like all these others, he could go straight up to any one if he wished and shake him by the hand. There was a strong and peculiar appeal about the bearing of these people, as though they had been soldiers. Involuntarily he fell into step with them, and felt himself stronger on that account, supported by a feeling of community. He felt solemnly happy, as on his birthday; and he had a feeling as though he must do something. The public houses were open, and the workmen were entering them in little groups. But he had no desire to sit there and pour spirits down his throat. One could do that sort of thing when everything had gone to the dogs.
He stationed himself in front of a pastry cook’s window, eagerly occupied in comparing the different kinds of cakes. He wanted to go inside and expend five and twenty öre in celebration of the day. But first of all the whole affair must be properly and methodically planned out, so that he should not be disappointed afterward. He must, of course, have something that he had never eaten before, and that was just the difficult part. Many of the cakes were hollow inside too, and the feast would have to serve as his evening meal.
It was by no means easy, and just as Pelle was on the point of solving the difficulty he was startled out of the whole affair by a slap on the shoulder. Behind him was Morten, smiling at him with that kindly smile of his, as though nothing had gone wrong between them. Pelle was ashamed of himself and could not find a word to say. He had been unfaithful to his only friend; and it was not easy for him to account for his behavior. But Morten didn’t want any explanations; he simply shook Pelle by the hand. His pale face was shining with joy. It still betrayed that trace of suffering which was so touching, and Pelle had to surrender at discretion. “Well, to think we should meet here!” he cried, and laughed good-naturedly.
Morten was working at the pastry cook’s, and had been out; now he was going in to get some sleep before the night’s work. “But come in with me; we can at least sit and talk for half an hour; and you shall have a cake too.” He was just the same as in the old days.
They went in through the gate and up the back stairs; Morten went into the shop and returned with five “Napoleons.” “You see I know your taste,” he said laughing.
Morten’s room was right up under the roof; it was a kind of turret-room with windows on both sides. One could look out over the endless mass of roofs, which lay in rows, one behind the other, like the hotbeds in a monstrous nursery garden. From the numberless flues and chimneys rose a thin bluish smoke, which lay oppressively over all. Due south lay the Kalvebod Strand, and further to the west the hill of Frederiksberg with its castle rose above the mist. On the opposite side lay the Common, and out beyond the chimneys of the limekilns glittered the Sound with its many sails. “That’s something like a view, eh?” said Morten proudly.
Pelle remained staring; he went from one window to another and said nothing. This was the city, the capital, for which he and all other poor men from the farthest corners of the land, had longed so boundlessly; the Fortunate Land, where they were to win free of poverty!
He had wandered through it in all directions, had marvelled at its palaces and its treasures, and had found it to be great beyond all expectation. Everything here was on the grand scale; what men built one day they tore down again on the morrow, in order to build something more sumptuous. So much was going on here, surely the poor man might somehow make his fortune out of it all!
And yet he had had no true conception of the whole. Now for the first time he saw the City! It lay there, a mighty whole, outspread at his feet, with palaces, churches, and factory chimneys rising above the mass of houses. Down in the street flowed a black, unending stream, a stream of people continually renewed, as though from a mighty ocean that could never be exhausted. They all had some object; one could not see it, but really they were running along like ants, each bearing his little burden to the mighty heap of precious things, which was gathered together from all the ends of the earth.
“There are millions in all this!” said Pelle at last, drawing a deep breath. “Yes,” said Morten standing beside him. “And it’s all put together by human hands—by the hands of working people!”
Pelle started. That was a wonderful idea. But it was true enough, if one thought about it.
“But now it has fallen into very different hands!” he exclaimed, laughing. “Yes, they’ve got it away from us by trickery, just as one wheedles a child out of a thing,” cried Morten morosely. “But there’s no real efficiency in anything that children do—and the poor have never been anything more than children! Only now they are beginning to grow up, look you, and one fine day they’ll ask for their own back.”
“It would go ill with us if we went and tried to take it for ourselves,” said Pelle.
“Not if we were united about it—but we are only the many.”
Pelle listened; it had never occurred to him that the question of organization was so stupendous. Men combined, sure enough, but it was to secure better conditions in their trade.
“You are like your father!” he said. “He always had big ideas, and wanted to get his rights. I was thinking about him a little while ago, how he never let himself be trampled on. Then you used to be ashamed of him; but….”
Morten hung his head. “I couldn’t bear the contempt of respectable folks,” he said half under his breath. “I understood nothing beyond the fact that he was destroying our home and bringing disgrace on us. And I was horribly afraid, too, when he began to lay about him; I wake up sometimes now quite wet and cold with sweat, when I’ve been dreaming of my childhood. But now I’m proud that I’m the son of the ‘Great Power.’ I haven’t much strength myself; yet perhaps I’ll do something to surprise the city folks after all.”
“And I too!”
Power! It was really extraordinary that Morten should be the son of the giant stone-cutter, so quiet and delicate was he. He had not yet quite recovered the strength of which Bodil had robbed him in his early boyhood; it was as though that early abuse was still wasting him.
He had retained his girlish love of comfort. The room was nicely kept; and there were actually flowers in a vase beneath the looking-glass. Flowers, good Lord! “How did you get those?” asked Pelle.
“Bought them, of course!”
Pelle had to laugh. Was there another man in the world who would pay money for flowers?
But he did not laugh at the books. There seemed to be a sort of mysterious connection between them and Morten’s peculiar, still energy. He had now a whole shelf full. Pelle took a few down and looked into them.
“What sort of stuff is this, now?” he asked doubtfully. “It looks like learning!”
“Those are books about us, and how the new conditions are coming, and how we must make ready for them.”
“Ah, you’ve got the laugh of me,” said Pelle. “In a moment of depression you’ve got your book-learning to help you along. But we other chaps can just sit where we are and kick our heels.” Morten turned to him hastily.
“That’s the usual complaint!” he cried irritably. “A man spits on his own class and wants to get into another one. But that’s not the point at stake, damn it all! We want to stay precisely where we are, shoemakers and bakers, all together! But we must demand proper conditions! Scarcely one out of thousands can come out on top; and then the rest can sit where they are and gape after him! But do you believe he’d get a chance of rising if it wasn’t that society needs him—wants to use him to strike at his own people and keep them down? ‘Now you can see for yourself what a poor man can do if he likes!’ That’s what they tell you. There’s no need to blame society.
“No, the masses themselves are to blame if they aren’t all rich men! Good God! They just don’t want to be! So they treat you like a fool, and you put up with it and baa after them! No, let them all together demand that they shall receive enough for their work to live on decently. I say a working man ought to get as much for his work as a doctor or a barrister, and to be educated as well. That’s my Lord’s Prayer!”
“Now I’ve set you off finely!” said Pelle good-naturedly. “And it’s just the same as what your father was raving about when he lay dying in the shed. He lay there delirious, and he believed the ordinary workman had got pictures on the wall and a piano, just like the fine folks.”
“Did he say that?” cried Morten, and he raised his head. Then he fell into thought. For he understood that longing. But Pelle sat there brooding. Was this the “new time” all over again? Then there was really some sense in banding people together—yes, and as many as possible.
“I don’t rightly understand it,” he said at last. “But to-day I joined the trade union. I shan’t stand still and look on when there’s anything big to be done.”
Morten nodded, faintly smiling. He was tired now, and hardly heard what Pelle was saying. “I must go to bed now so that I can get up at one. But where do you live? I’ll come and see you some time. How queer it is that we should have run across one another here!”
“I live out in Kristianshavn—in the ‘Ark,’ if you know where that is!”
“That’s a queer sort of house to have tumbled into! I know the ‘Ark’ very well, it’s been so often described in the papers. There’s all sorts of people live there!”
“I don’t know anything about that,” said Pelle, half offended. “I like the people well enough…. But it’s capital that we should have run into one another’s arms like this! What bit of luck, eh? And I behaved like a clown and kept out of your way? But that was when I was going to the dogs, and hated everybody! But now nothing’s going to come between us again, you may lay to that!”
“That’s good, but now be off with you,” replied Morten, smiling; he was already half-undressed.
“I’m going, I’m going!” said Pelle, and he picked up his hat, and stood for a moment gazing out over the city. “But it’s magnificent, what you were saying about things just now!” he cried suddenly. “If I had the strength of all us poor folks in me, I’d break out right away and conquer the whole of it! If such a mass of wealth were shared out there’d never be any poverty any more!” He stood there with his arms uplifted, as though he held it all in his hands. Then he laughed uproariously. He looked full of energy. Morten lay half asleep, staring at him and saying nothing. And then he went.
Pipman scolded Pelle outrageously when at last he returned. “Curse it all, what are you thinking of? To go strolling about and playing the duke while such as we can sit here working our eyes out of our heads! And we have to go thirsty too! Now don’t you dream of being insolent to me, or there’ll be an end of the matter. I am excessively annoyed!”
He held out his hand in pathetic expostulation, although Pelle had no intention of answering him. He no longer took Pipman seriously. “Devil fry me, but a man must sit here and drink the clothes off his body while a lout like you goes for a stroll!”
Pelle was standing there counting the week’s earnings when he suddenly burst into a loud laugh as his glance fell upon Pipman. His blue naked shanks, miserably shivering under his leather apron, looked so enormously ridiculous when contrasted with the fully-dressed body and the venerable beard.
“Yes, you grin!” said Pipman, laughing too. “But suppose it was you had to take off your trousers in front of the old clothes’ man, and wanted to get upstairs respectably! Those damned brats! ‘Pipman’s got D. T.,’ they yell. ‘Pipman’s got D. T. And God knows I haven’t got D. T., but I haven’t got any trousers, and that’s just the trouble! And these accursed open staircases! Olsen’s hired girl took the opportunity, and you may be sure she saw all there was to see! You might lend me your old bags!”
Pelle opened his green chest and took out his work-day trousers.
“You’d better put a few more locks on that spinach-green lumber-chest of yours,” said Pipman surlily. “After all, there might be a thief here, near heaven as we are!”
Pelle apparently did not hear the allusion, and locked the chest up again. Then, his short pipe in his hand, he strolled out on to the platform. Above the roofs the twilight was rising from the Sound. A few doves were flying there, catching the last red rays of the sun on their white pinions, while down in the shaft the darkness lay like a hot lilac mist. The hurdy-gurdy man had come home and was playing his evening tune down there to the dancing children, while the inhabitants of the “Ark” were gossiping and squabbling from gallery to gallery. Now and again a faint vibrating note rose upward, and all fell silent. This was the dwarf Vinslev, who sat playing his flute somewhere in his den deep within the “Ark.” He always hid himself right away when he played, for at such times he was like a sick animal, and sat quaking in his lair. The notes of his flute were so sweet, as they came trickling out of his hiding place, that they seemed like a song or a lament from another world. And the restless creatures in the “Ark” must perforce be silent and listen. Now Vinslev was in one of his gentle moods, and one somehow felt better for hearing him. But at times, in his dark moods,