The Last Letter Home (33 page)

“Why did you donate the crown?”

“I’ll tell you, Karl Oskar: The paper is wrong—I’m not grateful to Sweden. That wasn’t the reason.”

She thought for a few moments, then she added that she was only grateful to Sweden that she had gotten away from that country in order to live the life of a human being in America. At home she had been sold at auction when she was four, and raped by the farmer who bought her when she was fourteen. She had frozen and been hungry, and had been unable to nourish her children at her breast; three of them had died and for this people had spit after her and hated her. Was that treatment something to be grateful for?

Ulrika looked out through the window; her eyes followed the slow stream of the river, as far as they could. They tried to peer into the invisible distance, as it were, as if she wanted to look all the way back to her native country.

But this she must say as well: She had no desire to lie on her deathbed with hatred in her heart for the country where she was born. As the Lord had forgiven her all her sins, so she wished to forgive the people of Sweden. Henry had taught her that a person washed clean in the new baptism forgave his neighbors all their wrongdoings. Now she had donated the bridal crown to show God that she did not carry a grudge against any person in the old country. It had taken many years to get over her bitterness but at last she was reconciled in her heart to the Kingdom of Sweden, which hitherto she had always called a hellhole.

“And yet you were right,” said her guest. “Only the upper class lives well in that country.”

Mrs. Henry O. Jackson, the well-to-do widow of Stillwater’s Baptist minister, leaned back in her chair, still looking out at the stream below her window; the St. Croix flowed in the direction whence she had arrived that day when she landed in Stillwater. She was in deep thought.

“At Whitsuntide my crown will be used for the first time! At a church wedding in Ljuder!”

Then she grew silent; she closed her eyes. Whitsuntide would be here in a few days, in a few days her gift to Sweden would be consecrated. There would be a great ceremony in the church there at home. With her eyes closed she could see people filling the pews, her ears could hear the organ play, the congregation sing, as devout reverence filled the church to the very organ loft.

The singing and the music poured out through the open church windows. Outside the leafy elms swayed, there grew the spring blossoms, fragrant roses, tender lilies. The ground itself was potent with green grass and herbs, and a young and green summer soughed in the elm crowns above the earth.

And inside the church the wedding; the new bridal crown is worn for the first time, shown to the congregation. It is a gift from an unknown donor in the New World. Reverently the young bridal couple moves up the aisle. On the brides head rises the silver crown with its precious stones glittering like stars and crystals. The couple kneels at the altar, the congregation rises. As the wedding march dies only the soughing in the elms can be heard from outside.

Then the voice of the minister—the ceremony has begun.

All the people in the pews have their eyes on the beautiful crown.
But who is the bride?

The former Ulrika of Västergöhl sits with eyes closed, in deep thought. She has closed her eyes in order to see. And she sees. She does not see Karl Oskar who is sitting in front of her, or the furniture and knickknacks in her comfortable home in Stillwater, nothing of her surroundings. Under her closed eyelids she sees a bride at the altar in Ljuder church at Whitsuntide. She has recognized her. She has recognized not only the crown, which she herself has bought and held in her hands, she also knows the young bride—her body, her features: It is none other than she herself. It is Ulrika herself who wears the silver crown with the precious stones.

Everyone in the church can see that the bride at the altar is beautiful, her cheeks blooming pink from modesty, her eyes radiating health, happiness. She stands straight and proud, her bosom high under the bridal blouse. She is without a doubt the most attractive girl in the parish, and more beautiful than ever in her white gown. Who could have been more suitable to consecrate the crown? The whole congregation can see the young girl, the virgin, the church bride, a chaste young woman married in her home parish at Whitsuntide—Ulrika as a young bride!

The former parish whore, excluded from church and altar in her home parish, had been the first Swedish bride in the St. Croix Valley. But her innermost, secret dream had been from early years to be a bride in her home church. It was her great desire, for a life different from the one she had lived, and she could never smother it.

Now her dream has come true, in the guise of another woman; she has exacted payment for the life she had been denied. Every time a young bride wears her crown in Ljuder church, Ulrika is indemnified.

For each virgin bride in the home village church is she. Other women have a wedding only once in life, but she will celebrate it many times. Again and again she will be dressed and decked and see herself in the dream she has always nourished in secret. At each church wedding she will be resurrected from her youthful degradation as her head again and again carries the crown with the precious stones.

Mrs. Henry O. Jackson, sitting here in her home in Stillwater, is not young any more. She who with closed eyes views the June wedding in her homeland will soon be a woman of many years. Soon her cheeks will be flabby, the wrinkles spreading, and the legs under her heavy body unsteady. But she can sit and dream in this joyful knowledge: Even after her death she will stand as bride in Ljuder church, year in, year out.

Ulrika of Västergöhl has finally been vindicated in Sweden. She has been turned into the eternal crown-bride.

XXII

THE FARMER AND THE OAK

—1—

Strong, well-muscled young men were growing up at Lake Chisago’s oldest settlement. Four sons had grown into men. Two were as tall as the father, two taller. Any one of them could manage a job requiring a full-grown man. All were broad across the shoulders, strong in limbs, keen and handy. Their growth into manhood was the greatest change that had taken place at this settlement.

Karl Oskar retained a father’s authority over his sons; this must remain his as long as they ate his bread and lived in his house. But the older they grew the less he knew about them. He was together with his boys in work, but outside the home they lived their own lives. He was the hermit, seldom away from home, they were lively, often away, associating with other people. And father and sons already used different languages when they spoke with each other. The children more and more discarded their mother tongue for English—when he addressed them in Swedish they would reply in English. This seemed awkward to him and plainly askew. At first he tried to correct them, but by and by he became accustomed to it and after some time it no longer bothered him. There was nothing he could do about it, so perhaps it was better to say nothing. After all, his children were right; he must not hinder them from speaking their country’s language. In the settlements hereabouts Swedish was all right, but outside the Chisago Lake district they had little use for their mother tongue. The surer they became in English, the easier would be their success in this country.

Karl Oskar’s children were to be saved from the language difficulties he had gone through in America. How hadn’t it hindered him! How many humiliations hadn’t he endured because he couldn’t speak the country’s language. At last he managed, but like other Swedes at Chisago Lake he used his own brand of English, strongly mixed with the old language. He would never learn anything else. Lately he more and more forgot the new since he seldom went beyond his farm, and he fell back on Swedish.

He felt that his children, when outsiders were present, were ashamed of their father’s way of speaking. The children didn’t understand, couldn’t understand, how much easier it was for them. All he could do was to pretend he didn’t know they were ashamed of their father’s expressions.

With the growing children, the new language came into the house and expelled the old. It didn’t even spare the name their home had had from the beginning. Karl Oskar’s children no longer called their home New Duvemåla. They had given it another name, a name used by people who spoke of the first settlement at Chisago Lake. New Duvemåla was no more, it was gone and would never be revived. Instead it was now called the Nilsson Settlement.

—2—

The oak grove to the east of the house still stood, covering about twenty acres of fertile land where crops could grow. For ten years Karl Oskar had had his eye on this piece of ground. Then a mild, suitable autumn arrived which was to be the grove’s last; the days of the mighty oaks were numbered.

It had taken the farmer a long time to plan his attack on the oaks; this fall the plan was completed, now he had thought it over long enough. He had figured out how to go about it, how to turn this ground into a tilled field: The giant trees would be pulled up by the roots.

Now with the boys he had sufficient help, and Karl Oskar Nilsson and his four sons approached the grove with their team one early morning. Five men and two horses—the combined strength of men and beasts would fell the old oaks.

They began with one of the largest; they dug a ditch around the tree, four feet deep, and cut the roots. They took away the foothold of the oak. This was the trick to conquer it: Deprive it of its hold. They began down at the root; when the ditch was ready two of the boys climbed up the tree with a heavy iron chain, as high as they could get. They fastened it to the trunk and the father joined it to the pull lines from the team.

Human labor had done its part, now it was the turn of the beasts; the horses would fell the tree. But the oak itself would help, its weight would facilitate its fall.

The farmer picked up the reins and urged his strong team forward which he had followed for years after harrow and plow, wagon and timber sled. Today it was hitched to the heaviest load it had ever pulled, a giant oak which for hundreds of years had stood secure on its roots. Now the old one’s footing had been undermined.

The horses obeyed their master and started to pull, concentrating all their strength until their backs straightened out and their legs and loins sank. Their hooves took hold of the ground, turf and rocks flew about, the animals tramped, moved their legs, stretched their sinews. The hooves dug into the earth. The pull lines were extended until it seemed as if they would break, the horses crouched as if ready to bolt, their backs straightened out, their hindquarters sank down. But they did not move from the spot; they stood where they were, tramped the same place. They were hitched to a load that remained stationary.

The driver of the team kept urging it on. The horses pulled again, their hooves threw up turf. This was their life’s heaviest load.

Now the oak began to tremble from the force pulling in the chains around its trunk. The enormous crown swayed slowly back and forth. The men could see that the oak was beginning to lean. Once it had started to sway, its motion would soon utilize its weight in making it fall.

The team in its place pulled again, the giant trunk was beginning to give, the lines slackened—they were long enough so the tree would not reach the team in its fall.

The farmer and his sons cried out warnings to one another, the calls echoing back and forth:

“Timber!”

“She’s coming!”

“Get away!”

The tree was leaning. A sound like an approaching storm was heard in the air—the tree had started to fall! The giant took one last heavy breath as it sank to the ground. In falling the tree had pulled up its own stump. When the branches hit the earth there was a report like a gunshot. Then the great oak lay still. It had left an empty place in the air above.

The giant was felled, the first one. Five men and two horses had gone to work on the grove—oak after oak fell, each pulling up its roots with its fall. The warning calls sounded: Keep away! She’s coming! And heavy and big she came, roaring through the air, falling with a thud, her roots in the air, her crown crushed. In the place where the tree had grown, a ditch opened, deep as a grave. Each fallen oak left room for a piece of fallow field.

It was the autumn of the great oak destruction; death ravaged the grove. The owner and his four sons cleared ground—the farmer was using all the human strength that had grown up in his house. This work by the father and his sons would complete the clearing of this farm. In the evenings, tired and pleased, they looked at the row of oaks they had felled, quietly laid down their tools, and went home.

For more than twenty years Karl Oskar had cleared wild land in America, hoed, plowed, cut. Now he had started with the last piece. He was nearing the end. When the oak grove had been cleared and tilled his farm would be completed.

—3—

The clearing went on through the whole autumn. Karl Oskar hoped to be through before snow fell and the ground froze. And the winter was late this year, as if it wanted to aid him in his work.

It was an evening late in November. Only one oak remained, but one of the largest, a giant, almost six feet thick at arm’s height. At the time when this tree was a sapling the farmer’s parents had not yet come into the world, nor his grandparents. And when he himself saw the shore of Lake Ki-Chi-Saga for the first time, the oak had reached its full years. It had remained in its place while he felled thousands of trees around it. Now its turn had come: the autumnal storms had swayed its crown for the last time.

It was this oak the farmer was to remember.

The first blue approach of twilight appeared in the sky. The farmer’s oldest son said it was late, they were tired, and since this last oak was so big and deeply rooted it would be quite a job getting it down. It would be dark before they were through. Couldn’t they leave it till tomorrow?

The farmer replied that since only one single oak remained they would fell it too before they went home. Since it was the last one they must not leave it because of approaching evening. With the felling of this tree they could say they had completed their task. Then they could go home and rest, well satisfied.