The Settlers

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The Settlers Page 50

by Vilhelm Moberg


  Johan was fishing in the reeds a short distance from her. She called to the boy: he must go and fetch Father, who was sowing wheat in the field.

  The pain forced Kristina to lie down on the steeply slanted beating board, which was far from comfortable as a bed. As she lay on the board she suffered a sharper pain than any she had ever experienced in her seven childbeds. Afterward, she believed she must have fainted.

  Karl Oskar came running; he would help her get inside the house. She bent double when she tried to walk; her legs failed to support her. He had to carry her to her bed. Once there she pulled off her clothes and discovered red runnels on the inside of her legs: the bleeding had begun.

  Karl Oskar hurried to his nearest neighbor, Algot Svensson, to fetch his wife Manda to come and help. Meanwhile Kristina had another hemorrhage, and before Karl Oskar returned with their neighbor she had borne a lifeless child.

  For a few days before this happened she had noticed a faint bleeding. She had not realized that this, and the backache, were the signals of an imminent miscarriage.

  —2—

  Ulrika sat at Kristina’s bedside. It was the day after her miscarriage, and Mrs. Jackson had hurried to New Duvemåla as soon as the message reached her.

  Kristina lay spent, badly worn. A great weakness had come over her after the hemorrhaging, which had continued long after the stillbirth. Today the bleeding had finally stopped and now she felt as if she were torn to pieces inside. She was uninterested in everything about her and had only one desire: to lie still in bed.

  “This was my first ‘lost journey,’” she said. “My time was more than half gone . . .”

  “A miscarriage is harder on a woman than a natural birth,” said Ulrika. “It can be fatal to lose a brat before its full time.”

  She asked how much blood Kristina had lost. Approximately how much—she knew Kristina couldn’t have measured it, but couldn’t she tell almost how much? It was difficult to judge, even approximately, said Kristina, but she guessed she must have bled at least a quart last evening and during the night. For a while, during the night, the blood had run as it does from a stuck pig.

  “A hell of a lot! That sounds bad!” Ulrika was deeply concerned. “I read somewhere a person only has about three quarts in the body!”

  “Well, I guess then I have only about half left.” Kristina’s pale lips attempted a smile.

  In Alex Turner’s drugstore in Stillwater, Ulrika had bought several kinds of medicines, pills, and powders for her friend, which she arranged on the bedside table. She knew what was needed for a woman who had lost blood from a miscarriage. Here were the excellent blood pills; no one less than Mrs. Sibley, the governor’s wife, had written a testimony to their excellence; they had healed her. And this was the blood-rejuvenator-powder, discovered by a Swedish Methodist priest in Chicago; his pills were really miraculous even though he was lost in religious matters. And then she had brought a bottle of medicine called Gift of Blood, which had been manufactured in Washington, and she felt sure anything made there, especially medicines, must be first-class, for undoubtedly the President himself was sure to test and try the products of the capital.

  But Kristina felt better from Ulrika’s presence alone. She looked at the label on the bottle: Gift of Blood. “Gift!? Does it mean the medicine has poison in it?”1

  “Oh no! Not a drop! I wouldn’t want to poison my best friend!”

  Kristina was overwhelmed by her thoughtfulness and concern. Tears of appreciation came to her eyes: “My dear Ulrika—you’ve gone to a lot of trouble for my sake . . .”

  “You never take care of yourself, Kristina. I’ve told you before: you have too much to do. You wear yourself to a frazzle!”

  Now she must rest and gain strength after her miscarriage, emphasized Ulrika. Staying in bed was utterly important. And she mustn’t do any heavy work for a long time. She would send Miss Skalrud over to take care of the household for a while. That Norwegian was a stubborn, bull-headed woman, but very capable if you left her alone and didn’t interfere with her work. Norwegians were easy to get along with if you let them have their way.

  “Skalrud helped me through my last childbed.”

  Last winter Ulrika had borne her third child since her marriage to Pastor Jackson. This time the ministerial family had been increased by a son.

  Kristina asked, “How’s your little one?”

  “My little priest! He’s wonderful! He weighs twenty pounds already. He eats like a pig, my boy. He’s as fat as a bishop. Who knows—perhaps the Ljuder parish whore has borne a bishop for America! Wouldn’t that be something, Kristina!”

  The Lord had finally heard Ulrika and given her a male child, whom the mother long in advance had dedicated to the Church. She had been granted the deep grace to carry in her womb for nine months a man of the Church, and she enjoyed the honor, several times a day, of offering her breasts to a future dignitary of the Church. Only now did she feel fully recompensed for having once been denied the Holy Sacrament in Ljuder and excluded from the Swedish Church. By giving her a son, God had meant to poke the Swedish Church in the nose, give it a hell of a poke.

  One of her wishes, however, could never be fulfilled. She had wanted to write Dean Brusander of Ljuder and tell him that in her marriage to an American minister she had herself given birth to a minister. Then Karl Oskar had told her the dean had died, and there was now no earthly post office where she could direct her letter. The dean had died before he knew whom he had pushed out of his church. Anyway, she was willing to let bygones be bygones and forget about the old insults and let them rest in their grave in Sweden. Perhaps God, too, was willing to forgive that devil’s ilk, the Swedish priests.

  “Well, I guess I mustn’t be too proud and vain because I’ve borne a son,” added Mrs. Jackson in quiet modesty. “A human being mustn’t blow himself up till the skin bursts.”

  Before she left she took Karl Oskar aside and warned him that undoubtedly Kristina’s misfortune had been caused by her heavy work. Why couldn’t he help her with the worst chores from now on? By now he ought to be Americanized enough to scrub the floor, milk the cows, and wash dishes.

  And Karl Oskar retorted that quite often it happened that he milked the cows and washed dishes. But he was still Swedish enough so that he had never scrubbed a floor. Perhaps he had better rid himself of this Swedish trace.

  —3—

  Kristina enjoyed eight days of bed rest while Miss Skalrud took charge of the house for her. Meanwhile, Ulrika returned at intervals to see that her friend followed her advice and took the blood-giving, blood-strengthening, and blood-renewing pills, powders, and medicines. But rest itself was Kristina’s best medicine. Her births had become more difficult each time because she didn’t have the strength for them, thought Ulrika.

  Kristina as well as other settler wives ought to learn from the Indian women; they lay down on their backs and rested completely for two days each time their period came. That was why they had such easy and quick labor. It was quite simple for a squaw to have a child: she simply squatted down to expel the infant, in the same way as she took care of her needs.

  The wife at New Duvemåla was soon on her feet again, but she was still weak and tired. She must do only lighter chores for some time. Karl Oskar lugged in wood and water and milked the cows for her; she need not do any outside chores this spring. Marta, now twelve, was willing and handy and quite a help to her. After some weeks Kristina again felt fairly well physically, but her spiritual welfare was far more important to her at that time.

  A killing frost had this spring ravaged her apple tree and her womb. A life that had grown and increased for more than twenty weeks inside her had suddenly left her body. As it left, she had felt as if part of her inner organs had gone with it, a part of dead, bloody tissue. She had managed to give it only one horrified look; it appeared as if the life had been choked by her own blood. While the child was still within her, she had felt it move many times. It had been alive in he
r womb, but it could not live outside it. A human being had begun its life inside her but had been forced from its mother-shield too early and had perished. And the mother who was unable to become a mother to her child did not even have a grave to tend. The child in her dream, born on the church steps, had also been taken from her, but it had been alive, and its cries, as Samuel Nöjd carried it away, still echoed in her ears. Her stillborn child had been mute, a lifeless lump of flesh and blood. Thus the dream had come true in one way, but not in another: a half-true dream, as it were.

  After her miscarriage, Karl Oskar had taken the child away, and she realized he must have buried it somewhere in the forest. Where was the . . . ? she had once asked. He would never tell her, he had replied. And perhaps it was as well. She knew herself: the child had been returned.

  One secret remained between God and her. She had prayed to be relieved of another birth, and she had been. He had granted her prayer. He had taken the child back. He had not dared trust it to her, for she had prayed to be relieved from fertility and wished for barrenness, she had rejected blessing and prayed to be cursed. Now it was clear to her: she had sinned with her prayer in the oak grove on the hill that evening last summer.

  And she had committed a still greater sin with her dark doubt in the night last fall. She had doubted the Almighty—in a moment of great weakness her faith had faltered until she had doubted that God existed.

  She had been given her reply; she had been rebuked. He had taken his creation away from her womb.

  Thus Kristina had encountered the father in heaven in all his severity. His punishing hand had fallen on her that her blind eyes might be opened and she might see what she had done. A blessed woman had received the answer, both to her prayer and to her questions of doubt in a moment of despair. God had shown her that he existed, and he had shown it to her in such a way that she never again need doubt.

  Now there remained for her only to submit.

  —4—

  A Settler Wife’s Evening Prayer:

  Tonight again I pray for forgiveness, as I did last night and the night before, and all evenings since I lost my child. I have confessed my sin and endure my punishment with patience, but soon I hope to feel that you have forgiven me a little. I want so to feel that you haven’t turned your face away from me. Otherwise my despair will be great. I have no one to turn to, no one but you. Karl Oskar is kind and thoughtful about me, but my husband can be my staff only in worldly matters. When I worry about my soul, then he can’t help me—no, no more than any other wretched human being.

  I’m a simple and ignorant woman but I have repented and wish to better myself. From now on I will patiently endure the life which you in your grace and blessing give me. I will take care of the little ones with all the strength you give me. I shall try as well as I can to look after the other children you have given me. But you know how tired I get at times; in the evenings I feel worn out, and in the mornings I wonder if I will be able to get up.

  Sometimes I feel I would be glad to die, because then I would have the enduring rest which I long for. But I worry lest I die before my children can take care of themselves. If I should leave Karl Oskar he would be unable to handle the little ones alone; this you know. Ulrika is barely five years old and little Frank isn’t three yet. Therefore, I pray you, my creator and Lord, let me live still a few years, at least five years more, if you could grant me this. By then Johan and Marta will be nearly grown and can look after the others. Then I’ll be satisfied to die, if only you will receive me in your wonderful rest and peace.

  I think often about the words of Robert, my brother-in-law: I’m unable any longer to fight against him who rules creation—I might as well try to lift the whole earth onto my shoulders or tear down the heavens above my head. Therefore, do with me as you wish! I am reconciled to all. Like him I submit to the lot destined for me. Then nothing ill will happen to me in death.

  But dear Lord—I cannot think of being dead alone; in time I want Karl Oskar and the children with me in death. I do not wish to be alone in eternity.

  Give me strength to last a few years more! Dear God, the first thing and the last I pray for this evening: Don’t make my children motherless too soon!

  Bless and keep all of us who sleep under this roof and all the settlers who have come to this foreign land! Amen!

  —5—

  It was Kristina’s habit, during this season of the year, to lie awake in the evenings after she had gone to bed and peer into the dark for that land where the evenings in spring were light.

  In her thoughts she traveled the road back, piece by piece, mile after mile, down the rivers, across the prairie, over the sea. But the road each time seemed longer—she never reached the end, not even half or a quarter of the distance. She never reached her goal, she spent all her time on the road. And each time she journeyed a shorter distance, while the land receded farther.

  By and by, as the land of her childhood and youth faded into a distant memory, it was transformed in her mind’s eye. And as she remembered it in later years, she no longer longed for it: she was already there.

  As a small girl she had lost her doll one day, the first doll she had ever had, a china doll in a blue-flowered dress; it had fallen into the farmstead well at home in Duvemåla. She was inconsolable over her loss and cried and begged her father and brothers—wouldn’t they please get the doll out of the well for her? But the well was too deep; whatever was lost in it once remained there. So her doll had stayed at the bottom of the well. On clear days she could look down into the well and see the doll’s dress like a streak of bluing in the water. She would climb up on the fence around the well so that her parents had to forbid her to go near it. But whenever they were out of sight, she would steal back to peek in. She could see the rose cheeks of the doll fade away and the dress fade in the water. Her lost doll existed, and she knew where it was, yet it was lost to her forever.

  At the next fair her father had bought a new and much bigger doll for her, with a still prettier dress, but this didn’t help; she could never forget the other one, her longing for the lost one was as great as ever. She talked only of her lost doll, she re-created it, put new dresses on it, envisioned it as the largest and most magnificent doll ever to be bought at a fair. At last it had become a doll no one had ever seen or ever would see.

  So it was with her native land. She had lost it in a well so deep that she never could retrieve it. At first she had at times caught a glimpse of it with her inner eye, but during the past years it had sunk ever deeper and farther away from her. The land was there, and she knew where it was; she stood staring after it in the daytime, she had stretched her arms out to it in her dreams at night. But she would never reach it, never get it back. And she had no hope ever on this earth of seeing her beloved ones there at home.

  But as the years passed and drew the homeland farther and farther away from her, the memories of that land came ever closer, and the light over them became clearer.

  Thus, the same change had taken place with regard to her homeland as with the doll of the blue dress down in the well-bottom. She made a Sweden out of her own longing, a Sweden she carried within herself, a homeland that was hers and no one else’s. In so doing, she built recklessly from anything she could get hold of: all of childhood’s light and happy experiences in her home village, as they appeared across memory’s bridge; the dreams she had dreamed of her home while in this foreign land; happenings in Sweden she had heard others speak of; memories from the reading of the Bible and the saga books. She gathered up experience and dreams, guesses and suppositions, truth and fiction—from all these she wove a land that no one had ever seen and no one ever would see.

  Kristina often told her children about Sweden. The two oldest had some faint memory of an earlier home far away, but to the other four, Sweden was only the land where Father and Mother had been born and where their grandparents lived. The mother often told them of her own childhood, her sisters and playmates, of schooling
and games, about the seasons—a cooler summer and a warmer winter than here—about the first day of spring when she ran barefoot, about the first wild strawberries in summer and the first apples that fell from the tree in fall, about the wastelands blossoming heather in August, of the ripe-red lingon tussocks in September, the winter’s sleigh rides and the ice on the pond, about the Christmas morn journey to the early service in the light the crackling pitch torches cast over the snowy night.

  She told it as it came to her, as the moment supplied her, and she changed it from time in time, added to, or deleted from it. Sometimes the children might find her out: But Mother, you told it so the last time! And now you tell it this way. Which way was it? And she couldn’t reply except to say that it was the way she told it, and that was the right way and it couldn’t be any other. Because that was how it was in Sweden where she was born and had lived as a child.

  But her own children listened to her in the same way as they listened to fairy stories. To them, Sweden at last became one of those wonderful countries they read about in storybooks, where only good and pleasant things happened to the inhabitants—a country well suited for children. Once little Ulrika asked her mother: Did Sweden exist in reality? Was it actually a country on earth? Or was it, like that country with the proud prince and the beautiful princess, somewhere east of the sun and west of the moon?

  The mother, of course, replied that it did indeed exist and was on earth. Neither to herself nor to her children could she admit that she had described a country which no one beside herself had seen and no one ever would see.

  Only one homeland is given to a person. Kristina had lost hers. But she had no home-longing any more, she no longer missed what she had lost; she had won it back in the only way possible to one who has lost her dearest possession.

  Now when Kristina lay awake during the dark spring nights in Minnesota, her longing soul sought another land in which there was no difference between night and day.

 

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