Unto a Good Land (55 page)
Authors: Vilhelm Moberg
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Contemporary, #Genre Fiction, #Family Saga, #Contemporary Fiction, #Literary
“Kristina—”
He had not let go her hand, now he held on to it so tightly that it hurt her: he held on as though someone were trying to snatch her out of their bed, to take her away from his side. But he said nothing now.
She asked: “Karl Oskar—don’t you ever feel a longing for your old home?”
“Maybe. At times. Now and then. . . .”
Yes, he must admit, a longing came over him too. It seemed to come over all emigrants at times. But he always drove it away at once. He was afraid it might burden his mind. He needed his strength for other matters. He needed all his strength to improve their lives out here. He was careful, he couldn’t spend his strength pondering over what he had left forever. Just the other day, he had seen how dangerous it could be to dig oneself down in thoughts and musings—he had seen a man lying on a bed of wretchedness. . . .
Yes, she knew it well: What she worried over could never change. All her musing and thoughts were of no avail, served no purpose. . . .
“But I can’t help it, Karl Oskar!”
“No, I guess not.” He rose. “I’ll fetch something for you.”
He stepped onto the floor, and she could hear him as he walked barefoot toward the fireplace corner. She heard him stir in the Swedish chest. What was he fetching for her? Drops? Did he think the Four Kinds of Drops or Hoffman’s Heart-Aiding Drops would help her? There was hardly a spoonful left in either bottle, although she had used them sparingly.
Karl Oskar came silently back to the bed, he had something in his hand which he gave his wife. It was not drops, it was a pair of tiny, worn-out, broken shoes, a child’s shoes.
She accepted them in bewilderment, she recognized them in bewilderment. “Anna’s old shoes.”
“Yes. They help me to remember. If I sometimes feel downhearted a little . . .”
“You mean—?”
“Perhaps the shoes can help you too.”
“Karl Oskar!” Her voice grew thick again.
“Do you remember the winter the child died? You do, don’t you?”
“Yes. It was the winter when I agreed—to the emigration. I have almost regretted it at times. But I still agree. I don’t blame you a bit, Karl Oskar. You remember what I said that night on the ship?”
He remembered well, he remembered nothing better: She had said she had nothing to reproach him for, nothing to forgive him for. They were the best of friends. He could remember nothing more clearly than that. For that was the night when he thought she would die.
That time it had been she who had taken his hand and kept it firmly in hers. And there between them on the quilt had lain the old shoes, made by the village shoemaker in their home parish, made for their child’s feet—made for Anna, who had time to wear out only one pair of shoes while she lived on earth. And now they had the shoes here in America, still aiding them—they reminded the parents of what they had gone through in the homeland: Because of hunger the little girl’s life had been so short she had never needed more than one pair of shoes.
Karl Oskar said: Here in Minnesota was their home, here their home would remain. Here they had their children and all they owned, all that belonged to them in this world. In Sweden they owned not even a wooden spoon any longer, in Sweden they were homeless. This was their home.
And if Kristina still felt that she was away, then he would help her all he could to make
away
become
home
to her: “There is something I’ve long had in mind to tell you,” he said. “One day our children will thank us for emigrating to America.”
“You think that? You believe so?”
“I feel it. I know it.”
“Maybe. But who knows?”
“I know it’s true. I’m sure, Kristina. Our children will thank their parents for bringing them to this country when they were little.”
“But no one can know.”
Karl Oskar persisted: Every time he looked at this countryside and realized how much it could give to them, he felt assured of this: The children would be grateful to their parents. She must think ahead, of their children, and their children’s children in time, of all the generations after them. All the ones who came after would feel and think and say that she had done right when she moved from Sweden to North America.
On that thought he himself often lingered, it was a great help to him when his struggles at times seemed heavy and endless. It gave him renewed strength when he slackened. Couldn’t the same thought comfort her when she was depressed, longing for home?
“You may be right, Karl Oskar,” she said. “But we know nothing of the day we haven’t seen.”
There was one more matter Karl Oskar had thought over and which he now wanted to discuss with his wife: It was high time they gave a name to their home.
They had lived here an autumn and a winter and soon spring would be over. They ought to name their homestead now that they were settled and would never move away. That day last fall when they had moved in she had said that the place here with the lake reminded her of Duvemåla, that it was almost as beautiful as her home village. He had thought about this many times. They could name their home after her childhood home in Algutsboda Parish. And since he had heard her talk tonight, he was even more confirmed in that thought: They must name their home in the new land Duvemåla. How did she like that? What did she think of moving the name of her parental home over here?
“I—you must know I like it!”
Kristina was overjoyed. Now she took hold of his hand and held it tightly. It was a good idea, this name for their home. She would never have thought of it herself—the name of her own village!
“Duvemåla . . . we don’t live at Ki-Chi-Saga any longer, we live in Duvemåla. How lovely it sounds.” Her voice was clear, no longer thick and uncertain.
“That settles the name, then,” said Karl Oskar, with the intonation of a minister at baptism.
Kristina thought, from now on she would live in Duvemåla. And she would again try to make herself believe she was at home here.
So the first home on Lake Ki-Chi-Saga in Minnesota Territory was named, and the name was given late of an evening in spring as the couple who had built it lay awake in their bed and talked. They talked long to each other; the wife confessed her childish longing and spoke of the light spring nights at home, of the rosebush and the Astrachan tree and the gooseberry bushes and all the things that came to her mind at this time of evening.
It was nearly midnight, and they still lay awake. Karl Oskar said, now they must sleep. If they didn’t go to sleep soon, they would wake up tired next morning. And the morrow would bring heavy work—he himself would begin the most important task of the next years: the wooden plow he had made with his own hands, with great difficulty, was at last finished, and the ox team was waiting for him at his neighbor’s on Lake Gennesaret. Tomorrow he would begin to plow the meadow, the earth that was to become their good and bearing and nourishing field.
“Do you remember, Kristina? Tomorrow is an important day to remember.”
“No. Isn’t it a usual workday?”
“It is the fourteenth of April. The day we went on board ship in Karlshamn.”
Tomorrow, a year would have passed since they had tramped their homeland soil for the last time. Tomorrow they would put the plow into American soil for the first time.
Karl Oskar immediately fell into deep sleep, but Kristina lay awake yet a while. She listened to the sounds from the bed at the opposite corner of the cabin—short, quick breaths, the light rustle of children’s breathing in sleep. It reminded her of Karl Oskar’s words tonight: their children would be grateful to the parents for having emigrated with them while they still were little and had their lives ahead of them.
It might be so, perhaps he was right. But one couldn’t say for sure, no human could know this for sure—it would be better not to predict anything in advance.
What she could predict, what she did know for sure, was that her children would never have to go through the pain of longing which she now went through. They carried no memories from the homeland, her longing would never afflict them, no vivid memories from a past life in another country would plague them. Once they were grown they would never know any other life than the one lived here. And their grandchildren in turn would know even less of another way of life. Her children and her children’s children would never, as she did, remember trees and bushes they had planted in a far-off land, they would not ask, Do they still bud and bloom in spring, do they carry their fruit in fall? They would never, as she did, lie awake nights and gaze into the dark for that land where spring evenings are light.
The ones she had borne into the world, and the ones they in turn would bear, would from the beginning of their lives say what her own tongue was unable to say:
At home
here in America—
back there
in Sweden. With this thought, listening to her children’s breathing, Kristina went to sleep.
XXVI
A LETTER TO SWEDEN
Duvemåla
at Taylors Falls Postoffce in
Minnesota Teritory Northamerica
June 4 1851.
Dearly Beloved Parents
May all be well with you is my daily Wish
Father’s letter came some time ago, I thank you for it. I have not written to you because of great oversight, it was a joy to learn you are alive and in good health, the same good holds true for your son and Family in Northamerica.
It has been a struggle right along but all things turn out well for us, I plowed a five acres field on my land last spring, I have seeded the earth with three bushels of rye and two bushels of barley. Besides I have planted four bushels of potatoes, the american bushel is half time larger than the Swedish. All crops in the field grow and thrive it is a joy for the eye to behold.
I wonder if you will ask Kristina’s parents to send us seeds from the Astrakan apple in Duvemåla, we wish to plant a new astrakan apple tree here in Minnesota then we can have the same sort of apples, they were so fresh in eating as we well remember, and then we will have moved something from there over here. Sweden has good apple seeds and here is good soil to sprout and grow in, so it might grow to be a large tree in time, with many blooms.
As you see from this letter our abode now carries the name Duvemåla, Kristina holds that name dear I suppose, here it will soon be for her like in her childhood home, we have already full summer and warm weather, I sweat on my hands while I write this the sweat drops upon the paper, I have not much to write about, nothing has happened to us.
Our children are well and healthy, there is long space between my letters but they will not stop, I live far away but no day has come to its end without my thoughts on my dear Home and You my kind parents, your son never forgets his home.
Kindly overlook my poor writing written
down hastely by your devoted Son
Karl Oskar Nilsson
Unto a Good Land
is the second volume in a planned trilogy,
of which
The Emigrants
was the first volume.
Carmel, California, August 1953
V.M.
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