The Emigrants (53 page)

After many years she had even forgiven her master his stealing of her maidenhead, and leading her to whoring-sin. Not only had all hate been deleted from her mind, she had become entirely devoted to the man who had led her astray. She served him well, and looked after him in all ways. She had come to depend on him, and he had depended on her. They had both passed the age when men and women seek each other for the sake of bodily lust, but they were in other ways a help and comfort to each other. Magda had learned to know her one-time seducer as a good man, generous, kind, and helpful to the poor and destitute. And she had suffered deeply from the memory that once in her youth she had wanted to condemn this man to eternal suffering and deliverance to Satan. It had been a bloody sin.

And then one Sunday morning the Lord touched the forehead of his servant: Drysell had a stroke in the sacristy and died. And the moment had arrived when Magda made her horrible discovery: the devil had indeed taken up abode in her master’s body. With her own eyes she had seen that the Lord had answered the prayer she had uttered in her youth.

Many nights had already passed since her prayer was answered, yet not one wink of sleep had she enjoyed during a single night. She had lain wakeful in agony; the master whom she loved had through her instigation become the possession of Satan.

This was old Magda’s confession. And now she wished to make her own attempt to liberate Dean Drysell. She intended to remain through a whole night in the corpse-house, alone with the dead one and the one who had taken possession of him. How she was to save her master, she did not know, but she wished to confess at his bier what she had done.

The pastor advised the maid eagerly: Go and do as you say!

She went to the corpse-house that same evening, and people could see a light burning there throughout the night. What she did to the seducer of her youth no one knew, but they all guessed, and probably guessed aright: she protested to God that she forgave Drysell the evil he had once done her; she assured Him that she no longer hated her master but instead loved him and blessed his memory—she retracted her prayer of hate and substituted for it a prayer of love—she prayed for his soul.

And when Pastor Stenbeck came into the corpse-house the following morning, the body of his deceased colleague was the same as all dead men’s bodies. Satan had at last let go his hold of Dean Drysell. What the three learned and experienced ministers, God’s servants, had been incapable of doing, this simple, unlearned woman had performed. What three worthy parish pastors had been unable to effect, the poor maid had managed alone; her sincere love had conquered the sinister power in the corpse-house.

Two days later Dean Drysell was at last given Christian burial. All the people in the parish followed him to his resting place, and the joy was great that Satan finally had been driven from his limb. For he had been a good pastor; so said, in particular, the women of the parish, who now thronged about his grave in great numbers.

And this amazing happening, which had taken place a hundred years ago, was now told by an emigrant to emigrants, when, one day in fine weather, they gathered around the main hatch of the brig
Charlotta
as she sailed with her storytellers and her listeners to North America.

XXIII

PEASANTS AT SEA

—1—

The emigrants—the strayed ones in this world—brought with them a small book,
Almanac for the Year after the Saviour Christ’s Birth the 1850th,
which they consulted daily. In the empty space between the date and the sign of Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, they marked each passing day with a small cross. They wanted at least to know where they were in the calendar year, even though unable to fathom their whereabouts at sea. On the ship all days were the same, weekdays and holidays. The seamen performed their duties on Sundays and weekdays alike. The emigrants would have become lost in time, as they were in space, without the
Almanac.
The cross marks on the days that had passed gave their lives consistency and meaning. At home on land they had made these crosses only when they took a cow to the bull, so as to know when to expect the calf.

The
Almanac
also predicted the weather: Clear, Cloudy, Occasional Clouds, Rain, Clear and Beautiful Days. Sometimes it was cloudy, or rained, on Clear and Beautiful Days, and many times the sun shone from morning to night on Rainy Days. It also sometimes happened that the weather and the
Almanac
agreed.

The wind was mostly westerly; it was against them. And the wind that hindered them, and delayed their landing, this wind came from the land they were trying to reach. They did not know how to interpret this.

—2—

The emigrants had now been at sea for five weeks. The year had passed far into May—the month of flowers.

But now the people of the land lived on the sea, which showed no signs of the seasons: from its depths no plants shot forth to tell of spring or autumn, sowing or harvesting. The sea had no verdure, did not blossom. When the cold north wind swept down upon them, and the water turned as gray as the skies themselves, then the sea was like old fields with rotting stubble, and then they might guess at winter. When the sun shone and the sea lay there shimmering as blue and as calm as the small tarns at home, then they could guess it was summer. But the water did not divulge the seasons of the year to the people of the land—not so they could be certain.

During the month of flowers, however, there were days when a balmy air flowed over the deck; then they knew that spring had come on land, and they eagerly inhaled this new wind—perhaps (if it were not westerly) it had blown over their fields and meadows at home. These peasants at sea, sailing from tilled fields in the one continent to an unbroken wilderness in the other, drew the air in through their nostrils, wondering: How far advanced was the spring work at home? Were the oats sown? Had the potato field been prepared as yet? Had the sheep pens been cleaned? Did the fields reek of dung after the showers? Were the cattle still in their stalls, bellowing and longing, or had they been let loose in the pastures?

The emigrants came from land, and they were traveling to land. To them, the sea was only a passage which they used, a water which they must cross in order to reach land on the other side—they could not understand the sea folk on board who were traveling nowhere, who lived permanently on this ship, who only voyaged back and forth across this sea. The peasants traveled with a definite purpose in mind, the seamen only traveled.

To the peasants the sea was the same everywhere: there was no difference between the water in this ocean and the water in the inland Baltic Sea. The expanse of sea which their eyes beheld was no greater in one place than in another. And what they saw today was the same as they saw yesterday. Had they actually moved?

The wheels of a wagon never roll over the same stone more than once on a journey. But here it seemed as if the same wave lifted the ship on its shoulders day after day. When they traveled on land they passed through varying landscapes—meadows and forests, hills and valleys, brooks and lakes. But on the sea they were constantly surrounded by the same water. They sat and gazed across a desert water-field where nothing interfered with their vision: everything was alike, everything the same. The sea was great and endless as infinity, yet it was also small—it consisted of only
one
landscape, it was one region only. It was always the same landscape, it was the SEA.

And this monotonous view aroused a longing within them: they wanted to see a patch of green ground soon, if only a tree or a bush—they would be satisfied with a juniper bush, that weed of the forest; anything that grew green would gladden their hearts.

When, now, during “Clear and Beautiful Days,” a balmy wind blew into their nostrils, they recognized the spring. But their eyes looked in vain for signs of the season. They sat on the worn and splintery deck of a ship and the month of May failed to bring them armfuls of blossoms. Round and about rose the blue-green crests of the waves—the hills at home would now be covered by the cuckoo’s breeches, the buttercups, the rabbit-foot, the dog-ears, and the bumblebee-blossoms. But the fragrance from these blossoms of spring was not carried to them by the wind.

They were to lose this spring, for they were seekers of new homes. They traveled away, and it was still difficult for them to imagine that
away,
some time in the future, might mean
home.
Yet they felt this must be so.

The passengers on the brig
Charlotta
looked out over an empty, barren water-desert, as formidable and tiresome as the one the children of Israel had passed through when they were seeking the Promised Land. The emigrants were a sailing caravan: their ship was the rolling camel, carrying them across this unyielding and empty desert known as the Atlantic Ocean.

—3—

During some “Clear and Beautiful Days” the ship was enveloped in a thick fog which still further diminished the world of the passengers.

The fog enwrapped the brig
Charlotta
like a thick gray woolen shawl, so that the passengers’ range of vision narrowed down to a few yards. Now they could see nothing outside the ship’s world; no other world existed. The whole living earth consisted of this old, worn deck. The outside world was only something gray, penetrating, raw, fleeting, impenetrable—it was fog. A sticky, soft wall had been built close to them. They could not see the masts and the sails above them, the wall moved in on deck, it crept into the ship. It increased their irritation to the same degree as it narrowed their space. The downy fog was soft and light, yet it weighed heavily on their minds and caused them to become depressed and short of temper. The world seemed ever more gray and more sad. The emigrants were easily angered now, and quarreled about inconsequentials. As the men talked among themselves all gladness and friendly jesting disappeared, and in the galley the women fought during the preparation of the meals, and used pots and pans as weapons. The people could ill endure themselves, much less each other.

The gray soft wall enclosed them on all sides, enclosed the whole sea. They sailed through a wall hundreds of miles thick, and it seemed as if they sailed at random. Did their ship move at all? Might not the brig
Charlotta
lie still as an island on the water, tethered to the bottom with invisible chains? They could not see that she was arriving anywhere, she sailed, but sailed nowhere. Their ship lay here in the fog, swaddled in a woolen shawl which hid and wrapped up the whole earth.

And during these days of fog an anxiety began to spread from one to the other among the emigrants: hadn’t they sailed astray?

They began to count: six weeks, seven weeks—soon their voyage was in the eighth week. The year had passed into the month of June. How great a distance was still left to America? They had oftentimes asked the seamen, and equally often they had received indecisive answers: almost halfway, about halfway, nearly halfway, a little over halfway. Now they were tired of this halfway, and wanted to pass it. They had been told it would require at the most eight weeks for the crossing to North America, and they ought soon to arrive. But week was still added to week, and the anxiety spread. No one could tell them how far they had sailed, or definitely tell them their location. Perhaps they were lost? Perhaps they had already passed the shores of America? Perhaps they would never arrive?

Could they rely on the captain who charted the course? Could they be sure he would find his way over this water without signs, where no marks were left by those who had sailed before? He might steer in one direction but the winds and currents of the sea drive the ship in another. He might sail by the sun in the daytime and the stars at night, but what could he do when neither sun nor stars were shining? Or when it was misty and foggy, as now? They were afraid that by this time not even the ship’s commander knew where they were.

The patience of the passengers was almost at an end from the long sailing, and there were many things they would have liked to ask the captain. But the taciturn little man who was seen on deck only occasionally, spending most of his time in his cabin, encouraged no one to approach him. And there was talk of an answer which he had made to a bold and curious passenger who had asked the question which was in everyone’s mind: When do we land in America? The captain had answered: Which day do we arrive in the harbor of New York? That he would willingly say, he was anxious to tell them. Only, first he must have a little information—a little information about the weather. He would like to know what sort of weather they would have in the few weeks ahead, day by day. Would it be cloudy or clear, calm or stormy, would there be good wind or poor, rain or fog? Also, would they be so kind as to tell him from which direction the wind would blow in the near future, day after day? Would it blow from the east or west, from the north or south? When they could furnish him a little information about these things, then he would immediately tell them on what date the brig
Charlotta
would tie up at the pier in the harbor of New York.

It was a chagrined and disappointed interrogator who returned from the
Charlotta
’s captain. After this, none was willing to approach him again with the question. And Captain Lorentz thought that he might perhaps have explained a little about the continuous contrary wind. But why try to instruct these ignorant peasants about the prevailing winds which in these latitudes sweep the North Atlantic? He might as well try to explain the compass to them. Of course, the emigrants suffered, longing for land, but soon enough they would begin their poking in their dunghills again, soon enough they would dig themselves into their holes in the earth. What was their hurry? He could well have forced his speed somewhat, but he was afraid to strain the rigging further. The two full-tackled masts of the
Charlotta
could develop a large spread of sails that, in favorable wind, would give her great speed. The vessel was somewhat overrigged, however, and a moderate breeze was therefore the wind her skipper liked best.