The Emigrants (7 page)

The third year was filled with anxiety. When the meadow hay was cut in July such a heavy rain fell that the swaths were floating in water. When the flood had subsided some of the hay remained, fox-red, rotten and spoiled. It had a musty smell, no nourishment, and the animals refused to eat it. Karl Oskar and Kristina were forced to sell one cow. More bad luck followed: another cow had a stillborn calf, and a sheep went astray in the woods to become food for wild beasts. In the autumn it was discovered that potato rot had spread to their field—when picked, almost every second potato was spoiled; for one filled basket of good, an equally large one had to be discarded, hardly good enough for fodder for the animals. During the following winter more than one day went by without the potato pot over the fire. It was said the potato rot came from foreign countries, where it caused famine.

This year—1847—Karl Oskar went still deeper into debt. He had to borrow money for the whole amount of the mortgage interest. Nils had no more to lend him, and Karl Oskar did not wish to ask his father-in-law in Duvemåla. Kristina thought he should try her uncle, Danjel Andreasson, in Kärragärde, who was fairly well off. He was known as a quiet and kind man, although he was the nephew of the despised Åkian founder—but it would be foolish to pay heed to happenings of fifty years ago. No sooner had Karl Oskar made the request than Danjel gave him fifty riksdaler for the mortgage interest.

The day before Christmas Eve, that year, Kristina gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. The boy was sickly and was given emergency baptism by Dean Brusander; he died within a fortnight. The girl lived and was christened Märta, after Karl Oskar’s mother. She would afterwards be known as Lill-Märta.

After three years in Korpamoen Karl Oskar had now one cow less in the byre and seventy riksdaler more debt than at the time of taking over. And yet during every day of the three years both he and Kristina had worked and drudged to their utmost ability. They had struggled to get ahead, yet it had gone backwards for them. They could not sway the Lord’s weather, nor luck with the animals. Karl Oskar had thought they would be able to get along if they had health and strength to work; now they were aware that man in this world could not succeed through his work alone.

“It’s written, ‘In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread,’” said Nils.

“Aye—nor am I even sure to get bread through work and sweat,” retorted Karl Oskar.

Karl Oskar, as well as his father, knew the story of the Fall from his Biblical history; the dean used to praise him for his quick answers at the yearly examinations.

Karl Oskar had got what he wanted, but it wasn’t good for a person always to have his will. Most people thought he was a man with luck and of good fortune. He had two royal names, given him at baptism and formally recorded. He had the big Nilsa-nose—“Your nose is your greatest heritage,” his father used to say. But what help now were the names of kings and princes? What help now was a nose that extended a little further into the world than another’s? The day still seemed approaching when Sheriff Lönnegren might arrive at the farm and take something in pawn.

During his younger years Karl Oskar had often been teased by other boys about the big nose which distorted his face. He had always answered that it was the best nose he had. And he had believed his parents’ stories about members of the family in generations gone by from whom his nose had been inherited—he had always believed it would bring him good fortune in life. Kristina did not think his nose was ugly; it would have been different in a woman, she thought, but menfolk it suited. She did not believe, however, that his big nose would have anything to do with his success in life. That would be a heathenish thought. Kristina sprang from a religious home, and she knew that God shifted people as He saw fit, according to His inscrutable and wise ways. Since they now suffered adversity in Korpamoen, this was only in accord with God’s will.

—6—

So began the year 1848. Karl Oskar had bought an almanac from the schoolmaster, Rinaldo, for four shillings. He now read that the year was the five thousand eight hundred and fiftieth from the creation of the world. It was also the forty-eighth since “the High Birth of Oskar the First’s Majesty and the fourth since Its Ascendance on the Throne.” It was also the fourth of Karl Oskar’s possession and farming of Korpamoen.

He read about the movements and appearance of the greater planets in the new year. He was familiar with the constellations whose signs were printed in the almanac for each day: the ram, with his great bowed horns, the scorpion, with its horrible claws, the lion, with his wide and beastly jaws, and the virgin, so narrow around the waist and holding a wreath of flowers. Weather and wind and perhaps also the destiny of man depended on the meeting of the wandering planets with these constellations.

Before the close of the old year people had already noticed alarming signs: wide parts of the Milky Way where the stars used to shine clear and brilliant were now nebulous and dark—the heavenly lights had disappeared. This could mean war and unrest, rebellion and dire times, sickness and pestilence. Intense cold and a “crow’s winter” set in before Christmas; those who ventured out to the early service on Christmas morning came home with frozen ears. New Year’s Day opjened with high winds; the steeple in Elmeboda blew down, and also the great mountain ash at Åkerby Junction, and this the thickest tree along the whole church road. On the exposed wastelands where the spruce were poorly rooted in the sandy soil the wind mowed along like a sharpened scythe in morning-dewed grass. And Noah’s Ark, which had not been seen since the dry year of 1817, appeared again in the heavens, with all its sinister majesty. The Ark was formed by clouds stretching from east to west, thereby obstructing all running waters and streams and preventing rainfall for the coming year.

Throughout the winter and spring there were strange portents in the weather. February was warm, while the spring month of March was windy, dry, and cold. The winter rye fared ill: wide gaping stretches appeared in otherwise green fields after the winter snow had melted.

During the last week of April—the grass month—it seemed as if at last spring had arrived. And early in the morning of May Day Eve Karl Oskar pulled out the wooden harrow from its shed, intending to begin the preparation of the fields for the sowing. Then it started to snow; it snowed the whole day; in the evening a foot of snow covered the ground. The cattle recently had been let out to graze; they must now be put in their stalls again. The April snow covered flowers and grass which had only begun to grow. Again, the spring had frozen away.

Karl Oskar pulled the harrow back into the shed. He sat silent at the food table this May Day Eve, and went to bed with a heavy heart. As far back as men could remember it had never boded so ill for the crops as during this peculiar spring.

The young couple in Korpamoen lay together under the cover, the one Kristina had stitched. It had now warmed them at their rest during four years—more than a thousand nights. Many of these nights Karl Oskar had lain awake, thinking about the mortgage interest, and in many of these nights Kristina had risen to quiet the children when they awoke and cried. Four springs had stood green, four autumnal stubble fields had been turned since for the first time they enjoyed the embrace of man and woman under the cornflower-blue bridal quilt.

That evening in the autumn, when they had sat together on the potato basket in Idemo, now seemed so long ago—it might have been an experience in another world. It belonged to their youth, and they spoke of their youth as something long gone by; they had been young before they were married, and that was once upon a time.

Karl Oskar had recently had his twenty-fifth birthday; Kristina would soon be twenty-three. Not so long ago she was a child herself; now she had brought four children into the world. Three lived and slept now in this room; she listened to their breathing, ever anxious.

Kristina thought at times about the happenings of her young life and the relation of events. If she hadn’t fallen from the swing in the barn at home in Duvemåla, and injured her knee, she would never have gone to Berta in Idemo to seek a cure for gangrene. Then she would never have met Karl Oskar and they would never have become a married couple. They would not have owned and farmed Korpamoen together, and she would not have had four children by him. Nor would they lie together here tonight under the bridal cover which she had made. She would not have Anna, Johan, and Lill-Märta, those three small beings sleeping so close to them.

Everything important in her life had happened because once she had made a swing from an ox-thong, at home with her parents, and had fallen from it. God surely had willed that she put up the swing; He it was who had directed all this for her.

And she still enjoyed swinging; a little while ago she had made a swing again in the threshing barn, when no one saw her. She knew that her mother-in-law thought it was ill done by a farm wife who had borne four children—thought she should think of other things.

Kristina had blown out the tallow candle when she went to bed. Through the window she could see the glittering snow which had fallen the last day of April and—as it seemed—might remain.

Karl Oskar lay quietly at her side, but she could hear that he was still awake. She asked: “Are you thinking about something?”

“Aye. About spring. It looks ill for the crops.”

“It’s true. It seems ugly.”

Kristina’s eyes wandered through the window; when she and her husband arose tomorrow morning the month of May would be here—yet it was snowlight outside.

She said: “We must believe God will let things grow—this year as all years.”

“Believe! Yes—if faith were of help, we’d harvest a hundred barrels of rye this fall.”

He had never before shown such anxiety; now he seemed dejected, disheartened. His low spirits were contagious; she too began to worry about the coming days.

He continued: Including his parents there were now seven people who must find their food on this small farmstead—a one-sixteenth. If the year were lean and the crops failed, he would not know what to do.

Kristina thought of the children, now sleeping their sweet sleep in this room. Those who had brought the children into the world were responsible for them and must see to it that their stomachs were satisfied and their bodies clothed. The children’s welfare was much more important to Kristina than her own, and she knew Karl Oskar felt as she did.

Kristina folded her hands and said her usual evening prayer: “Turn Thy Grace to me and let me sweetly go to sleep this night. . . .” Before she said her Amen she added tonight a few sentences she remembered from “A Prayer for the Fruit of the Earth”: “Give us favorable weather and protect the crops from all destruction. Bless us with corn and kernel. Through Jesum Christum, our Lord, Amen.”

Karl Oskar seldom said his evening prayer any more; he usually was too tired after he went to bed. But as Kristina prayed and he listened, it might be for both of them. God must look kindly on a farmer in a stone country.

He turned over on his side to go to sleep, and Kristina felt for his hand, for she went to sleep sooner if she held it in her own.

They both lay quiet; Karl Oskar kept hold of his wife’s hand. At her touch the desire of the body was awakened in him. He put his arm around her to pull her closer.

“No-oo, Karl Oskar, I do-on’t know . . .” She struggled a little.

“What is it, Kristina?”

“I—I was thinking of the children.”

“They are asleep, all three.”

“I meant something else; I think of the food for the children.**

“The food?”

She whispered close to his ear: “If we didn’t—I thought—Then there wouldn’t be any more.”

There was a sense of shame in her voice. But now she had said it.

“If we didn’t? For the rest of our whole lives? Is that what you mean?”

Kristina wondered herself what she meant. God created as many people as He desired; as many children as He decided were born. That she knew. But she knew this just as surely: if no man came near her, then she would bear no more children. It seemed as if in one way God decided, in another she herself could make the decision. The conflicting thoughts disturbed her.

Karl Oskar went on to say that he could not leave her alone when he had her next to him in bed during the night; no man who slept with his wife was built in such a way; at least not before he became so old that moss grew in his ears.

Kristina had no reply. No, she thought, they could not stay apart throughout life. She too had her desire, which she could not resist forever. But she would never fall so low as to let Karl Oskar know this.

He continued to seek her; he clasped her breasts, which swelled and hardened in his hands. Her own desire awakened. She opened up as a mollusk opens its shells; she gave in.

They were silent during their embrace, as they always were. In the moment of fulfillment she had entirely forgotten what she had said before.

About a month later Kristina knew that she was carrying her fifth child.

II

THE FARMHAND WHO DROWNED IN THE MILL BROOK

—1—

Robert, Nils’ and Märta’s second son, was ten years younger than Karl Oskar. When he was little he had caused his parents a great deal of trouble by running away as soon as he was outside the house. He would disappear into the woodlands and they might spend hours looking for him among the junipers. They hung a cowbell round his neck so they could locate him, but even this did not always help, for they could not hear the tinkle when the child sat quietly. He did not change as he grew older: if he was not watched he would disappear into the woods and hide; if he was asked to do chores he might run away. And as the boy grew older they were ashamed to hang a bell on him as if he were an animal.

When his parents ceded Korpamoen, Robert was given employment during the summers as herdboy for Åkerby
rote
(a
rote
is a parish district with common grazing rights, etc.). Thus there was one mouth less to be fed from the porridge bowl in the spare room. Robert received food from the farmers, and two daler a year in wages (fifty-eight cents). Every fall he received also a cheese and a pair of woolen stockings. He liked it well out in the wastelands, alone with the cattle. During the long summer days, while cows and sheep grazed lazily, he would lie on his back in some glade and stare into the heavens. He learned to whistle, and he sang without even thinking of it. Later, when his shepherd days were over, he realized why he had done these things: he had felt free.