Unto a Good Land (37 page)

And she
had
been put in prison: the honored and worthy farmer had taught her how to sell her body, she had become the parish whore, banished from church and Sacrament, and at last imprisoned for unlawful communion. But the King of Alarum—who had raped a child and used her for his aging body’s lust—when he died, he had been given the grandest funeral ever seen in Ljuder Parish.

Kristina could remember how as a little girl she had been to the church when this funeral took place. The church had been filled to the last pew, people standing in the aisles, the organ had played long and feelingly, the coffin had been decked with the finest wreaths, and the dean himself had stood at the altar, lauding the dead one and extolling his good deeds in life. The memory of the “King” still was held in respect at home, and his tombstone was the tallest one in the whole churchyard.

Then the truth about him had been revealed to Kristina. And Ulrika said that she was only one of his victims, he had seduced and ruined many girls before they were of age. But the mighty ones could do whatever they wanted to in that hellhole, Sweden. Two of the jurors at her trial ought to have been in prison themselves, they had stolen money entrusted to them as guardians of orphans; and one owed her four daler for having committed what was known as whoring, not punishable in men. This she had told the judge and had pointed out that the law ought to be the same for all. But he gave her fourteen days extra on bread and water for having insulted the jury. And she had never received the four daler.

Ulrika was straightforward and said whatever came to her mind to whomsoever she met, even mighty lords. She could not help it, she was made that way. But in Sweden such honesty brought only misery; if you told the truth there, you were put in prison.

Having believed that justice ruled in her homeland, Kristina was deeply disturbed by Ulrika’s confidence. How rash and unjust her condemnation of Ulrika had been! She had listened to what other women said about the Glad One. No woman had a right to judge Ulrika and hold her in contempt unless she herself had been sold at auction as a four-year-old, and raped at fourteen. Kristina felt she could no longer rebuke Ulrika for her adultery before coming to live with Danjel. Vanity and self-righteousness were as sinful as whoring, and she had committed these sins many times. But that day in the steam wagon, when she had shared her food with the onetime parish harlot and her daughter, then her eyes had been opened: she had approached Ulrika, and Ulrika had approached her. When at last she had accepted Ulrika—something she felt now she should have done from the very beginning—she had discovered that this so-called bad woman was honest and could be a good friend.

Ulrika had changed, too, since people had changed their behavior toward her. Here she was no longer the parish whore. Here she was honored and treated like other women. Kristina was still bothered by the ugly words Ulrika liked to use, but now she knew they belonged to her old way of talking. The ugliest names invented for parts of men’s and women’s bodies, and for their conjugal acts, were part of the life she had led. The King of Alarum had taught them to her. But from Ulrika, Kristina learned that a person’s way of speaking had nothing to do with that person’s heart.

Now at Lake Ki-Chi-Saga, she discovered that she longed for Ulrika to come and visit her in her loneliness.

To the north lived the people who spoke her language, but in the other three directions there were no people of her own color. Their nearest neighbors were copper colored. The Indians had recently gathered in great numbers to make camp on one of the islands in Lake Ki-Chi-Saga, and every evening after dark she could see their fires. On that island now lived her nearest neighbors.

These Indians were said to be docile and peaceful, they would never commit atrocities against white people—but they were also said to be treacherous and unreliable, always watching their chance to scalp and kill the whites! Thus, the varying reports: They were kind, gave the settlers food, and helped them in need; they were bloodthirsty and cruel and blinded the eyes of their prisoners with spears before burning them in their campfires. They were as innocent as children, yet they murdered the settlers’ wives and babies. How could a newcomer know which was the truth?

From time to time they could hear piercing, long-drawn-out yells from the Indian camp. Only wild beasts yelled like that. But these were not wolf howls, these were human sounds, and as such they were terrifying. These yells through the night would frighten the most courageous, and lying there in the shanty listening to them, the settlers were inclined to believe the evil things they had heard of the brown skins.

The immigrants on Lake Ki-Chi-Saga had met and escaped so many dangers on their journey that they could scarcely imagine any worse in store for them. Yet now it seemed that their settling here might be as calamitous as their journey. The wild, heathenish people in the neighborhood filled them with insecurity.

Almost every day Karl Oskar met Indians in the forest, but they had not spoken to him or annoyed him; they only seemed curious, stopping and staring at him. He guessed the Indians were inquisitive. One day, some of their women came to look at the shanty. They carried children in pouches on their backs. One old woman looked hideous, with a face like gray-brown, cracked clay; the mosquitoes hung in droves on her wrinkled face. All the women were thin and looked wretched. Kristina felt sorry for them and wondered if the Indian men tortured them. Comparing her situation with theirs, she felt fortunate in her poverty. These poor creatures lived in the lowliest hovels, under matting hung on a few raised poles; next to their pitiable shelters, her own hut was like a castle. She did not understand how they could survive the winters in such dwellings.

Karl Oskar felt it unwise to mingle with the Indians in this vast wilderness, and he did not intend to get too close to them. Probably they considered him an intruder. But he had not come here as a thief, he intended to obtain his land honestly from the government of the country, who in turn had bought it from the brown skins. The Indians were too lazy to cultivate the ground. The whites here called them lazy men. And since they did not wish to till the land themselves, they could hardly object if others came and did so. The tiller of the soil had a right to it above all others; it would be a cruel injustice to hungry people if this fertile land—capable of feeding so many—should be allowed to lie fallow, producing only wild grass.

In the end, the family decided, all they heard of the heathens indicated that they could not be trusted. Though now they left the settlers in peace, there was no assurance of future safety. Karl Oskar always carried his gun when he went into the forest, and he kept it at hand when working near the shanty.

The building of Danjel’s house had begun, and now Karl Oskar went there to help, as Danjel would help him in return. One day while he was away, and Kristina was alone in the shanty, she suddenly was frightened into immobility: a face had appeared in the opening at the back of the shanty! At first she didn’t realize it was a human face: it looked like a furry animal skin. She saw a black, thick, stringy mat of hair, a dark oily skin splotched with red streaks. But when she discovered something moving under the mat of hair—a pair of coal-black eyes peering at her—then she realized it was a human face looking in through the opening. Human eyes were looking at her. She fled outside with such a loud outcry that she frightened herself.

Robert heard her, in spite of his deafness, and came running from the clearing. As they looked through the shanty door, the face in the opening disappeared. Turning around, they saw an Indian running into the woods.

That evening, when Kristina told Karl Oskar about the Indian, he said he would send Robert to work on Danjel’s house tomorrow. Now that he knew the savages were sneaking about their house, he wanted to stay close by; he dared not leave his family alone with the Indian camp so near.

It could be that the savages had no evil intentions, that they were only curious about the strangers who had moved in on their land—though no one could know for sure what they had in mind. But as Kristina listened to the outlandish yells from the camp on the island, she was filled with a deep sense of compassion. The Indians frightened her, but they were, after all, unchristian, they did not know their Creator, they did not know the difference between good and evil, they lived in darkness, according to their own limited knowledge—who could blame the poor creatures for anything? She herself could not condemn them. She was only grateful she had not been born one of them.

Here among the savages she could only trust to God’s protection.

—3—

Unexpectedly they had a change in the weather. One morning they awakened in their hut shivering—frozen through and through by a cold wind. An icy northwester was sweeping through their shanty, they felt as though the walls had fallen down during the night, as if they were lying in the open. The merciless wind seemed to strip them naked, it penetrated their thick woolen clothing, pinched their skin until it hurt, clawed with sharp talons, and blew right into their bodies.

When they looked out through the door at this weather, it seemed as if the crust of the earth might blow away. The grass lay flat to the ground like water-combed hair on a head. At the edge of the forest great trees were blown over, the exposed roots stretching heavenward like so many arms. All the haystacks in the meadow had blown over. They wondered that their little shanty still stood.

Now they could not use their fireplace, which lay to windward of the storm; but they managed to make a fire on the lee side of an enormous oak trunk. When they walked against the wind, they had to stoop in order to move. The unrelenting northwester swept away anything not tied to the earth.

Kristina said that none among them had ever known what a wind was, until they came to North America.

The children were blue-red from the cold; Lill-Märta and Harald coughed, and the noses of all three were running. Kristina put an extra pair of woolen stockings on each of them and wrapped them in woolen garments; she herself bundled up as much as she could, until she felt wide as a barrel; she was now in her last month. But clothes did not help against this ferocious wind, big and little shivered and shook; nothing helped. In the daytime they could get some warmth from the fire behind the oak, but how were they to keep warm inside the shanty during the nights if this weather continued?

“Has the winter come so soon?” Kristina wondered.

“It couldn’t come so suddenly,” Karl Oskar said anxiously. “It would be too bad for us—the house not yet ready. . . .”

They had heard of the unexpected changes in temperature hereabouts, and that the thermometer could fall forty degrees in one minute (but American degrees were said to be shorter than Swedish ones). Now the sudden cold and wind had come upon them while the timbers for the house still lay and waited. The men would come as soon as they had put the roof on Danjel’s house. It was expected to be ready in a week or so. Now Karl Oskar tightened the shanty as best he could; he nailed extra pieces of boards to the windward side and closed all cracks and holes with moss and wet clay. Inside, he laid a ring of stones for a fireplace and cut a hole in the roof for the smoke; now they could heat their hut. During the second night they were able to keep a fire alive, and they covered themselves with every piece of clothing they had, but the cold still penetrated—they froze miserably. The children whined and whimpered in their sleep like kittens. Many times during the night Kristina rose and put a kettle on the fire and boiled a meat soup, which they drank to warm their insides—though nothing could help their outsides.

In the morning the hurricane died down a little, but toward evening it increased again, with heavy showers of hail. Inch-long pieces of ice, hard as stones, fell and remained in drifts on the ground. But on the third morning the wind abated, and by evening the storm had spent itself.

After the three days’ frightful weather the sun warmed them again. The hail drifts melted away, the air was so still that not the smallest leaf moved, and the grass that had been combed flat rose again. Mild, late-fall weather reigned once more.

But the new settlers in the shanty on Lake Ki-Chi-Saga had experienced the touch of the blizzard on their bodies, they felt as if they had been saved from death. The winter had discharged a warning shot to show what miserable shelter they had against the cold north winds; to survive, they would need a tighter, better house, and soon.

And early one Monday morning their helpers arrived and began to raise the house. They were three carpenters—Karl Oskar, Danjel, and Jonas Petter—with two helpers, Robert and Arvid. Now there were rushed days for Kristina, who must prepare food for all of them over a fire in the open, while she kept an eye on the children. But the break in their loneliness was welcome, now there was life on their place with the menfolk building, and new strength came into her as she saw their house rise on the foundation timbers. Back there, under the great sugar maples, the walls of their new home grew, higher for each meal she prepared for the builders. Often she walked back to watch them and felt as if she herself were participating in the building.

The house was to be eight feet high at the eaves. The timbers were roughhewn, and now the men smoothed the upper and under sides of the logs to make them lie close together. Karl Oskar would later fill the cracks with moss, which he intended to cover with a mixture of clay and sand. The timberman’s most complicated task was the fitting of the logs together at each corner. “When a corner you can lay, you get a timberman’s pay” was an old saying at home, often quoted to a carpenter’s helper. Karl Oskar had learned building from his father, but he did not feel he was a master; working now as a timberman, he was glad his house had only four corners.