Pelle the Conqueror Part 66

So it is in the big cities!"

"Is that this sosherlism?" says Jeppe disdainfully.

"It's all the same to me what it is--Garibaldi begins and leaves off when it pleases him! And if he wants more for his work he asks for it!

And if that doesn't please them--then adieu, master, adieu! There are slaves enough, said the boy, when he got no bread."

The others did not get very much done; they have enough to do to watch Garibaldi's manner of working. He has emptied the bottle, and now his tongue is oiled; the young master questions him, and Garibaldi talks and talks, with continual gestures. Not for a moment do his hands persist at their work; and yet the work progresses so quickly it is a revelation to watch it; it is as though it were proceeding of itself. His attention is directed upon their work, and he always interferes at the right moment; he criticizes their way of holding their tools, and works out the various fas.h.i.+ons of cut which lend beauty to the heel and sole. It is as though he feels it when they do anything wrongly; his spirit pervades the whole workshop. "That's how one does it in Paris," he says, or "this is Nuremberg fas.h.i.+on." He speaks of Vienna and Greece in as matter-of-fact a way as though they lay yonder under Skipper Elleby's trees. In Athens he went to the castle to shake the king by the hand, for countrymen should always stand by one another in foreign parts.

"He was very nice, by the by; but he had had his breakfast already.

And otherwise it's a d.a.m.ned bad country for traveling; there are no shoemakers there. No, there I recommend you Italy--there are shoemakers there, but no work; however, you can safely risk it and beg your way from place to place. They aren't like those industrious Germans; every time you ask them for a little present they come and say, 'Come in, please, there is some work you can do!' And it is so warm there a man can sleep on the bare ground. Wine flows in every gutter there, but otherwise it's no joke." Garibaldi raises the empty bottle high in the air and peeps wonderingly up at the shelves; the young master winks at Pelle, and the latter fetches another supply of drink at the gallop.

The hot blood is seething in Pelle's ears. He must go away, far away from here, and live the wandering life, like Garibaldi, who hid himself in the vineyards from the gendarmes, and stole the bacon from the chimneys while the people were in the fields. A spirit is working in him and the others; the spirit of their craft. They touch their tools and their material caressingly with their fingers; everything one handles has an inward color of its own; which tells one something. All the dustiness and familiarity of the workshop is swept away; the objects standing on the shelves glow with interest; the most tedious things contain a radiant life of their own.

The world rises before them like a cloudy wonder, traversed by endless highways deep in white dust, and Garibaldi treads them all. He has sold his journeyman's pa.s.s to a comrade for a slice of bread and b.u.t.ter, and is left without papers; German policemen give chase to him, and he creeps through the vineyards for fourteen days, on hands and knees, getting nothing for his pains but grapes and a shocking attack of summer cholera. Finally his clothes are so very much alive that he no longer needs to move of himself; he simply lies quiet, and lets himself be carried along until he comes to a little town. "An inn?" asks Garibaldi.

Yes, there is an inn. There he tells a story to the effect that he has been robbed; and the good people put him to bed, and warm and dry his clothes. Garibaldi snores, and pushes the chair nearer the stove; snores, and pushes it a little further; and as his clothes burst into a blaze he starts up roaring and scolding and weeping, and is inconsolable. So then he is given fine new clothes and new papers, and is out on the road again, and the begging begins afresh; mountains rise and pa.s.s him by, and great cities too, cities with wide rivers. There are towns in which the wandering journeyman can get no money, but is forced to work; d.a.m.nable places, and there are German hostels where one is treated like a prisoner; all clothes must be taken off in a long corridor, even to one's s.h.i.+rt; a handful of men examine them, and then everything is put safely away. Thirty or forty naked men are admitted, one after another, to the great bare dormitory.

Paris--the name is like a bubble bursting in one's ear! There Garibaldi has worked for two years, and he has been there a score of times on pa.s.sing visits. Paris is the glory of the whole world ma.s.sed together, and all the convenient contrivances of the world brought to a state of perfection. Here in the town no respectable shoemaker will mend the dirty shoes of the "Top-galea.s.s"; she goes about in down-trodden top-boots, or, if the snipping season has been poor, she wears wooden shoes. In Paris there are women who wear shoes at twenty guineas a pair, who carry themselves like queens, earn forty thousand pounds a year, and are yet nothing but prost.i.tutes. Forty thousand! If another than Garibaldi had said it he would have had all the lasts thrown at his head!

Pelle does not hear what the master says to him, and Jens is in a great hurry for the cobbler's wax; he has cut the upper of the shoe he is soling. They are quite irresponsible; as though bewitched by this wonderful being, who goes on pouring brandy down his throat, and turning the accursed drink into a many-colored panorama of the whole world, and work that is like a miracle.

The news has soon spread, and people come hurrying in to see Garibaldi, and perhaps to venture to shake him by the hand; Klausen wants to borrow some pegs, and Marker, quite unabashed, looks in to borrow the biggest last. The old cobbler Drejer stands modestly in a corner and says "Yes, yes!" to the other's remarks. Garibaldi has reached him his hand, and now he can go home to his gloomy shop and his dirty stock and his old man's solitude. The genius of the craft has touched him, and for the rest of his days has shed a light upon his wretched work of patching and repairing; he has exchanged a handshake with the man who made the cork-soled boots for the Emperor of Germany himself when he went out to fight the French. And the crazy Anker is there too; but does not come in, as he is shy of strangers. He walks up and down the yard before the workshop window, and keeps on peeping in. Garibaldi points his finger to his forehead and nods, and Anker does the same; he is shaking with suppressed laughter, as over some excellent joke, and runs off like a child who must hide himself in a corner in order to savor his delight.

Baker Jorgen is there, bending down with his hands on his thighs, and his mouth wide open. "Lor' Jiminy!" he cries from time to time; "did ever one hear the like!" He watches the white silk run through the sole and form itself into glistening pearls along the edge. Pearl after pearl appears; Garibaldi's arms fly about him, and presently he touches the baker on the hip. "Am I in the way?" asks old Jorgen. "No, G.o.d forbid--stay where you are!" And his arms fly out again, and the b.u.t.t of the bodkin touches the baker with a little click. "I'm certainly in the way," says Jorgen, and moves a few inches. "Not in the least!" replies Garibaldi, st.i.tching away. Then out fly his arms again, but this time the point of the bodkin is turned toward the baker. "Now, good Lord, I can see I'm in the way!" says Jorgen, rubbing himself behind. "Not at all!" replies Garibaldi courteously, with an inviting flourish of his hand. "Pray come nearer." "No, thank you! No, thank you!" Old Jorgen gives a forced laugh, and hobbles away.

Otherwise Garibaldi lets them come and stare and go as they like. It does not trouble him that he is an eminent and remarkable person; quite unperturbed, he puts the brandy-bottle to his lips and drinks just as long as he is thirsty. He sits there, playing thoughtlessly with knife and leather and silk, as though he had sat on the stool all his life, instead of having just fallen from the moon. And about the middle of the afternoon the incomparable result is completed; a pair of wonderful satin shoes, slender as a neat's tongue, dazzling in their white brilliance, as though they had just walked out of the fairy-tale and were waiting for the feet of the Princess.

"Look at them, d.a.m.n it all!" says the master, and pa.s.ses them to little Nikas, who pa.s.ses them round the circle. Garibaldi throws back his close-cropped gray head.

"You need not say who has made them--everybody can see that. Suppose now the shoes go to Jutland and are worn there and are thrown on the rubbish-heap. One day, years hence, some porridge-eater goes ploughing; a sc.r.a.p of the instep comes to the surface; and a wandering journeyman, who is sitting in the ditch nibbling at his supper, rakes it toward him with his stick. That bit of instep, he says, that, or the Devil may fry me else, was part of a shoe made by Garibaldi--deuce take me, he says, but that's what it was. And in that case the journeyman must be from Paris, or Nuremberg, or Hamburg--one or the other, that's certain. Or am I talking nonsense, master?"

No; Master Andres can a.s.severate this is no nonsense--he who from childhood lived with Garibaldi on the highways and in great cities, who followed him so impetuously with that lame leg of his that he remembers Garibaldi's heroic feats better than Garibaldi himself. "But now you will stay here," he says persuasively. "Now we'll work up the business--we'll get all the fine work of the whole island." Garibaldi has nothing against this; he has had enough of toiling through the world.

Klausen will gladly make one of the company; in the eyes of all those present this proposal is a dream which will once more raise the craft to its proper level; will perhaps improve it until the little town can compete with Copenhagen. "How many medals have you really received?"

says Jeppe, as he stands there with a great framed diploma in his hand.

Garibaldi shrugs his shoulders. "I don't know, old master; one gets old, and one's hand gets unsteady. But what is this? Has Master Jeppe got the silver medal?"

Jeppe laughs. "For this I have to thank a tramp by the name of Garibaldi. He was here four years ago and won the silver medal for me!" Well--that is a thing Garibaldi has long forgotten! But medals are scattered about wherever he has been.

"Yes, there are a hundred masters knocking about who boast of their distinctions: first-cla.s.s workshop--you can see it for yourself--'a silver medal.' But who did the work? Who got his day's wages and an extra drop of drink and then--good-bye, Garibaldi! What has one to show for it, master? There are plenty of trees a man can change his clothes behind--but the s.h.i.+rt?" For a moment he seems dejected. "Lorrain in Paris gave me two hundred francs for the golden medal I won for him; but otherwise it was always--Look in my waistcoat pocket! or--I've an old pair of trousers for you, Garibaldi! But now there's an end to that, I tell you; Garibaldi has done with bringing water to the mill for the rich townsfolk; for now he's a sosherlist!" He strikes the table so that the gla.s.s sc.r.a.pers jingle. "That last was Franz in Cologne--gent's boots with cork socks. He was a stingy fellow; he annoyed Garibaldi. I'm afraid this isn't enough for the medal, master, I said; there's too much unrest in the air. Then he bid me more and yet more--but it won't run to the medal--that's all I will say. At last he sends Madame to me with coffee and Vienna bread--and she was in other respects a lady, who drove with a lackey on the box. But we were furious by that time! Well, it was a glorious distinction--to please Madame."

"Had he many journeymen?" asks Jeppe.

"Oh, quite thirty or forty."

"Then he must have been somebody." Jeppe speaks in a reproving tone.

"Somebody--yes--he was a rascal! What did it matter to me that he had a lot of journeymen? I didn't cheat them out of their wages!"

Now Garibaldi is annoyed; he takes off his ap.r.o.n, puts his hat on sideways, and he goes into the town.

"Now he's going to look for a sweetheart!" says the young master; "he has a sweetheart in every town."

At eight he comes sailing into the workshop again. "What, still sitting here?" he says to the apprentices. "In other parts of the world they have knocked off work two hours ago. What sort of slaves are you to sit crouching here for fourteen hours? Strike, d.a.m.n it all!"

They look at one another stupidly. "Strike--what is that?"

Then comes the young master. "Now it would do one good to warm one's eyes a bit," says Garibaldi.

"There's a bed made up for you in the cutting-out room," says the master. But Garibaldi rolls his coat under his head and lies down on the window-bench. "If I snore, just pull my nose," he says to Pelle, and goes to sleep. Next day he makes two pairs of kid boots with yellow st.i.tching--for little Nikas this would be a three days' job. Master Andres has all his plans ready--Garibaldi is to be a partner. "We'll knock out a bit of wall and put in a big shop-window!" Garibaldi agrees--he really does for once feel a desire to settle down. "But we mustn't begin too big," he says: "this isn't Paris." He drinks a little more and does not talk much; his eyes stray to the wandering clouds outside.

On the third day Garibaldi begins to show his capacities. He does not do much more work, but he breaks a heavy stick in two with one blow as it flies through the air, and jumps over a stick which he holds in both hands. "One must have exercise," he says restlessly. He balances an awl on the face of a hammer and strikes it into a hole in the sole of a boot.

And suddenly he throws down his work. "Lend me ten kroner, master," he says; "I must go and buy myself a proper suit. Now I'm settled and a partner in a business I can't go about looking like a pig."

"It will be better for you to get that finished," says the master quietly, pus.h.i.+ng Garibaldi's work across to little Nikas. "We shan't see him again!"

This is really the case. He will go into the town with the honorable intentions, to buy something, and then he will be caught and whirled out into the great world, far away, quite at hazard. "He's on the way to Germany with some skipper already," says the master.

"But he hasn't even said good-bye!" The master shrugs his shoulders.

He was like a falling star! But for Pelle and the others he signified more than that; they learned more in three days than in the whole course of their apprentices.h.i.+p. And they saw brilliant prospects for the craft; it was no hole-and-corner business after all; with Garibaldi, they traveled the whole wonderful world. Pelle's blood burned with the desire to wander; he knew now what he wanted. To be capable as Garibaldi--that genius personified; and to enter the great cities with stick and knapsack as though to a flourish of trumpets.

They all retained traces of his fleeting visit. Something inside them had broken with a snap; they gripped their tools more freely, more courageously; and they had seen their handicraft pa.s.s before their eyes like a species of technical pageant. For a long time the wind of the pa.s.sage of the great bird hung about the little workshop with its atmosphere of respectable citizens.h.i.+p.

And this fresh wind in one's ears was the spirit of handicraft itself which hovered above their heads--borne upon its two mighty pinions--genius and debauchery.

But one thing remained in Pelle's mind as a meaningless fragment--the word "strike." What did it mean?

XIII

One could not be quite as cheerful and secure here as one could at home in the country; there was always a gnawing something in the background, which kept one from wholly surrendering oneself. Most people had wandered hither in search of fortune--poverty had destroyed their faculty of surrendering to fate; they were weary of waiting and had resolved to take matters into their own hands. And now here they were, sunk in wretchedness. They could not stir from the spot; they only labored and sunk deeper into the mire. But they continued to strive, with the strength of their bodies, until that gave way, and it was all over with them.

Pelle had often enough wondered to see how many poor people there were in the town. Why did not they go ahead with might and main until they were well off? They had all of them had intentions of that kind, but nothing came of them. Why? They themselves did not understand why, but bowed their heads as though under a curse. And if they raised them again it was only to seek that consolation of the poor--alcohol, or to attend the meetings of the home missions.

Pelle could not understand it either. He had an obscure sense of that joyous madness which arises from poverty itself, like a dim but wonderful dream of reaching the light. And he could not understand why it failed; and yet he must always follow that impetus upward which resided in him, and scramble up once more. Yet otherwise his knowledge was wide; a patched-up window-pane, or a scurfy child's head, marked an entrance to that underworld which he had known so well from birth, so that he could have found his way about it with bandaged eyes. He attached no particular importance to it, but in this direction his knowledge was continually extended; he "thee'd and thou'd" poor people from the first moment, and knew the mournful history of every cottage.

And all he saw and heard was like a weary refrain--it spoke of the same eternally unalterable longing and the same defeats. He reflected no further about the matter, but it entered into his blood like an oppression, purged his mind of presumption, and vitiated his tense alertness. When he lay his head on his pillow and went to sleep the endless pulsing of his blood in his ears became the tramping of weary hordes who were for ever pa.s.sing in their blind groping after the road which should lead to light and happiness. His consciousness did not grasp it, but it brooded oppressively over his days.

The middle-cla.s.s society of the town was still, as far as he was concerned, a foreign world. Most of the townsfolk were as poor as church mice, but they concealed the fact skilfully, and seemed to have no other desire than to preserve appearances. "Money!" said Master Andres; "here there's only one ten-kroner note among all the employers in the town, and that goes from hand to hand. If it were to stop too long with one of them all the rest of us would stop payment!" The want of loose capital weighed on them oppressively, but they boasted of s.h.i.+powner Monsen's money--there were still rich people in the town! For the rest, each kept himself going by means of his own earnings; one had sent footwear to the West Indies, and another had made the bride-bed for the burgomaster's daughter; they maintained themselves as a caste and looked down with contempt upon the people.

Pelle himself had honestly and honorably intended to follow the same path; to keep smiles for those above him and harsh judgments for those below him; in short, like Alfred, to wriggle his way upward. But in the depths of his being his energies were working in another direction, and they continually thrust him back where he belonged. His conflict with the street-urchins stopped of itself, it was so aimless; Pelle went in and out of their houses, and the boys, so soon as they were confirmed, became his comrades.

The street boys sustained an implacable conflict with those who attended the town school and the grammar-school. They called them pigs, after the trough-like satchels which they carried on their backs. Pelle found himself between a double fire, although he accepted the disdain and the insult of those above him, as La.s.se had taught him, as something that was inherent in the nature of things. "Some are born to command and some to obey," as La.s.se said.

But one day he came to blows with one of them. And having thrashed the postmaster's son until not a clean spot was left on him, he discovered that he now had a crow to pluck with the sons of all the fine folks, or else they would hold him up to ridicule. It was as though something was redeemed at his hands when he managed to plant them in the face of one of these lads, and there seemed to be a particular charm connected with the act of rolling their fine clothes in the mire. When he had thrashed a "pig" he was always in the rosiest of tempers, and he laughed to think how Father La.s.se would have crossed himself!

One day he met three grammar-school students, who fell upon him then and there, beating him with their books; there was repayment in every blow.

Pelle got his back against the wall, and defended himself with his belt, but could not manage the three of them; so he gave the biggest of them a terrific kick in the lower part of the body and took to his heels. The boy rolled on the ground and lay there shrieking; Pelle could see, from the other end of the street, how the other two were toiling to set him on his legs again. He himself had got off with a black eye.