Unto a Good Land (7 page)

III

MILK AND WHITE BREAD

—1—

The day they left Sweden the emigrants from Ljuder Parish had counted sixteen in their group. For one of them a watery grave had opened during the voyage, but as Fina-Kajsa from Öland had joined their company, they were still sixteen when they gathered together on the American shore in Battery Park.

Danjel Andreasson of Kärragärde sat by himself, a little to the side of the others, next to his America chest. He was reading in his psalmbook, his head was bent down, and his bushy, brown beard swept the book, open at Hymn 344—”At the Death of a Mate.” A dried flower, a reseda, lay as bookmark between the leaves; it had grown in the flower bed at home, cared for and tended by his wife. The page with the psalm was badly worn from much use.

O Death, why hast thou snatched away

My bosom Love from me?

In sorrow and despair I pray,

But comfort flees from me. . . .

Danjel Andreasson had arrived in the new land to which the Lord had guided him with four motherless little children. He had lost Inga-Lena, his dear wife and earthly helpmate; the Lord had stricken him and trampled on him; he was now only a wretched human worm, wriggling under the heel of the Lord.

He had searched his inner self and arrived at a new understanding: he had sinned the sin of self-righteousness. In his presumption he had considered himself better than others and had believed that his sins once and for all had been washed away and tied up in Christ’s napkin cloth that bound His head at burial. He had held himself righteous, unable to sin any more. But on the ship, as he had lain in all his wretchedness covered with his vomit, listening to the tempest and feeling the depths below him, he had learned that he had been found wanting in the eyes of the Lord.

In his vanity he had believed that when he reached the harbor he would be able to praise God in the foreign language; in his conceit he had considered himself an equal of Christ’s apostles who were visited by the Holy Ghost on the first Whitsuntide, and he had thought that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit would take place in him so that he would be able to use the American tongue. His Creator had already given him a speaking tongue, and this in itself was so great a miracle that it was presumptuous to expect God to give him the ability to use this tongue for all languages.

Sitting here now, he heard the buzz of this foreign language which he had expected his ears to understand and his tongue to imitate. But his ears recognized no sounds and his tongue remained dumb. The words of the language he heard did not reach him, he could not use them in his mouth. No outpouring of the Spirit filled him, no cloven tongues appeared, no visions were seen. He could not prophesy in the new language; his ears were closed and his tongue lame.

Danjel Andreasson entered North America a mute and lost stranger among all other strangers in this multitude of people, races, and tribes here gathered. Once, in Babel, the Lord had confused human language so that men could not understand one another; because each was a sinner, his tongue was capable of his native language only. And because Danjel had thought himself righteous, the Holy Ghost had failed him in the new land; he was not worthy of spiritual outpouring.

Danjel was stricken to the earth, God had chastised him, left him naked in all his frailty and faults. He beheld one vision only, a terrifying one: Man was smaller than the worm, because he was the food for worms—he, Danjel Andreasson of Kärragärde, was food for crawling creatures of the earth.

Once he had conceived this picture of himself, he ceased to explain God’s word to his fellow travelers on the ship; how could he explain Holy Writ when he hadn’t rightly understood it? How could he advise and admonish others when he himself had committed the grossest of sins? How could he be a spiritual guide for others if he were unable to guide his own soul?

“At the Death of a Mate”—Danjel knew this hymn by heart and he closed the book and laid it on the ground. Then he knelt down and folded his hands over the lid of his America chest: “In Thy presence, Father in Heaven, I crawl in the dust.”

On the ship Danjel had given a promise to the Lord—he would build an altar of thanks in the new land. The old clothes chest from the loft of Kärragärde became a Lord’s altar on American soil, and next to it now knelt a crushed man, praising and thanking God; with a full heart he thanked Him for the trial which had been sent for his betterment; he thanked the Almighty Who had snatched away Inga-Lena, taken from him his earthly helpmate; he thanked the Lord Who had taken the mother from four little children; he blessed and praised the Lord God for the ills, sufferings, and persecutions he and his beloved ones had had to endure; he thanked his Creator with the warmth of his heart for all the evils which had been bestowed upon him.

God had sought out Danjel Andreasson who now bent like a worm under His foot. At his entrance into the new, young, and healthy world, he prayed for a rebirth, he prayed to be washed clean from that vanity and self-righteousness which clung to him from the Old World. And he felt that God had come close to him now, closer than He had ever come to him in the country he had left.

—2—

Kristina lay with her head on the bulging knapsack; it was a hard and knotty pillow but to her it seemed the softest down; the knapsack had come with them from home—it was something intimate and friendly. She lay still; she was weak from her severe illness, every limb was weak and weary. If only she could rest, rest a long time; if only she could lie like this, quite still, stretched out on her back in the grass, without having to move even a little finger or a little toe. Such were the delights she desired. If she could remain still, perfectly still, then the tiredness would leave her body. But as yet she could only find momentary rest, soon they must move on again.

A few feet away from her another woman was sleeping, no doubt more tired than she—old Fina-Kajsa lay there with open and gaping mouth. She had pulled up her skirt in a roll around her waist, exposing a worn-out, mended, dirty petticoat which once must have been red. In her arms, tight against her chest, she held a wooden casket decorated with green and yellow dots. It contained her most treasured possessions. The casket had no lock but was tied with heavy string, and the sleeping old woman held it close to her breast the way a mother holds her little child. Through her pointed, toothless mouth, which opened like a black hole, Fina-Kajsa snored. At her feet stood her iron pot, now wing-broken and crippled, one leg lost during the voyage. No wonder people had ill endured the crossing when even iron vessels were broken.

Uncle Danjel’s large white linen sack, once Inga-Lena’s pride, was now frayed and dirty, having fared badly on the ship. Ulrika of Västergöhl, who was looking after Danjel’s belongings now he was a widower, had just opened the sack and was searching for something in it. She was dressed today in Aunt Inga-Lena’s best dress; she and her daughter had divided the dead one’s clothes. Kristina never spoke to Ulrika more than was absolutely necessary; for her uncle’s sake Kristina had endured Ulrika’s company, but Karl Oskar had promised that they would separate themselves from the former parish whore as soon as possible. Kristina did not begrudge the Glad One her aunt’s clothing; both she and her daughter must have something to cover themselves with, and they had earned the garments now that they were taking care of the poor children who had lost their mother.

The dress Elin was wearing had also belonged to Inga-Lena, and it was too big for the sixteen-year-old girl. It flowed in large billows and bags about her lithe body. She sat with a small chip basket on her knees and it reminded Kristina of berry-picking time. What kind of berries might there be to pick in this country? Wild strawberries, so sweet to taste, and with such delicate white flowers in the spring? Blueberries which colored the fingers black in summer. Fiery red cranberries on the tussocks in autumn? Elin held the handle of her basket firmly, as if just about to go out into the berry lands—she held on to it as one holds to a single worldly possession.

And Kristina sat up, the better to keep an eye on her family belongings. There stood their chest—five feet long and three high—reinforced with broad iron bands which had held it together unharmed across the Atlantic; only one corner of the lid was scraped a little. On the front of the chest glowed the letters, still red, painted there before departure:
Home-owner Karl Oskar Nilsson, North America.

And there stood their sacks and their food basket. The small bundle next to Kristina moved at times, it was alive—in it slept little Harald, the baby. Karl Oskar had gone back to the ship to pick up something forgotten and he had the two other children with him.

From where she sat among the trees Kristina could see the harbor and the long row of ships at the piers. Right in front of her was a tall, yellow-green house with a round tower which it carried like a crown. The house was built on an islet, and people went to it across a bridge. High up on the wall over the entrance there was something written in tall black letters, visible from where she sat: CASTLE GARDEN. It was, of course, the name of the house, whatever it might mean. In front of the round house on the same isle there was a smaller and lower house, one wall of which was almost covered by an inscription: LABOR EXCHANGE; the name of that house was painted in the largest letters she had ever seen.

They put names on the houses in America. And the incomprehensible writing she saw reminded her that she was now in a land where she understood not the smallest word of what people said; they might speak into her very ears, yet she wouldn’t hear them; she might talk, and they would not hear her. From the first moment here in America she suffered from two defects—deafness and dumbness; she must go about among strangers a deaf-mute.

It was gentry she saw walking about there near the big house with the tower; the women had umbrellas like the ladies at home in Sweden. But it wasn’t raining, it was entirely clear, the sun shone in a cloudless sky. Why did the women carry umbrellas today? Perhaps they had brought them along for show.

Yes, the sun was shining, there was an unmerciful heat in America. The air was oppressive and she breathed with difficulty; she had the sensation of inhaling pungent steam while bending over a pot of boiling water. But her happiness in being on the earth again was so great that it almost obliterated the discomfort of the American heat. On the ship she had believed that she never more would get out into God’s clear daylight; she had felt she would end her life enclosed in the dark hold; she had thought she would never again see a patch of grass or a green leaf. But now she lay here on the green earth in the sun. She could just as easily, like poor Inga-Lena, have been lying on the bottom of the ocean, her body lowered for monsters of the deep to devour. But she had been saved from them, she and her loved ones—what else mattered?

To go out on the ocean in a fragile ship with three small children—she felt it had been to tempt the Lord God. In a long and fervent prayer she thanked her Father in Heaven Who in His mercy had let them reach solid ground in health.

She almost felt as if she had been dead and awakened to life again, as if a miracle had happened to her. How wonderfully still everything about her seemed! The joy of lying here on the peaceful, quiet earth could only be fully appreciated by one who had long lived in a constantly moving and heaving bed, one who had been tossed about on high, restless billows. At last she was liberated from the ship’s swing which had thrown her up and down, she was free from the dizzy journeys to the top of the waves and into their valleys. She had always loved to play with a swing but never again would she be tempted by the swing of the sea; with this she was sated for life. Never again would she desire to see this terrifying ocean, never again would her feet leave solid ground.

She felt thirsty, her tongue was parched, and her appetite was returning now that she was on land; she must eat well now that she had one more life to feed.

She put her hand against her abdomen: again she could feel the stirring within her. Many days had passed since the last time she felt the child move, and she had begun to wonder if it still could be alive. It would not have seemed strange to her had it died, so ill and weak she had been from seasickness and scurvy. A joy filled her as she now felt it stir: once having conceived a child, she wished to bear it alive; a stillborn child was a shame and God’s chastisement—the woman was not worthy to carry into the world the life He had created within her.

When was it due? She counted the months on her fingers: she had conceived it sometime in the middle of February—March, April, May, June—she was already in her fifth month. July, August, September, October, November—her childbed would be sometime in the middle of November.

About half the time left until she was in childbed. Would they have a bed by then, a bed in which she could bear her child?

The child was alive. A life that had traveled free across the ocean had come into the land. It stirred and moved in its hidden nest, stronger than the mother had felt it before. Not only had she herself come to life again, the child within her seemed to have gained new life, now that she had carried it into the New World.

—3—

“Are you asleep, Kristina?”

She had dozed off. Karl Oskar stood by her side, wiping his sweaty face with his jacket sleeve.

“What a heat! They can fry bacon on the roofs here!” He took off his wadmal coat and threw it on the ground. Johan and Lill-Märta came rushing to their mother.