“I thought of you, Kristina. It’s too much for you—you need a little rest.”
She felt his concern, both in voice and look.
Sure, she needed a long rest. Her strength diminished as her chores increased. The older children were growing up and could begin to look after themselves, but those of tender age required care in their stead. She had always had three babies who depended on her: one in her arms, and two hanging onto her skirt. This predicament had been her lot as a mother. And at regular intervals she had had to retire to childbed, from which she arose more tired each time, her body turned into a supply room for a new life, her thin breasts sustaining a hungrily sucking mouth. Karl Oskar had known what he was doing a few years earlier: he had made a solid cradle of oak. That cradle rarely stood empty.
Karl Oskar himself pulled such a heavy load that he could not take on any of hers. But his willingness to help was in itself a help. And the chores with the children she could never have managed except for the great mother-comfort: she had carried them in her body; she had borne them in pain; but when she had them around her—all healthy and without blemishes, chirping like morning birds—in such moments she felt a joy so great that she only wanted to thank God for the lives he had created through her. She ought to be still more grateful since all their children had been born well developed and without deformities.
She said that she must try to get through each day in turn. But after a moment’s silence her thoughts turned to other things.
“I wonder how they have it at home this evening?”
“They must be on their way to the early morn Christmas service,” answered Karl Oskar. “The Swedish clocks are six hours ahead of us.”
Kristina had wondered greatly about this difference in time. It showed that Sweden and America were two entirely different worlds, each with different time and hours. While it still was evening here, dawn broke at home. The two countries were given their days—their light and their dark—at different times.
During a few evenings before the holidays Karl Oskar had busied himself with his letter to Sweden. Tomorrow he would take enough time off to finish it. What more was there to put into the letter? He had told in detail about the iron stove he had given Kristina as a Christmas present, he had enumerated the cooking utensils that came with the stove, and he had written that the price in Swedish money was about one hundred twenty-five riksdaler. Father and Mother would feel he had paid a senseless sum for it. A mason in Ljuder parish would build a whole fireplace for ten riksdaler. But he had added in his letter that he felt sure it would be many years before an iron stove would be put into a farm kitchen in the home parish.
The last letter from his father had come during the fall; it had been short, yet difficult for Karl Oskar to read. The lines wiggled up and down like a snake; the letters in many places crept into each other, making them impossible to decipher. His father, Nils Jakobsson, wrote that his hands trembled, but he need not have written this: every word in the letter indicated the condition of his hand.
His father had replied to the message about his son Robert’s death in America: “It was Sad for us Old ones to learn of our youngest Son’s demise in youthful years. It was difficult for Robert to be satisfied with anything in this World. You wrote your Brother traveled widely. Wither can Man Flee that Death shall not o’ertake him?”
The letter was barely ten sentences long, and Nils had written only these few words about Robert. It seemed as if the trembling hand had been unable to manage any of sorrow’s outpourings. When Karl Oskar read the letter to Kristina, she told him what she had heard his father say that April morning when they left home and started their journey to America: “I must step out on the stoop and behold my sons’ funeral cortege.” The words touched Karl Oskar deeply. His father had felt his sons were dead while they still lived. Thus when the message of Robert’s death reached him he had submitted to his loss in advance.
The old parents did not know the circumstances of their youngest son’s death. Karl Oskar had only written that Robert had died suddenly and from an unknown sickness.
Surely, no age has a promise of the morrow. When Karl Oskar had gone to inspect the maple-studded knoll near the lake for a cemetery, who would that day have thought his younger brother, a young man of twenty-two, would be the first to be buried under the silver maples?
Since then a new summer had come and gone; the silver maples had twice shed their leaves over the first grave of the new cemetery. And Robert was no longer alone in the Swedish burying plot at Chisago Lake.
You raised your hand against your brother the last time you saw him in life! Such had been their last meeting: one brother had struck the other. Karl Oskar had struck his brother, flesh of his own flesh—what wouldn’t he give to have that deed undone. He had regretted his action at once, and Robert’s assurance of forgiveness was some comfort to him when they found the body a few days later. But his brother’s forgiveness was not sufficient for Karl Oskar; he could not forgive himself for what he had done. Kristina had not again mentioned this burst of temper, except to say on the day of Robert’s funeral that this was a warning, something to learn from, the thing that had taken place when two brothers met for the last time in life: people should always act toward others as if their meeting were the last.
The gold seeker returning from California had been a short-time guest in their house. He had arrived on Monday evening, he had left on Saturday morning. During five nights he had slept under his brother’s roof—then he had taken off again, but had not gone farther than the brook a few miles away in the forest. There his body was found.
If they only had known that Robert was deathly sick when he returned . . . But Karl Oskar guessed that Robert himself had not known this. And so the sick one had been forced to end his life like a wounded animal seeking a hiding place in a forest thicket. Such an end would have been spared him had they known about his mortal illness. But the wise man who knew everything aright—his name was Afterward.
Robert’s own reticence was at fault, but concerning his illusory fortune, he had convinced them he had acted in good faith and had believed the useless bills were worth their face value. And it was good, at least, to know that he hadn’t wanted to cheat them but had himself been cheated. Karl Oskar had later thrown the whole bundle of bills into the fire, and as he did so he had felt an intense hatred for the notes: these bills had been printed and circulated to destroy people. Because of these damned bills he had abused his brother! He had wished the wildcat money had feelings; he wanted it to suffer in the flames as it burned to ashes.
What had happened on Arvid’s and Robert’s California journey would now never be clear to them. The gold seekers’ own mouths were closed for eternity. Arvid’s watch, which they had found in Robert’s pocket after his death, had been sent to the boy’s father, the cotter Petter of Kråkesjö. Karl Oskar had enclosed a letter saying Arvid had perished in North America, in an unknown way, in an unknown place, and that no one knew his grave. The father received back the inheritance he gave his son at the emigration; the patrimony returned to its source in Sweden.
On Christmas Eve they always thought of their relatives, both living and dead. Kristina remembered that already a year and a half had passed since Robert was buried on the beautiful hill near the lakeside. But he was far from forgotten; Kristina often mentioned his name, and she did so tonight.
“My brother—I never understood him,” said Karl Oskar. “I wonder if he ever would have found peace in this world had he lived.”
“Robert was already finished with life,” replied Kristina. “He was reconciled to his fate.”
She had several times told her husband about the talk she had had with Robert under the sugar maples on the Friday when Karl Oskar was in Stillwater; it had been her last talk alone with Robert. Now she repeated it again to her husband, and he wondered how she could remember Robert’s words in such detail after so long a time. She explained that his words had had a special meanin
g after he was dead, and she had thought of them so much because they were uttered at a time when he had only a few days left of life. She had been talking at the time to one who had already completed his life span.
“Do you suppose he knew he didn’t have much time left?”
It was not the first time he had asked this question, and she replied now as before. Robert was sure to have felt that his life would not be long. But his words could sometimes be interpreted one way, then again another way. He had also said that he didn’t suffer from any disease except the old earache he had had since his farm service in Sweden. And when Hemlandet had printed a notice seeking a young man to learn printing, he had asked her if he oughtn’t to reply to the advertisement. Then he had sounded in good health, with no expectation of imminent death.
Karl Oskar nodded: Robert had been a master of secret, always talking in riddles.
“I suspect he had consumption,” said Kristina.
“Probably so.”
“But Robert wasn’t afraid of death. He was unreachable, he said.”
“Unreachable? There again he spoke in riddles!”
“It’s no riddle—I understand what he meant.”
“You do?” Karl Oskar raised his eyebrows and looked at his wife in surprise. “What do you suppose he meant?”
This time Kristina was slow in answering, and when she spoke her voice had changed; it was tense and restrained. In vain she tried to suppress a tremble.
“He was through his. We have ours ahead of us, we do.”
Karl Oskar’s eyes still rested on her inquisitively; he did not understand.
“I just said Robert was reconciled to his lot in life,” she resumed. “We are not.”
What is this all about? he asked himself. A few words by Robert, a year and a half ago, she had taken so seriously that time and again she came back to them and repeated them. What did it mean? He began to suspect that she was keeping something from him.
“What is it we must be reconciled with, Kristina?”
Now she quickly turned her eyes away as if she were found out. She seemed to feel she had said too much and was now regretting it. She replied that she didn’t want to talk about it tonight. It was time to go to bed. It was awfully late, she was quite worn out this Christmas Eve.
How deeply Robert’s statement concerning his fate had affected her she did not divulge to Karl Oskar. It concerned her own life, the lot of the emigrant. And each new day posed this question to her: How would she manage her lot in life?
—3—
Beginning on Christmas Eve 1856, Kristina had a good and faithful assistant in her kitchen. On the Prairie Queen she was able to prepare food for the large family in half the time it previously had taken her. After a few months with the new stove Kristina could not believe she had been able to manage her household without it for so many years. The new invention saved her so much work it became the most useful object in the house.
Kristina loved her stove as if it had been a living being. She looked after it carefully, dusted it every day, and polished away spots and grease and soot. The Prairie Queen always sat shining clean in its elevated place, an enduring, elegant decoration for their home. And it was the first object a caller’s eyes would light upon when entering the kitchen. She always received her homage: what a beautiful stove!
The only name they used for it was the Queen: Have you fired the Queen? Has the Queen burned down? Did you empty the Queen’s ashes? The potato pot is boiling over on the Queen! Get some wood for the Queen! And they were proud they had a stove they could speak of as royalty, even though it was their servant.
Karl Oskar said that of course an Englishman must have named it; an American would have called it Mrs. President of the Prairie. But he himself was a man who insisted the real truth be known in his house.
“You, Kristina, you are the queen in our kitchen!”
To this she laughed heartily, her hands and face sooty. Pastor Törner had once said something similar when she mended the seat of his pants; he had said that with thread and needle and nothing else she could turn herself into a queen and their house into a palace. But she had never before heard a man use such fair and poetic speech to his own wife.
Karl Oskar insisted. No one but she reigned in their house. While he had his domain outside, she was the absolute ruler inside their timbered walls; he made the decisions in stable and barns, in forest and field. And neither one ever interfered in the other’s rule. In this way their power had always been divided, both in Sweden and America, and it suited him well, and he hoped it suited her too.
The fine stove was queen in name only—Kristina was a queen in reality. She stood faithfully at her stove, she kept her house in order, she managed to make new clothes for all of them and kept their clothing clean. She milked their cows, churned butter, made cheese, spun and spooled yarn, wove and sewed, and during the rush seasons she helped Karl Oskar in the fields with sowing, mowing, and harvesting.
But every day she fought her fatigue. Each day there came a moment when she was tempted to give in to it and suddenly drop what she had in hand, when in the midst of a chore she wanted to lie down on her back and do nothing except this: only rest quietly. How rest tempted her—she longed to taste the wonderful rest! She forced herself to go on; this must be done! It was her work, her duty and no one else’s. No one in the whole world would do it for her. If she didn’t do it, it remained undone. There was no recourse, no grace. It was necessary, and what was necessary a person always managed.
Kristina was not yet an old woman; as yet she had not earned the right to sit down and rest during the day. Only after another twenty or thirty years as the household ruler would she be permitted this. Then she could abdicate her queenly kitchen affairs and surrender to her great wish: rest.
The depressing evening fatigue, with worry in its wake, was nothing new to her; it was part of the lot of every working person. But in the past the fatigue had disappeared after a night’s sleep and rest, and a new day had brought its gift, new appetite for work and new assurance. In this respect it was now different for Kristina; the morning no longer brought back her courage and confidence.
XXVII
THE YEAR FIFTY-SEVEN
—1—
During the open-river seasons in 1855 and 1856 the steamboats carried sixty thousand passengers up the Mississippi to settle in Minnesota Territory. Because of the great immigration, a steamboat costing $20,000 returned twice this sum to its owner within a year.
A story is told of one ship which paddled up the Mississippi with two hundred passengers who had already in New York bought, through a real estate broker, land for their settling in Minnesota. They asked the captain to put them ashore at a town called Rolling Stone, located on the river.
The captain pulled out his charts with all the landing places along the river. There was no place called Rolling Stone. He found a later map of Minnesota Territory on which all towns and places of settlement had been marked. It showed no town called Rolling Stone. He pursued his investigations further, he inquired from old river captains whose boats they met and who had traveled this route for years, he asked early settlers who came down to meet the boat at the piers: no one had heard of a town or place called Rolling Stone.
And the captain turned regretfully to his passengers: he could not put them ashore at a place which did not exist.
However, the two hundred passengers, having bought lots in the fair city of Rolling Stone on the beautiful shores of the Mississippi, showed the captain their maps and descriptions of the new town. The real estate man in New York had supplied them with these papers. The pictures showed tall houses in the town, churches, hotels, shops, and taverns. All the streets in Rolling Stone were well marked. The captain could see the market place. The passengers pointed to the city hall. They had been given the name of the mayor, they knew the number of inhabitants. They showed pictures of the beautiful surroundings. Anyone seeing these pictures must be caught by an irresistib
le desire to own a home in this wonderful town. And each one of the two hundred passengers had paid three hundred dollars for a lot in Rolling Stone.
The captain replied: Rolling Stone was without doubt a beautifully situated and well laid out city. It was only that the city was missing. If Rolling Stone had ever existed in Minnesota Territory, it must now have rolled to some other territory.
The captain regretted it sorely, but he was forced to put his passengers ashore where they could continue their search for the town in which they had bought lots for their new homes. They could themselves choose a place along the wild shore where they would leave his boat; it couldn’t house them for the rest of their lives. And so they were put ashore. They built themselves brush huts along the bank, they dug themselves down near the river, they were seized with cholera, dysentery, fevers; the greatest number of the lot-owners in the non-existent town died; the survivors gradually scattered and were swallowed up by the great country. But none of them ever found his way to Rolling Stone. Because this town had never existed, except on paper.
This incident took place in Minnesota Territory in the year 1856.
In seven years seven hundred towns were surveyed and laid out in the Territory, and the number of inhabitants increased from six thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand. After the 1851 treaty with the Sioux the whole country west of the Mississippi lay open to settlers. In the capital, St. Paul, there were ten thousand people in 1856. The settlers called this town the Pig’s Eye. Close by, at St. Anthony Falls, the new town of St. Anthony was growing up, later to be renamed Minneapolis.
Not all of the one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants had come to Minnesota to farm. In the tillers’ wake came the speculators who would become rich without tilling the earth. To these, land was a commodity, to be bought one day, and sold for a profit the next. The speculators’ only implement of labor was paper. They printed bank notes and swamped the country with wildcat money; wrote sales contracts and obtained deeds to land; drew maps and built towns on paper. Thus, a large part of the country came into the hands of people who never touched the handle of an ax or a plow.
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