The Settlers (66 page)
Authors: Vilhelm Moberg
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Contemporary, #Genre Fiction, #Family Saga, #United States, #Contemporary Fiction, #American, #Literary
“Well,” said Karl Oskar, “I guess everything is as it used to be there.”
He could not imagine that much had changed in his home village during the ten years since he left it forever. In Sweden no changes or improvements ever took place. There people lived as they had always lived, performed their chores over and over as their forebears had performed them. That ancient kingdom was ruled by the Law of Unchangeableness. In the United States new ideas were tried and greater changes took place in one year than happened in a hundred years in Sweden.
Karl Oskar could still see his home village as it had been that April morning when they stepped onto the wagon to drive to Karlshamn. The years had brought no change in the picture he carried in his memory. He saw his parents as he had last seen them from the wagon—his farewell look: Father and Mother standing side by side on the stoop, placed there, immovable as stone monuments, looking after the wagon with their sons driving through the gate, leaving their old home, their village where the family had lived through endless generations. The wagon swings out into the road, the team begins a slow trot, he himself turns once more and sees his parents stand motionless as before, Father leaning on his crutches, Mother beside him, tall, her back straight, perhaps straighter because of this farewell moment. They remain in the same position, until the road turns and they vanish from his sight for time and eternity.
In that position their son in America had seen his parents for the ten years his eyes could not behold them.
Already, Father had been decaying in his grave in the churchyard for three years, but to Karl Oskar he still stood on the stoop beside Mother, supported by his crutches, looking after his departing sons. There Nils Jakobsson would remain standing as long as his son had a memory.
Father had been against the great decision of Karl Oskar’s life; he had never reconciled himself to his sons’ emigration. The last night of his life he had heard the sound of their departing wagon. To the memory of the dead one belonged something that still hurt Karl Oskar. But it did not change his conviction: he had done the right thing, even though he had acted against his father’s wish.
But how was it now with Kristina? He had harbored through the years a question he had never managed to direct to his wife. Perhaps he feared the answer, perhaps that was why he had never given it voice.
Their emigration, from the very beginning, had been his idea and it was he who had driven it through. His wife was against it for a long time—only the brutal famine winter, when he had been forced to make a coffin for his oldest child, had changed her mind, so that she said she was ready to go with him. Since then it had seemed to him many times that she had accompanied him half regretfully. What did she think now, ten years later, about the decision which had affected them and their children’s lives so deeply?
This memorable day might be the right moment to put the question to her.
“We did the right thing when we emigrated—don’t you think so, Kristina?”
She turned her head and looked at her husband: he could see her face only faintly in the dusk. Kristina seemed surprised at his question, as if it had taken her unawares.
“We did neither right nor wrong. Our emigration was predestined. It was predestined that we should live here. It was our fate.”
“Do you mean that? Predestined? Our fate?”
He in turn was surprised, even astonished.
“It was our lot, as it fell to us. We need not ask about right or wrong.”
“I only wondered if you hold me responsible.”
“No one is responsible for it. There’s only one who rules.”
And before he had time to say anything she went on. She still remembered very clearly the Bible text Pastor Törner had chosen when he gave them the Sacrament in their old log house: God had ordained how far and wide people must travel to find their homes on earth. He chose and decided the places for their settling. And they just happened to be of a family God had moved from one continent to another on his wide earth.
That was predestination.
But now Karl Oskar shook his head, firmly and definitively.
“I can never in life believe that we don’t decide anything for ourselves.”
In his wife’s eyes he was not the instigator of their life’s great undertaking; she relieved him so entirely from all part in it that she demoted him merely to a blind tool of the High One’s will. But in his own eyes Karl Oskar did not even have a partner in the emigration. He only, he alone, was the originator and the one responsible for the decision which had given them and their family a new homeland and decided where their children, grandchildren, and grandchildren’s children, and their descendants for all time would be born and live.
Karl Oskar had now reached the age of his full manhood, and everything he had tried and experienced and gone through strengthened him in the belief of his youth: it was given to man to decide for himself, to take care of his life and make of it what he could. Never must one give up in adversity and distress, always one must seek and try another way. If one wanted something done, one must do it oneself, never leave it to an inscrutable and unreliable Providence. In this faith he had lived his life; it had never failed him and he felt sure he would stay with it until the end of his days.
Since his wife’s miscarriage, he had noticed a great change in her. She often appeared absentminded and preoccupied, she was more closed up within herself than before, yet at the same time she displayed a greater steadfastness of character, an even temper and inner peace. It had seemed to him that her old longing for her homeland, her worries and doubts, had at long last disappeared. And he had felt greatly relieved that she was rid of this bitter suffering.
She had, however, never given him any clear indication that this was so. Now he asked, “If I’m right, Kristina, I believe you don’t long for the old country any more?”
“No, I don’t. It doesn’t matter where a person lives in this life on earth. One corner of the world is as good as another. The only thing that counts for me is that longer life.”
“Have you changed—because it can’t be otherwise?”
“I haven’t changed. On the contrary. I have only accepted this preordained, earthly life . . . that’s how I’ve gotten over it.”
Kristina’s voice indicated the truth of her words: it was not a voice of surrender—it was calm, firm, full of conviction. Karl Oskar had a feeling he need not venture any further, need not ask any more.
To reconcile herself to the settler’s lot, to fate, that had been Kristina’s struggle. And when now at last she had reconciled herself to what Providence had ordained, it was not that she had given up. She had not lost her battle: to accept was to her to conquer.
—2—
In the thickening dusk they could no longer discern the blossoming decorations or the festive arch which they had raised today outside their home. In America the night of St. John was not light. Over the young settlement fell the cloak of darkness and Ki-Chi-Saga’s water turned black under the evening sky.
And so Karl Oskar and Kristina sat up late and talked of the land they never again would see.
XXXVI
THE LETTER TO SWEDEN
New Duvemåla at Center City Post
offis in Minnesota State North
America Christmas Day Anno 1860
Dearly Beloved Sister Lydia Karlsson,
Hope you are well is our wish to you, you must be waiting for a letter from Your Brother, I am slow in writing.
We are well in our family up to date and all is well with us. Our children have grown a lot and are well, Johan is our Hired Hand and Marta our Maid. All the boys are full of life and activity but that is their age. Christmas has come again, I bought a Sewingmachine for Kristina, she was glad for the Christmas Present. She didn’t like it here so well the first years but now it is over. She planted a new flowerbed in front of our house with many Swedish blooms, Reginas, Pionees, Yellow Striped Lilies, Brushblooms and poppies. Kristina astrakhan tree has not yet had any fruit on it on account of because the blooms have frozen two springs in turn. But the tree will undoubtedly give us Fruit in the Future.
You asked in your last letter if I ever regretted my emigration—I cannot say that I have. I won’t boast but my situation here is on a level with the best farmers at home. Last fall I harvested 125 Bushel Corn, 73 Bushel Wheat and 51 Bushel rye, all heaped measure. I have also bought a horse.
I am master on my claim and do not bow to anyone. But no lazy fool will have success in North America. It takes a man’s whole life and daily toil.
All the Land here in our settlement around the big Lake is now taken. This Indian water is in daily talk called Swede Lake. One race leaves this world, another comes along.
I have this year served on the jury in our Swedish district. I have long been a member of our Parish Council. You may well tell people at home that your Brother in North America has become both Churchwarden and Sheriff.
Last November 6 I voted for the first time for Government of our new Country. I voted for Abe Lincoln for President of the United States. He was also chosen. Abe was born in a log house exactly like the one I built the first year I was here.
The Slavestates want another president and there are rumors of war to free the Slaves. We hope to be spared the destruction and devastation of the Country, I am sure Father Abe will find some way to escape war.
How is Our old Mother? Greet her from her Son who lives in a distant Land in the far West.
Anno 1860 is nearing its end and we have also come one year closer to Eternity. To my Dear Sister and all who still remember me in my old Village I send you Christmas Greetings and wish you Peace.
Written down by your devoted Brother
Karl Oskar Nilsson
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