The Emigrants (21 page)

The child had eaten of the barley porridge.

Of the wretched barley which grew last summer they had garnered only a few bushels, and of this a small portion had been ground to grits. From the last grits Kristina had cooked porridge for the christening. But when the barley field stood green, no one had said to the child: If you eat of this you shall surely die!

Anna had died because the earth here was cursed. It must be so; this field where the deadly barley had grown must be stricken by the Lord’s word to Adam.

Karl Oskar beheld the pale beggar children wandering about, searching for sustenance in the refuse piles, and he thought: My child found good food, her bowels burst from sugared and buttered barley porridge. Yet she too was a pawn to hunger.

For many weeks after the funeral Kristina was crushed; most of what she did she did wrongly, and other chores stayed undone. A thousand times she reproached herself, asking: Why didn’t I hide the bowl of christening porridge where no one could find it? Why didn’t I let the children taste it before putting it away? If I had done this, Anna would be alive.

A long time elapsed, and the parents had not mentioned the name of their dead child. They never spoke of the little girl they had lost; their sorrow would have become doubly heavy if it had been brought out into clear daylight, and its power acknowledged. Now they tried to push it away, not let it penetrate beyond thought. As long as words didn’t help, why use them? Exchanged between two mourning people, they were only a dissonant sound, disturbing the bitter consolation of silence.

A month had passed since Anna’s funeral when Kristina one evening said to Karl Oskar: After what had happened, she had now changed her mind; she was not averse to their emigration to North America. Before, she had thought she would be lacking in responsibility if she endangered her children’s lives on the ocean. Now she had learned that God could take her little ones even on dry land, in spite of her great care. She had come to believe that her children would be equally safe on the stormy sea, if she entrusted them to the Highest. Moreover, she would never feel the same in this place again. And so—if he thought it would be best for them and their children to emigrate, she would comply. They could know nothing of what was in store for them in so doing, but she wanted to take part in the emigration, she wished to go away with Karl Oskar.

The couple agreed: they would look for passage in the spring of next year.

So the decision had been reached, a decision which determined the course of life for both of them, which determined the fate of their children, the result of which would stretch through time to come to unborn generations—the decision which was to determine the birthplace of their grandchildren, and their grandchildren’s children.

VIII

WITH GOD’S HELP AND THROUGH THE ASSISTANCE OF THE AUTHORITIES

—1—

One day in February the churchwarden, Per Persson, came to Dean Brusander with grave tidings: behind locked doors in Kärragärde Danjel Andreasson gathered his house folk and neighbors to nightly meetings and administered the Lord’s Holy Supper.

At first the dean would not believe his warden: the news was too shocking. But Per Persson had the word of eyewitnesses; some young people happening by the other night had peeked in through the windows in Kärragärde, and had seen people gathered inside around a Communion table. After hearing of this, he himself last night had gone to the farm and looked through the window to ascertain the truth. He had seen some ten people sitting around a table, while Danjel conducted confession and Communion among them; no person with eyesight could remain in doubt as to what was taking place. By reliable people in the neighborhood he had also been informed that Danjel, through one of the timber drivers, had sent to Karlshamn for several gallons of Communion wine.

Dean Brusander sat for a long while with bent head after hearing the warden’s report.

He had tried to bring Danjel Andreasson back into the church through peaceful and gentle means. He had warned, and thought he had enlightened him with kind admonitions. He had sought with mild measures to correct his false opinions of God and spiritual freedom. He had avoided commotion in the parish, and had treated the poor man with caution and consideration. Only when Andreasson had inoculated simple, spineless people with his poison, and had continued to gather them to meetings in his house, had Dean Brusander excluded him from the Lord’s altar. But through all his kindness, patience, and tolerance with the strayed one, he had apparently only given freer scope for the Evil Spirit: the miserable people in Kärragärde were now led so far by the devil that they confessed and held Communion among themselves.

The sacred sacraments, Christ’s body and blood, the church’s most holy jewel and exclusive prerogative, these sacraments were desecrated by an ignorant peasant, they were soiled by the hands of a coarse and criminal person. Andreasson was inflated with spiritual vanity; he had commenced with Bible explanations and thereby encroached upon the ministry, later his presumption had gone so far that in his house he organized his own congregation and held his own church.

Thus Danjel Andreasson in Kärragärde set himself above temporal and spiritual ordinances. If God still hesitated and did not defend His holy and catholic church, then secular authorities must enter in, must discipline the strayed ones, rebuke the leader and agitator.

Per Persson said: What now took place in Kärragärde would stir and upset parish people profoundly.

Deeply grieved, Brusander looked at his warden. “I fear the same. We must immediately avert these excesses.”

He now wished to ask the advice of Per Persson, his most trusted churchwarden. Brusander had been unlucky in his choice of wardens: one used to steal into the sacristy during weekdays and drink from the Communion wine, so that one Sunday when Brusander had announced a Communion he had been forced to call it off; another had appeared drunk in church and placed the numbers of the hymns upside down; a third had, on the holy Christmas morning, repaired to a corner of the organ loft and there let his water, in the presence of several women. But always the dean had had full confidence in Per Persson. Because he consumed only a fifth of brännvin per day he was, in sobriety, a worthy example for other parishioners. It was true that ugly rumors had circulated concerning his moral life, but these were, fortunately, unverified. When he had been accused of causing the pregnancy of a fifteen-year-old girl boarding in his house, as a parish pauper, the dean had questioned him privately, and Per Persson had repudiated the false accusation, saying it was spread by the malicious and jealous. And it was a fact that the warden’s great success in worldly affairs had made him the object of much jealousy in the parish.

“Speak freely, Per Persson! What means shall we use against these Åkians?”

The warden answered: Old parishioners remembered how much trouble Åke Svensson had caused in his day. This time they must prevent the dissenters from disturbing the parish tranquillity. There were already hot-tempered persons who wished forcibly to chastise Danjel and his followers: a few sturdy men intended to go one evening to Kärragärde and with suitable weapons drive out the devil. This Per Persson had heard; but he thought it would be ill-advised and cause an unhealthy stir in the parish.

The dean agreed; he could easily understand the noble zeal which called for forcible discipline against the Åkians; if a few good men were to go to Andreasson’s house on such an errand, then this in itself would be commendable, proving an ardent devotion to the purity of evangelical teachings. But he must disapprove; they could use legal means only against the sectarians.

The churchwarden wished also to report that there were people who spoke well of Danjel and lauded his generosity toward the poor and homeless. As yet they weren’t many, but their numbers might increase, and it would menace community peace and order if two parties were to arise, one for and one against the Åkians.

“May God prevent such a calamity!” exclaimed the dean with emphasis.

The peasant of Kärragärde showed an exaggerated and harmful zeal for things in themselves good, thereby misleading credulous people. No tempter was more dangerous than he who twisted the tools of deceptive goodness into the service of transgression. Brusander realized that he ought to have used stronger means against Danjel Andreasson’s activities from the very beginning.

“The ministry must call on the secular authorities for help,” advised the warden. “This malpractice of dissenters cannot be handled in any other way.”

The dean nodded eagerly. He, also, could see no other way. And a conviction began to take shape within him: an overpowering certitude that God’s patience with the heretics in Kärragärde was now drained to the last drop.

He asked the churchwarden to keep him posted when the Åkians next prepared to gather round their unlawful Communion table in Kärragärde. This Per Persson promised before he left; a couple of boys would help him and watch near Danjel’s to keep him informed.

Dean Brusander had been working on his next Sunday’s sermon when the warden arrived, and his thoughts returned to his work when he was again alone. It was the first Sunday after Septuagesima, and the Bible text was the story in St. Matthew, Chapter 8—of Christ driving the devil from two possessed men into a herd of swine which charged down a steepness into the sea, to perish in its waters. Now, with the churchwarden’s news fresh in his mind, he realized how profound this text was, a text that called for explanation and application. And to those listeners familiar with the appalling happenings in Kärragärde, little explanation was necessary: “And when He was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way. . . .” In like manner today, any man within this parish, on any road or at any moment, might meet a man in plain peasant dress who was possessed by the devil and tempted with the Evil One’s words and promises. Never before during his time in office had he so felt the urgency of his message as he did about next Sunday’s sermon.

Dean Brusander looked out through the window; snow had fallen the whole day, it was still snowing, and drifts were beginning to form on the road outside the parsonage. With an expression of concern his eyes followed the wafting flakes: perhaps the heavy snowfall might keep distant parishioners from church on Sunday, and they would miss a sermon of the utmost importance to their spiritual welfare.

Brusander was the son of a peasant who had fed and brought up eighteen children in a little cottage with two windows. He thus sprang from the peasantry which made up his congregation. He was the eighteenth child, and his mother had died at his birth. Even in early childhood he felt a strong call to the ministry; he had studied under great hardship, with no financial aid from his poor father, who was barely able to provide him with food during his school years in Växiö. But the peasantry in these parts were flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone; he felt for these people as for his own children, and embraced them in fatherly love and devotion. He grieved over their vices and errors, their ignorance and drunkenness, their violence and whoring. But most of the parishioners were peace-loving, pious and devout, and hitherto subservient to their spiritual teachers and others who had fatherly power over them.
Hitherto
—he stopped short at that word; in these latter days, he had observed a dangerous sign of change.

At this time a great unrest was visiting all nations. The people were revolting, using force against their legal authorities, and many heretical teachings were spread and believed. The old and approved order was being thrown aside, the customs of forebears disregarded. The evil had its roots in disobedience to God’s Fourth Commandment, in the disintegration of the bonds between children and parents, between servants and masters, subjects and authority. Those holy bonds which, according to God’s ordinance, kept society united, and preserved order and security, had been attacked by gnawing, corroding evil.

Even in Ljuder Parish there had been signs of contempt for authority, and disobedience toward masters. Maids and farmhands left their employers in the middle of the service year, and had to be returned to their duty by the sheriff. In a few cases the authorities had been so lenient that the escaped servants were not returned to their service but had been allowed to go their way. Such happenings were spots of shame on a Christian church; such examples were dangerous. If the servant law were not obeyed by servants, society might sink into lawlessness, wildest disorder might ensue. Regard for laws and ordinances in force was based on the Fourth Commandment, tranquillity and security depended on that very commandment. God’s world order rested primarily on adherence to His Ten Commandments, and the servant law—being part of God’s world order—could not be set aside without setting aside the whole order; it was the covenant between masters and servants.

It became more and more apparent that literacy was, in the main, harmful to the common man who couldn’t use it wisely. As knowledge of reading spread, so also spread heresy, dissension, and insubordination. Simple folk made wrong use of their reading knowledge. Here the authorities ought to keep stricter supervision and inspection; if you gave to the people a new knowledge—useful in itself—then you must also see to it that this knowledge was not abused. This was the holy duty of the authorities; the people must feel the guiding paternal hand. And the first duty of a spiritual teacher was to impress upon the common man the enduring order, created after God’s will and not to be changed without His permission.

But the fundamental cornerstone of the community’s existence was unity in religion. One God, one church, one congregation which strove to be one soul—only when humanity reached this perfection would the kingdom of God be established on earth, for eternity.

The Åkians broke religious unity and tried to overthrow God’s church. And who was the Enemy insinuating himself with fair words and promises—to cause strife and dissension among them? Hotheaded but righteous men in the parish wanted forcibly to throw out the devil from Kärragärde. It was a method of simple folk, but their intent was Christian. God had been patient, and had waited, but now the time had come to defend the sanctity of the ministry and the purity of religion.