The Settlers (59 page)

Many people were said to have come to America from Ljuder but he had not met any of them. And now the first store in the new town of Center City in Chisago County was run by a son of Churchwarden Per Persson of Åkerby. In some way it seemed the old and the new country had come closer through this meeting.

This countryman he must greet warmly. He offered his hand. “Welcome to us, Klas Albert.”

“Thank you, Karl Oskar.”

Karl Oskar had learned through letters from home that the churchwarden had been killed when his horses bolted, the summer after their emigration. The son now told him that his oldest brother had taken over the homestead. They were seven brothers and sisters, and the six younger ones must find their way in life the best they could. Since there was nothing to do at home, he had come to America to find his future. More and more people at home did likewise.

But the farmer from Korpamoen had never imagined that a son of the rich churchwarden would ever emigrate.

“I recognized you the moment you came in,” said Klas Albert proudly.

“Hm. My nose, I guess?”

And Karl Oskar smiled broadly. The churchwarden’s boys must often have seen his big nose when he drove by on his way to church or to the mill.

Klas Alberts look indicated that this was so. “But you’ve changed a lot since I last saw you.”

“Grown older, of course. We age faster in America than in Sweden.”

“Something in your face is different,” explained the younger immigrant. “Your skin looks like American people’s, they get so sunburned it stays with them the year round.”

“Well. How did you happen to come to Chisago?”

“I heard they had planned a town here, and I thought, as soon as they lay out a town they’ll need a store.”

Klas Albert had wanted to be a storekeeper ever since he was a small boy. But there was no opportunity in Sweden. All the old aldermen sat there and decided who was to be admitted to their group; they wouldn’t let in an outsider with no experience. Anyone wanting to start something new ran into red tape and great lords to stop him at every corner. So he had felt North America was the place to start a business unhindered. It was of course bad luck for him that he had had to start in this depression while all these money troubles still were unsettled. Wasn’t this a strange country, where anyone who wanted could start a bank and print his own bills? It was confusing, and certainly was apt to make people lose confidence in paper money. In Sweden only the government had the legal right to depress the value of money.

But this town had a good location; as more people came business would soon improve. He had heard that a German had arrived who would open a second store in Center City. “But I’m sure I’ll get along,” concluded Klas Albert with youthful confidence.

And Karl Oskar encouraged the new businessman.

“There’re lots of Swedes around here; you’ll get along, Klas Albert.”

He talked so long with the Åkerby churchwarden’s son that he almost forgot he had come to do some shopping. Before he left he invited Klas Albert to his house next Sunday. It would be hard for Kristina to wait to meet him.

When he came home he told her about the new storekeeper in Center City who was no one else but the youngest son of the Åkerby churchwarden. And the following Sunday Klas Albert arrived and was greeted as the most welcome guest they had ever received. Kristina had eagerly been awaiting the visitor and she began at once to question him about the home parish. She asked about people she remembered and wanted to hear of; hour after hour she questioned him about their home village. As it happened Klas Albert had left Sweden three years earlier so his news was not entirely fresh, but his brothers and sisters had written him about what had happened after he left; North America was spoken of in every house, and more and more people thought of emigrating.

Kristina learned a great deal she hadn’t known, and it was especially pleasing to her to see the face of a person who had been in the home places later than she.

Klas Albert was impressed with the fine house they had built to live in, so Karl Oskar took him out on an inspection of their other buildings and the fields; his new home could stand inspection and he wanted to show his guest from Sweden how things were with him in North America.

It was the nicest time of year, early summer; the verdant fields were fresh with the new crops. Karl Oskar didn’t want to boast of his great fields, but Klas Albert guessed he must have over twenty-five acres—which was a good guess. The fat oxen and the cows with their swollen udders wallowed in the meadow, healthy hogs filled the pen, thick-wooled sheep bleated contentedly. Stables, barns, threshing and wagon sheds were examined, and American tools and implements—so work-saving for a settler—were inspected in detail. Then Karl Oskar showed Klas Albert the huge sugar maples. Every year Karl Oskar drilled holes in the trunks to release the sap, which gave them all the sugar and syrup they needed. He asked the guest to taste the product; didn’t those blessed trees give them good sweetening?

The more Klas Albert saw the more his respect grew for the farmer from Korpamoen who was responsible for this thriving farm. Time and again he asked:
When
had Karl Oskar done all this?
How
had he had time? The reply was short. He had not wasted a single working day during his years on the claim, and that was the way it had happened.

Kristina showed the young man the Astrakhan apple tree, grown from a seed that had been sent from her Swedish home. The tree had shot up so fast it was now a head taller than she herself. Every fall she dug around her tree and covered the roots with an extra foot of soil to protect them against the cold. Her tree was in its early youth; as yet it had had no blossoms.

When the inspection had been completed and they sat down to the dinner table, Klas Albert said, “Not one of the big farmers at home in Ljuder is as well off as you, Karl Oskar and Kristina!”

He knew Karl Oskar had been the first farmer in the home parish to sell his farm and emigrate to North America. Now he wanted to say how much he looked up to him and respected him for having taken this initiative. He always admired the first ones, those who dared something new, those who were courageous enough to move. Karl Oskar had indeed been bold in taking off for such a distant country.

Karl Oskar looked at the floor, embarrassed at all this praise. “When I started to talk emigration, the whole parish felt insulted. It was as if I had done something evil. People thought I should be punished for my arrogance.”

“Now you can laugh at those hecklers!” insisted Klas Albert.

“They poked fun at me and said my nose would be still longer when I came to America.”

“Well, is it?”

Karl Oskar laughed. “I guess it’s about the same, within a fraction of an inch!”

“That I must write home about!” said the young store keeper.

They had so much to talk about that their guest remained until late in the evening. When he finally left, Karl Oskar said to Kristina with pride that now Klas Albert would write home and tell them he had met the Korpamoen farmer in Minnesota. He would tell them about the Nilssons’ situation after starting a second time in life. And what he wrote would be spread over the whole parish, and people would talk about them and about their fine home, New Duvemåla, on the beautiful lake. And what now would those people think who once had talked so cruelly about him because he left his old home. They had predicted that his arrogance and pride would be punished with an evil end. His deriders would of course be hoping to hear that he and his family lived in poverty and misery in the new country. Instead, they would hear from the son of the churchwarden himself that Karl Oskar now had twenty-five acres of the most fertile land in America and harvested better crops than any farmer in the whole of Ljuder parish!

“There’ll be a great sickness in Ljuder for some time,” predicted Karl Oskar. “People will be sick with jealousy!”

Kristina had noticed his eagerness to show Klas Albert around. “I think you boasted a little too much,” she said.

“To point out the truth is not to boast!”

Now many more would follow the example of the one they had belittled and derided. His old neighbors had already started to come here; Ljuder parish was being transplanted to this valley. And he felt sure the settlers would in time outshine the home parish. The looked-down-upon emigrants—that pack of Gypsies—would win out over their slanderers. And he began to realize he had shown his countrymen the road to a new and greater homeland.

—4—

About the same time that Karl Oskar from Korpamoen and Klas Albert, the churchwardens son, met in America, the successor of Dean Brusander sat in his office in Ljuder parsonage every day and handed out emigration papers which his parishioners came to ask for. On the top line of each page in the parish register he wrote after the emigrant’s name:
Moved to N. America.
But those words he only wrote once on each page; below, on the following lines, he wrote
Ditto.
It was sufficient. From the first line to the last there were many dittos. And every line of every page of the large parish register was filled with the names of Karl Oskar Nilsson’s followers.

XXXI

A BLESSED WOMAN’S PRAYER

—1—

Ulrika had given Kristina a mirror which she had hung on the long wall above the sofa in the living room. In that position the mirror could be seen from any place in the room and was convenient to look into. A red rose had been painted on the glass in each one of the four corners, and when Kristina sat on the sofa and turned her head she was confronted by her own image.

As a girl Kristina had often been told that she was beautiful. And perhaps it had been the truth since so many had said it. But where now was the girl who so many times had blushed at the words, “You are beautiful!” Where now were her full cheeks with the soft little dimples of laughter? What had become of her nicely rounded chin? Where was her blossom-tinted color? Where the young girl’s quick and clear glance? What had become of the lips once full as wild strawberries?

The flower of her youth had passed and was gone. The mirror showed her a face already marked by age. It was always there, reflecting back at her; she could not escape the face of a woman getting on in years.

Every day she met this depressing sight. Was this she? She herself? These gaunt, wrinkled cheeks, this pale-gray color, this sharply etched chin, these tired, fading eyes without a glint, this caved-in mouth with teeth missing—this was she herself, what was left of the once beautiful girl Kristina of Duvemåla! And the face seemed to her doubly old and doubly pale as it looked back at her between the four red, cheerful roses in the corners of the mirror; they should instead have served as a frame for a youthful, blossoming girl’s face.

Kristina no longer wished to acknowledge her face. She would be just as pleased if she never saw it again.

“How silly of me to put up the mirror,” she said to Karl Oskar. “I would know anyway that I look worse each day.”

“We all must age,” said Karl Oskar comfortingly. “But the years are harder on us emigrants; we age faster than others.”

The years had set their mark on him too; he no longer moved about with such quick steps and easy gait as before, and at times he complained of the old ache in his left leg which made him limp occasionally. But she had fared worse than he; the neighboring wives had guessed she must be older than her husband, even though she was two years younger. The burden of childbearing fell on the woman; that made the difference.

Frank, the youngest in her flock, had come as a birthday present: he had been born on her thirty-first birthday, two years ago. She had barely been twenty when she had her first child, her daughter Anna, who had died at an early age in Sweden. In the eleven years between her first and her youngest, she had endured seven childbeds and borne eight children. During that time she had also gone through their emigration to a new continent, the building of a new home. All the things that had happened to her were bound to leave their mark on her.

“I want to put away the mirror,” she said, “somewhere in a dark corner.”

“But it’s a nice decoration,” said Karl Oskar. “And when Ulrika comes here she’ll need it to look at herself.”

“She doesn’t age,” said Kristina, with a trace of jealousy of her best friend.

“No, that is remarkable.”

“Her color is like fresh cream even though she has had six children.”

“Six?” he wondered. “I thought it was more. But those bastards she had at home I guess she didn’t count very carefully.”

Kristina tried to tell herself that it was childish to regret that she no longer looked like a young girl. And deep in her heart she knew that her vexation was not primarily directed against her changed face; she regretted her youth which had run away from her during her isolation in a wild and foreign country. Her youth was suddenly gone before she had had time to enjoy it. And she blamed the emigration which had devoured her joyous years. As a young girl—with great expectations for the future—she had not counted on a change of home and homeland.

It seemed to Kristina the great majority of people enjoyed much good and experienced much happiness in life which she had been denied. Most of them had participated in wonderful experiences that she would never have. She had been denied so much and she felt it was the emigration that had robbed her of this. Thus she had never been able to adjust herself to her lot as settler.

But this she had never told Karl Oskar. Nor had she told him that if, at the age of nineteen, she could have seen herself in labor seven times before she was thirty-one, she would probably have said no to his proposal and remained a spinster.

Ulrika had given her a real scare by saying that she could go on and bear children until she was forty-six; half of a woman’s fertile years still lay ahead of her. She could expect to give life to as many more children as she already had.

She had said at the time that she couldn’t survive that many births, of that she was sure. Each time she was more worn-out, more tired. She still felt the results of the last birth in her body.