The Settlers (15 page)

But the weather turned out to be blessed: Sunday dawned with clear skies. Now the children could stay outside, and no one would bother to inspect their clothes too closely. She saw to it that Karl Oskar was Sunday-clean; she handed him a newly washed and ironed shirt, a wooden spoon filled with soft soap, and a bowl of lukewarm water, and then he went outside in the yard and cleaned up. Of suitable communion clothes he had none, he must wear the same clothing he had long worn to work in.

Kristina herself had her black dress of which she had been so careful that it still looked nice.

On Sunday morning Pastor Törner arrived at the log cabin on foot, carrying his black leather bag with the sacred bread and the wine, and a parcel with his minister’s surplice. This had become wrinkled, as he had bundled it up, and Kristina warmed her iron to press it.

As she reverently handled the ministerial garment, a thought came to her. She had not been churched after her last childbed, and Dan was more than two-and-a-half years old. The boy was so big that she no longer could give him the breast, even though she had wanted to do so in order to delay a new pregnancy. Should she ask the young pastor to church her? But perhaps by now so much time had elapsed that it was too late. A wife ought to be churched before she knew her husband carnally, and in that respect it was more than two years too late in her case. Should she now ask the pastor if it was too late for her?

She felt ashamed to ask him. Perhaps he would be greatly upset that she delayed two-and-a-half years after the childbed. She remembered her mother saying that it would have the same effect as churching if a woman shook a minister’s hand. And she had shaken hands with this young pastor each time he had come to their house. Could this be sufficient? Why couldn’t it be counted the same as churching? She did not know. But as long as Pastor Törner remained in the neighborhood, she would continue to shake his hand whenever she had the opportunity.

The communion guests had begun to arrive, and as they entered the cabin, Pastor Törner wrote down their names in turn. He recorded that Danjel Andreasson of New Kärragärde was present, accompanied by his two sons, Sven and Olof, who were of confirmation age and today for the first time would go to the Lord’s table. Jonas Petter and his housekeeper, Swedish Anna, had also arrived on Danjel’s ox cart. From Taylors Falls came Mother Fina-Kajsa and her son, Anders Månsson. The old woman was perky and talkative but looked unkempt, her gray, matted hair in tufts. Anders Månsson was shaved and combed, but his eyes were bloodshot, and he seemed shy and depressed; he seldom showed himself among people. Petrus Olausson and his wife, Judit, had brought along their daughter, who, like Danjel’s boys, was to participate in her first communion.

With Karl Oskar and Kristina, there were twelve communicants in all. All the Swedes in the valley who had received an invitation had come, except one: Samuel Nöjd, the trapper in Taylors Falls. He had said to Swedish Anna, who had brought him the message, that he did not wish to participate in any of the foolery or spectacles of the priests. He had hoped, out here, to be left in peace by those black-capped sorcerers who in Sweden had plagued him with their catechism and religious examinations. Swedish Anna had replied that Jesus had also redeemed his soul with his dear blood, but this Samuel Nöjd had denied; his soul was not to be redeemed by anybody, whatever the price, for he was a free, thinking human being.

The sturdy, red-hued Swedish Anna was greatly disturbed over the blasphemer Nöjd and his way of living: recently, he had taken in an Indian woman to live with him, and what he did to her, each and every one could imagine. He was known to be heathenish, and now he was also carnally mixing with the heathens.

Swedish Anna was considered a deeply religious woman and she was looked up to by her countrymen for her irreproachable morals. Kristina had a deep respect for this woman from Dalecarlia. Swedish Anna was a kind-hearted woman, but kept so strictly to the true religion that she had difficulty in enduring Ulrika after she had turned Baptist, but Kristina defended Ulrika when Swedish Anna called her a hypocrite and a slovenly woman.

Danjel Andreasson praised his niece for having decorated the cabin so nicely: it was attractive and made up to look like a real church, he said.

The table stood in the middle of the room, and Karl Oskar had put planks on sawhorses for the people to sit on. When all were seated there was no place for him, so he went to the woodshed and brought in the chopping block for a chair. The fresh planks smelled pungently of pine and pitch. On the foodboard Kristina had spread her only tablecloth of whole linen, ironed and shining white. There stood the pitcher with the Communion wine, and one of Karl Oskar’s huge brännvin glasses which was to be used as a communion cup. On a small plate lay the communion bread, thin, flat, dry breads, not unlike cookies.

Pastor Törner took his place at the end of the table where the family Bible lay open. His cheeks were newly shaven and shiny, and his thick, light hair was combed straight back. As he stood there in his newly ironed surplice and white collar, Karl Oskar and Kristina could not imagine that this was the same man who on that rainy night had sought shelter in their cabin, dripping like a wet dog, his clothes torn, muddy, his face bloody with mosquito bites.

Today the sun shone through the windows and through the open door into the settlers’ home, and in there the Lord’s table stood prepared. The immigrants were to partake of their first communion in the new country.

The young minister pointed out that there had been twelve communicants when Jesus gathered his apostles for the first Lord’s Supper in Jerusalem, there were twelve here today when he would now distribute Christ’s flesh and blood to his countrymen in the wilderness. In his wine flask here on the table he had only very little left of the dear sacrament, which therefore must be divided with great economy to make it last for all. There would hardly be more than a sip, a small teaspoon for each one. Bread, however, he had in sufficiency.

They were ready to begin and the pastor gave the number of the opening psalm. Just then Dan, the baby, came rushing in from outside, yelling at the top of his voice. The boy stopped in the doorway and howled. Kristina jumped up and took him in her arms. The child had done both his needs in his pants. She turned to the minister, greatly vexed: this was most embarrassing—would he forgive her but she must first look after . . .

She took the boy outside and cleaned him and dried his behind. Then she let him run without pants—it was warm enough. Dan was a troublesome child; he still whined and complained because he no longer could have her breast; but while she was still suckling him he had grown several sharp teeth, and when he was hungry and impatient he would bite into her nipples until she yelled with pain. Now she put a small piece of maple sugar into his mouth to make him keep quiet and be on his way.

Pastor Törner had been waiting patiently while she attended to the boy; he only smiled at the little one as he cried and carried on. She very much liked this minister who never showed any severity. He seemed to realize that a small, innocent child, only lately a suckling, could not wait to do his business until the service was over.

Now the pastor took up the psalm: “For thy wounds, O Jesus dear, for thy anguish and thy suffering . . .” He himself sang with a powerful, vibrant voice, but his communicants in the cabin had trouble with their singing. They had only a few psalmbooks—three or four people jostled for each one—and it was a long time since they had attempted psalm singing.

The minister read the text:

“ . . . And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us . . .”

At the sound of the holy words the participants sat stone still as if bound to their seats. These settlers, who at home had attended services almost every Sunday, had not listened to a sermon in years. And now they heard God’s Word again, in their native tongue, spoken by a minister, spoken well and beautifully. They listened, tense and still.

“I speak to settlers,” continued the minister, “to people who have left their homes in the Old World to build new homes in a new continent; that is why I have chosen the text from the seventeenth chapter of the Acts. More than eighteen hundred years ago these words were uttered by St. Paul to the Greeks in the judicial place in the town of Athens, but they have a meaning to the immigrant Swedes of Minnesota today: wherever human beings live on the earth, they are of the same blood, the same race, and the Lord lives near them. He is not far from us at this moment, in this settler home.”

Twelve immigrant Swedes listened, packed together in the small log cabin. Twelve pairs of eyes were riveted upon the young minister at the head of the table. The twelve listened, and their lips parted, their mouths opened, as if their ears were unable alone to catch the speaker’s words.

“God has decided to what distances on the earth people shall travel and move their habitations!” The minister made a sweeping gesture with his hands, as if wanting to measure the journeys length. “I speak to men and women who have traveled over one third of the earth’s circumference, who have moved from one continent to another, in order to found new homes in these wild forests. You, my countrymen gathered here, have participated in an emigration covering a greater distance than ever before in human history!”

And his countrymen listened. It was a sermon all of them understood well: it was about themselves. They had forsaken that part of the earth where their forebears had lived for thousands of years, to wander to another part of the globe where they still were aliens. This sermon explained the fate which the Creator in his inscrutable wisdom had prepared for them—the fate of emigrants.

Karl Oskar recalled his parting from Dean Brusander, who had depicted North America as a sky-high Babylon of sin and who had told him that, through his emigration, he broke the Ten Commandments. It was a comfort now to learn from another minister that their emigration was not contrary to God’s will; rather, it sounded as if God had planned and arranged for their move.

Kristina thought that the pastor there at the end of the table was himself a proof that the Lord had not forsaken them in a foreign country. She knew who had sent him to their distant dwelling; the Almighty knew the roads even in the unbroken Territory.

She listened to the minister intently, but also with half an ear to the yard outside; if the kids only didn’t start yelling or coming in to disturb them! They had been told to keep as quiet as mice. But through the open door she could hear the brood-hen cackling, persistently. What an awkward sound, coming like that between the words of a sermon! It was a fine hen, this present from Ulrika; already she had deserted her chicks and started to lay. Now she must have laid an egg in some bush behind the cabin; she could hear it in the tone of the hen’s cackling: she wanted to announce that she had just laid an egg. Why couldn’t she have waited to lay that egg until a little later in the day, after the sermon . . .

“The Lord has decided where people shall live. To you emigrating Swedes he has indicated Minnesota. The brown-skinned sons of the wilderness have ruled this land for centuries. But the Almighty sweeps away one race from the surface of the earth and plants another. You are the new race to build the land. But it is your duty, my dear countrymen who are born in a Christian land and know the Ten Commandments, to treat these heathens as brethren. Indians, too, are our neighbors; they are not of the same color as we, but they have the same Creator. Be kind and patient with the vanishing race . . .”

The hen outside cackled ever more lustily. Kristina turned in her seat; it sounded as if the obnoxious creature had made up her mind to drown the minister’s voice! Had ever a pastor endured such a hen cackle during a sermon?

Kristina was grateful for the new egg, but if she could have imagined that the critter would have made so much noise for the sake of an egg, she would have locked the hen in the barn before they began. What must the minister think? He was so kind, he wouldn’t reprimand her for not keeping her feathered livestock under control.

He continued his sermon, without appearing in the least disturbed by the critter, and none of the other listeners paid any attention to the hen. But now the cackling was right outside the door. The hen was accustomed to come here for food when the door was open. And the door was open now . . . If the hen should come tripping into the room . . . Once she had flown up on the table—suppose the beast repeated that maneuver! What would they do? It would reflect on them. Oh, if that shameless creature would only stay outside . . . !

The service continued, and the hen did not come in, God be praised. And it seemed no one except Kristina had heard its cackling. Soon she too was able to close her ears to the bird’s chatter and entirely immerse herself in the minister’s words.

In the cabin it was as still as if everyone had stopped breathing; no noise or sound in the whole world could disturb this, the settlers’ service, in Karl Oskar’s and Kristina’s home. And soon the communion would begin, and they would sit down at their own table and receive Christ’s flesh and blood, which would lift the three-years burden of their sins. Today they were guests in their own house.

—5—

“Kneel and read after me the confession of your sins!”

Twelve people knelt around the table. Twelve had gathered around Jesus at the first supper, and Pastor Törner had seen a deep significance in the fact that the number of guests here was the same as it had been at the institution of the Sacrament: Christ’s Church would be built here in the wilderness.

The minister read the confession. The kneeling men, women, and children each read after him in his or her own way, some loudly and openly, some in low and mumbling voices. Child voices repeated the words clearly, vibrantly; thick male voices halted and stammered: