The Emigrants (57 page)

A group of passengers were gathered on the
Charlotta
’s afterdeck. The people stood in a semicircle around an improvised bier: a few planks had been laid upon two low sawhorses, and on these was placed an oblong bundle wrapped in canvas. The emigrants had donned their Sunday best—the men, gray or black wadmal jackets; the older women wore silk kerchiefs. Those of the crew who were free mingled with the passengers.

The men stood bareheaded, the women’s covered heads were bowed. All faces reflected the gravity of the moment. They were an immobile, solidified group of people, gathered around the bundle on the improvised bier. A human body was wrapped in the white canvas; the bier leaned toward the water, the feet touching the rail.

The
Charlotta
’s flag was lowered to half-mast. The captain emerged from his cabin and issued a quick order: the mainsail was braced, reducing the slow speed of the ship to almost nothing, hardly enough for steering. The brig
Charlotta
’s voyage was delayed for the sake of a human corpse on the afterdeck this beautiful summer morning.

The captain had exchanged his oilskins for a black redingote; on his bare head his thick gray hair now lay smoothly combed. He went to the head of the bier, then looked for a moment into the rigging as if to see how his ship carried her sails. Under his arm he held a prayerbook. As he opened it the emigrants folded their hands and their faces took on—if possible—a still more serious mien.

Captain Lorentz turned a few pages in his prayerbook, turned them back again, made a jerky, impatient movement with his shoulders when he was unable immediately to locate the place: he must remember to turn the page at “How to Bury a Corpse.” And what was the number of the hymn they were to sing?

While he was looking for the prayer he happened to notice the man standing beside him: a small peasant with a bushy brown beard. He remembered that man well. The first day out he had stumbled on him praying on deck. Now the little man held a baby in his arms; beside him stood three other children. Together they were four children and a father.

Lorentz quickly turned his eyes away from this group and looked about him on the deck. There was something he needed—there, at his feet, it stood, the wooden bushel measure half filled with earth. In it was stuck a small shovel, resembling a winnowing scoop.

He found the page in the prayerbook and began to read. His voice was clear and resonant, trained during many years at sea to rise above the roar of the waves and the storms:

“O Lord God! Thou Who for the sake of sin lettest people die and return to earth again, teach us to remember that we must die, and thereby gain understanding. . . .”

Now all the people present held their hands folded, in reverence they bent their heads and listened to the words of the prayerbook. The ocean’s water played softly against the side of the ship, a breath of air lifted a few tufts of hair on the captain’s uncovered head. With the last words someone was heard sobbing, but the sound was quickly drowned in the captain’s powerful voice.

The seagulls had returned, and they swarmed this morning in large flocks through the rigging. Life was again visible on the sea.

The funeral officiant took up a hymn. It began haltingly, and he had to sing half of the first stanza alone. But gradually the people joined in—slowly as the rolling of the ship the singing proceeded:

“You wicked world, farewell!

To heaven fares my soul,

To reach her harbor goal . . .”

When the last notes of the hymn had rung out over the sea, the captain bent down and from the bushel at his feet picked up the little scoop. Three times he filled it with the earth his ship carried with her from the homeland, three times he emptied it over the dead body in front of him. With a soft thud the soil fell on the canvas. But heavy and terrifying fell the captain’s words over the bent heads of the people: “Dust thou art, to dust thou shalt return. Jesus Christ shall awaken thee on the Day of Judgment! Let us pray.”

Heavy was the truth, but the prayer was a mild comfort. Someone cried out at the words “Day of Judgment.” It was not a cry of hope, it sounded rather like a bird’s eerie and hopeless cry. It might be a sea bird calling, and some of the people turned their eyes toward the rigging—it might be a gull disturbing the solemnity of the funeral. But the cry did not come from a hungry seagull—it came from a child.

On the canvas-covered bundle there still remained the sprinkling of earth, three unshapely little mounds with a few pinches of mold in each, three ugly gray-black spots on the clean white cloth. But before the captain had finished reading the ritual, the lighter particles of earth separated from the mounds and trickled down the side. With the bier leaning toward the rail, toward the water beyond, some earth ran slowly across the rail, into the sea.

This was soil that had traveled a long way. It came from the land where the feet of the dead one had tramped the earth during her forty years, where she had struggled with her potato baskets and her barley sheaves, where she had carried milk pails and water buckets, where she—in concern for the food of her dear ones—had locked the larder every evening, where she had lived out her summers and her winters, all her autumns and springs—all except this single spring, when she had followed her mate out on the sea. It was a little earth from Sweden, a little of the three shovelfuls which accompany the words about creation, destruction, and the resurrection, which now trickled into the sea as if anxious to reach it before the human body which had just been consigned to its watery grave.

But no one noticed the movement on the canvas. As the grains of earth separated and rolled on their way the group now sang the second and last hymn of the ritual:

“Let my body then be hidden

In a humble, nameless tomb;

When at last I shall be bidden

To forsake that narrow room,

Jesus knows where they are sleeping

Who were given in His keeping. . . .”

The sun shone down on a peaceful sea which had calmed this morning and now lay quiet before the song about a patient and resigned human soul who sought his sleep with God until the end of time. Still a little more earth trickled down the canvas toward the water.

Captain Lorentz was ready to give his crew men the sign: Lower away.

At that moment someone stirred behind him—the little brown-bearded man with the baby on his arm stepped up to the captain. He looked at the ship’s commander beseechingly, hesitatingly. Lorentz stepped aside, leaving his place at the head of the bier to the surviving husband.

Danjel Andreasson wanted to say something. His voice was not strong, he had never issued orders, he had no commander’s voice. And few were the words he had to say to his mate in the canvas: “The Lord said unto you as He said to Moses: ‘You shall not get into that land.’ You, my dear wife, were not allowed to see the new land—yet you reached the harbor before us.

“When I wanted to move over there, then you spoke to me and said: ‘say not to me that I should separate from you; where you go, there will I go, where you die there will I die and be buried.’”

Only those closest to Danjel Andreasson could hear his voice, his words were uttered in such low tones.

He took a step back from the bier, a long, hesitating step. Then the captain gave the sign—two seamen stepped forward and the oblong bundle glided into the sea. Almost as it disappeared over the rail a vague splash was heard from the side of the ship. It sounded as if some of the sea’s creatures had moved in play on the surface, or perhaps it was a little billow breaking.

The ship’s flag was raised and lowered—three times this was repeated.

Meanwhile the emigrants began to disperse. Soon the bare rough bier stood alone. But two crew men came and took it to pieces, carried away the planks and moved away the sawhorses, while the mainsail was spread to its full capacity, and the brig
Charlotta
sailed on—with one passenger less.

It was a radiant morning on the Atlantic Ocean. The sun had risen still higher and the beams glittered in the clear water where a moment before the ship had left part of her cargo from the hold. It was almost as if a fire glowed below the surface, a flame burned down there.

XXVI

SAILING TOWARD MIDSUMMER

—1—

Robert and Elin stood leaning against the rail and watched the porpoises play alongside the ship. The fat round fishes looked like suckling pigs, and they tumbled about in the water as a mill wheel turns in its channel. These were the largest fishes the youth and girl had ever seen. But Robert had no fishing gear handy. His fishpoles, lines, and hooks were in the America chest, put away in the storeroom below the main hold at the embarkation in Karlshamm—Robert had not seen it since.

The eternal westerly wind was blowing; because they had contrary winds the porpoises moved faster than the ship. They swam and jumped and played around the bow as if mocking the tardy vessel: Here we are! Where are you? How far have you come? What kind of old pork barrel are you, splashing about like that?

Elin pointed at the water where the porpoises played: right there the water was green, she had seen similar spots before on their voyage—how did it happen that the sea water was green in some places? Had some ship spilled green paint there? Robert thought a bit before he answered: perhaps God at the Creation had intended to make the sea water green, perhaps He had at first made a few sample lakes of that color and later changed His mind and created all waters blue. Then afterward He might have thrown the green lakes into the sea here and there, just so as to make some use of them.

There was always something to observe at sea. Robert did not agree with the other passengers, he did not think the sea was a desolate landscape, depressing to watch day after day. In storm the sea was a hilly landscape, each knoll mobile and rolling about. In sunshine and calm weather the sea lay there outstretched like a blue and golden cloth of silk or satin which he would have liked to stroke with his hand. The sea in moonlight at night was made up of broad, light paths, for the angels of heaven to walk on. A hill or a knoll on land always remained in the same spot, and looked exactly the same each time one passed by it. But the sea was never the same.

During a few nights early in the voyage Robert had thought he was going to die at sea. While the first storm raged he had lain in his bunk, his forehead moistened by the cold and sticky sweat of death-fear. This experience he had not liked. To be enjoyable, an adventure must not involve fear for life. But he had grown accustomed to the sea, and now he felt ashamed when he thought of his fear during that first storm. Now he could go to bed in the evenings without fear of drowning during the night.

And as they approached the end of the long-drawn-out voyage he had even begun to like the sea. Soon he must part from it. It was said they might expect to see land almost any day now. Every day passengers gathered in the prow and looked for America, as if thinking that that land was such a small speck they might pass it by if they didn’t keep a lookout for it. Those among them who possessed almanacs, and marked the passing days by crosses, said that it would be Midsummer in a few days. Perhaps they would reach the shores of America for the Midsummer holidays.

“Shall we read in the language book?” asked Elin.

“If you wish, let’s.”

She was now as eager as he to learn English words. He suspected she no longer relied on the Holy Ghost to give her power to use the new language immediately on landing. And he had several times reminded her that the descending of the Holy Ghost upon the apostles on the first Whitsuntide had taken place long before the discovery of America, long before the English language was invented. Therefore no one knew for sure if it could be taught in the same manner as the languages of the Greeks, the Elamites, the Syrians, and the Copts, which the apostles learned in one day—and this a holy day to boot.

In the textbook Robert and Elin had now reached the chapter about “Seeking Employment.” It was an important chapter; the very first day when they arrived in America they both must earn their own living, and anyone who must earn his living must also know how to find employment.

Robert had finally decided that they must pronounce the English words as they were spelled in the first sentences and disregard the spelling within the parentheses which only confused and complicated the language for them.

Could you tell me where to get work?—What can you do?

Here the work-seeker must answer that he was a carpenter, a tailor, a cobbler, a harness maker, a tanner, a spinner, a weaver, a mason, a waiter, or whatever occupation he pursued. But Robert had skipped all this, he was not concerned about what a harness maker was called in English as he couldn’t make harnesses anyway. He himself stuck to one single sentence:
I am used to farm work.

He was a farmhand. The only work he had done was farm work, the only chores he had performed were those of the farmer. And he had long struggled with this sentence, but he knew it now—he repeated the words slowly and tried to pronounce them carefully as they were spelled.

I am used to farm work.
He wished already the very first day to astonish the Americans by being able to tell them what he could do, and he wished to say it correctly in their own language. He wished to inspire respect from the very first day.

At home in Ljuder Elin had only worked as nursemaid, but now that she had passed sixteen she hoped to find a position in America more worthy of a grown woman. She read the chapter in the textbook entitled “Doing Ordinary Household Chores.” It dealt with every hour of a maid’s workday in America, and Robert urged her emphatically to learn this chapter well before she landed: having done so she would inspire respect.

I am the new servant girl. You must get up at six o’clock in the morning. Make fire and put water to boil. Get the broom and sweep the dining room. Clear off the table. Wash your hands before you handle food.