by Ola Larsmo
They were sitting on the foredeck. A cold wind had started blowing, but no one wanted to go below as long as there was still some daylight. All the people around Anna were crowded together, sitting on whatever they could find, like hens in a chicken coop. In the gathering dusk she could see what looked like a mist of body heat rising up from those seated across from her with their backs to the west. The girls were quietly playing a game that involved hopping on one leg around each other while counting to themselves; when they reached a certain number they would grab each other’s hands. Some of the Irish children stood nearby, watching, though not wanting to appear overly interested. Carl was sitting on Gustaf’s lap, but now he’d started to squirm. When Gustaf set him down, the boy clung to his father’s leg and wanted to be lifted up again. His whole face contorted into a plaintive mask. He was growing tired, and any moment now he would start to whine. Anna got ready to stand up and take him below. But not yet. She was still sitting there when Inga came over and sat down beside her.
“It’s getting really cold,” the younger woman said.
She merely nodded.
“We’re headed far to the north. I’ve read that at this time of year we might actually see icebergs.”
At first Anna didn’t reply, simply wondered where Inga got all her information.
“Where did you read about that?” she asked at last, just for something to say.
“I got a book for emigrants from the agent. Didn’t you get one?”
“Maybe Gustaf has it somewhere.”
For a moment Inga sat in silence, but then she said in a more serious tone, “Have the two of you given more thought to where you’ll go?” She pushed back a lock of hair that had escaped from under the shawl draped over her head.
“We haven’t had a chance to talk about it yet. There’s been so much to do.” When Anna said that, she felt her stomach lurch. The stench from the women’s privy gusted toward them on the wind. And yet, she thought, so far I haven’t felt the slightest bit seasick.
“Well, you should,” said Inga. “I mean, you have a few days to think about it. But maybe we should talk to some of the others. Together, I mean. Because you have to decide where you’re going before we dock. You have to say where you’re headed.”
The smell was getting worse. Anna was keeping half an eye on Carl, who was squirming more and more on his father’s lap. But part of her wanted to stay and listen to what Inga had to say.
“Who do you think we should talk to?” she asked now.
“I was thinking of starting with Mrs. Lundgren and her son David. They’re going to St. Paul in Minnesota. David’s brother is already there. He has a job with the railroad.”
Anna wondered what Inga’s real intentions were. The young woman had deliberately sought her out and seemed to have some purpose in mind. But right now it was so nice merely to sit and listen to her talking. Inga clearly had goals and plans. It felt somehow liberating to listen to her, almost as if listening to music.
“That’s where you’re going too, isn’t it?”
Inga nodded.
“So are you suggesting that we should go there? Gustaf has talked about both Minnesota and New York. But he has mostly worked in shoe factories, so . . .”
Inga quietly waited for Anna to go on.
She ended up saying something different from what she’d planned. “Until he was let go, that is.” Then she fell silent. Yet Inga didn’t seem to pay much attention to what she’d just said.
“I think you should talk to the Lundgrens. They know a lot about St. Paul, because of the letters they’ve received from David’s older brother. He’s told them about places to live and where to find work. If there’s a shoe factory, they might know about that too.”
Minnesota. New York. They were nothing but words in Anna’s head, words without pictures. She’d seen a sketch of the Statue of Liberty in a newspaper, and the same drawing on a poster at the harbor area in Göteborg. Otherwise the names conjured up no images in her mind. St. Paul. Carl wriggled out of Gustaf’s grip and fell to the deck, though he didn’t land particularly hard. Even so, he scrunched up his eyes and opened his mouth to what was certain to be an angry howl.
“Let’s talk more later,” Anna said as she quickly got to her feet.
Then she swept up the boy and headed for the ladder to go below, holding against her shoulder his warm and hard little body, now trembling with sobs. The sea was a leaden black beneath an equally dark gray cloud cover. It was their second night.
About the crossing on the Majestic, Carl would remember only this: how he’d fallen and landed hard on the rough, gray planks of the deck where the varnish was completely worn away except in the cracks. Gray and brown and a sudden white pain. That would be his first memory. Along with being carried beneath the high, dark vault of the railway tunnel and out into a heavy snowfall. Both memories seemed to follow closely upon each other, with no distance from one to the other. Strangely enough, he remembered nothing at all of the big fire that took place in between.
Anna never understood where they’d gotten hold of the liquor. As far as she knew, none could be purchased onboard unless you were a cabin passenger. But the next evening the steerage deck was crowded with shouting people, and a brawl broke out in the forward section reserved for bachelors, on the other side of the central passageway’s endlessly long “dining table” made of unpainted boards. Raucous voices yelled in Finnish and other languages, followed by loud thuds as men were repeatedly shoved against the wooden wall, along with the sound of bottles shattering and glass skittering across the deck. Then someone came running into their section, screaming shrilly. It was one of the Gavin girls. She was crying and calling for her mother. The woman, whose name Anna hadn’t yet learned, simply handed over her youngest child before hitching up her skirts and following her daughter out to the central passageway where a man’s voice bellowed nonstop, with equal parts anger and pure terror.
There Anna sat, holding on her lap a stranger’s child, who stared up at her without fear in her alert green eyes. The little girl was wrapped in a gray woolen shawl, and on her head she wore a white crocheted cap.
With a great deal of noise Mr. Gavin abruptly came in, half carrying and half dragging his son, who was draped over his back. Behind them came Mrs. Gavin and the eldest daughter, who had placed a supportive hand on her brother’s shoulder. She was crying soundlessly, open-mouthed.
The young man’s shirt was dark across the chest, and he held one hand pressed against his shoulder. The blood was coming from his arm.
They laid him down on the lower bunk. Mr. Gavin took a clay jug from under the bed and poured something on his son’s outstretched arm, making the boy swear and try to get away, but his mother and sister held him in place. Before the women’s backs blocked her view, Anna caught a glimpse of a long, ragged wound reaching up to the crook in his arm. Dark blood was still gushing out. The mother ripped a pillowcase in strips and wrapped them around his arm. The sister squatted down and spoke to her brother in a soothing tone, the way she might talk to a family pet. Then the father held up his son’s arm. Blood was already seeping through the improvised bandage. Anna turned away and closed her eyes tight. She didn’t want to see any more blood.
She opened her eyes when she felt someone sit down on the mattress next to her. It was Gustaf. She hadn’t noticed him come in.
“What a damn ruckus out there,” he said quietly. “The steward arrived and brought a couple of sailors to help him. They’ve seized one of the Finnish boys. I don’t know what’s going to happen to him, but he’s just as drunk as that boy over there.”
He motioned toward the pale and sweaty young Gavin boy, who was now peering up at his bandaged arm, which his father held pressed against the head of the bunk.
The youngest Gavin daughter squirmed a bit as she lay on Anna’s lap, so she looked down at the child. The girl reached up a hand to grab her hair, seemingly unaffected by all the nearby commotion. Things were settli
ng down. Mrs. Gavin stood with her forehead pressed against the edge of the upper bunk, muttering to herself words that sounded like a prayer: sé do bheatha a Mhuire atá lán de ghrásta tá an Tiarna leat.
If not for the bloody bandage visible inside the bunk, it might have been an idyllic tableau. No one said a word. And Anna breathed a sigh of relief as the child grabbed hold of her thumb with her strong little fingers. She was ashamed to admit that her sense of relief came from knowing that Gustaf clearly hadn’t been involved in the brawl.
That was the only incident to occur during the crossing. That night the wind picked up, and the Majestic changed course so as to sail more directly into the wind, which might delay their arrival by as much as a day, or so the steward had said to someone. Yet it did little to ease the seasickness many were suffering. Anna noted with surprise that she remained largely unaffected.
The stench of vomit spread over the entire between-deck, and there was the constant sound of people moaning in incomprehensible languages. Sometimes there were no words at all. Gustaf was able to stay on his feet, but he was even less vocal than usual. They took turns sitting with the children, who lay on the bunks, pale and whimpering. Anna went to get water from the big tank mid-ship and immediately fell into a wordless argument with the steward, who didn’t want to let her use her own cup. Everyone was supposed to use the cup hanging on a string from the tank. Without knowing exactly how she did it, Anna managed to convince him the water was for her children. He then allowed her to fill her enameled metal cup and take the water back, carefully holding the cup in both hands. She concentrated on keeping steady in order to counterbalance the rolling motion of the ship and avoid spilling any water. Before Anna reached their quarters she began feeling a little dizzy. I wonder if this is what it feels like to be seasick, she thought. But the feeling subsided as soon as she looked up and no longer kept her eyes fixed on the rippling water in the cup. The children would take only a sip, and Carl vomited as soon as he swallowed the water, which rose up in his throat and ran down his chin. Gustaf waved her away, signaling that she shouldn’t worry about them. She should go out on deck. Mostly to get out of the way, she did as he wished.
The passageway was filled with people listlessly lying on the floor. Some of them had vomited as they lay there, too lethargic to get cleaned up. Anna wondered if the situation was the same on the cabin deck. In her mind she pictured women wearing elegant clothing spattered with vomit lying next to each other on red carpets, but she quickly dismissed the thought. Holding her breath, she climbed up the ladder and pushed aside the sailcloth covering the hatch.
The sky was a dark gray swiftly turning black. The sea was surging and heaving in every direction. The foredeck, normally teeming with people, was pleasantly deserted and rinsed clean, gleaming in the nebulous dim light. She saw only one other person on deck, wearing a dark shawl over her head and shoulders. At first she thought it was one of the Irish women, but then she recognized Inga. The young woman was sitting in a nook that offered the only shelter, beneath the wall of the bridge and the door to the women’s privy, which thank goodness had been properly latched from the outside. Otherwise the door had a tendency to fly open whenever the ship rolled. Holding on to the rope that acted as a handrail, she made her way over to Inga, who looked as if she was feeling the effects of seasickness but had nevertheless ventured outside to get some fresh air.
At first Anna didn’t speak, merely held on to the rope and stared out at the sea. This was nothing like looking at the ceaselessly rolling waves from shore. Here there was no specific direction. The water seemed to pour in from all sides. The ship rose up on one wave and then turned slightly on the next, which came from a different point of the compass.
“Breakers,” said Inga dully. “That’s what those waves are called.”
Alone on the foredeck, the two women tried to make sense of the unpredictable motion of the sea. For all Anna knew, the ship might have turned around and be headed back to Ireland. There were no directional markers or fixed points on which to focus. She couldn’t tell whether they were moving forward or in circles. The knot in her stomach was not from nausea but pure fear. She wasn’t scared they might sink, because the ship was upright and smoke was streaming from the three smokestacks, but she was frightened by this vast, new world that offered no discernible sense of direction. She’d never seen anything like it before. And that was how things would be for the rest of her life.
Someone placed a hand on her shoulder, as if seeking support. She gave a start and then looked up to see Mrs. Gavin’s narrow, pallid face under her shawl. The woman’s colorless lips managed a thin smile as she clung to her while the ship once again made what felt like a quarter-turn. Anna kept a tight grip on the rope. If I close my eyes now, she thought, I’m going to be sick. I have to keep looking at the sea, even if it pulls my soul from me. The other woman held on to her shoulder, her grip firm yet gentle. Inga held out a hand to help them sit down beside her. Then the three of them silently looked out at the sea, which lacked any horizon.
The next day the weather was calmer and a little warmer, so it was a good time to talk. The deck was once again crowded with people, some of whom could not settle down but instead insisted on walking restlessly from the rail on one side of the ship to the other and then back again. Yet it was still much too soon to be dreaming of land. Others marked off a space for themselves in the morning and then guarded it for the rest of the day, or at least until the next meal was served. A man wearing a waistcoat and brimless cap had brought out a fiddle. He sat down on a coil of rope and every once in a while squeaked forth little dance tunes. Some of the Irish youths tried a few dance steps, but they were constantly scolded by the deck passengers after colliding with them. Finally they simply gave up.
Inga was the youngest of the group of women, yet she was always at the center whenever they gathered. Today she’d seen to it that Mrs. Lundgren and her taciturn son David had joined them. Occasionally Gustaf would appear at the edge of the group, holding Carl by the hand. He and his son would disappear in the space between the privies and the bridge over by the rail on the port side, but soon they’d be back again. In addition to the Lundgrens, the group was joined by the slightly older Mr. Nilsson, a carpenter, and his wife and two teenage daughters who never said a word. One of them always smelled faintly of urine. Elisabet and Ellen sat beside their mother, whispering as they played with a paper fortune teller they’d made from a sheet of newsprint they’d found somewhere. At the moment, Mrs. Lundgren was the one doing the talking, though she spoke so quietly it was hard to catch what she was saying. She had brought along some letters, which she smoothed out and then read aloud. They were from her son Jonathan in St. Paul, and she had underlined certain sections. Like the part about how winters were colder than back home in Sweden. And how you needed good shoes and boots. It was possible to find a place to live, her son wrote, at least in Minnesota. When he’d first arrived several years ago, he’d stopped in New York, but things had been much more difficult there. He hadn’t been able to find a place to sleep so he could get to work on time, so he’d spent the last of his money to head west. There were jobs available both in New York and in St. Paul, where he’d started out as a day laborer for the railroad and then found work in the forests to the north. Now he was back in the city. There were several big mills there because of the river rapids, and they were building the railroad north to Canada. The work in the forests was much harder than back home, especially in the wintertime, so he’d decided to stay in the city.
“He doesn’t write anything about the need for maids,” said Inga. She smiled, so no doubt she meant it as a joke. But the widow Lundgren looked uneasy and fixed her eyes on the letters again. David sat behind her, reading over her shoulder. Or at least it looked as if he were reading. His unshaven face was motionless, shadowed by the visor of his cap. There was something about David that made Anna nervous. He was quiet and calm and friendly whenever anyone spoke to him, yet he seem
ed filled with a great tension, as if he had something very important to divulge. But he never mentioned a word about it as far as anyone could tell. When he looked out at the sea, his eyes were as black as a bird’s.
The widow Lundgren licked her fingertips as she leafed through the letters, the corners of which were already dark with smudges. The stamps on the creased envelopes were red and green and looked quite strange. She kept on smoothing down the paper with her hand, which explained why the letters were so worn looking, as if they were very old. But the latest one had actually arrived only a few weeks before Mrs. Lundgren and her son had set out from their home in Västergötland.
“Gustaf worked in the shoe factory back home in Örebro,” Anna heard herself explaining. Then she looked over her shoulder to see if he’d heard. But her husband and son were now standing with other passengers at the rail, right in front of the locked wrought iron gate leading to the section for second- and first-class passengers.
“Does he write anything about shoe factories?” she asked, a bit more confidently. To her surprise, the older woman looked up and smiled.
“He does, in fact,” she said. “Jonathan says they make a lot of shoes in St. Paul. And everywhere in Minnesota.”
Mrs. Lundgren’s words made Anna’s heart skip a beat. Then she heaved a big sigh of relief, as she could now set some of her worries aside for a while.
“I’ll tell Gustaf,” she said, hoping no one would notice the quaver in her voice. She stuck her trembling hands under her apron.