The Settlers (9 page)

At all life’s great happenings and holidays in the Old World, Kristina had heard the church bells ring. In them she had heard the Creator’s voice, when he was in his holy temple, and their sound was the voice of the Holy Day. But for a thousand days now she had not heard that voice.

Here in the New World Sunday was like a weekday with all the sounds of a weekday. In North America, too, churches had been built, but she lived so far from them that the sound of their bells did not reach her. They rang from many steeples in this broad land but were never heard at Lake Ki-Chi-Saga. Nor could she listen to God’s servant speaking in her language from a pulpit or altar, she could not hear the organ’s pealing, the tones of the psalms, her fellowmen’s voices in prayer and singing. For a thousand days she had heard nothing but the forest silence.

She had moved away from church bells, from altar and organ, to the land of the heathens where repulsive idols were worshiped.

But God had not forgotten her, had not lost track of her. He would find her whenever he wished. She was and remained a life, sprung from the Creator’s hand, and he needed no church bells to reach her. And today she had heard his voice. She was convinced that he had called her with a message: she must not forget the immortal soul he had given her.

And so at last Kristina said her prayer to the Almighty, who was before the mountains, and would be after them. She prayed fervently for an answer to her question: what must they do—she and her husband—to save their poor souls? How should they manage so as not to lose their eternal salvation in this unChristian land where they had come to start life anew?

And she thanked God for the past day and the message he had brought her through a stranger—this day when Karl Oskar had heard a new ax ringing in the forest.

II

THE WHORE AND THE THIEF

—1—

It seemed to Kristina that their third winter might last forever. The cold was unmercifully severe. On the inner side of the door was a circle of rough nail heads which were constantly covered with hoarfrost. The nail heads, shining like a wreath of white roses on the door, were the winter’s mark of sovereignty over the people who lived here; they were prisoners in their own home, locked in by the cold. The warming fire on the hearth did not have the strength to wilt the frost roses on their door.

The dark, shining, nail heads in the wood became the first visible sign of liberation; the cold had been forced to recede beyond the threshold. And what a joy to Kristina when she awakened one night and heard the sound of dripping water outside, melting snow dripping from the eaves. It ran and splashed the whole night through and she could hardly go to sleep again, so happy was she. Every drop from the roof was a joy to her heart; she thanked God for the spring that was near.

Since Ulrika of Västergöhl had married the Baptist minister Mr. Henry O. Jackson and moved to Stillwater, Kristina had no intimate friends in the neighborhood. Ulrika’s visits were infrequent. Kristina herself was tied to her home by her own children and she hesitated to visit Ulrika because of the long and difficult road to Stillwater. In two years she had only once been to see Ulrika in her new home. That had been a winter day, and she had ridden with Uncle Danjel on his ox sled. It had been miserably cold, and in spite of all the clothing she had bundled around herself, she had felt as if she was sitting naked on the sled. They had brought along warm stones for their feet and had stopped several times on the way to rewarm them. Even so Kristina still had a frostbitten toe as a reminder of her visit to Stillwater on the slow ox sled.

During the last year, however, the lumber company had cut a new road all the way to Ki-Chi-Saga. Now the settlers could get a ride on the company’s ox wagons, and when Kristina decided to journey to Stillwater this spring, she decided to use this transportation. Her errand was partly to visit Ulrika and partly to buy necessities. During the winter she had stopped suckling Dan. She now had no child at her breast, and as Karl Oskar could feed the little one, she could stay overnight with Mr. and Mrs. Jackson.

One pleasantly mild spring day she set out on the ox wagon to Stillwater. During this journey she had no need for warm stones, today she need not worry about getting her toes frostbitten as she sat on the wagon. The sun had warmed the forest, which seemed friendly and inviting along the newly cut road. And the company’s ox wagon rolled steadily on its heavy, iron-bound wheels, quite different from the settlers’ primitive jolting carts. Today Kristina traveled in comfort; the ride was a pleasure rather than an ordeal.

The Baptist congregation in Stillwater had built a new house for their pastor, next to the little white timbered structure that served as the church. Ulrika saw Kristina through the window and came out on the stoop to welcome her. On her arm Kristina carried the lidded shingle basket which she had brought from Sweden.

“I can see you’re out on big business,” said Ulrika. “But first you must have something in your belly!”

Pastor Jackson’s house had one large and one smaller room, a good-sized kitchen with a storeroom, and an ample cellar under the house. The large room was used only during the day; Ulrika sometimes called it the sitting room and again the living room. The smaller room was a bedroom and in it stood the largest bed Kristina had ever seen; it was as broad as two ordinary beds put together. On the wall above the couple’s bed hung a framed picture with a maxim in gilded letters: The Lord Gives Us the Strength!

This house had one room for use all day long, and one for use at night, one room to sit in and one to lie down in! Since Ulrika of Västergöhl had become Mrs. Henry O. Jackson she lived like an upper-class woman.

Ulrika urged Kristina to sit down on the soft sofa in the living room. She wanted to show her something strange which she had acquired since Kristina’s previous visit. On the wall hung a picture of Mr. and Mrs. Jackson as bride and groom, but it was not a painted picture of her and Henry, and that was the strange thing about it. She and Henry had been placed in the picture by an apparatus. It was like a miracle. Mr. Paul Hanley, a member of the Baptist congregation and now Elin’s employer, had bought the apparatus; he was one of the directors of the lumber company and a rich man; he wanted to have a picture of them in their bridal outfit. To take a photograph, he had called it. It was a new invention. They had stood in front of the machine, quite still, for a few moments, while Mr. Hanley had gone to the other side of it with a cloth over his head and manipulated something. And so, quite by magic, they had got their likenesses printed on a thick paper, as nice as any painted picture. And their likenesses did not scale off or fade away but had remained there on the wall, exactly as they were now, for a whole year. They would stick to the paper for all eternity, Mr. Hanley had told them.

Next to the groom, who wore a knee-long coat and narrow pants, stood Ulrika in her white bridal gown of muslin and a wide-brimmed hat, her very first hat.

Below the picture of the bridal couple, a notice from the St. Paul
Pioneer
was cut out and glued to the wall. The paper had printed a piece about the Jackson wedding:

Baptist Church Is Scene of First Wedding

The first marriage in the history of the Stillwater Baptist Church took place Saturday, when Miss Ulrika of Vastergohl became the bride of the Reverend Henry O. Jackson, minister of the Baptist congregation. The bride belongs to the very old noble family of
Vastergohl
in Sweden.

The Reverend R. E. Arleigh who teaches at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul read the service.

Attendants were Cora Skalrud, bridesmaid; Betty Jean Prescott, maid of honor; Paul Hanley and Bob Orville, both best men.

A reception at the new home of Mr. and Mrs. Henry O. Jackson in Stillwater followed the ceremony.

Ulrika translated for Kristina, telling her that the man who had come to write about the wedding for the
Pioneer
had asked her if she belonged to a noble family in Sweden. The Swedes he had met previously in America had all been counts and barons. But she had felt that her ancestry was none of his business, and to his rude question she had, of course, replied that she came from such an old noble family that it could be traced back to the time when Father Adam and Mother Eve walked about with their behinds bare in Paradise. Whether it was because of her English, which wasn’t quite perfect yet, or because the writer had taken her seriously—whatever the reason—this writing man had printed in his paper that she had been born into an ancient noble family in Sweden.

And as she had been the first Swedish bride in the St. Croix Valley, it somehow seemed as if it were required of her to have a noble name. It was an honor to her homeland, perhaps. Anyway, it didn’t hurt her to be taken for a noble Swedish lady. The aristocratic ladies in Sweden were of course quite uppity, but as far as she knew they did not have bad reputations. And she didn’t feel their good names were besmirched when the paper raised her to noble status.

Ulrika prepared dinner for Kristina, sure that she was hungry after her long ride. She treated her to an omelet, warm from the oven, made of ten strictly fresh eggs which had been given to Henry for a sermon in Marine a few days ago.

“Henry is serving as priest in Franconia today,” said Ulrika. “He won’t be back until late. You must stay the night with us!”

“Come with me to the store and help me buy,” pleaded Kristina. “I can’t talk to the clerks.”

“I’ll be glad to be your interpreter, of course. But you must speak to Americans so you learn the language!”

Through her marriage to an American, Ulrika had become so familiar with English that she could understand it well and equally well make herself understood.

Kristina knew the meaning of a few English words but never tried to say anything in the foreign language. She was afraid of ridicule; the Americans laughed at the clumsy Swedes who attempted to use English. But Karl Oskar paid no attention, he just talked on.

“There’s something in this tongue that stops me,” she would say.

“Nothing except inexperience,” he would reply.

But when she wanted to use the English words she had to twist and turn her lips and loosen her tongue, insisted Kristina. She felt as if she were playacting, making a fool of herself, when she used English. Her tongue was not made for this strange language. And if she listened to others speaking it, she got a headache; it did not suit her ears either.

“Let’s go and get the shopping done with,” said Ulrika.

Kristina rose and picked up her basket, while Ulrika went to the wall mirror in the living room to put on her hat. It was indeed beautiful and amply decorated; a tall plume swayed from the front of the hat—as elegant as the plume of a soldier on parade; the top and the brim were heaped with multi-colored feathers and flowers, and long, red, silken ribbons dangled down the back. She fastened the enormous hat under her chin with a broad, green band, which she tied in a large bow at her right ear.

“In Sweden I had no right to wear a hat,” said Ulrika. “But in America I’ve become a free person.”

She wore her fashionable American hat with her head held high on her straight neck, proud and unafraid. The way she stood there now she was not unlike some noble lady in Sweden; the hat was the final touch to a woman’s transformation in North America.

Kristina tied on her old, worn, black silk kerchief which her parents had given her as a bridal gift and which she had worn now for eight years.

“Don’t you think I should put on a hat too and lay aside my old kerchief?”

“No! You need no hat! You were honestly married when you came here—but unmarried Ulrika needed one!”

Ulrika added that liberty was not in the hat, exactly, but rather in the right to wear it. On her wedding day, two years ago on May 4, she had put on her hat for the first time. That was the day she had declared her independence. Now she celebrated the Fourth of May the way the Americans celebrated the Fourth of July.

And so they went on their way to do Kristina’s shopping. Their route took them along the street which followed the river. During the spring months the St. Croix was covered with floating timbers, log beside log all the way to the bend of the river. Stillwater smelled of pitch and fresh lumber. In some places on the town’s main street the two women waded through sawdust to their ankles. As they walked, they met men in flaming red woolen shirts tucked under broad leather belts, most of whom swung elegant canes. They appeared to be proud, cocky men; Ulrika called them lumberjacks. Almost every male inhabitant of Stillwater had something to do with lumber.

And almost every second man they met doffed his hat courteously to Ulrika; she was the minister’s wife, she was well known in this town.

“Menfolk in America are so courteous and educated,” said Kristina.

“Here they value womenfolk,” replied Ulrika. “In that hellhole Sweden a man will use a woman as a hired hand in daytime and as a mattress at night. In between she isn’t worth a shit!”

How had she herself been valued in the old country? Other women—married and unmarried—had spat at her. But the married men had come to her for their pleasure. They had used sweet words, then. Then she was good enough. Good enough even for his honor the church warden of Åkerby himself. But going to church on Sundays he did not recognize her. And he was one of those who had been against her participation in the sacraments. He was himself an adulterer, but men could whore as much as they wanted without being denied the holy sacraments. In Sweden the sixth commandment was in effect for women only; they must obey the catechism written by that man Luther. But perhaps in that country the men only followed the lead of the king himself, who whored with sluts from the theater, and the crown prince, who from his earliest years had been considered the foremost rake in the kingdom.

At Harrington’s General Store Kristina, with Ulrika as interpreter, bought so many articles and necessities that her old shingle basket almost overflowed. The two women carried it between them, each holding her side of the handle. When they returned to the parsonage, Elin was waiting for them on the stoop; she had brought a message for Pastor Jackson from her employer, Mr. Hanley.