Peter had at first obstinately refused. It seemed to him a matter of honour not to betray his greasy old evening coat. Not till Stellan had promised to pay the bill did he give in.
“Tell the tailor you have won the suit as a bet,” Stellan hissed out. “It is unnecessary to show people what a mean beggar you are!”
Peter took his revenge by ordering the most expensive things he could get hold of.
He was walking homewards one sultry August night, yellow in the face, bent and heavy. His head, which had always been a little askew, had sunk between his shoulders. He walked on the edge of the foot path, staring at the paving stones, and carefully avoided stepping on the joints, so that sometimes he took gigantic steps and sometimes proceeded with a ridiculous strut. It was always so when Peter went pondering over business.
Twice he stole into small bars and had a glass. The further he came out towards the suburb—his suburb—the more slowly he walked. He stopped at a row of houses that were being built in a blocked up suburban street that was under repair and from which you could see the tops of the masts in the Ekbacken shipyard away in the background. These houses lay silent and deserted. Their uneven brick walls glowed in the last rays of the sun high up above the chasm of the street. But in the empty window-holes the heavy twilight floated and he visualized all the struggles and mean worries that would soon be housed there. Peter stood in the raw chilly draught from the gaps in the walls and thoughtfully stirred a big trough of mortar with his stick. His expression was at the same time one of disapproval and contempt. “Don’t build,” he muttered, “don’t build! Buy from those who have built beyond their means. Houses are worst for those who have them first. Quite different from girls, ha, ha! But then they are good, damned good. No shares and such rubbish for me. What is it they say about a thief? Yes, he is one who has not had time to promote a company, ha, ha! No, land and bricks are better. Both real bricks and those that have engraved on them ‘robur et securitas
.’ ”
After this monologue Peter stalked on in the twilight. He then came to a rather wild and queer patch of stony ground which most resembled the scene of a devastating battle. It was here that the country and town skirmished with each other on a battlefield that was never cleared, full of blown-up rocks, rubbish heaps, bottomless fragments of road and fields brown and intersected with a deep trench. The town had pushed forward its apparatus of siege: stonecutters’ sheds, metal-crushers and dynamite boxes. The country obstinately defended its retreat by guerilla troops of creeping nettles and dock leaves, whilst one or two dried-up dusty pines represented the remnants of the main army in retreat.
And over it all whirled the crows, the ravens of the battlefield.
But Peter was the marauder in this war. From each onward push of the town he would creep home with fresh booty of war. He strolled among the rubbish and interposed his coarse signature between those of the buyer and seller. And woe to him who had ventured too far in the heat of the moment. They were his victims at once.
Peter struggled panting up a mountain of road metal. He stood up dark against the red evening sky, a grinning and spying evil spirit on a pedestal of millions of broken fragments of stones. He looked out over the masses of houses of the town. They were enveloped in smoke, smouldering like a weary brain after a long working day. The very air around them seem used up and tired. Yes, there the stupid town lay and sweated and converted Peter’s rocks into gold. It paid dearly for its work. And still there was no gratitude in his glance as he looked down upon it from the macadam mountain, but rather something resembling inveterate distrust and aversion. The town, the community, and the public were there to be cheated and that was all. This was the doom pronounced on the honest old granite rocks and it made them less safe, less suited for human habitation.
Then Peter turned on his heel and glanced at his own domains. Then he saw the grey ribbon of a new road stretched past red fences and high piles of wood, long and straight as an arrow it stretched with neat, well measured plots of building land on either side. Yes, it was like following the columns of a cash book with safe entries and solid credits. All the way to the big sandpit all was well. But there Majängen began, Peter’s sore spot. He fell in his own estimation as half involuntarily he stared at that miserable agglomeration of cottages above which even the sunset glow seemed sullied and decayed.
Peter was afraid of Majängen. For several years he had not dared to set foot there. And his fear was shared by all his neighbours and, as a matter of fact, by the whole town. Yes, Majängen was a name of terror. Peter’s own policy had long ago driven away all decent, honest people, and now only the worst rabble lived there. In the twilight they swarmed out of their holes, the Majängen roughs, thin, pale, with their hands deep in the pockets of their wide trousers and caps pulled down over their eyes. They had a new style. Their slang and their types quickly took possession of the comic papers, so that Peter and his like soon began to talk the simple but expressive language of their mortal enemies.
These youths conducted a bitter war against Selambshof. They pulled down fences, broke windows, trampled on garden beds. Their numerous thefts testified to their activity, against which he
