Pelle the Conqueror | Page 6

Martin Anderson Nexo
at their feet.
"Look out, you Swedish devil!" cries a sailor who has to open the iron
doors. The Swede backs in bewilderment, but his hand involuntarily
flies to his pocket and fingers nervously his big pocket-knife.
The gangway is down, and the two hundred and fifty passengers stream
down it--stone-masons, navvies, maid-servants, male and female
day-laborers, stablemen, herdsmen, here and there a solitary little
cowherd, and tailors in smart clothes, who keep far away from the rest.
There are young men straighter and better built than any that the island
produces, and poor old men more worn with toil and want than they
ever become here. There are also faces among them that bear an
expression of malice, others sparkling with energy, and others
disfigured with great scars.
Most of them are in working-clothes and only possess what they stand

in. Here and there is a man with some tool upon his shoulder--a shovel
or a crowbar. Those that have any luggage, get it turned inside out by
the custom-house officers: woven goods are so cheap in Sweden. Now
and then some girl with an inclination to plumpness has to put up with
the officers' coarse witticisms. There, for instance, is Handsome Sara
from Cimrishamn, whom everybody knows. Every autumn she goes
home, and comes again every spring with a figure that at once makes
her the butt of their wit; but Sara, who generally has a quick temper and
a ready tongue, to-day drops her eyes in modest confusion: she has
fourteen yards of cloth wrapped round her under her dress.
The farmers are wide awake now. Those who dare, leave their horses
and go among the crowd; the others choose their laborers with their
eyes, and call them up. Each one takes his man's measure--width of
chest, modest manner, wretchedness; but they are afraid of the scarred
and malicious faces, and leave them to the bailiffs on the large farms.
Offers are made and conditions fixed, and every minute one or two
Swedes climb up into the hay in the back of some cart, and are driven
off.
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. Things looked bad, but Lasse staked his
all on one cast, and used the couple of krones he got for the hide of the
cow to go to Bornholm. When he came back in the autumn, there were
three mouths to fill; but then he had a hundred krones to meet the
winter with.
At that time Lasse had been equal to the situation, and he would still
straighten his bowed shoulders whenever he thought of that exploit.
Afterward, whenever there were short commons, he would talk of
selling the whole affair and going to Bornholm for good. But Bengta's
health failed after her late child-bearing, and nothing came of it, until
she died after eight years of suffering, this very spring. Then Lasse sold
their bit of furniture, and made nearly a hundred krones on it; it went in
paying the expenses of the long illness, and the house and land
belonged to the landlord. A green chest, that had been part of Bengta's
wedding outfit, was the only thing he
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