The Emigrants (13 page)

He couldn’t believe anything else but that in some way they could walk around the ocean.

“It’s impossible. No one can walk to America.”

“It’s impossible? There is no way?” Arvid’s eyes were pleading for any little hope, the barest possibility, even if it meant the longest and most difficult road.

Robert answered definitely: No one could walk dryshod to a land which was surrounded on all sides by water. Arvid could see that on the map at schoolmaster Rinaldo’s. America lay there like a vast island in the world sea; they could not walk around that body of water.

“Under no circumstances?”

“Under no circumstances.”

Arvid’s face fell. Robert continued: In any case, that way was so long that if Arvid were to walk it he would not arrive until he was eighty, just in time to lie down in his grave. And he must take the village shoemaker with him to prepare him a new pair of boots a couple of times a year to replace the worn-out ones.

Arvid sat silent again, very long. Then he mumbled something between his teeth—four words: “That God-damned ocean!”

At last he crawled into bed, still cursing the ocean which separated the Old and the New Worlds. That evening he swore himself to sleep.

NOTE

1
. $43.50 in today’s currency.

IV

KARL OSKAR AND KRISTINA

—1—

In this year—“the 5,850th since the creation of the world,” according to the almanac—the early summer was the driest in thirty-one years.

During the month of June not a drop of rain fell. Dry, harsh winds from east and north blew constantly, but never the west wind, the wind of rain. The sun glared day after day from a cloudless sky. The grass in glades and meadows turned coarse and rough, rustling underfoot. The winter rye stopped growing at knee-height; grazing ended, and the cows went dry.

Haying commenced before June had passed; to leave the ready ripened grass standing would risk its strength. Hillocks and knolls turned brown-red—the color of animal blood, foretelling death under the knife for cattle, with fodder shortage ahead.

Karl Oskar and Kristina harvested the meager hay grown in their meadow. The straws were so short and spindly that the rake could hardly catch them; one could almost count the straws, Karl Oskar said.

He was angry and bitter as he raked; last year was a wet year and hay rotted in the swaths or washed away in the flood. This year it was drought, and the hay burned up. Which was the better for the farmer? Which one could satisfy him?

This year the only moisture in Karl Oskar’s field was his own sweat. The Lord’s weather was either too wet or too dry. Of what help was it, then, to bend one’s back and toil and struggle? The Lord’s weather ruined everything for him, all his labor was in vain.

“It’s all the fault of the Lord’s weather!”

Kristina stopped raking and looked at him gravely.

“Don’t be impious, Karl Oskar.”

“But—is this hay, or is it cats’ hair? Is it worth our work?”

And Karl Oskar was gripped by sudden anger: he seized a wisp of hay on his rake and threw it up into the air while he shouted heavenwards: “As you have taken the rest of the hay you might as well have this, too!”

Kristina let out a shriek, terror-stricken: Karl Oskar had challenged the Lord in heaven and on earth. Her eyes followed the wisp of hay as if she expected it to reach the heavens. But the straws did not get high above the earth, they were separated from each other by the wind and, scattering over the meadow, they fell slowly to the ground. No one up there in heaven would accept the hay.

“Karl Oskar. You have blasphemed.”

Kristina stood there, her cheeks white, her hands clutching the rake handle. Her husband had thrown their hay back to Him above because he was not satisfied. What was he doing? How dared he? Did he no longer fear his Creator? He must know that God would not allow mockery. Frightened, she looked toward the sky as if she expected that the presumptuous one would receive his punishment immediately.

“May God forgive you! May God forgive what you did!”

Karl Oskar did not answer. Silently he began to rake together a new swath. He had indeed learned God’s commandments, he knew the Lord endured no mockery, and he felt a pang within him. He had lost his temper, the gesture with the hay would have been better undone, those words should not have been uttered.

The clear words of the Bible proclaimed that man on earth should eat his bread in the sweat of his brow; he asked no better than to be allowed to do this. But as he gave his sweat, so would he like also to receive in return the bread. He did not think it too much to ask that all might happen according to God’s own words.

In silence they continued to harvest their hay. But the meadow hay barn which in good years was too small was this year not half filled.

The drought continued.

Their well dried up and the people in Korpamoen carried water from an old spring in the forest. Hungry and thirsty, the cattle stood all day long at the stile, lowing plaintively. The fields were scorched as if fire had passed over them. In the beginning of August the birches turned yellow and began to lose their leaves. The summer had never had time to bloom and ripen before the autumn set in; this summer had died in its youth.

Karl Oskar had a stiff neck from looking for rain clouds. At times clouds did appear, dry clouds, empty smoke rings that passed across the heavens, visions of deceit, a cruel mockery. A few tiny scattered drops fell at times; they were like scorn.

The rye stood overripe, the grains ready to drop from the heads. At the cutting they must be careful not to lose some of the invaluable kernels. Karl Oskar and Kristina brought the quilted bedcover with them into the field, and spread it on the stubble before the swath of the scythe. They moved the quilt gradually, for the cut straws to fall on it and remain there while being tied into sheaves. Thus grains which might fall from the heads were collected on the quilt and saved. From the ground Kristina gleaned the broken heads, gathering them in her apron; when evening came they had collected in the cover a tenth of a bushel of the drop-rye, sufficient for a few loaves of bread. The rye field yielded only a third of its usual crop in this year of drought: what would one loaf of bread count when winter came?

Kristina tied the corners of the quilt into a sack and carried it home under her arm. Four years ago it had been her bridal spread, her cover during the first night with her mate, when she was transformed from maid to wife. Now the bridal cover was with them in their field and helped to garner their bread; it belonged closely to their lives.

Kristina thought: Four years ago, when this cover was new, Karl Oskar had more to say to me. Why is he nowadays so silent? She mused: Now he spoke mostly of work to be done; in the morning about what must be done that day, in the evening about tomorrow’s work. And at least once a day either he or she said: Still no rain!

During this summer all people, it seemed, had become serious and sullen and short-tempered; the weather affected their minds. Talk was about the dire winter ahead, as though no one had a right to be joyous now because of the crop failure. Not even children dared show happiness: when a child laughed some older person at hand spoke harshly and silenced it. And all continued to speak of this: What would happen next winter?

Karl Oskar blamed everything on the drought. When he returned empty-handed from a day in the woods with gun and dog, this was because of the dried-up ground: the dog could get no scent of game. When he pulled nets and lines empty from the tarn, he blamed this on the drought: heat drove the fish into the depths. And three times he had brought a cow to the bull with no result: this too because of the drought. Such an opinion did not seem reasonable, as part of the blame might be laid on the bull. But Karl Oskar said that his neighbor, Jonas Petter of Hästebäck, was also unable to get his cows with calf because of the heat.

One night toward the end of August Kristina was awakened by a great thunder. She was afraid of storms and she called her husband.

Karl Oskar sat up in bed and listened. It rumbled and thundered, and lightning flashed past the window. Shirt-clad only, he ran to stand on the porch, hands outstretched. An occasional fat raindrop fell; once it began there would be heavy showers. He could go back to bed and sleep again in the blissful knowledge that there would be rain.

He returned inside. Kristina was comforting the children, awake and frightened by the lightning and thunder.

Anna, the oldest child, was now in her fourth year and all were of the opinion that she had a mind far ahead of her years. She was wont to follow Karl Oskar in his work outside, close to him everywhere; if he drove or walked, the child was with him. He called her his big helper. Wise as an eight-year-old, he said.

The thunder boomed again, and Anna asked: “Will the lightning kill us tonight, Mother?”

“No! What nonsense! Who has given you such an idea?”

“Father. He said we are to die—all of us.”

“Yes, yes, but not tonight.”

“When will we die, Mother?”

“No one knows, no one except God. Go back to sleep now!”

And Kristina’s eyes turned questioningly to Karl Oskar: What had he said to the child? He smiled and explained. When he had gone with Anna through the pastures recently they had found a dead baby rabbit, and then she had asked if they were to become like the rabbit, if they were all to die. He had replied in the affirmative. He could not lie about such things to a child. But ever after the girl asked whomsoever she met when they were to die. The other day she had embarrassed her grandmother with the same question. He had had to assure his mother that the question was the child’s own idea. She was a strange child, Anna.

Karl Oskar was very proud of this daughter, his big girl.

A clap of thunder sounded, louder than before, and the lightning pierced their eyes, sharp and blinding.

Kristina let out a shriek.

“Did it strike?”

“If so, it was near.”

But the heavy rain was slow in coming; only an occasional few drops smote the windowpanes. Karl Oskar could not help the rain to fall, and he went back to bed. Before he was asleep the window was again brilliant, with a new light; but this time it was not lightning cutting through the dark and disappearing. This time the light remained, mobile and flickering.

The young farmer leapt up.

“There is a fire!”

“My dear God!”

“It’s burning somewhere!”

As Karl Oskar reached the window he could see that the light came from the hay meadow.

“The meadow barn! The meadow barn has caught on fire!”

He ran outside, only half dressed, followed by his wife. By now Nils and Märta also had awakened in their room, and Kristina called to them to look after the children.

Karl Oskar ran to the well where two water buckets stood filled from the forest spring; he thrust one bucket at his wife and they rushed down the meadow with a pail each in their hands. The water splashed to and fro, and when they arrived at the burning hay barn hardly more than half of it was left. Nor did it matter; the fire by now had reached such proportions that a couple of buckets of water would be of no help. The whole barn was burning, flames leaping high from the dry shingled roof which went up like tinder. A fierce, voracious lightning-fire was burning, and it had found delicious fare: an old dry barn filled with the harvested hay.

The owners of the hay barn—the young farm couple—approached the fire as closely as they could for the heat. They stood there, water pails in their hands, and watched the fire; they just stood and watched, like a pair of surprised, amazed children listening to a cruel and horrible tale which—God be praised—could not be true.

People from neighboring farms had already seen the fire and come running. They too soon realized it would be hopeless to try to stop this fire. The conflagration had the barn within its scorching jaws—no one could hinder it from swallowing its’ prey.

Luckily, there was no wind. But the neighbors remained to see that the fire did not spread; what might not happen once it were loose in the drought-dry woods?

Already the rain was over; a few heavy drops had fallen, hardly enough to wet the stones on the ground.

Swiftly the meadow barn was burned, and hay and all became embers and sullen ashes. Karl Oskar and Kristina walked back to the farmhouse; there had been nothing for them to do, they had done nothing. On the way home they walked quite slowly, they did not run, nothing was urgent any more. In their hands they still carried their buckets, half full of water; without thinking, they, carried the water home again.

At the meadow stile they met Nils on his way to the fire, hobbling on his crutches. He had managed half the way when his son and daughter-in-law told him to turn back. But he sat down on the stile to rest; for many years he had not walked so far from the house.

Watching the fire, Karl Oskar and Kristina had not exchanged a single word. They had only looked at each other a few times; perhaps they had been thinking the same thoughts.

Now on the way home Kristina said, “Do you remember the harvest this summer? When you threw the hay upwards?”

“Yes.”

“It happened as you asked.”

Karl Oskar kept silent; he could find no answer.

She continued: “It was the punishment. God allows no mockery.”

Karl Oskar in Korpamoen walked back to his home carrying his bucket. He walked with bent head and looked at the ground. What Kristina had said was true. This time the Lord had answered his prayer—He had taken the rest of the hay.

—2—

The east wind blew and no rain fell. Those who could read in the book of the future predicted that rain would never fall again. Last time the Lord had wished to destroy mankind through flood, now He intended to do it through drought, and this time no Noah would be saved with wife and children to propagate a new race.

Karl Oskar sowed his winter rye on the fallow land, strewn with hard clods of earth—gray, lumpy, and unfertile as a field of crushed stone. Even below the topsoil the earth was scorched. It seemed futile planting here, he might as well sow in the ashes of his hearth. Last spring he had sown four bushels of barley in one field; now in autumn he harvested four bushels in return. What did he gain by all his work? Why should he plant seed corn in the earth when the earth did not multiply it? Nothing would germinate here before the rains came and loosed the hard crust of the field.