Unto a Good Land (16 page)

Perhaps the train couldn’t go on during the night when it was so dark; perhaps they had to stay here until daybreak.

No light was lit inside the wagon, and the passengers couldn’t see each other’s faces, but they sat close to one another and each knew where his own family and his belongings were. They were not in need of light and they were thankful to have air; those in charge of the train had opened the doors at both ends of their wagon as soon as it stopped; the cool night air refreshed them. But none of the travelers dared step outside.

One more hour passed, and the immigrant train still stood there. They began to grow restless, they wondered and worried. Outside the windows they could see sparks from the steam wagon, whirling about in the dark like a swarm of fireflies, and this increased their anxiety. They began to fear that some accident had befallen their vehicle, or was about to happen. Why hadn’t their guide returned? Someone suggested that perhaps Landberg had deserted them.

They could hear the wheezing and hissing from the steam wagon in front, and they saw the flying sparks; they were in the depths of a dark forest, and here they sat clustered together, blind, like chickens perched in darkness, and could not even ask anyone if they were in danger. They knew nothing, therefore they feared everything.

At last they began to confer with each other: shouldn’t they elect someone to step out onto the ground and try to discover what was the matter with their unmoving train? Even if he couldn’t talk, he might learn something with his ears and eyes.

They were talking this over when the doors suddenly slammed shut, and the train started up with such a jerk that the passengers tumbled against each other. And suddenly the man they had missed stood among them; Long Landberg had returned, friendly and calm, and he explained: There was a steep, difficult hill ahead of them on the railroad, and one more steam wagon was required to pull them uphill. Their train had been waiting for the extra steam wagon, and now it was added to the back of their train, and would help push the wagons up the steep hill.

So their journey continued; the immigrant train pushed on through the night, seeking its way into North America. As yet nothing dangerous had developed, but anything could happen, they did not even know what to fear.

VII

VOYAGE ON THE LAKE STEAMER

—1—

In the forenoon of the next day the immigrants arrived at Buffalo. That evening they started across Lake Erie on the steamer
Sultana.
The whole remaining part of their journey was to be on water—across lakes, up rivers, and through canals. Just ahead of them lay three great lakes over which they must pass. They had embarked on a vast, restless, inland water, but on this voyage they at least could see land on one side of the ship. At intervals, the
Sultana
touched shore to discharge or take aboard passengers, cargo, and firewood for her engines.

The
Sultana
was a fairly large steamer with one water wheel on either side; she was overloaded with people and cargo. The immigrants were given quarters below, on the middle deck, and when they were sent to their quarters, they learned another English word,
steerage.
Cabins were built in three rows in the hold, each one four feet wide, and each one accommodating two full-grown persons of the same sex, or a married couple. Two children under eight years of age were counted as one grown person; children under three years of age were transported free of charge, but no one asked the little ones’ ages, and all children carried aboard by the parents were allowed free passage, however old they were.

Kristina took charge of Harald while Karl Oskar carried Johan on one arm and Lill-Märta on the other. Johan was four, but tall as a six-year-old. Other parents carried children even larger, never before had such big two-year-old babies been seen. But it seemed as if all Americans loved children: they brightened and smiled as soon as a child came near them, and no one spoke harshly when the youngsters were noisy or caused trouble; children were the most welcome of all immigrants, it seemed.

Kristina was uneasy each time she boarded a new means of transportation—she was afraid her family might be separated during the journey; she wanted them to hold on to each other all the time.

The American steamer was new and the middle deck roomier, lighter, and drier than the immigrants’ living quarters on the old Swedish ship; nor did this vessel smell musty. But when all had gone aboard and packed themselves in down there, it was just as crowded and uncomfortable as it had been on the
Charlotta.
The passengers’ belongings were stacked together helter-skelter on the lower deck, and the owners had to look after them and watch that nothing fell overboard. On the
Charlotta
they had been allowed the unrestricted use of the upper deck in fine weather, but here they were confined to the lower deck. Yet they could see there was plenty of space on the upper deck, where only a few passengers walked about. The immigrants enviously watched these fellow travelers who had their individual cabins and more room than they needed: why was that deck up there in the fresh air and daylight reserved for only a few, while such a great number of people must stay below, packed together?

Long Landberg explained that the upper deck was first class, which cost much more than a berth in steerage, and the ladies and gentlemen up there were wealthy travelers on a pleasure excursion.

Kristina noticed that the passengers on the upper deck were dressed like the people she had seen walking about near the harbor in New York: the women in silk skirts and velvet shoes, the men in tall hats and long coats of costly cloth. And here, too, the women went about with open umbrellas even though it wasn’t raining. Those passengers up there were not, like themselves, traveling to find homes; they already had homes. Why did they travel when not forced to? How could anyone, of his own free will, roam about on lakes and seas? If Kristina ever found another home in this life, she would certainly stay there.

And these passengers who traveled just for fun were allowed to keep the whole upper deck to themselves, while the immigrants, forced to find new homes, were crowded and jostled down here. Kristina thought that the passengers in first class were like the gentry at home in Sweden, and she asked her brother-in-law Robert, who had learned so much from all kinds of books, to explain this: Hadn’t he said that the inhabitants of North America were all alike and not divided into gentry and ordinary people?

Robert tried to make himself clear: He had only said that different classes did not exist in the New World, no one was born into a class. But there was, of course, a difference between people, in that some were rich and others poor; some could afford to spend more, others less; some could afford first class, others could not. There were only two kinds of people in North America: those who had lived here long enough to grow rich, and those lately arrived and still poor.

There was no other difference between people, Robert insisted. Kristina could observe for herself—did she see anyone who took off his hat or cap to another? Did she see any man bow or any woman curtsy? Here one didn’t stand on ceremony, the poor didn’t kowtow to the rich as they did at home in Sweden.

The ship’s fare was ample, even abundant, but to the Swedish peasants it seemed oddly prepared and peculiarly flavored. American food consisted mainly of things mixed together, and one’s tongue was unable to distinguish one kind of food from another; the immigrants did not always know what they were eating. But still more foreign than the food were their fellow passengers in the hold. They were lodged with other immigrants, people who, like themselves, came from countries of the Old World, each speaking his own language. Their fellow passengers were dressed in outlandish clothes, they laughed and sang and behaved in the strangest ways, and they were loaded down with an amazing variety of things: axes, hoes, spades, harnesses, saws, tubs, barrels, cradles, clocks, pots, yarn winders, ale kegs. The Swedish immigrants began to feel that they had arrived empty handed in North America when they saw what these others carried along. Many of those who crowded the ship with their belongings were Germans, the guide told them; a German was wedded to his possessions and would not part with them when emigrating. But when they saw a spade with a six-foot handle, said Landberg, they might be sure the owner was Irish: the Irish were too lazy to bend their backs while digging; at work they stood upright.

He pointed out some tall men in skin jackets who carried guns and hunting sacks and had knives in their belts. They were fur hunters on their way to the forests of the West for autumn game.

But strangest of all the steerage passengers were two Indians. The immigrants studied them with timid wonder. The two men were draped in pieces of red-striped woolen cloth which covered them from head to knees and which they usually held closely around themselves; they wore trousers reaching the middle of their thighs and held in place by strings to a belt around their waists; on their feet they wore skin shoes but no socks. From the Indians’ ears hung beautiful glittering silk bands; the color of their faces was sooty brown, and their sloe-black eyes lay deep in their skulls, lurkingly under their brows.

Most of the time the Indians sat immobile, staring moodily before them, each holding his blanket tight around his body as if this garment were his only possession. No one addressed the brown-hued men, and they themselves seemed inclined to silence. When they spoke to each other they used a language which sounded like a series of short grunts. These Indians could not be wild, as they were allowed to travel unhindered among white, Christian people. But they sat apart from the other passengers, who walked by them in silence and with some uneasiness; perhaps they were heathens after all; one couldn’t know for sure; there was something dark, threatening, and cruel in their looks, something inspiring fear. The immigrants did not know what to think of or expect from these curiously draped figures.

The steamer had a large crew—bosuns, engineers, stokers, and deckhands. Negroes served in many capacities; those black men with hair like wood shavings prepared the food and served it, loaded the ship, cleaned it, and busied themselves everywhere. The black crewmen were free, but among the passengers in steerage were two Negro slaves shackled in foot chains, because they were said to have wild tempers.

Kristina felt pity for the two black-skinned men sitting there chained together, unable to move. Why were people put in chains and foot irons when they had done no wrong? The slaves’ owner was among the pleasure travelers on the upper deck: Kristina would have liked to ask him to unshackle the poor Negroes, had she been able to speak his language.

Little Johan watched the Negroes for a long time in silence. Then he asked his mother: How long had their faces been so terribly black?

“They have always been that way.”

“Are they black both morning and evening?”

“Yes. Negroes are always black.”

“But, Mother—how can they know when they need to wash themselves?”

“I don’t know. . . . Quiet, now.”

But the boy insisted: “Tell me, Mother, how do the Negroes know when they are dirty?”

Kristina was unable to give Johan this information. She herself was deeply disturbed by the dirty white passengers in steerage. No Negro could help it that the Lord God had made him black, but when God had given people white skin, then they owed it to their Creator to keep it white. Children and menfolk seemed to crave a little dirt for comfort’s sake, but Kristina demanded more from women. Here she saw womenfolk who were sorely in need of a thorough scrubbing in boiled lye-soap, and their children appeared never to have touched water since they were baptized. Fina-Kajsa, to be sure, wasn’t very clean, and washed herself unwillingly, but compared to these foreign women she stood out as clean as an angel. They were probably too lazy to keep dirt from them; slothfulness bred uncleanliness and uncleanliness bred vermin; among these people they must be careful or they might again become lice infested.

In the hold there were no spittoons, which seemed strange; one would expect to find them in nice places, among cleanly people. The deck soon was awash from the tobacco-chewing menfolk’s spittle, and Kristina had to hold up her skirts as she walked over it; she was horrified to see little children crawling and creeping about on their hands and knees on this bemired floor; only with great effort was she able to keep little Harald away from it.

Washing buckets were set up for the steerage passengers, but the water was never changed. After a score of people had dipped their hands and rinsed their faces in the tubs, the water became as thick and black as though blood sausage had been boiled in it. And the same towel passed from one hand to another—there was only one for this multitude. Perhaps the ship’s command felt: If fifty people have dried themselves on the towel before you, then it’s good enough for you too! But Kristina washed neither herself nor her children in water used by dirty fellow passengers. The very first morning on board she asked their guide for help, and as soon as the steamer touched shore he managed to get her a tub of clean water. Then she used her own towels, which she had brought along and laundered during the voyage.

But in spite of her annoyance at this lack of external cleanliness, Kristina was unable to dislike her fellow passengers. These foreign people—poor, dirty, and badly dressed—appeared so friendly; only kind eyes and smiling faces were turned on her and her children. When strangers spoke to her, Kristina realized they spoke no evil, but rather something kind and cheering, wishing her only well. She felt ashamed that she could not answer them with the same kindness, that she could not make herself understood by them. All she could do was to smile back as broad a friendliness as she could and shake her head for the rest. She longed to enter into conversation with them; she suffered from being unable to do so and felt as though she were doing the strangers a rudeness. Besides, here she could have found honest friends, and these friends she turned away, again and again, through her silence.

Kristina suffered and worried over the lot awaiting her in the new land: to walk like a deaf-mute among other people.

—2—

It had been agreed that the interpreter Landberg was to accompany the immigrants to Chicago and from there return to New York.

While he still was with his countrymen he tried to advise and inform them about the things they needed to know. Landberg said he had traveled all the great seas, he had seen much of the world, on land and water, but he had found himself most at home in North America. Nowhere had he been less disturbed by the authorities, nowhere had he been so free to make his own decisions, nowhere were people so helpful to each other as here. His deepest needs—freedom to move as he pleased, and sufficient food—he had found in North America. Yes, more freedom and cheaper food than anywhere else on the globe. Just as an example—pork could be bought for three Swedish shillings per pound, pork so tasty and fat that the grease spurted between the jaws while one was eating it. Long Landberg called the North American Republic the Land of Liberty and Fat Pork.

But, he reminded them, they must remember that here, as elsewhere in the world, people were good and evil, industrious and lazy, generous and greedy, honest and crooked. They must be particularly on their guard against two types: the runners, who wanted to rob them, and sectarians, who wished to snare them into their fold. Among the latter he warned them against the Jansonites, who had come earlier from Sweden. Their prophet, Erik Janson, had been a plague to humanity, a torturer of his followers. First he had forbidden marriage in his sect, as childbearing interfered with the women’s work, but when his adherents grumbled at this, he was forced to allow it, and prepared a wedding for fifty couples at one time. But the sectarians were allowed no will of their own; when a married man wished to sleep with his wife, he must announce his wish to the prophet far in advance and obtain his permission. And when the tyrant gave his assent to the bedding, he insisted also that husband and wife must perform it in full view of all the other sectarians. Many hesitated at this. Landberg himself had for a while been a member of this sect, but he had soon left it, with many others, who, like himself were unable to put up with Janson’s demands.