The Emigrants (29 page)

The dean’s brow wrinkled: a peasant leaving his farm to emigrate to North America—a new sign of that spiritual decay which had set in among the country people, tearing asunder holy ties. The outermost cause of this evil was disobedience of the Fourth Commandment; as a result of this primary disobedience, even the last tie might be broken, the tie holding people to the beloved fatherland.

“Your venture might be the ruination of you and yours; therefore I advise against it. And you must be aware I speak only for your good.”

“I think you mean well, Mr. Dean.”

Karl Oskar had always felt that his pastor was sincere in the fatherly care of his parishioners’ spiritual and temporal needs, even though at times he assumed too great authority.

The dean went on: Because the emigrants were driven by selfishness and lust of the flesh—man’s base, carnal desires—emigration to the United States was contrary to God’s commandments and the true evangelical Lutheran church. Emigrants from Sweden had already been made aware of this in a frightful way. A group of people from the northern provinces—from Helsingland and Dalecarlia—had been led astray by an apostle of the devil, an instrument of falsehood, a peasant named Erik Janson, and in their blindness had emigrated to North America. On their journey they were stricken by cholera, that scourge from God. Hundreds of the poor people had died before they reached their destination. The Lord God was a powerful avenger, and cholera His instrument. The horrible punishment had calmed restlessness at home in the last year, quenched desire to emigrate.

After the experience of these sectarians one could comprehend God’s opinion of emigration.

“Answer me honestly, Karl Oskar: Is it not the desire for high living that drives you to emigrate?”

Karl Oskar was still twisting his cap with both hands as before. He did not contemplate the voyage to North America in order to abandon himself to those vices enumerated in the catechism: debauchery, gluttony, adultery, and others, which tended to shorten one’s life. He had not had high living in mind, of that he was sure.

“No. It isn’t because of that. Do not think so, Mr. Dean. It isn’t because I desire high living.”

“I believe your word,” said the dean. “But you are seized by the spirit of dissatisfaction. Otherwise you would remain in the land of your fathers. And have you thought of your parents, whom you abandon? And your father a cripple!”

“Their reserved rights go with the property, as usual. The old ones will manage.”

“But if all young people and those fit for work should emigrate, and leave the old and decrepit behind, who would then take care of the helpless?”

Karl Oskar kept silent, twisting his cap with fumbling, clumsy fingers. If only he were quick-witted; whatever he might say, the dean would surely put him in the wrong. And it seemed to him that he must tell his pastor it was time to stop his dissuasion. If the bishop himself were to come to the dean’s aid, he, Karl Oskar, still would not change his mind; nay, not even if the King tried to persuade him. Moreover, it was too late.

He now said, somewhat tartly: “I’ve already sold out. I’m free and without obligations. Perhaps I could have my errand attended to . . . ?”

Dean Brusander sat down and leaned his head against the high back of his chair. He set his lips, and his mouth took on a sterner look.

This peasant from Korpamoen seemed on the surface tractable and decent; but apparently he had a bullish nature. Through all the dean’s kindness and repeated advice he had not been able to move Karl Oskar one iota. Occasionally he had answered a few words, but for the most part he had persisted in a silence that was deaf to God’s words and his pastor’s admonitions. No human power could remove the man’s emigration notions. And now he sounded almost importunate, as he referred to his errand. It might well be that he lacked respect for the office of the ministry. Perhaps after all he was a horse of a different color.

At any rate, the dean had done his duty as teacher and pastor. And he was pretty sure this farmer would be alone in his America ideas. This desire for emigration among the peasantry, which had broken out here and there throughout the kingdom, would probably die down as quickly as it had flared up. Twenty years from now there would be no one in the land with a mind to emigrate.

“You shall have your papers!”

A silence ensued. Only the quill’s scratching against the paper was heard from the desk. Karl Oskar took a step backward, as if wishing to leave the dean undisturbed with his writing.

Dean Brusander turned and handed the farmer the extract from the parish register.

“Once I gave you Christian baptism. Once I prepared you for the Lord’s Supper. I’ve baptized your children. Now I pray God to bless you and yours during your voyage to a faraway land. May you never regret your bold decision!”

Karl Oskar bowed. “Thank you, Mr. Dean.”

Brusander extended his hand. “May you be within God’s protection! Such was the blessing of our forebears at times of parting.”

“Thank you most kindly, Mr. Dean.”

And Karl Oskar bowed once more, this time perhaps deeper than he had ever bowed to the dean before. After all, it was the last time he would bow to his parish pastor.

Dean Brusander wrote a few words in the parish register, words which he never before had written about any one of his parishioners: he noted that homeowner Karl Oskar Nilsson of Korpamoen, on the twenty-eighth of March, 1850, had requested extracts from the records for himself and his household for emigration to N. America.

And the remaining blank pages in the parish register were in time to be filled with the repeated notation: “Moved to N. America.” Through years and decades they were to be filled, page after page, with the names of Karl Oskar Nilsson’s followers.

XI

ONE EMIGRANT PAYS NO FARE

—1—

In the newspaper
Barometern,
to which some of the farmers in the village subscribed, there appeared early in spring a news item about a lost emigrant ship: “Owing to absence of communications of any kind, one is now forced to admit the sad foundering and total loss of the small schooner
Betty Catharina,
built in 1835, measuring 80 lasts, on voyage from Söderhamn to New York. The schooner had taken on a load of pig iron in Söderhamn. On board the vessel were 70 emigrants who had left their fatherland to seek a precarious living in a foreign country. The
Betty Catharina
sailed through the straits of Öre Sund on April the 15th of last year but since that date her owner, the firm P. C. Rettig et Cie., has had no word from her. Since now almost a year has passed without the slightest information as to the ship’s whereabouts, notice of the deaths of the crew—nine men—has been published in their respective home communities. The ship’s Master was Captain Anders Otto Rönning. The emigrants came from different parishes in Helsingland; among them were 25 women and 20 children.”

This copy of the paper was widely read in the village, and no wonder, in those days; it was even lent to families who did not subscribe. Berta of Idemo brought it to Korpamoen, and Kristina read about the ship whose sailing time was supposed to be about five weeks yet after fifty weeks had not reached her destination. The
Betty Catharina
’s passengers had not arrived in a new land; they had emigrated to the bottom of the ocean.

A stab of pain went through Kristina’s heart as she tucked in her three little ones that evening—“. . . among them were 25 women and 20 children.” All her earlier anxiety returned and pressed upon her. The children were left in her care by God—wasn’t she an irresponsible mother to take her helpless little ones out in a fragile ship to cross the forbidding ocean? She did not fear for her own life; but had she the right to endanger her children? If they went down with the ship, then it was she who drowned them, and God would ask accounting for them on the Day of Judgment: How did you look after your children? What did you do with them? Who forced you out on the ocean? Weren’t you warned of the danger?

Wasn’t the notice of the lost ship a last warning from God, arriving as it did on the eve of their departure?

Karl Oskar said that most people on land died in their beds, yet people went to bed every evening. Only fools were frightened by stories of wrecks. Robert wasn’t afraid either. He wasn’t old enough, he didn’t have his mature senses as yet. As if it were a pleasure to him, he now read a horrible piece to Kristina from his
History of Nature,
about “The Billows of the Sea.”

“Because water is a liquid which can be stirred up, so it is also moved by wind and storm. This causes billows which are great or small depending on the wind’s intensity and the size and depths of the sea. In heavy storms on the great seas the billows rise above each other to a height of thirty or forty feet; then they fall down with unbelievable power and crush all in their way. When such a huge billow falls over a ship it may break away large pieces of the vessel, splinter yard-thick masts, yea, even fill the whole ship with water, making it sink immediately.”

“Think of it, Kristina!” exclaimed Robert excitedly. “Waves three times as high as this house!”

“Are you trying to make me feel better about the voyage?”

And she couldn’t help smiling at the boy. He didn’t care what might happen as long as he became free and got out into the world. But he had only his own life to account for.

Kristina did not wish to approach Karl Oskar with her worries. She had once agreed that all should be as he decided, and she couldn’t take back her words. He had once and for all assumed responsibility for their emigration. She liked to lean on him and have confidence in him. He was headstrong and stubborn, but she liked a husband who could order and decide for her at times; what woman would be satisfied with a weakling, a shillyshallying husband? All the men in the Nilsa family, born with the big nose, were said to have been like Karl Oskar; unafraid, perhaps even a little refractory, not to be swayed, never yielding. Of all the men she knew, Karl Oskar was the one who most definitely knew what he wanted, and because of this she liked him.

Kristina had not felt well lately; she was weak and had lost her appetite. At first she thought this might be caused by her worrying about the America journey. But when—on getting out of bed one morning—she had to run outside behind the gable and throw up, she knew how things stood with her. She had had this ailment before, four times. It always followed the same course: her monthly bleeding was delayed beyond its time, then came weakness, loss of appetite, worry and mental depression; and at last the vomiting, as a final confirmation. Everything fitted in, there was no longer any doubt, she was pregnant again.

She had feared a new pregnancy. She still gave the breast to the little one and intended to continue to suckle him—Berta of Idemo had said that women would not become pregnant while still suckling a baby. Berta herself had suckled each of her children three years, and within a month after stopping each time she had become pregnant again. It had never failed. Occasionally there might be a wife in the neighborhood who suckled her children until they started school; when the children had to eat from food baskets they must stop suckling and eat the food of grownups. Rarely did it happen that a mother went with her child to school in order to feed it from her breast in between lessons; children who didn’t stop suckling at school age were usually dull-witted; they hung on to their mother’s apron-strings, always hungry, always pulling up a chair for her to sit on.

Berta’s advice had not helped Kristina, but, indeed, the old woman had been careful to add: if she should become pregnant while still suckling her baby, then that might be the fault of Karl Oskar. Some men had seeds so vital that no prevention ever helped.

A few times during the past year Kristina had been seized by an evil temptation. She had wanted to pray to God that He would not make her pregnant any more. This thought had come over her for the first time when she laid Anna in the coffin after only four years on earth; she did not wish to bear children who were to die. But she had been able to withstand the temptation, she had not prayed this sinful prayer. How very sinful it would have been she realized now, when a new life was being created within her.

She must resign herself to the decision of the Highest One. As yet she had said nothing to Karl Oskar.

—2—

One thought constantly hammered within Kristina’s head during the evening before their departure: Do not forget anything. Up to the last moment she kept finding indispensable objects, things which must be taken along but which she had not thought of earlier. She had forgotten tapers, and pitch splinters—they would no doubt need light sometimes while traveling. The children would want playthings on the ship—for Johan she took a clay cuckoo, and Lill-Märta must have her rag doll—neither one was bulky. The baby Harald, who during the last days had taken his first stumbling steps across the floor, and who handled toys only in a destructive way, could be without anything. She was annoyed with herself when she came across the tripod copper kettle, a wedding gift from her parents; why hadn’t she thought of it before!

Now the only space she could find for the kettle was among the bedclothes in one of the sacks that had not yet been sewn up. As she put her hand into the sack to make room for the kettle she got hold of a pair of children’s shoes, ragged and worn out. They were Anna’s shoes! It was her first pair of shoes—and her last.

Kristina stood, deeply moved, with the tiny shoes in her hand. None of the other children could use them, they were too far gone, they barely held together in the seams; she remembered she had thrown them away. Karl Oskar must have picked them up and put them in the sack that was to go with them to America.

As soon as the girl had learned to walk she had followed her father, in these shoes she had often walked with him, in them she had gone long distances at his side. And as Kristina now found them in the sack they conveyed something new to her about her husband.