Pelle the Conqueror, vol 3 | Page 2

something myself, and I know quite well what it is, but
I'm just not going to tell," they murmured, blinking mysteriously up
into the blue.
However, one could have too much of a good thing.... But the round
grating under the timbers yonder, where Hanne's father drowned
himself, was a thing one never grew weary of. The depths were forever
bubbling upward, filling the little children with a secret horror; and the
half- grown girls would stand a-straddle over the grating, shuddering at
the cold breath that came murmuring up from below. The grating was
sure enough the way down to hell, and if you gazed long enough you
could see the faintest glimmer of the inky stream that was flowing

down below. Every moment it sent its putrid breath up into your face;
that was the Devil, who sat panting down there in a corner. If you
turned your eyes away from the depths the twilight of the well had
turned to brightest day, so you could make the world light or dark just
as you wished.
A few children always lay there, on all fours, gazing down with
anxious faces; and all summer through, directly over the grating, hung
a cloud of midges, swaying in the breath of the depths. They would rise
to a certain height, then suddenly fall, and rise again, just like a
juggler's balls. Sometimes the breathing from below sucked the whole
swarm right down, but it rose up again, veering hither and thither like a
dancing wraith in the draught from the tunnel-like entry. The little girls
would gaze at it, lift their petticoats, and take a few graceful steps.
Olsen's Elvira had learned her first dance-steps here, and now she was
dancing respectable citizens into the poor-house. And the furniture
broker's daughter was in Petersburg, and was almost a Grand Duchess!
On the walls of the narrow shaft projecting porches hung crazily, so
that they left only a small free space, and here the clothes-lines ran to
and fro, loaded with dishclouts and children's clothing. The decaying
wooden staircases ran zig-zag up the walls, disappearing into the
projecting porches and coming out again, until they reached the very
garrets.
From the projecting porches and the galleries, doors led into the various
tenements, or to long corridors that connected the inner portions of the
house. Only in Pipman's side there were neither porches nor galleries,
from the second story upward; time had devoured them, so that the
stairs alone remained in place. The ends of the joists stuck out of the
wall like decaying tooth stumps, and a rope hung from above, on which
one could obtain a hold. It was black and smooth from the grip of many
hands.
On one of those hot June days when the heavens shone like a blazing
fire above the rift overhead, the heavy, mouldering timbers came to life
again, as if their forest days had returned. People swarmed in and out
on the stairs, shadows came and went, and an incessant chattering filled
the twilight. From porch to porch dropped the sour-smelling suds from
the children's washing, until at last it reached the ground, where the
children were playing by the sluggish rivulets which ran from the

gutters. The timbers groaned continually, like ancient boughs that rub
together, and a clammy smell as of earth and moist vegetation saturated
the air, while all that one touched wore a coating of slime, as in token
of its exuberant fertility.
One's gaze could not travel a couple of steps before it was checked by
wooden walls, but one felt conscious of the world that lay behind them.
When the doors of the long passages opened and shut, one heard the
rumor of the innumerable creatures that lived in the depths of the "Ark";
the crying of little children, the peculiar fidgeting sound of marred,
eccentric individuals, for many a whole life's history unfolded itself
within there, undisturbed, never daring the light of day. On Pipman's
side the waste-pipes stuck straight out of the wall, like wood-goblins
grinning from the thicket with wide-open mouths, and long gray beards,
which bred rose-pink earthworms, and from time to time fell with a
heavy smack into the yard. Green hanging bushes grew out of holes in
the wall. The waste water trickled through them and dripped
continually as though from the wet locks of the forest. Inside, in the
greenish, dripping darkness, sat curiously marked toads, like little
water-nymphs, each in her grotto, shining with unwholesome humidity.
And up among the timbers of the third story hung Hanne's canary,
singing quite preposterously, its beak pointing up toward the spot of
fiery light overhead. Across the floor of the courtyard went an endless
procession of people, light-shy creatures who emerged from the womb
of