The Emigrants (24 page)

Karl Oskar answered proudly that he acted according to his own good judgment, and after much thought. He understood well enough that a peasant who had tilled his farm some fifty years might think himself ten times wiser and more experienced than he, who had worked Korpamoen only five years. But did anyone gain in wisdom from living on the same place and tramping in the same furrows all his life? If a man’s wisdom increased because he remained all his life on the patch where he was born, then the oldest farmers in the parish should by now possess more wisdom than King Solomon himself. But the fact was that most of them were squareheads.

Karl Oskar was considered arrogant and proud when he rejected his neighbors’ kind advice. His emigration was taken as a reproach, an insult even, to the parish as a whole and to each individual: the community and the people here were not good enough for him. The old story of the Nilsa-nose was remembered; Karl Oskar’s big nose protruded so far that he was unable to turn about in the parish. The whole of Sweden was not large enough to house his nose—he must travel to a bigger country, far away in the world, in order to be comfortable. And some wit started a saying which spread through the village: when Karl Oskar came to North America, his face too would be long.

Perhaps he thought himself such a bigwig that he could look down on his home community? Others surmised something wrong in his head; he was seized by a delusion of grandeur. Such ideas didn’t suit a one-sixteenth homestead peasant.

Karl Oskar knew that people poked fun at him and spoke ill behind his back. But he didn’t bother to get angry; after all, he tried to please himself, not others. If you spent your time worrying about what other people thought and said, you wouldn’t get much done in your life. Outside his home everyone was against his proposed undertaking; even within his home, only his wife was for him; but she was the only one he needed on his side. His parents were against him, though they kept silent. Their reserved rights would now have to be met by an outsider, and this was not to their liking.

Once only did Nils quietly reproach his son: “You take many along with you.”

“There will be six of us.”

“You take many more. Your descendants are more numerous than you know.”

Karl Oskar did not answer. He felt the grief he caused in taking the family from their own country to a foreign land.

“You have not asked the opinion of children and grandchildren,” continued the father.

“I must be the one to assume responsibility. I do think of my children.”

Nils sat on his chair, his fingers twisting the well-worn crutch handles; he answered softly: “I too think of my children.”

He had but two sons.

Karl Oskar understood his father, who now asked himself of what use it had been for him to clear the ground here in Korpamoen, when this ground was now no longer good enough for his own son. Those twenty-five years of fighting the stones must now seem to him a futile strife, as it did not benefit either of his sons.

His mother thought Karl Oskar showed a sinful ingratitude by discounting his gain here at home. He had done nothing wrong, he was not driven by the whip to flee the country. But neither she nor Nils wasted much time in persuasion—they knew Karl Oskar. They turned to the Almighty in prayers that He might change their son’s mind and make him give up the American journey.

Time passed—a summer sped by, and an autumn, and winter came again. But their prayers brought no apparent sign of change in Karl Oskar. Nils and Märta concluded at length that God had some secret purpose in their son’s and daughter-in-law’s emigration to the United States of North America.

—2—

Robert returned home for his “free week” after a year’s service with Kristina’s parents in Duvemåla, where he had been treated well and given no chastisement. No one thought the sheriff would look for him any further and he remained in the parental home; Karl Oskar would need his brother’s help this last year on the farm.

With Robert the United States also moved into the peasant cottage. From his “description book” he knew everything about the new land. Long ago he had landed on the other side of the ocean and made himself at home on distant shores. On the map which he had made up in his mind were marked the lakes, rivers, plains, and mountains of North America, all roads, on land and on water. He insisted he would not get lost in the New World once he arrived there, and now he must help his brother and sister-in-law to find their way. Karl Oskar, too, had begun to read in his brother’s book, and every day he obtained new information from Robert.

In America the kine fed on a grass that stood belly-high.

In America wild horses and oxen existed by the thousands, the fields were overrun with them and one could easily catch a hundred in a day.

In America it would have been impossible for David to kill Goliath; if he had searched forever he would have been unable to find a stone for his sling.

In America one could say “thou” to the President himself, and one need never remove one’s cap for him, if one didn’t wish to.

In America any capable and honest man could step directly from the manure wagon to the presidential throne.

In America there was only one class, the people’s class, and only one nobility—the nobility of honest work.

In America there were no taxes and no examinations in the catechism.

In America you need not pay the minister’s salary if you did not like his sermons.

All sounded too good to be true, and during the long winter evenings Robert read to his brother and sister-in-law about the strange roads of iron which existed throughout the United States:

“In America one travels a great deal with the help of steam and steam wagons, but for this are required roads which are built in a peculiar way and which are called iron roads or railroads. Such a road must be almost even and practically level. On the road are placed crossbars of wood and to these are tied strong iron rails which serve to guide the wagons. The wagon wheels have on their inside a rim all the way around which forces them to follow the rail on the road.

“On such roads one travels with great speed, twelve to eighteen miles an hour, nay, even faster. Several big wagons are tied together and pulled by a steam wagon, or that wagon on which the steam engine is placed. At the end of each wagon is a small bridge which enables the traveler to pass from one wagon to another during the journey, should he desire to speak to an acquaintance. Every wagon has a comfort room which makes it unnecessary to leave the wagon even on a long journey.

“These railroads, where with the help of steam one can enjoy a comfortable and inspiring journey, have now in America a length of 8,000 miles. . . .”

Kristina said: “It will be fun to ride with no beast pulling the wagon!”

She enjoyed riding in all kinds of vehicles, and in spite of her years she most of all, still, enjoyed swinging on a rope. Only a few days ago Karl Oskar had surprised her in the threshing barn, where she had again fastened the ox-thong to the beams and sat riding the swing.

There was now something she wondered about: “How can they steer the wagons when the railroad is snowed under in wintertime?”

“I don’t know,” said Robert, “perhaps they stable the wagons during the winter.”

The book also said that no steam wagons were in use on Sundays. The drivers were at church, of course; and maybe the steam also needed rest to gather strength.

“I wonder about those iron rails,” said Karl Oskar. “They lie without guards in the wilderness, night and day. Isn’t the iron stolen?”

Robert told him with a superior smile, there was such an abundance of iron in America that no one cared to steal as much as the filings of a saw. And it was the same with gold and silver. Why should people steal and go to jail when they had more than they needed of everything? In America it was so easy to earn one’s living in an honest way that no one was tempted to dishonesty. A thief was immediately strung up, often before he even had time to confess his crime. Therefore all thieves in that country were now exterminated. The gentry here at home lied in saying that North America was full of robbers and murderers and wickedness, when in truth it was populated by the most honest and upright people in the whole world.

“They must have an occasional scoundrel there, too,” Karl Oskar said.

Robert admitted that this might be so but insisted that evil people were exterminated much more quickly than here at home.

Karl Oskar wished to settle in that part of the country where soil was the most fertile. Robert had read that the best regions for farmers were around the upper end of the great river Mississippi and its tributaries. This neighborhood was fertile, healthy, and rich in forests and beautiful mountains, in valleys and spring waters. The grass thereabouts was so abundant that in two days a man could cut and harvest sufficient winter fodder for a cow, and in three days enough for a horse. One farmer who had cultivated land on the Mississippi shores had in five years earned a bushel of gold.

Kristina did not wish to live in a place where there were crocodiles. Recently she had read in a paper a horrible tale about a settler family in America who had happened to spend a night in a cave where crocodiles were nesting. Early in the morning the man went out to hunt, and when he returned his wife and three children had been eaten by the crocodiles. The old crocodile had just swallowed the wife: only the head of the poor woman was still visible in the mouth of the beast, who had choked and lay there dead; the ground was drenched in human blood. Kristina could not forget the poor mother watching the crocodile feast on her small children while she was waiting her turn. But of course the woman had taken revenge by choking the beast with her own head.

Robert had never read about man-eating crocodiles in America; the piece in the paper must have been a lie; some duke or count must have had it printed to discourage simple folk from emigration.

Arvid, whom Robert had met again, had also been afraid of wild beasts in America. He had had to leave his service in Nybacken; Aron did not wish to keep a servant called the Bull. The old mistress was dead and Arvid was sure she came back to him in the stable room, accusing him of having tried to kill her—which indeed was true—so he had moved without regret. But he had asked at many farms before he found work; he was known everywhere as the Bull from Nybacken. At last he was hired by Danjel in Kärragärde, who was unable to find another hand this winter. All servants were afraid of the place now that the devil had moved in there. People had actually seen the Evil One hanging to the back of Danjel’s wagon as he drove along the roads; sometimes he even occupied the seat next to the driver, laughing and pleased. The devil was now the real master on that farm.

Arvid was saving every penny of his wages for his transportation to America. For a whole month he had bought no brännvin. Long before his confirmation he had learned to chew snuff (although children weren’t supposed to use it before they had participated in the Lord’s Supper); he would save three daler a year if he stopped, and this would help him a bit on the road to America. He realized he must give up some things in the Old World to make possible his move to the New; so he had thrown his snuffbox on the dunghill.

But giving up the box was difficult for Arvid. It had been good company for him, he had carried it in his pocket and enjoyed its contents. It had been a loyal companion in work and loneliness. The snuffbox had been his only friend after Robert moved. And now he had thrown it away—into the depths of the dunghill. He felt his pain keenly when others brought forth their boxes and used them without offering him a pinch: then he had to turn away to escape the sight of the refreshing mixture.

He admitted to Robert that after three weeks of suffering he had bought a new snuffbox. And again he bought half a gallon of brännvin each Saturday night. For at last he had clearly understood that a person had no right to treat his God-given body according to his own will; he had no right to torture and plague it and deny it all its pleasures; one could not treat one’s body like a dog, denying it even the comfort of snuff.

Would Arvid ever follow him on the road to America? Robert did not believe so; apparently, in one year and a half, he had not saved a single daler; in his whole life he would be unable to save two hundred daler.

But in Korpamoen everything was now being put in order.

One day the Nilsa family’s old clothes chest—of solid oak painted black—was pulled forward from its place in a cobweb-infested corner of the attic, and carried down into the kitchen for inspection and dusting. No one knew how old this chest was—the hands which made it were mixed with the earth of the churchyard many hundreds of years ago. It had passed from father to son through numerous generations. More than one young bridegroom had entrusted his finery to it after the wedding feast, more than once had the farm’s women fetched winding sheets from it when there was a corpse in the house to shroud. Under the lid of the chest valuable things had been secreted; this lid had been lifted by the shaking hands of old women, and by young, strong, maiden fingers. It had been approached mostly at life’s great happenings: baptisms, weddings, and funerals. This enduring piece of furniture had through centuries followed the family, and at last been pushed away into a dark attic corner where it had long remained undisturbed. Now it was pulled out into the daylight once more; it was the roomiest and strongest packing case they could find—five feet long and three feet high, wrought with strong iron bands three fingers wide.

In its old age the Nilsa family clothes chest must go out into the world and travel.

It was tested in its joints, and the still-sound oak boards passed the inspection. It was scrubbed clean inside, and old rust scraped from hinges and escutcheons. After timeless obscurity the heavy, clumsy thing was unexpectedly honored again. From its exile in attic darkness it was now honored with the foremost place in the house. The chest had been half forgotten, years had passed without its lid being lifted; now it became the family’s most treasured piece of furniture, the only one to accompany them on the journey.