“At the Death of a Mate”—Danjel knew this hymn by heart and he closed the book and laid it on the ground. Then he knelt down and folded his hands over the lid of his America chest: “In Thy presence, Father in Heaven, I crawl in the dust.”
On the ship Danjel had given a promise to the Lord—he would build an altar of thanks in the new land. The old clothes chest from the loft of Kärragärde became a Lord’s altar on American soil, and next to it now knelt a crushed man, praising and thanking God; with a full heart he thanked Him for the trial which had been sent for his betterment; he thanked the Almighty Who had snatched away Inga-Lena, taken from him his earthly helpmate; he thanked the Lord Who had taken the mother from four little children; he blessed and praised the Lord God for the ills, sufferings, and persecutions he and his beloved ones had had to endure; he thanked his Creator with the warmth of his heart for all the evils which had been bestowed upon him.
God had sought out Danjel Andreasson who now bent like a worm under His foot. At his entrance into the new, young, and healthy world, he prayed for a rebirth, he prayed to be washed clean from that vanity and self-righteousness which clung to him from the Old World. And he felt that God had come close to him now, closer than He had ever come to him in the country he had left.
—2—
Kristina lay with her head on the bulging knapsack; it was a hard and knotty pillow but to her it seemed the softest down; the knapsack had come with them from home—it was something intimate and friendly. She lay still; she was weak from her severe illness, every limb was weak and weary. If only she could rest, rest a long time; if only she could lie like this, quite still, stretched out on her back in the grass, without having to move even a little finger or a little toe. Such were the delights she desired. If she could remain still, perfectly still, then the tiredness would leave her body. But as yet she could only find momentary rest, soon they must move on again.
A few feet away from her another woman was sleeping, no doubt more tired than she—old Fina-Kajsa lay there with open and gaping mouth. She had pulled up her skirt in a roll around her waist, exposing a worn-out, mended, dirty petticoat which once must have been red. In her arms, tight against her chest, she held a wooden casket decorated with green and yellow dots. It contained her most treasured possessions. The casket had no lock but was tied with heavy string, and the sleeping old woman held it close to her breast the way a mother holds her little child. Through her pointed, toothless mouth, which opened like a black hole, Fina-Kajsa snored. At her feet stood her iron pot, now wing-broken and crippled, one leg lost during the voyage. No wonder people had ill endured the crossing when even iron vessels were broken.
Uncle Danjel’s large white linen sack, once Inga-Lena’s pride, was now frayed and dirty, having fared badly on the ship. Ulrika of Västergöhl, who was looking after Danjel’s belongings now he was a widower, had just opened the sack and was searching for something in it. She was dressed today in Aunt Inga-Lena’s best dress; she and her daughter had divided the dead one’s clothes. Kristina never spoke to Ulrika more than was absolutely necessary; for her uncle’s sake Kristina had endured Ulrika’s company, but Karl Oskar had promised that they would separate themselves from the former parish whore as soon as possible. Kristina did not begrudge the Glad One her aunt’s clothing; both she and her daughter must have something to cover themselves with, and they had earned the garments now that they were taking care of the poor children who had lost their mother.
The dress Elin was wearing had also belonged to Inga-Lena, and it was too big for the sixteen-year-old girl. It flowed in large billows and bags about her lithe body. She sat with a small chip basket on her knees and it reminded Kristina of berry-picking time. What kind of berries might there be to pick in this country? Wild strawberries, so sweet to taste, and with such delicate white flowers in the spring? Blueberries which colored the fingers black in summer. Fiery red cranberries on the tussocks in autumn? Elin held the handle of her basket firmly, as if just about to go out into the berry lands—she held on to it as one holds to a single worldly possession.
And Kristina sat up, the better to keep an eye on her family belongings. There stood their chest—five feet long and three high—reinforced with broad iron bands which had held it together unharmed across the Atlantic; only one corner of the lid was scraped a little. On the front of the chest glowed the letters, still red, painted there before departure: Home-owner Karl Oskar Nilsson, North America.
And there stood their sacks and their food basket. The small bundle next to Kristina moved at times, it was alive—in it slept little Harald, the baby. Karl Oskar had gone back to the ship to pick up something forgotten and he had the two other children with him.
From where she sat among the trees Kristina could see the harbor and the long row of ships at the piers. Right in front of her was a tall, yellow-green house with a round tower which it carried like a crown. The house was built on an islet, and people went to it across a bridge. High up on the wall over the entrance there was something written in tall black letters, visible from where she sat: CASTLE GARDEN. It was, of course, the name of the house, whatever it might mean. In front of the round house on the same isle there was a smaller and lower house, one wall of which was almost covered by an inscription: LABOR EXCHANGE; the name of that house was painted in the largest letters she had ever seen.
They put names on the houses in America. And the incomprehensible writing she saw reminded her that she was now in a land where she understood not the smallest word of what people said; they might speak into her very ears, yet she wouldn’t hear them; she might talk, and they would not hear her. From the first moment here in America she suffered from two defects—deafness and dumbness; she must go about among strangers a deaf-mute.
It was gentry she saw walking about there near the big house with the tower; the women had umbrellas like the ladies at home in Sweden. But it wasn’t raining, it was entirely clear, the sun shone in a cloudless sky. Why did the women carry umbrellas today? Perhaps they had brought them along for show.
Yes, the sun was shining, there was an unmerciful heat in America. The air was oppressive and she breathed with difficulty; she had the sensation of inhaling pungent steam while bending over a pot of boiling water. But her happiness in being on the earth again was so great that it almost obliterated the discomfort of the American heat. On the ship she had believed that she never more would get out into God’s clear daylight; she had felt she would end her life enclosed in the dark hold; she had thought she would never again see a patch of grass or a green leaf. But now she lay here on the green earth in the sun. She could just as easily, like poor Inga-Lena, have been lying on the bottom of the ocean, her body lowered for monsters of the deep to devour. But she had been saved from them, she and her loved ones—what else mattered?
To go out on the ocean in a fragile ship with three small children—she felt it had been to tempt the Lord God. In a long and fervent prayer she thanked her Father in Heaven Who in His mercy had let them reach solid ground in health.
She almost felt as if she had been dead and awakened to life again, as if a miracle had happened to her. How wonderfully still everything about her seemed! The joy of lying here on the peaceful, quiet earth could only be fully appreciated by one who had long lived in a constantly moving and heaving bed, one who had been tossed about on high, restless billows. At last she was liberated from the ship’s swing which had thrown her up and down, she was free from the dizzy journeys to the top of the waves and into their valleys. She had always loved to play with a swing but never again would she be tempted by the swing of the sea; with this she was sated for life. Never again would she desire to see this terrifying ocean, never again would her feet leave solid ground.
She felt thirsty, her tongue was parched, and her appetite was returning now that she was on land; she must eat well now that she had one more life to feed.
She put her hand against her abdomen: again she could feel the stirring within
her. Many days had passed since the last time she felt the child move, and she had begun to wonder if it still could be alive. It would not have seemed strange to her had it died, so ill and weak she had been from seasickness and scurvy. A joy filled her as she now felt it stir: once having conceived a child, she wished to bear it alive; a stillborn child was a shame and God’s chastisement—the woman was not worthy to carry into the world the life He had created within her.
When was it due? She counted the months on her fingers: she had conceived it sometime in the middle of February—March, April, May, June—she was already in her fifth month. July, August, September, October, November—her childbed would be sometime in the middle of November.
About half the time left until she was in childbed. Would they have a bed by then, a bed in which she could bear her child?
The child was alive. A life that had traveled free across the ocean had come into the land. It stirred and moved in its hidden nest, stronger than the mother had felt it before. Not only had she herself come to life again, the child within her seemed to have gained new life, now that she had carried it into the New World.
—3—
“Are you asleep, Kristina?”
She had dozed off. Karl Oskar stood by her side, wiping his sweaty face with his jacket sleeve.
“What a heat! They can fry bacon on the roofs here!” He took off his wadmal coat and threw it on the ground. Johan and Lill-Märta came rushing to their mother.
“Guess, Mother! Father has bought something!”
“Guess what Father bought!”
In one hand Karl Oskar carried a paper bag, in the other their own large pitcher. He held up the bag to Kristina’s nose. “You want to smell something?”
“Look in the bag, Mother!” shouted Johan. “Father has bought sweet milk and wheat bread!”
“Sweet milk and wheat bread!” Lill-Märta repeated after him.
Kristina inhaled a pleasing odor which she had not smelled for a long time. She stuck her hand into the bag and got hold of something soft: fresh, white rolls, wheat rolls!
“Karl Oskar—it isn’t true.”
“Look in the pitcher!”
“Mother! It’s sweet milk!” shouted Johan.
Karl Oskar held up the pitcher, so full of milk that it splashed over.
“Be careful. Don’t lose any,” she warned.
“Now you must eat and drink, Kristina.”
“Karl Oskar, I don’t believe my eyes. How could you buy it?”
“The Finn helped me. Eat and drink now. We have already had some.”
Sweet milk! Fresh milk! When had she last tasted it? Not one drop had they been able to obtain on the ship. It was in their quarters in Karlshamn that she had tasted milk last time; long, long ago, in another world, in the Old World.
Kristina took hold of the pitcher with both hands, carefully; she mustn’t let it splash over. Tears came to her eyes; she had to see what milk looked like, she had forgotten. This milk was yellow-white, thick and rich; no spoon had skimmed off the cream; and it smelled as fresh as if it had just been milked into this pitcher.
Karl Oskar opened the knapsack and took out a tin mug which he filled with milk from the pitcher. “Drink—as much as you are able to. You need it to get well.”
Kristina held the mug. “But the children? Have they had enough?”
No mother could begin to eat and drink before her children had been given food and drink. But Karl Oskar told her that Johan and Lill-Märta had eaten themselves full and drunk until their thirst was quenched back there at the store where he had bought the food.
Kristina drank. She emptied the mug in a few swallows, and Karl Oskar filled it again; she drank until she felt satisfied; never before had she realized that milk could be so good. She herself had sat on the milking stool and pressed out hundreds of gallons of milk from cow udders, she had strained milk for her children morning, noon, and night, she had fattened calves on milk, she had brought up piglets on milk—during her whole life she had never longed for milk until she started on this voyage. Now she accepted the pitcher of milk as a gift from God; she felt she would cry.
She said the milk was cream-rich and good. Then she took a roll from the bag and looked it over; this roll was almost as big as a small loaf at home.
They still had a little left in their food basket. The ship’s fare had been rancid, bitter with salt, smelling of old chests and musty barrels; Kristina still had a taste in her mouth from the dried, hard rye loaves. Toward the end of the voyage there had been worms in the bread, and they had been forced to soak it in water and fry it in pork fat before they could eat it; much of the fare they had been given on the ship had been little better than pig food.
After those hard loaves, how delicious it was to bite into a soft, fresh wheat roll! The rolls looked a little puffy, but she soon saw that they were well filled under the crust. At the very first bite she felt that she was eating festival food.
“They bake mighty fine bread in America,” said Kristina.
“Here they eat wheat bread on weekdays as well as on Sundays,” said Karl Oskar.
“I’ve heard so. Can it be true?”
Kristina was a little skeptical. To her, wheat bread had always been a food for holidays and festival occasions. She used to buy a few pounds of wheat flour for a baking at Christmas, Easter, and Midsummer. Then she counted the loaves and locked them in the bread chest so the children couldn’t eat them unless allowed; such food had to be carefully portioned out, each one getting his share.
“It’s swarming with people here in New York,” she said. “Is there enough wheat bread for all of them?”
Karl Oskar said, that, according to what he saw with his own eyes, there must be plenty of food in this country; in several stores he had seen quantities of wheat loaves, piled high like stacks of firewood at home, and he had seen whole tubs full of sweet milk. He was sure that both she and the children could eat and drink all they needed to regain their strength.
The bundle at Kristina’s side began to move and a sound came from it; Harald had awakened and cried out. The mother picked him up and his cry died as soon as he felt the sweet milk in his mouth. The little one swallowed the unfamiliar drink in silence, he simply kept silent and swallowed: surprise overwhelmed him.
It hurt Kristina’s heart to see how fallen off her children were, how pale their faces, how sunken their cheeks, how blue their lips, how tired and watery their eyes. When she took them in her arms their bodies were light, their arms and legs thin, the flesh on their limbs loose; it was as if muscles and bones had parted from each other. They had dwindled this way from having been kept so long in the dark unhealthy hold below decks. How often had she worried about them when she lay sick, unable to care for them, while all three of them crawled over her in her bed. How often had she reproached herself because of her inability to give them a single bite of fresh food, or a mouthful of sweet milk. How she had longed for the moment when she could walk on shore with Johan, Lill-Märta, and Harald. These poor, pale, skinny children certainly were in need of America’s good sweet milk and fresh wheat rolls.
Johan had been told to guard his father’s coat lying there in the grass, and he said impatiently: “Father, you forget the apple! The apple for Mother!”
From the pocket of his father’s coat he took a shining red apple, almost as big as his own head. The boy handed it proudly to his mother.
“Have you ever seen such a big apple?” said Karl Oskar. “I got it for nothing!”
Near the pier, he told her, they had met a woman carrying a large basket filled with beautiful apples. Johan and Lill-Märta had stopped and looked longingly at the fruit. The woman had spoken to them, but they had not understood a word. Then she gave the children each an apple, which they immediately gulped down. He, too, had received an apple—which he had saved for her.
“Karl Oskar—you’re good. . . .”
She weighed the large apple in her hand; it must weigh almost
a pound, she thought; it was the largest one she had ever seen. The children’s eyes were glued to the fruit in their mother’s hand, and Kristina asked Karl Oskar to cut it in four equal pieces, so that all would get even portions. He pulled out his pocketknife and divided the apple carefully; each quarter was as big as a whole apple at home.
And the immigrant family ate and enjoyed their first American fruit, which was full of juice and cooled their mouths.
“Is it a new apple?” exclaimed Kristina when she tasted it.
“Yes, doesn’t it taste like one?”
“I thought it was fruit from last summer.”
“Here in America the apples ripen before Midsummer,” said Karl Oskar.
Yes, the sour-fresh taste in her mouth convinced Kristina. It must be true what Karl Oskar said—she was eating a fruit of the new crop; yet it was only Midsummer.
Midsummer—the holidays had passed, a Midsummer no one had celebrated. Enclosed on the ship, they could not celebrate, they could only talk of the Midsummer holidays in the land they had left.
Just a little more than a stone’s throw from where she sat Kristina could see the pier where the Charlotta was still tied up, discharging the rest of her cargo. She recognized the Swedish brig by its familiar flag. After unloading, it would sail back again. The ship would once more have to find her way across the restless, endless water. It had been a bleak and misty spring day when she left the Swedish harbor; perhaps it would be a bleak and misty autumn day before she returned to the same harbor. Then their ship would be at home. At home—the thought cut Kristina to the quick, and she chewed more slowly on her piece of apple.
Midsummer at home—Father putting young birches on either side of the door, Mother serving coffee at their finest table, which had been moved out into the yard and placed under the old family maple; Maria and Emma, her sisters, picking lilacs and decorating themselves for the village dance. The house would smell of newly scrubbed floors, smell clean, inside and out, smell of lilac blossoms and flowering birches. And when they gathered around the table under the family maple—the guardian tree of their home—they would all be dressed in their Sunday best, and there would be much fun and much laughter. At home it was always so for Midsummer.
Unto A Good Land Page 6
