To Siberia Read Online Free PDF Page B

barn where the cows stood steaming on each side. I could just glimpse Jesper in there, he clung on to the baron’s back with his arm hard around his neck, and the baron kicked backward with his iron-tipped heel, but there was so much smoke and steam in there it was difficult to see much else, and for a moment I was certain it was a cow barn I had walked into.
    A voice that brought everything to a halt cut through the smoke.
    “Where did that lass come from? Get her out of here!”
    I had seen but not realized that only men were in there, and now I saw all the faces and eyes staring at me. Dead silence fell. Grandfather turned around slowly. He was still holding his glass. It looked ridiculous, and he seemed to realize that because he looked down at the glass and was about to put it on a table, but instead he took a gulp and only then put it down. Now it was empty. He stared at Jesper hanging around the baron’s neck, and he put his hand to his hat and shook his head and turned right around, followed the direction of the eyes around him and caught sight of me standing in front of the door in my coat. It was bright blue and quite visible, and I was sure he had seen it many times before. But all the same he peered at it vaguely, took his hat right off, and bent forward before he drew a breath and roared:
    “What the hell is this? Alcohol Concern, is it?!” Rough laughter came rolling from the counter in a wave towards the door, it hit me in the face and I burned with shame and the heat from the stove after the cold outside.
    “It is you who should be ashamed!” I shouted though he had not said anything about me being ashamed of myself, but there was nothing but shame in there now. The door behind me burst open, a cold draft swept up my back as the laughter rolled backward to the counter. A hand clamped down on my shoulder. It hurt and I did not need to look around to know who had arrived.
    “Go outside and wait till I come,” said my father. His voice was gentle, almost kind, and his hand was hard. I did not want to go out. It was cold outside and warm inside, but also filled with huge staring eyes, so I turned, took two steps and stopped in the doorway.
    The sound of a crash came from the other end of the room. Jesper had landed on the floor, he kicked and floundered and the baron snarled:
    “Miserable peasant boy! Are you mad?”
    “I’m no peasant, I am a proletarian!” shouted Jesper. Laughter rose again. The regulars at the Aftenstjernen had not had such entertainment since New Year’s Eve, but Jesper had read Nexø’s books and Pelle the Conqueror was his latest hero. He was going to be an industrial worker and a shop steward and lead his comrades towards the red sun and the New Human Being. Not a brick or a haystack would be left of the old world, and certainly no baron who was generally so drunk when he was going out to hunt in his forests that he could not even walk across his yard without falling on his back, and then crawled on all fours through horse dung and straw to his dovecote, let the pigeons out, and shot them instead. And that’s no lie.
    My father walked through the inn he knew so well with a different light through the windows, now I could see his back and Jesper in there. Jesper was kneeling and brushing dust off his jacket and trousers with one hand while he fended the baron off with the other, and then he looked up and stiffened. He took a big breath and got cautiously to his feet, he did not take his eyes off my father’s and he was biting his lip. Now no one spoke. I closed my eyes and waited for the sound that was about to come, for my father’s dark voice and his hands that could crush whatever he liked, I had seen that in the workshop when he could not make something work, but it was Grandfather who said:
    “Well, if it isn’t our joiner-master master-joiner. The prodigal son of agriculture, the good shepherd of sawdust. What’s he doing out so late with practically the whole of