The Emigrants (6 page)

The farm was too small to divide; a one-sixteenth could not be split. And Nils did not wish to sell it to an outsider; one of his children must reap the benefit of his many years of clearing. Karl Oskar was still in service in Idemo, and barely of age. Robert, their second son, was only eleven, and the daughter Lydia fourteen years old. Even the oldest son was rather young to become his own master, but Nils offered Korpamoen to him, nevertheless. The father by now had more respect for the headstrong boy who had left home at fourteen because he couldn’t have his way about a few hayrick slats.

After seven years as a farmhand Karl Oskar was weary of working for others, and would rather be master of the homestead; he was ready to buy.

“If you become a farmer, you’ll need a wench,” said Nils.

“I’ll find one,” said Karl Oskar, sure of himself.

“Braggart!”

A few days later, however, Karl Oskar announced that the banns would be read for him the following Sunday. The parents were so much astonished they could not say a word: the son had even arranged his marriage without their advice! Indeed, the boy did have a will of his own. But they were also concerned; in the long run such a headstrong son would succeed only with difficulty.

—2—

On an autumn day a few years earlier Karl Oskar had brought a load of his master’s firewood to Berta, the Idemo woman with healing knowledge. Berta offered him a dram in the kitchen, and there sat a young girl, unknown to him, spooling yarn. She had thick, light yellow hair, and a pair of mild eyes—green, blue, or perhaps both. Her face, with its soft, pink skin, pleased him, in spite of a few freckles on her nose. The girl sat quietly at the spooling wheel while Karl Oskar was in the kitchen, and none of them spoke. But when he was ready to leave he turned to her and said: “My name is Karl Oskar.”

“Mine is Kristina,” she answered

Then she sat silent, and spooled as before. But she had given him her name, she who was to become his wife.

Kristina was a farmer’s daughter from Duvemåla, in Algutsboda Parish, and she was only seventeen when they first met. But her body was well developed, with the first marks of womanhood; her hips showed well-rounded curves and her maidenly breasts were cramped inside the blouse which she had long ago outgrown. In her mind, however, she was still a child. She loved to swing. A few weeks before she met Karl Oskar she had taken the ox-thong and set up a swing in the barn at Duvemåla. During her play she had fallen out of the swing and broken her kneecap. The injury was poorly looked after, and gangrene set in. Her parents had then sent her to Berta in Idemo, who was known through many parishes for her healing ability, and Kristina was staying with the old woman while the gangrene mended.

Kristina still limped, and that was why she didn’t rise from the spooling wheel while Karl Oskar was in the kitchen.

But he found excuses for calling on Berta to see the girl again, and next time he found her standing outside on the porch. He noticed then that she was a tall girl, as tall as he. She was lithe and slender around the waist. Her eyes were bashful and tempting.

They met now and then while Kristina remained in Idemo. Her knee healed and she limped no more; no longer was she ashamed to walk about when Karl Oskar saw her.

The evening before she was to return home they met and sat outside Berta’s cellar on an upturned potato basket. He said he liked her and asked if she liked him. She did. He then asked if she would marry him. She answered that she thought both of them too young, that at least he ought to be of age. He said he could write to the King and get permission to marry. Then she said they had no place to live, nor did she know how they could feed and clothe themselves. To this he had no answer, for it was true. He had nothing to promise her, therefore he kept still; a spoken word and a promise carried weight; one had to answer for it, it could never be taken back.

They had since met at the Klintakrogen fair three times, two springs and one autumn, and each time Karl Oskar had said that he still liked her and no one else was in his thoughts.

Karl Oskar was sure of what he wanted. As soon as he had been offered Korpamoen by his father, he went to Kristina’s parents in Duvemåla. They were much surprised by this visit from an unknown youth who asked leave to speak with their daughter alone.

Karl Oskar and Kristina stood under the gable of her home and talked to each other for twenty minutes.

Karl Oskar thought:

Their hour to get married had now arrived; he was of age, he was to take over his father’s farmstead, they had house and home and means to earn food and clothing.

Kristina thought:

As they had met only a half-score times, they had hardly had opportunity to get to know each other. At nineteen she was still too young to become a farm wife; he must ask her parents if they wanted him for a son-in-law.

It turned out as Karl Oskar had thought it would. He was accepted into the family when her parents learned that his suit was earnest and that he owned a farm. He stayed in their house overnight and slept with his wife-to-be, fully dressed, in all honor. Six weeks later the wedding was held in Duvemåla between Karl Oskar Nilsson and Kristina Johansdotter.

Karl Oskar said to his young wife: There was no person in the whole world he liked as well as her, because she never criticized him or pointed out his shortcomings as others did. He was sure he would be happy with her through his whole life.

—3—

King Oskar I ascended the throne of Sweden and Norway in 1844, and the same year Karl Oskar Nilsson (the old-fashioned spelling of Nils’ Son was discarded by Karl Oskar, who had learned to write) took possession of “one-sixteenth of one homestead, Korpamoen.” He still carried the names of the King and the Crown Prince, but now the order of the names was reversed: the new King’s name was Oskar and the Crown Prince was Karl.

The price agreed upon for Korpamoen, with cattle and farming equipment, was seventeen hundred riksdaler. This sum (amounting to a little less than five hundred dollars in American money today) included the mortgage of eight hundred riksdaler. Nils and Märta also kept their “reserved rights” to the end of their days: living quarters in the spare room, winter and summer fodder for one cow and one sheep, three-quarters of an acre of arable land for their own sowing, with use of the owner’s team, and twelve bushels of grain yearly, half rye and half barley. In the preserved deed it can still be read: “The reserved rights to begin July 1, 1844, this agreement entered into with sound mind and ripe consideration has taken place in Korpamoen, June nineteenth of this year, in the presence of witnesses.” The deed bears the cross marks of Nils and Märta, who had never learned to write.

As was usual when parents ceded their farm with reserved rights, a division of inheritance was now undertaken. Each of the children received two hundred and ten riksdaler and twenty-four shillings. Robert and Lydia, not yet of age, let their shares remain as claims against their brother.

Karl Oskar had got what he wanted; and how was it with him as a beginner? During his seven years in service he had saved one hundred and fifty riksdaler; with his wife he had received as dowry two hundred riksdaler; his inheritance was two hundred and ten riksdaler. But this money amounted to only one-quarter of the sales price. The other three-quarters remained as debt, debt which carried interest. He must pay fifty riksdaler a year in interest on the mortgage. And his greatest debt was the reserved rights to his parents. Indeed, the reserved rights were heavy for so small a farm—but they must be sufficient for the parents’ maintenance. Karl Oskar’s obligation to them was a debt on the farm which he must continue to pay as long as they lived; and Nils was only fifty-one years of age, Märta forty-eight. It was hardly a farm that Karl Oskar had taken over—it was debts to pay, with interest. But debt could be blotted out through work, and so he did not worry: he knew how to work.

Thus life continued in Korpamoen: Nils and Märta moved into the little spare room where they were to live out their years; Kristina arrived with her dowry chest and took Märta’s place. It was a young farm wife who moved in. But with her own hands she had stitched the bridal cover which she now, the first evening, spread over the nuptial bed. It was the blue of cornflowers, and Märta had said it was nice; Kristina was proud.

Karl Oskar was pleased that his mother and wife could live in harmony; otherwise they might have caused each other great irritation. The contract stated that his mother had the right to cook in the kitchen and bake in the big bake oven; had they been unfriendly they could have been in each other’s way in every corner.

But one day Kristina was discovered by her mother-in-law in the threshing barn, where she was playing in a swing which she had secretly hung from the rafters. Märta excused it and said nothing; Kristina was still a child in her ways, with a desire for play still in her body. It was peculiar, however, that Kristina would want to play with a swing since she had once fallen from one, injuring her knee. Besides, the wild play did not suit a married woman. Luckily no outsider saw her in the barn, hence no rumors spread in the neighborhood.

There was, however, something in regard to Kristina which Nils and Märta did not like: on her mother’s side she was related to descendants of Åke Svensson, the founder of the Åkian sect. Her mother was Åke’s niece. And her uncle, Danjel Andreasson, was owner of Kärragärde, the meeting place for the Åkians in Ljuder. Of course, more than fifty years had elapsed since the instigator of this heresy, the troublemaker from Östergöhl, had died in Danvik’s asylum. As far as was generally known, nothing had survived in Kärragärde of the horrible Åkianist contagion. But the original ill feeling toward the founder had been so deeply rooted among a great many of the parishioners that it still survived—kinfolk of Åke Svensson did not brag about their relationship.

Nils and Märta said nothing to their daughter-in-law, but one day they did broach the question to Karl Oskar: “Do you know your wife is related to Åke of Östergöhl?”

“I’m aware of it—and I defy anyone to hold it against her.”

There was nothing more to be said. Märta and Nils only hoped that Kristina’s kinship with the Åkian founder wasn’t generally known in the village. In Korpamoen it was never mentioned again.

—4—

Early every weekday morning Nils emerged from the spare room, hobbling along on his crutches, slowly reaching his old workbench outside in the woodshed, where he remained through the day. He cut spokes for wagon wheels, he made rakes, and handles for axes and scythes. He could still use plane and chisel; his hands were in good health, and their dexterity remained. He taught Karl Oskar what he could of this handicraft.

During most of the summer days one could find Nils and his tools outside in the yard, where he sat in the shade of an old maple tree. From there he had a good view over the fields with all the piles of stone which his hands had gathered. His twenty-five farming years had indeed left marks; all the heaps of stone and all the stone fences which he had built remained in their places, and no doubt would long remain.

The invalid was not bitter. His belief was that all things happened according to God’s preordination. It was his conviction that God in the beginning had decided that a stone in his field—on a certain day, at a certain hour—would roll back into its hole. He would miss his foothold and fall, the stone would break his hip joint, and he would ever after crawl about like a wing-broken magpie. It would be presumptuous of him to question the Creator. Nils Jakob’s Son did not burden his brain with questions.

Now his son plowed and sowed the fields which he had cleared. He had fought the stones to the best of his ability; now his son reaped the benefit.

But Karl Oskar worried about debts and interest. If he only had a horse, then he could hire himself out and earn some money hauling timbers. But a one-sixteenth was too small to feed a horse, who chewed several barrels of oats during the winter; he needed three acres more to keep a horse. As it was he had to feed his parents and his wife and himself on seven acres, most of which was poor, sandy soil.

Soon he realized that he must clear more land.

He went out to inspect the unbroken ground belonging to Korpamoen. There were spruce woods and knolls, there were desolate sandy plains with juniper and pine roots, there were low swamplands with moss and cranberries, there were hillocks and tussock-filled meadows. The rest was strewn with stone. He carried an iron bar which he now and then stuck into the ground, and always he heard the same sound: stone. He went through pastures and meadows, through woodlands and moors, and everywhere the same sound: stone, stone, stone. It was a monotonous tune, a sad tune for a man who wanted to clear more acres.

Karl Oskar did not find a tenth of an acre within his boundaries left to clear; his father had done his work well; all arable ground was cultivated. What he now possessed to till and sow was all he would have. Until acres could be stretched and made broader than God created them, there would be no more arable land in Korpamoen.

And because the young farmer couldn’t continue creation where God had left off, he must be satisfied with his seven acres, and all the stones wherever he looked: broken stones, stones in piles, stone fences, stone above ground, stone in the ground, stone, stone, stone. . . .

King Oskar had ascended the throne of the kingdoms of Sweden and Norway; Karl Oskar Nilsson had become king in a stone kingdom.

—5—

His first year as a farmer—1845—was a good year. The crops were ample, he was able to pay the mortgage interest on time, and all was well. And in the spring Kristina had given birth to their first child, a daughter, christened Anna after Kristina’s mother.

The second year also they had good crops in Korpamoen, but the harvesting was poor. The rye sprouted in the shocks, and bread baked from the flour was soggy. They sold a calf and half of the pig to help pay interest on the mortgage, and the twenty riksdaler he was short Karl Oskar borrowed from his crippled father: it was money the old one had earned through his handiwork. In the midst of the August harvest Kristina bore a son; he was named Johan after his mother’s father in Duvemåla.