The Settlers (32 page)

He had emigrated to get away from masters, but his ear accompanied him with its buzzing and turmoil. He had run away from service, he had crossed the ocean, but the sound in his ear remained with him. He had fled the Old World for the New, but the aching ear accompanied him. It followed him on the road to California, and now it had come back with him. He had traveled over lakes and rivers, he had walked across plains and deserts, he had journeyed thousands of miles over land and water, but the ear still pursued him. He had not been able to escape from it—wherever he fled it followed him, clung to him. The echo of a box on the ear in the Old World still reverberated; his persecution by his left ear was the punishment he must suffer because be did not want to dig ditches.

And now he has come back to his brother’s house, and the ear is with him in the bed where he rests. And his heart moves into his ear again, where it pushes and roars and fills his head. He feels the sensation of stinging pain in sensitive tissue each time his heart beats. He turns his head on the pillow to the left, he turns it to the right, he raises it, puts it down, but the ear is the same. He rests on his right cheek, he changes over and lies on his left cheek, he rests on his forehead, but the knife-cuts remain inside the Ear.

He had fled from his service, he had fled from his homeland, he had fled from his masters, but wherever in the world he flees, he has a guardian he cannot escape, a pursuer he cannot get rid of, a master he cannot flee from:
the ear.

And so he has been forced to get along with his eternal companion, who keeps him awake during the night hours. He lies still and does not try to escape any more, for he knows he can’t succeed. The pursuer forces his company on him; the ear forces him to listen to all its sounds. It tells him, relates to him in detail, all it has recorded: human voices and animal cries, laughter and weeping, sounds of joy and of pain and of sorrow, his own words and those of others, the voice of his friend Arvid, shouts, the swearing of men whose names are foreign to him. He hears the creaking wagon wheels in the desert sand, neighing horses, bellowing oxen, lowing cows, braying mules. The whipping, wind-driven sand, the pelting rain, the noisy great rivers, the sweeping storm over the prairie buffalo grass. It is the echo of shots and barking dogs, of muleteers hollering, fighting voices, drunken men’s slobberings, voices in delirium, calls, danger warnings, nature’s forces at play—every audible sound and noise.

The ear remembers much he himself has forgotten, or has tried to forget—the ear digs up the forgotten past and makes it vivid and present. So did it happen! Exactly so! And he lies awake and listens as it brings back to him every one of the four years of days and nights on the California Trail.

What does the injured ear say to Robert during the nights?

XV

THE FIRST NIGHT—ROBERT’S EAR SPEAKS

(There you lie—and here I am! You’ll never be rid of me! We share our secrets. But don’t worry: no one except you can hear me! My voice belongs to you only. All I say remains between us! It stays right here, with. If another ear tried to listen in—how silly! It wouldn’t hear the slightest little buzz, not the smallest whisper! So don’t worry! Not a peep from me!

Listen closely to me now! How was it? Do you remember how it happened—that first summer—that time when Arvid wanted to—well, you remember what he had in mind . . . ?)

—1—

It was April when they started on their journey.

On the paddle steamer from Stillwater they got jobs as dishwashers in exchange for free transportation to St. Louis. Together they had twenty-five dollars, well hidden in a skin pouch.

The last time they had traveled on the Mississippi they had gone upstream on the
Red Wing;
now they traveled downstream on the
New Orleans.

On his first journey up the Mississippi—the world’s greatest moving water—Robert had heard a song about liberty and freedom: I will be free, as the wind of the earth and the waves on the sea . . . Ever after he had been lured by that song and had trusted its promise. But then he had been a passenger; now he was a dishwasher below deck. He and Arvid sat in a dark, narrow, dirty galley and peeled potatoes for the cook. Whole barrelfuls of potatoes were rolled up to them, and as soon as they saw the bottom of one, another appeared. During the whole long, light spring day, as the
New Orleans
glided by the verdant river shores, Robert and Arvid sat in the galley, the peelings wriggling like snakes about their feet. By afternoon the heap of peelings reached their knees, by evening it was up against their thighs.

“A helluva lot of potaters they grow in America,” said Arvid.

“America is the homeland of the potato,” said Robert. “The Indians invented this root.”

“Then the heathens must be quite brainy,” said Arvid, who liked potatoes.

Late in the evening, when the piles of peelings had reached all the way to their groins, the youths were liberated and could go onto a lower deck. They were forbidden, however, to go onto the upper deck, where the paying passengers promenaded and viewed the wonders of the shores along the world’s broadest river.

As they steamed south, the days grew warmer and it became oppressive in the narrow galley. Any grown person can with equanimity peel potatoes for a few hours, perhaps a whole day, and a patient individual can perhaps peel for a few days, even a whole week, without despairing. But from morning to night, day after day, week after week, penned up in a dark corner on a ship during beautiful spring days, would be enough to make the stoutest heart fail. Arvid sat half buried in a nest of peelings sad and depressed. But Robert comforted him; they must keep this in mind: admitted, they were on a boat peeling potatoes—but they were on their way to California: they were peeling their way to the Land of Gold! Once there they would sit buried in gold sand up to their thighs! And when they returned from the gold fields it would be as passengers on the upper deck, where they would promenade, smoking cigars and viewing the scenery! They would wear broad gold watch chains across their vests and heavy gold rings on each finger, every pocket of their clothing would be filled with large, rustling bills!

Spring advanced as the
New Orleans
floated farther south on the river, and an ever hotter sun shone down on her deck. The Mississippi widened, the shores grew more lush and the vegetation richer. And the heat increased in the galley under the deck where two Swedish farm hands sat and peeled their way to California.

The crew members who did the loading, fired the engines, filled the bunkers, served the food on the
New Orleans
were nearly all white men, although the officers on the steamboat preferred a black crew. This time, however, there hadn’t been enough Negroes; there were only about half a dozen. The command preferred Negroes because they were pleasanter to the passengers, happier and jollier; they entertained the passengers. The blacks could also stand the heat better than the whites; and they endured the beatings they got, while such rough treatment was not allowed with a white crew.

One evening Arvid and Robert watched as a uniformed officer beat up a disobedient Negro. Arvid wondered; were they allowed to do that to people in this country, as they did at home? Robert explained that only black-skinned people were allowed to be beaten in America, for it was written in the laws of the American Republic that all white people were equal. What luck, said Arvid, that time when God decided what color their skins should be.

In the evenings the crew—firemen, loaders, kitchen helpers, waiters—gathered on their own deck and lit torches. The flickering torches reflected in the dark river water on either side of the boat while the crew sang their songs, strange songs whose words had little meaning:

Corn and pudding and tapioca pie,

Hi ho, hi ho!

The geese play cards and the chicks drink wine,

Hi ho, hi ho!

In the crowd, on the shore,

In New Orleans,

There stands my girl on the shore!

She is young and she weeps and she is mine,

The girl on the shore in New Orleans!

Corn and pudding and tapioca pie,

Hi ho, hi ho!

When the geese play cards and the chicks drink wine,

While floating down the river to the sea!

Robert and Arvid thought that tapioca pie must taste good, and they were disappointed never to sample it.

They counted their days on the river, and the barrels of potatoes they peeled through but which never came to an end. They felt that through their work they were paying too much for their transportation on the
New Orleans.
But they must save their cash.

At last one day when the bell rang they heard the words they had been listening for each time the boat docked:
St. Louis!
They were free! The two boys threw their peeling knives onto the deck with shouts of joy, picked up their rucksacks, and ran down the gangplank. They had traveled the first stretch of the road and it hadn’t cost them a penny.

They had come to a place with crowds of people and jostling animals and vehicles on the streets. Stillwater was a river town on the St. Croix, but St. Louis was a larger town on a larger river. It was the biggest town they had ever seen, except for New York. It seemed to be fenced in by the river. But it wasn’t yet completed, and outside of New York they hadn’t seen a town in America that was completed: all were a-building, all were like a shell of a house, ready to be finished up. In St. Louis timbers and boards were strewn over the streets, hammering and digging went on everywhere. People sat eating bread and fruit outside shacks that were so primitive the boys wondered if they were lived in or in the process of being built. A great many Negroes mingled in the crowds, half-naked, woolly-haired, and Arvid remarked that there was much black hide to be beaten in this town. The blacks were slaves, they knew, slavery being permitted here in the South, but they didn’t see a single one in chains or shackles.

In St. Louis the two boys got along better than they had in New York the previous year. I am a stranger here, Robert had told the people then, but he had not been able to make anyone understand. Now he could say almost anything he wanted in English—although a little haltingly and not always according to his language book—and he understood most of what people said to him. It was harder for Arvid; he did not know many of the English words as yet, even though he usually pretended to understand everything. Robert did not let on that he knew Arvid pretended; Arvid had never learned to read or write his own mother tongue—how could he learn English?

From the pier the boys followed a broad street, perhaps the town’s Broadway, although it wasn’t half as wide as the street of that name in New York. But here, too, wonderful fruits were sold, many kinds whose names they did not know. At one stand they bought oranges, and sat down on some boxes against the tin wall of a nearby shed to eat them.

The sun felt good on their faces as they sat eating the juicy fruit; this was a fine place, and summer had already arrived.

Robert and Arvid had traveled over water to St. Louis. Now they would continue over land to California. Robert had figured out they would walk as far as possible on that road; their own legs would have to pay for the journey which their money couldn’t afford. But all who traveled over land, and on ground in general, needed a road. If they rode horses, or wagons, a road was required. Even those who used their legs must have a road bed to walk on.

Now, where was the road to the goldfields of California?

In Stillwater Robert had bought a map of the United States. These grew in number and size for every year; they expanded so fast that nearly every year a new map had to be printed of the Northamerican Republic. This was a country that grew night and day, throughout the week, the whole year round. Robert had therefore asked for the latest map which the president in Washington had issued as the official map for this country this year, 1851, a map with no state left off, however small, empty, and insignificant it might be. It had cost him one dollar and fifty cents for the latest edition, completely revised, but he would get back that sum with the first little grain of gold he saw on the California ground.

Arvid knew that if one had a map and a watch one could find any road in the world, however crookedly it ran and however bad its condition. Robert had the map, he himself had the watch. He pulled it from his vest pocket, the nickel watch his father, Petter of Kråkesjö, had given him as a parting gift. It was his paternal inheritance from Sweden, and Arvid had chained it to his vest buttonhole. His father’s labor had earned it for him; much sweat had gone into that watch, many long days’ toil, many evenings with a sore back. It was not an old-fashioned spindle watch with unreliable works, it had cylinder works. A cylinder watch had a more precise mechanism and kept better time—this watch kept time to the second.

And now they would have great use of this cylinder watch. If Robert’s map showed the road they must take, then this watch would show the time it would take to walk it.

Now where was the road they were to take to California and how long was it? How much farther to the gold land?

Robert spread his map of the United States across the empty boxes beside them. He had not had access to a table on the boat and had been unable to inspect it earlier. Now he looked at it carefully, and the longer he looked, the wider his eyes opened; could it be right? Was this map correct?

California, the newest state of the Union, was the long, narrow strip of land near the Pacific Ocean. If they walked overland from St. Louis straight west, they would reach the Pacific Ocean, and the sun setting in the west would point the way for them. But how long was the road?

“Let me see . . .”

Robert used a six-inch pencil to measure as he figured the size of the United States. From the east coast to St. Louis the distance was exactly the length of the pencil. But then it took two whole lengths of the pencil and still another half to reach the Pacific Ocean!