The Emigrants (31 page)

Nils and Märta stood on the stoop.

“Drive carefully through the gate,” said Nils to the boy who drove. Those were the last words his departing sons heard him utter. And the admonition was pertinent: the gate was narrow for such a broad wagon, the steering shaft caught one of the posts, and the team with the load could barely make it through the gate.

“Everything is narrow, here at home!” said Robert.

Karl Oskar was sitting next to the driver with Johan on his knee. Kristina sat behind with the smaller children, who in spite of the early hour were fully awake, looking about them with their clear eyes. Robert sat on the horses’ hay sack on top of the load.

As they reached the village road Karl Oskar turned a last time and looked toward the house: his father and mother were still on the porch, watching the departing ones—his father gnarled and stooped and hanging on his crutches, his mother close by her husband’s side, tall, her back straight. Here on the wagon sat the young ones, departing—there stood the old ones, left behind.

Karl Oskar could not see either of his parents make the slightest movement. As they stood there on the stoop, looking after the wagon, they seemed to him as still and immobile as dead, earth-bound things, as a pair of high stones in the field or a couple of tree trunks in the forest, deeply rooted in the ground. It was as if they had assumed that position once and for all, and intended to hold it forever. And as he saw them in the half-mist, this early morning, so they were forever to return to his mind: Father and Mother, standing quietly together on the stoop, looking after a cart driving through the gate and onto the road and after a minute disappearing among the junipers at the bend. In that place and in that position his parents would always remain in his mind. After many years he would still see them standing there, close together, looking out on the road, immobile objects, two human sculptures in stone.

Kristina did not mention to Karl Oskar that she had happened to hear a remark by Nils as the wagon was ready to depart: “I must go outside and behold my sons’ funeral procession.”

—2—

The spring was late this year; the ground lay frozen still. There had been a freeze during the night, and the April morning was chilly; the sky was overcast and it was not yet full daylight. The load was heavy but the wheels rolled lightly on the frozen road.

From his high seat on the hay sack Robert could see the horses’ manes waving below him like young birches in the wind. Their strong-muscled necks rose and sank at regular intervals, their hairy flanks moved in soft billows, and the sharp horseshoes cut sparks from the stones in the road. Anticipation without measure filled his breast: this was no ordinary mill-wagon, this was not a slow timber load, nor was it a depressing Sunday church carriage. At last he was riding the chariot of adventure.

He would reach the sea tomorrow.

They passed Nybacken, and as the wagon gained speed downhill on the other side of the farm, Robert began to whistle. He could not hold back any longer, and his brother and sister-in-law said nothing about it.

He whistled a piece again as they passed the parsonage: he wondered if it could be considered sacrilegious. He had not asked for his papers, and he could hear the dean call his name at all the yearly examinations: Farmhand Robert Nilsson, not heard from since 1850. And the dean would write: Whereabouts unknown. After ten or twenty years it would still be written about him: Whereabouts unknown.

Every time they came to a gate on the road Robert jumped down to open it. Before they reached Åkerby Junction he had opened five. He counted them carefully, he was to be gate-boy, he must count all the gates on the road to America.

The road also went through pasturelands, where the gates had been removed for the winter; but Robert still counted the openings as gates on the America road—if their emigration had been delayed a month, these gates too would have been closed.

Lill-Märta and Harald had gone to sleep in their mother’s arms, rocked to sleep by the movement of the wagon, Johan played driver, holding on to one rein and shouting at the horses. Karl Oskar and Kristina sat silent and serious, their eyes tarrying on well-known places: this is the brook with the swimming hole, we are passing it for the last time; in this meadow we will never see the lilies of the valley in spring again. We want to remember what these places are like, we are anxious to remember them—they were once part of our youth. . . .

The emigrants had agreed to meet at Åkerby Junction, and the other wagons awaited them there. Danjel of Kärragärde had hired a team from Kråkesjö. He too had a heavy load—his wife, his four children, and Ulrika of Västergöhl. Jonas Petter of Hästebäck drove his own single-horse wagon and was accompanied by his hired man, who was to drive the horse back from Karlshamn. Two of the people from Kärragärde, unable to find room on Danjel’s wagon, rode with Jonas Petter—the farmhand Arvid, and Ulrika’s daughter Elin.

The wagon from Korpamoen had, besides its load, four full-grown persons, and Jonas Petter thought it should be made lighter; Robert therefore moved over to him and found a seat between the driver and Elin. Behind him, next to Jonas Petter’s hired man, sat Arvid, who now welcomed Robert with a broad grin; the two farmhands from Nybacken were journeying together to the New World after all. Otherwise things weren’t going as they had planned during their nightly combats with the bedbugs in Aron’s stable room: they didn’t sneak away in secrecy on a load of timber, nor were they alone on their journey.

There were nineteen of them at the meeting at Åkerby Junction this morning. Three drivers were to return from Karlshamn. The emigrants were sixteen, nine grownups and seven children. Together they made a suitably large family, said Jonas Petter as he counted them. But who was to be head of the family?

All looked at Karl Oskar. He said he could hardly be head of them all, he was the youngest of the three farmers.

“You are the oldest one, Jonas Petter.”

“But you were the first one to decide on this journey, Karl Oskar. I was the last one.”

The loaded wagons started moving again, toward the province of Blekinge. Jonas Petter drove first, he knew the roads, and Robert continued to jump off and open gates. They drove a wagon length apart and mostly at a slow trot, or letting the horses walk to save their strength, as it was fifty long miles to Karlshamn. On steep downgrades they kept still farther apart, to give the horses more room.

As Kristina eyed the three wagons she thought of her father-in-law’s words about his departing sons; it was true, their company looked like a funeral cortege. A small one. But there had been no more than three carriages when Anna was buried.

Now she would rather forget what Nils had said in the bitter moment of leave-taking—he had not thought anyone would hear him. Somewhere, some place, a grave awaited every mortal, somewhere there was a patch of earth which one day would open for one’s body. So it might be said that every moment man was on his way to that place; all people’s journeys were one long funeral procession.

Some one, or perhaps several, of this company might return home again—no one knew. Kristina supposed that most of them—though not Karl Oskar—nourished in secret the hope of returning. Of course, they wished to come back rich and well-to-do, not poor, impoverished wretches. Yet it was most likely that none in their group would ever travel this road again.

Robert was now opening gates which he had never before seen. They had left the roads he was familiar with, they were in strange country. They passed farm after farm, and he asked Jonas Petter the name of this place, and that. They passed a church with a much higher steeple than the one at home. They met completely unknown people who greeted them sharply and morosely and who stood for long moments looking after the three wagons—with open mouths, impolitely. But they were something to look at: three flat-wagons full of people and loaded high with chests, boxes, sacks, baskets, and bundles. One might indeed wonder what kind of travelers these were.

“They must think we are gypsies,” said Jonas Petter. “These loads look like gypsy carts.”

But they themselves did not resemble gypsies, thought Robert. Nearly all the grownups of the company, women as well as men, were tall with blond hair and light complexions. Gypsies were short and dark. And all of this company were well dressed, washed and clean; gypsies were ragged and dirty. And they traveled their way quietly and peacefully and soberly, while gypsies lived ill, shouted, and were drunk and evil-natured. It irritated Robert that they might be mistaken for such rabble. He wanted to call to all staring people whom they met: We are not gypsies! We are honest, decent people! We’re emigrants! We’re going to a country where there are no bad people, where we never will meet any rabble! Don’t stand there and stare at us—go home and harness your horses and come with us to the sea, to the ship waiting for us!

But after a while he thought that if he told the people they met about the members of his own group, then perhaps the strangers wouldn’t join them. Those sitting here on the wagons were not too well thought of at home. How about Arvid, sitting there behind him? He was so much looked down on that no one except Danjel was willing to hire him. And how about Danjel himself? Nearly all at home were pleased and grateful that he left the parish. The dean was most happy; the sheriff, too, was pleased. And Ulrika of Västergöhl? All decent women thanked God that she was leaving the district. And, not to forget himself. Sheriff Lönnegren no doubt was thankful that he had left the village for ever, he had caused him so much trouble; the sheriff hated to chase “servant-scoundrels.” No, outside of his parents, and his sister Lydia, no one at home would miss him.

And perhaps no one missed the others in the group either. At some time in the future, maybe fifty years hence, they might hold a celebration at home in memory of the day when they got rid of the rabble that was taken for gypsies on their America road.

—3—

Robert cast glances at the girl sitting next to him on the driver’s seat. He had never seen Ulrika’s daughter at close hand before. Elin was little and spindly, but her small-girl limbs had begun to fill out; she would soon be a woman. She had long hair falling to her shoulders, and it had a sheen of golden ripe barley. Her big eyes were dark blue, and gleamed like sloeberries. She was pleasant to look at. What a pity that her mother was the Glad One, the foremost whore in the parish.

Jonas Petter was broad through the hips, and the three of them were crowded in the driver’s seat. It was lucky that Elin was so slender, said Robert, otherwise he would have been forced to walk beside the wagon. After he had said this he noticed that the girl kept moving away from him, but each time the wheels hit a stone in the road her body was moved closer to his and he could feel her thigh against his own, soft and tender as the supple flesh of a calf or a lamb. Never before had Robert had a girl so close to his body.

Elin kept silent; she was shy and bashful. Perhaps she was afraid of Jonas Petter, perhaps of Arvid sitting close behind her; perhaps she had heard of the Bull of Nybacken. She was only sixteen and her mind wasn’t as yet developed, but she must have sense enough not to be afraid of
him.

Robert tried again: “No one would ever take
you
for a gypsy.”

The girl didn’t answer this time either, and Jonas Petter nudged Robert in the side to silence him. After a while the driver stopped, and the men went off to let their water. As they stood together on the road’s edge Jonas Petter explained the prod in the ribs: no one knew for sure who Elin’s father was, perhaps not even the mother herself. But rumors had it that a gypsy was just what he was.

Robert felt embarrassed and had nothing more to say.

Elin wore a dark dress which had belonged to Inga-Lena, and which was too large for her. On her knees she held a basket. Her narrow blue-veined hands held tightly on to its handle, as if she were afraid someone might try to snatch it from her. It was a small basket for so long a journey, thought Robert, too small for emigration to the New World. It was only a berry basket, large enough for picking blueberries or wild strawberries—not much to go out into the world with. But probably the poor girl didn’t need a larger packing box; all she owned must be contained in that little basket.

Elin belonged to the Åkians; Ulrika had permitted Danjel to confirm her. The mother had been in prison on bread and water for participating in the illegal Communion in Kärragärde, but Elin was under age and had therefore escaped punishment.

Suppose her father was a gypsy? The girl couldn’t help who he was, she had not shown the way to her mother’s bed; and she couldn’t help who her mother was, either. Robert felt sorry for her, and thought he would be kind to her. They were to journey in close company for some time, perhaps several months. They couldn’t sit together and not speak to each other, like this, the whole way to America. They must talk, she too must talk. He had no experience with girls, he had hardly shaken hands with a girl before. What ought he to say to make her answer?

They drove by a fine gray manor house on top of a knoll, and Jonas Petter pointed with the whip, saying that this was Galtakullen. Lotta Andersdotter had lived there, she who had become infamous through a horrible deed done to her first husband.

Robert thought probably the farmer would tell one of his stories again, and his supposition proved to be correct.

Yes, continued Jonas Petter, it was said that the farmer of Galtakullen could never satisfy his wife in bed, she was that kind of woman whom no man could please however much he worked and tried. Now she wanted to exchange her husband for the enlisted man of the village, a strong, bed-worthy man. And the soldier was tempted by the promise that he was to be farmer of Galtakullen. One night when her husband was sleeping soundly Lotta Andersdotter got out of bed and went to the toolbox for a hammer and a five-inch spike. With the hammer she drove the spike full length into the skull of her sleeping husband. He never awakened—unless it were in heaven or hell. Some blood splurted out of the hole in his head, but the murderess dried it off and left the nailhead well covered by her husband’s hair.