And I will be kind to you tonight and relieve the bursting ache in here. I’ll pour out a little blood, only a few drops. Now you’ll feel how it helps. There now—can you feel the warm fluid? It feels as if someone had squirted tepid water into your ear, doesn’t it? And now it drips red on the slip, the new, clean one that Kristina put on today. Nothing feels as wonderful as the end of pain.
Now you’ll soon sleep! Again tonight you’ll sleep on a spotted pillow!
I don’t begrudge you a deep, wonderfully purling waterdream!
XXII
THE UNGET-AT-ABLE
—1—
On Friday morning Karl Oskar was up before daybreak, greased his oak-wheel cart, and made ready to drive to Stillwater. Already at sunrise it was evident the day would be very hot. It would be the first time he had undertaken a long drive with his young ox team. Animals were greatly plagued by the heat and the mosquitoes, and although his ox team by now was well broken in, he was afraid they might be unruly and hard to handle in this heat; that was why he wanted to get under way while the morning was still cool. He hoped to be back again with oxen and cart intact before sundown.
Last evening Kristina had gone through the two bundles of money, removing spots from the bills and ironing out those that were wrinkled. A few grease spots remained, but on the whole the bills now seemed clean and neat; they were at least as nice-looking as other American paper money they had had in the house.
Karl Oskar pushed the two bundles down in the sheepskin pouch Kristina had sewn for him when they left Sweden and which had served as a hiding-place for their Swedish money. In this pouch—worn as a belt under his clothing—he had, during the crossing from Sweden, secreted five hundred riksdaler, all he had owned after selling the farm and the cattle. Now it hid thirty times as much in American money, sufficient to buy ten farms as big as Korpamoen. This according to the value printed on the bills. Today he would ask the bank in Stillwater if the money was acceptable.
While he was yoking the oxen Algot Svensson, his companion for the journey, arrived. He was always punctual. Today Karl Oskar was to be a witness for his neighbor at the land office, concerning Svensson’s right to his claim in section 35 of Chisago Township.
Before Karl Oskar got into the cart he said to his wife that today he was setting out on the most important errand he had undertaken so far in America. And he had almost the same anxious expectation as on that day when he had gone to her father’s home in Duvemåla to ask for his daughter Kristina as bride: no one could tell in advance what the reply might be.
Then he stepped up into the cart and it started on its clumsy, thudding way down the road along the lakeshore. The sheepskin pouch was under Karl Oskar’s shirt; his riches were on the way to a better place of safekeeping, a right place of safekeeping.
—2—
This Friday turned out to be the summer’s warmest day in the St. Croix Valley. The heat bothered Kristina as she sewed and she had to lie down and rest for a moment now and then. She had a burning headache and she saw black every time she tried to thread the needle. Her discomfort from her pregnancy increased with the hot weather; all smells became vile, nauseating her, and if she saw a blowfly light she wanted to vomit. A woman was only half a person during the first months of this condition; taste, smell, and appetite were completely awry.
Robert had found a cool place to rest under the sugar maples near the house. He was not going to visit the Indian today; it was too hot in the forest. She had also noticed how tired and short of breath he became after his walks. Kristina picked up her sewing and went outside to sit in the shade with her brother-in-law. The heat was not quite so oppressive here as inside the house. Robert was reading the latest issue of Hemlandet. He had just discovered an advertisement:
HELP WANTED
Youth for Hemlandet’s Printing Office.
Applicant should be able to read
Swedish; if he also can write, so much
better. If he has a good head, lack
of knowledge can gradually be
remedied . . .
“Do you think I should apply for the job, Kristina?”
“You with your riches needn’t work any more!”
And she reminded him that the very first evening he had said that he had done all the work he intended to do and had had his last master.
His bad ear was turned toward her; probably he didn’t hear what she said; he was absorbed in his reading.
“Here is something for you, Kristina.”
He read aloud:
“Hemlandet has been considering the printing of a nice, neat Swedish A-B-C book. For this, however, several Swedish letters and decorative signs will be required, and the readers are asked for contributions of fifty cents each which can be sent to the printing office. We have also decided to print Luther’s Little Catechism, word for word according to the Symbolic Books, and without the improvements or worsenings which have been made to this little bible, in this country as well as elsewhere. This Catechism will be the first Swedish book printed in America.”
“That’s good news!” exclaimed Kristina.
“Yes, you said the other day Johan and Marta did not have any A-B-C book or catechism.”
“We need those books! I’ll tell Karl Oskar to send in money at once!”
She sat on the ground, the cloth she was sewing on on her knee. Robert was lying in the grass, reading. He had returned last Monday; today was Friday. He had been in their house four days. But she felt that during these four days as much had happened as during the four long years he had been gone.
If there was anything else of importance or interest, would he be kind enough to read it to her, she asked? He replied that there wasn’t much in the paper today except for a funny piece about a false Swedish priest—quite a long article.
Hemlandet warned against a self-styled minister who traveled about among the Swedish settlements in Illinois and Minnesota. He called himself Timoteus Brown, but it was a false, assumed name. He was not ordained, only a former student with a whiskey flask in his bag. But he preached, married couples, baptized children, and gave the Holy Sacrament. He had an unusual gift of speech and could entirely at will turn his listeners’ heads, and that was why many Swedes had been fooled and availed themselves of the services of the false priest. Timoteus Brown had such remarkable gifts that he could preach in any religion he chose; one teaching was as easy to him as another. If he came to a Lutheran settlement he preached the Lutheran teachings, but among the Methodists he was an accomplished Methodist preacher, and among the Baptists he preached the Baptist doctrine better than anyone they ever had heard. And he did call himself “the cleverest minister in America.”
Nor had Brown hesitated to falsify the Holy Sacrament: not one drop of wine had been added to the fluid in his cup; only water, into which fruit juice and vinegar had been mixed with syrup to make it sweet. In some settlements the participants had been seized with stomachache and diarrhea from his false sacramental wine. The self-made minister himself insisted that he gave the sacrament according to Christ’s ordinance which forbad alcoholic spirits. But this, the paper said, was a false interpretation, exaggerated temperance zeal. He not only hurt people’s bodies, but more important, their souls when he married trusting couples without being ordained. In the Swedish colonies, in Illinois and Minnesota, many otherwise honest and decent people now lived in sin and fornication, not knowing how deeply they had fallen in sin and iniquity.
Hemlandet urged the Swedish settlers to drive away Timoteus Brown, this blasphemer and derider. He was described as a wolf gifted with a sheep’s mild appearance which aided him in bewitching people.
Robert was interrupted in his reading several times by his persistent cough. Now that Kristina sat close, she looked at his face: it was caved-in, ravaged, wan. And his body was barely skin and bone; he had never appeared so worn-out as he did today. He must surely be suffering from a much more serious ailment than his bad ear.
She must try again:
“Have you never been to see a doctor, Robert?”
“Hadn’t thought of it. I’m only twenty-two. I can’t go to a doctor—I’m supposed to be healthy!”
“You have caught something dangerous. I don’t know—but it might lead to your death . . .”
“Death . . . ?”
The word escaped him in a quick breath.
Robert pulled up his upper lip in a great smile, or sudden surprise, and exposed decayed teeth in the back of his mouth. He turned from the paper to his sister-in-law.
“Kristina—you don’t believe I’m afraid of death?”
“All people fear death!”
“Not I!”
“You too—now you only brag!”
“No, I mean it. Death cannot really do anything to me. It cannot touch me.”
“Stop! That’s blasphemy!”
Kristina’s body had straightened up with the last word, now she fumbled with the needle so that it pierced her thumb instead of the cloth.
“Do you mean you are above death? Above the Almighty?”
“All I said was, death cannot touch me.”
Robert threw down Hemlandet in the grass and rose to a sitting position. He leaned his elbows against his knees and bent his long, lean torso toward Kristina.
“No, not even death can hurt me or get at me any longer.”
“That’s terrible of you to talk like that! It’s arrogance! Conceit!”
Kristina stuck her thumb into her mouth and sucked a few trickling drops of blood. She sat and stared at Robert, horrified at his talk; was his mind affected? Even yesterday she had wondered if he wasn’t out of his head at times.
“Nothing touches me any more. Neither good nor evil affects me. Do you know why?”
“No, you must explain it, Robert!”
“Ill try . . .”
The cough prevented him from going on. She sat in suspense, waiting for his explanation.
When Robert at last had finished coughing, it came slowly and simply:
“I have reconciled myself to my lot. That’s all.”
He had pulled up a few tall spears of grass and began chewing them. As he looked back on his life, he told Kristina, he understood everything that had happened to him. It was the way he was created that explained his life. If he had been an obedient and willing farm hand, he would never have tried to steal rest periods while he dug ditches, and then he would not have been given a hard box on the ear by his first master, and would have escaped his earache. And if he had had the temperament of an obedient and satisfied farm hand he would never have emigrated. And even if he had emigrated, he would have remained with his brother Karl Oskar and worked on his claim in Minnesota and been satisfied with that life. Then he could have lived his whole life in one place, in constant peace of mind.
But the way he was born prevented him; he couldn’t stay in Sweden, he couldn’t stay with his brother in America, he couldn’t stay in service. He himself drove peace and tranquillity from his mind, although without wishing to do so, since deep in his heart he wanted to live a peaceful life. But he couldn’t take a claim and be a settler; he might as well try to reach the moon, or walk across the water out there on the lake. He had been given those ideas about gold and riches and freedom, and he was forced to get out and pursue what was in his mind. This brought him into one bad situation after another. His misfortunes and sufferings were his own doing, as he himself had once caused the box on his ear. He was often accused of lying, but he never knew when he did lie, and if he did lie it was because he was forced to. All his hardships in life he himself had caused. Like yesterday—when he got into a fight with his brother—he alone had caused it. Everything that happened to him was because of the way he was born.
To him, as to everyone, a certain fate had been given, which he couldn’t escape however much he tried. At his creation it had taken charge of his body and soul. He had carried it through his whole life, in his head, in his mind, in his heart. He couldn’t escape it as long as life remained in his body—no more than a person could tear out his heart and remain alive.
It didn’t help to pray to God that he would re-create him and make another person of him. No living being was twice born into this world. He would remain, unchangeably, Axel Robert Nilsson with a sick, buzzing ear which spoke loudly to him in the silence of the nights.
Such was his fate. And there remained nothing for him to do except adjust himself to it. The most difficult and most bitter thing he had experienced was adjustment—adjustment to himself, adjustment to the person he was, from whom he could never escape, who forever remained unchangeable, who was the same until the end of life, who eternally was he. He had suffered for many years—intensely, patiently—but he had come through at last. He no longer fought his fate, he no longer was bitter about it. He had accepted his impotence. He had adjusted himself to this: that nothing could be done, and so found harmony with his lot in life. And after that—what more could happen to him? Because to his fate belonged also the end, death.
Robert knew he was someone very little who had thought himself to be someone very big. For a long time he had demanded the measureless, but at last had been forced to be satisfied with this person he had been created and accept the fate chosen for him. It had cost him a great deal—oh, what hadn’t it cost him to submit to the Lord of Life and Death! But there was no other comfort for him, or anyone for that matter, except this, to say to the one who reigns over creation: I cannot fight you! I might as well try to lift the earth on my shoulders and tear down the heavens above me! Why should I fight you, when I know in advance who will win? Do with me what you want! It suits me! Then I will have peace and be unget-at-able by death. By accepting it it no longer concerns me!
“Do you understand me, Kristina?” he ended. “I’m not being conceited. I’m not boasting. I’m full of humility instead. I am reconciled.”
He had spoken slowly and calmly, as if fearing to say too much or use the wrong word; as if, in this way he could tell her everything clearly and honestly.
Kristina had listened in silence, and when he finished she remained silent. It was Robert’s voice she had heard, but the words were the experience she herself had lived through and felt; they had sprung from her own heart, as it were. How many times hadn’t she asked herself: Is everything that has happened to me decided by God from the beginning? Did the creator decide on the emigrant’s lot for me? As Robert talked about himself, he was explaining her own eternal questioning and pondering and wondering. Now for the first time she knew something about him—now, when she recognized herself in him. One couldn’t know a person before one discovered him in oneself—and oneself in him.
“Robert . . .” she stammered faintly. “Now I understand.”
It was during this talk, that she truly began to know him. And that conversation would remain with Kristina forever afterward.
XXIII
THE FIFTH NIGHT—ROBERT’S EAR SPEAKS
You had intended to sit up and wait for Karl Oskar this evening, he is returning from Stillwater. But he is delayed, you’re tired and it’s getting late. Well done of you to listen to Kristina and go to bed! You’ll see him in the morning.
I understand—you would have liked to speak out with your brother already tonight. It would have been right—after what happened yesterday morning.
Karl Oskar has looked so crushed ever since you opened your black pouch Monday night. Then, for once, he had nothing to say. Never before have you seen him so embarrassed. But he has always been suspicious of you and he doesn’t trust your gift. He’s afraid you’re fooling him with false useless money.
But today he’ll learn he hasn’t been cheated. And tomorrow he’ll shake your hand and say, Forgive me, Robert! Forgive my mistrust! From now on I’ll always trust you! We must be as good and intimate brothers should be!
When you and Karl Oskar have talked together these last days it has been one continuous cat-around-the-hot-milk busines
s. From now on that will be over. All will be different between you as soon as he learns that you haven’t lied to him.
You had wanted Karl Oskar to offer you his hand this evening. But you must wait till tomorrow. And now you want to sleep. I know; you’ve only one wish left—to sleep. And this you do wish like hell. And your intense weariness closes your eyelids but you don’t go to sleep. You lie awake and wish and pray. You call on sleep, the only good thing you’ve left in life: come, come to me! But it doesn’t come. For with night and silence I come instead.
Perhaps you should sing an evening psalm, calling on Sleep; a waking person’s praise of Sleep. You, the dearest One I know! Sleep, you lovely Comforter! Where are you? Come, come and take me with you! To that place where no suffering is! Come and save me from my sleeplessness! Carry me off! You know the place where it is good to be! I have been there and I want to go again and stay there! Blessed Sleep! Take me in your arms! Hold me to your soft bosom! Where there is no more suffering!
But you know your prayer is in vain: I’ll keep sleep from your eyes a long time tonight also. Night and its silence—that’s when I reign! I yet have much to tell you, and you must stay awake and listen. I’ll tell you about the ghost town on the sandy plain where you stayed so long. How long was it . . . ?
It began with a voice you thought you recognized . . .
—1—
It happened in Spring Creek one day in September.
Robert was walking past the trading post where ox teams were resting and people always congregated. Several trains had just arrived from the prairie. He walked among the vehicles as an idle bystander when he heard a voice he thought he recognized. The speaker was just jumping off a big double-team wagon which was piled high with buffalo hides. A cloud of flies swarmed over the load. The hides stank like entrails at slaughter. Robert looked closer at the red-faced man jumping off. He knew in advance that this man had the gold-seeker’s face, like all men passing through Spring Creek. There was something in this face, something he recognized: puffed-up, rosy-red cheeks, flat nose, blood-streaked eyes under heavy, swollen lids. It was a gold-seeker’s face all right, but so ugly it was easily recognizable. And it was well-known to him—it belonged to a countryman.
The Settlers Page 36