Unto a Good Land (13 page)

Danjel had opened his psalmbook to the “Prayer before Starting a Journey,” and when Kristina saw her uncle fold his hands, she did the same. She, her husband, and children already had risked their lives at sea, now they must do it on land as well; in silent prayer she invoked her Creator’s protection.

—3—

In each end of the wagon was a narrow door, and over both doors were identical inscriptions in tall black letters:

DANGER!

WATCH YOUR STEP!

Karl Oskar had seen the same inscription near the pier in New York and as he now recognized it he asked their interpreter to tell him the meaning. Landberg said that these four words warned of dangerous places; when they saw the sign they must watch their steps and look carefully where they set their feet. Inexperienced travelers could easily take a false step when entering or leaving the wagon, and fall off.

Karl Oskar in his turn explained the words to Kristina, who said it was thoughtful to nail up placards in dangerous places in America; she too was going to keep in mind the four words signaling danger, they were so black and threatening she could never forget them.

Outside their window was a tall, white-painted signpost with several lines of foot-high letters:

SAFETY SIGNALS FOR TRAINS

A WHITE FLAG BY DAY

A WHITE LAMP BY NIGHT

SHOWS

ALL CLEAR

Karl Oskar wondered what this placard might mean; no doubt it concerned the travelers, therefore they ought to know. And it annoyed him that he understood not a single syllable of the new language, that he couldn’t decipher a word. It was like the first day at school, when Schoolmaster Rinaldo had held the ABC book to his eyes for the first time. But now he was a full-grown man, twenty-seven years of age, with three children of his own; yet in this country he felt like a schoolboy once more; he must learn to spell all over again, he must learn to recognize words. His inability to read the language did not seem so bad, but it vexed him not to understand the spoken words; it hurt him to hear people speak in his presence without understanding them; he felt inclined to believe they were talking about him, and he was ashamed and annoyed to be talked about before his face, disregarded. Here in America one could stand face to face with people who insulted one, yet one couldn’t do a thing about it; only stand there and stare, awkward, helpless, dumb. Since stepping ashore in America not many hours ago, he had felt foolish more often than during his whole life in Sweden.

But he refused to believe his intelligence had suffered from the emigration.

Their guide Landberg was standing at the entrance, his tall head concealing the inscription; he was speaking English to a man in a blue coat with yellow buttons; the man had a yellow sign on his cap, he must be one of the American guards, or steam-wagon officials. Karl Oskar surmised they were talking about the travelers inside the wagon. He listened with his ears open, trying to understand something that at least
reminded
him of words he understood. But the language of the interpreter and the American did not sound like human speech, rather like the buzz of a bumblebee in his ear; the sounds were distorted, mixed up, crazy through and through. The men twisted their mouths and made knots of their tongues in order to emit strange sounds; it seemed they imitated each other, made faces at each other as children might in play. To Karl Oskar’s ears the American language seemed an unaccountable mixture of senseless sounds, and he grew more depressed each time he listened to it; he would never be able to teach his mouth to use this tongue.

The official left the wagon after he had seen to it that both doors were closed, and now Landberg spoke in Swedish: “Hold on to your seats, good people! Our train is starting to move!”

The warning was followed by a long-drawn-out, piercing, evil yell from the first wagon. The immigrants had never heard the like of this horrible howl, produced by neither beasts’ nor human beings’ throats, but by a lifeless thing and consequently much more terrifying. When it stopped, there was silence in the wagon, a silence of fear and apprehension. Faces turned pale, hands grasped hands, the travelers clutched each other or sought support against benches and walls, against anything within reach.

The moment had arrived; the steam wagon was moving. They could hear the wheels thunder under them as they rolled along on the iron bars, they could see through the windows that they had started ahead.

Their wagon jolted and shook, it cracked and creaked. A minute passed, and two, it pulled still harder, and the wagon rolled and leaned over a little to one side. Some of the travelers crouched in terror to weigh down the other side with the weight of their bodies; Fina-Kajsa shrieked to heaven. It was like the shriek of a dying person; she said she was being choked. Ulrika of Västergöhl hurried to her and loosened her vest, and soon she grew quiet and breathed more easily.

“It’s turning over!” Johan screamed and gripped his mother’s legs. “It’s tipping over, Mother!”

“Keep quiet, boy!”

“I’m afraid!”

“Don’t be afraid! It isn’t dangerous!” Karl Oskar reassured the boy. “Lill-Märta and Harald aren’t crying. You’re the biggest, you mustn’t cry.”

Johan wanted to crawl up onto his mother’s knees, already occupied by the smaller children, but the closest he could get was to cling to her legs; he held on with all his strength while the wagon rolled on, and great tears rolled down his pale cheeks.

Kristina was as much afraid as the child holding on to her, but she forced herself not to cry out. As she looked through the window and saw houses, trees, and the very ground itself move backward, she felt nauseated, her eyes blurred, her throat closed, her head swam. She wanted to see nothing, feel nothing—she closed her eyes and clenched her teeth. She must drive away this dizziness. She held her children closer to her, she clenched her teeth still tighter, she mustn’t faint. . . . Perhaps she might escape it by sitting quite still, eyes closed. . . .

And while the train increased its speed, faster and faster, Kristina sat with her eyes closed. The engine blew out smoke and sparks from its interior, it belched and sputtered, it drew its breath heavily, in and out. The wheels rolled, creaked, and thundered, the wagons rocked and jerked, pulled and shook. And the people closed up inside sat in tense turmoil, each moment anticipating calamity.

But their wagon did not leave the rails, nor did it turn over, nor catch fire; nothing happened.

After a long while Kristina opened her eyes. She saw through the window how trees, bushes, hills, fields rushed by her with dizzying, indescribable speed, and her feeling of faintness returned. They were traveling with frightful speed, she could not endure to see how fast they moved, her head could not stand it; she was forced to close her eyes again.

And the immigrant train continued inland. Pale, silent, serious, the travelers felt they were moving with the speed of the wind.

Karl Oskar said, perhaps they were the first from Sweden to ride on a steam wagon.

—4—

The passengers gradually grew calm, they began to talk to each other and move about. But they suffered sorely from the heat that pricked their skins with a thousand invisible pin points. As no air was admitted, it grew more and more oppressive inside the wagon, breathing became almost impossible; the children grew restless and irritable.

Karl Oskar turned to their guide: “Couldn’t we open the windows ever so little?”

“The windows are nailed and cannot be opened.”

“Couldn’t we open the doors, then?”

“The doors are locked. They won’t be opened until we stop.”

And Landberg admonished the travelers to be calm and to rely on him; they were in his hands and he would look after them the way a shepherd watches his flock.

Landberg continued: It had happened that traveling immigrants had fallen off the wagons during the journey and been killed; it was in concern for their lives that the doors had been locked. But he would see to it that they got the air they needed during the journey. He knew that locked doors, too, could be dangerous. Last year a gruesome disaster had happened to an immigrant train. When it had arrived in Buffalo, and the doors of one windowless freight car had been opened, five travelers were dead of suffocation. Three of those stifled had come from Sweden. All the other passengers were far gone. They had cried and begged to have the doors opened, but no one had understood them as there was no interpreter in their company. So, Landberg pointed out, the travelers could readily see how useful a guide was to newcomers. Since that tragedy, the railroad companies had been instructed to open the doors every time the train stopped. Landberg would see to it that sufficient air was admitted to keep his flock alive; no one would suffocate on this journey.

And the ex-carpenter, their tall countryman, smiled encouragingly at them. He had a mouthful of teeth which glittered white and handsome, and his cheeks were covered with a black, well-kept beard. He was a man whom women looked at. When unmarried Ulrika of Västergöhl asked him a question, she stuck her finger in a buttonhole of his coat so as not to let him get away. Long Landberg was kept busy answering questions, as they had no one else to ask, no one else to hear complaints; but he was never impatient or short.

Hardly had the passengers got their promise of fresh air than they were disturbed again: the sound from the wheels had suddenly grown more intense and hollow. They looked out and saw water streaming on either side of the wagon. They were riding over a bridge that crossed a broad river. The Americans had laid the iron bars for the railroad right across the water! The guide said the Americans were very daring people; above all, they liked to risk their lives; they did it frequently, as a matter of course.

Robert and Arvid sat together on the wagon floor and spoke to each other in low voices. Arvid did not feel well, he had a toothache; he wished he had continued the journey on foot. The first day on land he had had the motion of the waves in his legs and had felt as though he were walking over a quagmire; now when all his limbs were in good order again he must sit locked up in this calf coop. He was sure the wagon had been used for cattle transport—under one bench he had found dry cow dung. Robert showed this to Landberg, who said yes, maybe the wagon had been used for freighting cattle before it had been turned into an immigrant wagon.

Arvid asked if they could trust the wheels to follow the iron bars all the way. Robert told him there were rims on the wheels which forced them to follow the bars. It might, of course, happen that a wagon would lose a wheel, particularly as they drove with this terrible speed; they must be going eighteen miles an hour, or three times as fast as an ordinary spring wagon. That was how fast and strong the steam was.

Arvid looked at him in disbelief: “They say steam is nothing but mist?”

“Ye-es. The kind of mist one sees when water is boiling.”

And Robert explained the power of steam to his friend: Once he and some other boys had picked up an old, discarded gun pipe; they had plugged one end, filled the pipe with water, and then plugged the other end too; they had made a fire in the forest and laid the gun pipe over it; soon it became red hot and blew up; it made a terrific explosion, and the pipe burst into a thousand pieces. One of the boys had had three fingers torn off—so strong was steam power when loosed.

If they were unlucky, it might well happen that the steam in this train would break loose and tear all of them to pieces like a mash of meat so intermingled that flesh scraps and bone chips could hardly be separated.

Arvid chewed one of his knuckles, as was his custom when uneasy. “You think the steam will break loose?”

“No. I said, only if we are unlucky.”

Robert meant to recount all he had read in his
History of Nature
about iron roads and steam power, so that his friend might feel comfortable and safe on this journey. But Arvid’s face showed that his mind was in a turmoil. He whispered: “Do you remember what we promised each other? Always to stick together. Whatever happens, we must stick together.”

“That we must, Arvid.” Robert suddenly became very serious. “I do not forget a promise. Whatever happens to us in America, we must be friends.”

Once, in their farm hands’ stable quarters, back in Sweden, they had clasped hands and promised always to stand by each other. After their lives had been endangered on New York’s broadest street, they had renewed this pledge.

Robert nodded toward his elder brother, he told Arvid he did not care for Karl Oskar’s masterful ways, he did not like masters, he would rather be in Arvid’s company. To be such friends as he and Arvid were counted more than blood relationships.

The train was slowing down, and soon their wagon stood quite still. Landberg kept his promise: the doors were opened at both ends of the wagon, and fresh air came in to ease their breathing. Through the windows they could see a few tall houses along a street and many small houses clustered near by, some no larger than woodsheds.

At last Kristina dared open her eyes and she gazed out as long as their wagon stood still. Karl Oskar asked how she felt after this first stretch.

“Not too bad. A little dizzy.”