The Emigrants (32 page)

Then she announced that her husband had died from a stroke; as people knew, he had been somewhat ailing lately. A grand funeral was held. The widow wanted to show that she mourned her husband deeply, and she cried profusely and bitterly at the graveside. No one suspected her of a crime.

As soon as her widow year was up she married the soldier. He in his turn died, after ten years of wedded life, from somewhat more natural causes than the first husband: people said from overwork in bed. The housewife of Galtakullen remained the same craving woman; she was about to take a third husband, but he became frightened of her, and changed his mind before it was too late. He is supposed to have said that the widow of Galtakullen was almost as much man as woman, that she had the organs of both sexes—though no one could be sure of this.

After two marriages she sat, a widow, on her farm for the rest of her life.

Then thirty years after her first husband’s sudden death the grave-digger was one day opening a new grave in the churchyard. While digging he got hold of a skull on his spade. He usually paid no attention to a skull, big or small, any more than a potato picker looks at his potatoes; for human skulls grow in a churchyard as profusely as tubers in a field. But this skull was different: a long rusty-red spike hung rattling inside it. The gravedigger carried his find to the dean, and pointed out to him where he had found the skull. The dean looked up his records and made sure of who had once been buried in that place. Then he tied the skull up in a piece of black cloth, took it under his arm, and went directly to Galtakullen. The widow was at home and he handed her the parcel, saying: Here comes your first husband to visit you; he wishes to speak about the nail in his head. Later you can come to me and speak about your wretched soul.

With this the dean went home. The following day the widow Lotta Andersdotter went to the parsonage and confessed her crime, and in the evening that same day she hanged herself in the milk cellar of her farm.

“Right in there, in that gray house up there,” concluded Jonas Petter.

Everyone looked toward the farm. Jonas Petter knew of all the crimes and evil deeds perpetrated by wives against their husbands in Konga County during the last hundred years, but Robert thought he shouldn’t tell them in the presence of a girl. Elin had looked straight ahead and acted as if she had heard nothing. Perhaps Jonas Petter had thought that the daughter of the Glad One was hardened.

Robert could see her eyes under the kerchief she had drawn forward over her brow, but she always looked away if he tried to meet her gaze. She did not appear sociable. So he turned his back to her and began speaking to Arvid behind him. He intended to buy a book in Karlshamn to learn the American language, he said; he would no doubt have time for study while crossing the ocean.

This was said for Elin’s benefit, and for the first time the eyes under the kerchief turned to the youth beside her.

He met her gaze. “You can borrow the book—if you wish.”

“I don’t need it,” she answered.

“You mean you speak English?”

“Not yet. Not before we land in America.”

“Do you think you can speak fluently as soon as we land?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Really?”

“I don’t need to learn the language because I’ll know it when we arrive,” repeated the girl with assurance.

“Who has told you that?”

“Uncle Danjel.”

And her eyes now looked into his, clear and trusting: Danjel had told them that all who were reborn in Christ would be able to speak the English tongue fluently as soon as they stepped on shore in America.

Robert was stupefied; he could hear and see that she believed this promise to the very letter.

Elin continued: Danjel had told them not to worry about the foreign language, for at their landing all believers would be filled with the Holy Ghost as once had happened to the apostles on the first Whitsuntide. Thus they would be able to understand and speak freely the language used in that land.

“
You
must learn the language, you yourself, of course,” she added, “because you don’t live in the spirit. But we who are reborn need not learn it.”

“Can that be true?”

“Do you think Uncle Danjel would tell a lie?” She sounded hurt. “Or do you think I lie?”

“No, no! Indeed not—but . . .”

He didn’t like to contradict Elin now that she had begun to talk; he wanted to agree with everything she said. But faced with Danjel’s promise, he was unable to hide his doubts completely.

“I’ve never heard that story about the Holy Ghost,” he excused himself. “That’s why I was a little surprised.”

“Have you never read the Acts?” she asked, a little puzzled.

“Yes. Yes, of course I have.”

“You can read about Whitsuntide in the second chapter, if you don’t believe Danjel. But he has never lied to us.”

“I understand now. You won’t need a book to learn English.”

“That’s so.”

“Well—I didn’t know. That’s why I was confused a moment ago.”

Arvid too had listened in amazement. He had not been received among Danjel’s followers, but the master had high hopes that his servant would “awaken” one day. What Arvid now heard about the great advantage of the Åkians, with the American language, made him thoughtful.

They were driving up a steep hill and the men stepped down to spare the horse. Arvid asked Robert: What were they to think of the girl’s statement? Was the new language to come running from the mouths of the Åkians as soon as they landed?

“I won’t believe it until I hear it myself,” said Robert flatly.

“The girl seems cocksure.”

What she said might be true, admitted Robert. It was written in the Bible that the Holy Ghost once filled the apostles so they could speak new languages. But it said nothing about their speaking English on that first Whitsuntide—the language was not yet invented in the days of the apostles, that much he was sure of. So no one knew if the Holy Ghost could teach people to speak English.

The air was colder; the north wind had begun to blow. It felt like a steel brush on their faces. The old frostbites on Arvid’s nose, developed when he was hauling timber during severe winters, took on a red color, cracking a little and bleeding. On the horses the sweat foamed, remaining as white crust on their necks. Sparse, hard snowflakes fell and lay on the road like scattered rice. The emigrants sat silently on the wagons, hour after hour, mile after mile, a chill creeping into their bodies.

They had passed the border of a new province, Blekinge, once part of another kingdom—Denmark. There was still hatred between the inhabitants dwelling along the border, said Jonas Petter. When the Smålanders came driving their loads they were often attacked by Blekinge men, who were evil-tempered and used knives; they were another type of people. And their women, it was said, were hotter under their shifts than women farther north.

The emigrants now drove through wild, uninhabited regions. They rode through a forest of high pines where everything seemed deserted and dead. This was known as the snake forest, said Jonas Petter, for the stone-covered ground was filled with poisonous snakes—more poisonous here than the vipers in the north. Here it was that the Blekinge men used to lie hidden when the Smålanders came with their wagonloads, and here the two peoples often had fought bitterly. If one looked carefully on the stones along the roadside one might still see spots of blood from the old fights; the ground here was in a way sanctified.

Jonas Petter himself had once participated in a fight in the snake forest; a swarm of Blekinge men had surrounded him, buzzing and hissing like wasps on a hot summer day, cutting and hitting at any part of his body they could reach. When he returned home after that journey his body was cut up, open as a sieve. For many months he could keep no fluids in him because they ran out through the holes which the Blekinge men had cut through his body. It was half a year before he could drink brännvin again.

Robert’s eyes shifted from side to side in the semidark underbrush of the forest, looking for men armed with knives, ready to waylay the travelers. But Jonas Petter assured him that it was much more peaceful on the Blekinge road nowadays, and they might feel especially safe from the evil-tempered people since there were so many in their company.

Jonas Petter continued to shorten the fifty long miles by his talk. Robert was busy opening gates; he had by now counted thirty of them. The gates had lately been closer together—the travelers were nearing inhabited places.

The forest came to an end and they drove into a large village. They were in Eringsboda, almost halfway to Karlshamn. This was their first resting place. The wagons came to a stop in front of an impressive-looking building with iron rings in the wall for the horses’ halter straps; this was the inn. The travelers came down from their seats, and the horses were unharnessed.

Big as well as little ones felt frozen, and their faces were blue from the biting wind. The children’s noses were running, making tapers, as it was called.

“We must get inside and thaw out our young ones,” said Kristina anxiously.

Her own children had on warm woolen mittens which she had knitted for them especially for the journey, but the children from Kärragärde were barehanded. Inga-Lena’s last-born, a girl only a few months old, began to cry. She was hidden somewhere in a huge bundle of woolen shawls. Through an opening in the coverings her mother spoke comfortingly to the baby. Danjel came by and nodded and smiled at the little one, the child conceived in the couple’s true, God-inspired marriage, after they were living in the spirit. But not even the father could silence the crying baby. Then the youngest boy from Korpamoen joined in the crying, and the two children tried to outdo each other.

The company of emigrants entered the barroom of the inn with their two loudly crying children.

Nearly every day the maids in the inn saw peasants from Småland with their loaded wagons stopping in on their way to Karlshamn, but never before had they brought along wives and children. Now a question could easily be read in the maids’ staring eyes: What was the idea of dragging suckling children along the roads in this bitterly cold spring weather? But it was warm in here in the barroom, a tremendous fire was roaring on the hearth. The maids busied themselves heating milk for the children and preparing coffee for the grownups.

The emigrants found benches and chairs, sat down, and opened their food baskets. They cut long slices from their rye breads, and brought out their dried lamb quarters. Jonas Petter and the Korpamoen brothers shared a quart of brännvin. Kristina had baked a potato pancake which she divided among husband, children, and brother-in-law; as yet she would not open the butter tub.

The fire sparkled and all enjoyed the coziness of the inn after the cold road. Their senses as well as their limbs thawed. There was an odor of food and brännvin, snuff and chewing tobacco, greased leather and warm, wet wadmal, there was a fragrance of mothers’ milk as the women suckled the children.

The people from Korpamoen and those from Kärragärde were gathered around their respective food baskets, but Jonas Petter sat alone with his. He had left wife and children behind. It was said he had left without forethought: one evening he quarreled with his wife and next morning packed his America chest. But no one knew how long this had been in his mind. He willingly told what he knew of other people, but about himself he never said a word.

Kristina sat and thought of how some in the company still were strangers to each other; as yet she had not exchanged a word with Ulrika of Västergöhl, nor shaken her hand. Before their departure she had told her Uncle Danjel the truth: she could not stand that woman. Must she endure her as a traveling companion? Danjel had opened the Bible and read to her about the meeting of Christ and the harlot. What the Redeemer had said to her, he, Danjel, had said to Ulrika: Sin no more! And Ulrika had obeyed him, she had discarded her old sin-body. Now it was Christ’s body that lived in her, and anyone saying unkind words to Ulrika said them also to Christ. But Kristina could not help herself—she still could not endure that woman.

Nor did she notice any difference in Ulrika. She was good to her daughter; when the two spoke to each other she was sweet and careful in her words. Otherwise she was as foul-mouthed as ever. And one could never misunderstand her manner of looking at men; there was always something of a come-and-let’s-get-to-bed look in her eyes. Hadn’t she today looked at Karl Oskar in that way? She had long taken advantage of Uncle Danjel, who fed and clothed her and her daughter and now paid their passage to America. Uncle Danjel was credulous and easy to take advantage of. Perhaps Ulrika still carried on her whoring in secret, whenever she had the opportunity. At least she
acted
like a sow in heat.

Good-looking she was, the bitch, no one could deny that. Now she was sitting in front of the fire, combing her daughter’s hair and tying a red ribbon in it. The whore was as haughty as a queen, with her bastard a princess being decked to wed a prince. One could wonder what kind of virtues that woman had instilled in her child, poor girl who had to wear old women’s cast-off clothing.

Sven was the eldest boy from Kärragärde, and he had already torn his jacket on a nail—now his mother was mending the hole with linen thread and a darning needle. Inga-Lena and Kristina got along well together. But Danjel’s wife was easily led, quite without a will of her own; she let her husband decide and rule in all matters. Kristina felt a little ashamed of her when among women.

Inga-Lena had suckled her baby, which was quiet now, after being freed from its bundle of shawls. But presently it began to cry again. The mother opened her blouse and offered the breast to the child once more. But the little one threw up what she had already eaten.

Kristina’s thoughts turned to the impending sea voyage as she watched the child vomit.

“I wonder if we will be seasick on the ship,” she said.

“Seasickness is no real ailment,” said Karl Oskar.

“Nevertheless, one has to throw up.”