The Settlers (10 page)

Kristina had not seen Ulrika’s daughter for two years and was greatly impressed with the change in her. She was only nineteen but looked and acted like a grown woman. She had a well-shaped body and her fresh skin shone with health. But she did not resemble her mother; she had black hair and dark eyes. She must take after her father, whoever he was; that secret Ulrika had never divulged. Elin had a position as an ordinary maid in town, yet here she was, dressed in a starched, Sunday-fine dress with large flowers, and this in the middle of the week, during working hours. No one would now recognize the shy little girl who once had been with them on the emigrant wagon to Karlshamn. Then she had worn a discarded old skirt Inga-Lena, Danjels wife, had given her, and carried a berry basket, and looked so forlorn. Today she looked like a young manor girl.

Kristina herself wore her best dress today, and it was worn and moth-eaten in places. At the sight of Ulrika’s daughter she felt as if she were decked out in rags. She had put on her best finery, and Elin was in her working clothes, yet Kristina felt poor in comparison with the maid of the American rich people. Many things were topsy-turvy in the New World.

Elin spoke English to her mother, making Kristina feel awkward and pushed aside, excluded from their talk. And then, too, Elin at first acted as if they never had seen each other before. Although then she admitted that it was true, they had come together from Sweden. Had the girl really grown that uppity? It looked suspiciously so. Kristina might have asked her if she had outgrown the skirt Inga-Lena had given her to cover her body during the journey to America. But the girl, of course, didn’t know any better.

After Elin left, Ulrika carried on at length with great pride about her daughter, who was, she said, capable and learned quickly. Mr. and Mrs. Hanley had increased her wages to twelve dollars a month, and they served fare that was better than holiday food in Sweden, where maids and hired hands had to be satisfied with herring all year round. But the girl caused her mother great concern because she was so beautiful; men were after her and played up to her, and Ulrika wasn’t sure if they had marriage in mind. In Sweden a beautiful girl of poor parents was nothing more than prey for lustful menfolk, and even out here there was surely an occasional pant-clad animal out hunting. But this much she had made up her mind about: her innocent little girl would not be prey for such a human beast. Elin’s maidenhead was not to be wasted in advance—like her own—without joy, but would be an honest man’s reward in the bridal bed.

Ulrika set the coffee table in the living room. They sat down on the sofa again under the picture of Mr. and Mrs. Jackson which Kristina greatly admired. Pastor Jackson had been the first kind and helpful person she had met in America. When they had arrived on the steamboat, and were sitting down by the river in a cold rain, their brats whining, all of them wet through and through, hungry and homeless, without shelter or roof—then it was that Pastor Jackson had taken charge of their whole helpless group, had brought them to his home, prepared food, fed them, made up beds for them to rest on overnight, and helped them continue their journey the following morning. And to think that one of the women in their group had become his wife!

“You have been given a kind and good husband, Ulrika.”

“Yes, Henry is gentle. He never uses a woman for a slave.”

“But how could you and he understand each other in the beginning, before you learned English?”

“Well,” said Ulrika, “a man and a woman always find a way if they like each other. We made signs and pointed and used our hands in the beginning.”

She handed Kristina the plate with the buttercakes to be dunked in their coffee. American men were easy for an experienced woman to handle; they were so quick to offer marriage. Four men had proposed and offered her their name before Henry came along. Good, upright, American men.

“Ulrika,” said Kristina reflectively, “before the marriage I guess you told your husband the truth about your life in Sweden, and he holds nothing against you, according to what you say?”

“No. And I hold nothing against him.”

“Against him? Do you mean that he too—the pastor . . . ?”

“Yes, he led a wretched life; sinful like mine.”

“That I wouldn’t have thought,” said Kristina, greatly surprised.

“I told you once, ‘Henry is nothing but a great sinner forgiven by God. We’re alike, he and I!’ Don’t you remember that?”

Kristina remembered. But she had understood this to mean that Pastor Jackson had been born in sin, like all people.

“Oh no! In his old body he lived in deep sin! One was no better than the other, Henry and I!” Ulrika held her cup firmly and looked steadily at Kristina. “Henry used to steal. The same as I whored. Those two actions even up.”

Kristina opened her mouth quickly. She closed it again without speaking.

Ulrika continued: “Henry was in prison in England. For stealing.”

He had had the same unhappy childhood in England as she had had in Sweden. She had lost her parents when four, he when three years of age. She was sold at auction to the lowest bidder, to be brought up, Henry had been put in a foundling home. Her foster father had raped her and taught her whoring, in the orphanage Henry had learned to steal. He stole food to satisfy his hunger. At the age of fourteen he had escaped from the home and continued to steal his food until he was caught and put in prison for three years. When he was released he had signed up on a ship to America. In New York he had lived among thieves and whores until he met a Baptist minister who converted him. He was baptized and given help to study for the ministry. For fifteen years now he had been a pastor.

Kristina listened, confused and embarrassed, and at first without taking much store in what she heard. But Ulrika couldn’t have made up all these tales.

“Henry is an old thief—I’m an old whore. We’re two of a kind and very happy together!”

Kristina thought Ulrika would feel hurt if she now tried to excuse her and her husband: “All that is now passed, all of it,” she stammered.

“Yes, Henry and I have been immersed and live now in new bodies. We’re forgiven by God. We’re reborn. Our hearts are cleansed.”

“I’ll never forget your husband’s kindness when we landed here. I couldn’t believe he was a churchman. He was so kind and helpful.”

Pastor Jackson of Stillwater was as different from the church officials at home as his rough-timbered church across the yard was different from Ljuder’s stone church.

“Henry has suffered,” said Ulrika. “People who have suffered are kind to other people.”

Jackson was a nobler and stronger Christian than she, and she wanted to make that clear. He was a help to her when the temptation of her old body came upon her. She couldn’t pretend to be better than she was. The old serpent tempted her; at times she could feel him tickle her weak flesh.

When she married Jackson, no man had been in bed with her for four long years. It was not easy for her to hold herself until after the wedding; she almost crept near Henry before that time. But she wanted so to wait until after the ceremony, to show him that she had conquered her old sinful flesh. And he had not tempted her—he was not that kind of raw and selfish man. And in this way he had helped her endure and preserve her new body innocent until the bridal ceremony was over.

When at last the time had come to pull on the bridal shift she had felt like a virgin. She couldn’t quite explain it, but she almost felt like a girl going to woman for the first time when at last they got down to business. And in her new body, rebaptized and all, she really was a virgin, untouched by men. She was still in her best years, and it had felt so wonderful to be able to use her body for the purpose for which it had been created, now that God had joined them together.

Henry himself had had hardly any experience at all when they married. He had slept a few times with ordinary waterfront whores in New York but that had been fifteen years ago. So she had had to instruct him and guide him. He had really had so little experience that he could be called a beginner at bed play.

“Jackson pushed in too fast in the beginning, that was the trouble . . .”

Before Kristina had time even to suspect what Mrs. Jackson was describing, with this last sentence, Ulrika had jumped up; she had just dunked a second butter cake in her coffee and had barely swallowed a bite of it when she suddenly groaned loudly and rushed to the kitchen, her hands on her stomach.

What was the matter with Ulrika? But before Kristina could ask, her friend had returned to the living room. She dried her mouth with the back of her hand, jolly and happy as ever:

“Excuse me for running out!”

“Did you get something in your windpipe?”

“No, it was only my ‘priest.’ He’s on his way now.”

Kristina looked out through the window but could see no one outside. “Is Mr. Jackson coming?” she asked.

“No, not Henry. I meant the priest I’m going to bring into the world. I went out to reek a little.”

“Reek a little?”

Ulrika sat down again at the coffee table: “I’m in the family way, you see.”

Ulrika used the English words and it was a few moments before Kristina understood. Ulrika went on to explain. She had decided long ago that her first son should be a minister, the same as his father. With a son in the pulpit she would be redeemed in the eyes of Dean Brusander at home, he who had excluded her from his congregation.

“I haven’t had my regulars for two months and I puke like a she-cat. I’m pregnant.”

In Sweden when a woman was pregnant she was said to be on the thick, and it sounded as if she were afflicted with a shameful disease, said Ulrika. That was why she used the English words for her condition, it sounded fine and elegant in some way. Furthermore, this was the first time she was married to the father of a child of hers, and it seemed strange to her, but not unpleasant.

“I wish you all luck!” said Kristina. “I’ll carry your first-born to baptism as you carried my last-born.”

“I’m sorry, but he won’t be baptized until he is grown. We intend to immerse our brats in our own religion.”

That was true, the Baptists did not christen their babies. Kristina was apt to overlook the fact that Ulrika had embraced a new religion.

“You’re tardy with your pregnancy,” said Kristina. “You’ve been married two years now.”

“Yes, it’s taken so long I was getting worried. I myself have borne four brats in my life but I was beginning to wonder if Henry was useless. Having born the others outside wedlock, I’m anxious to have a few real ones too.”

Kristina sighed; the childbed Ulrika impatiently looked forward to she herself feared. Each month she trembled lest her period stop. And her apprehension had increased since Dan stopped suckling; she thought she had noticed that suckling was an obstacle.

Ulrika added that she had already bespoken a midwife, a Norwegian woman, Miss Skalrud, who had been maid of honor at her wedding. Miss Skalrud usually helped the women of their congregation at childbirth, and she had promised to help the little one through the portal into this world.

Toward evening Pastor Jackson returned from his journey to Franconia. He carried his bag with books and pamphlets and also a parcel which turned out to contain five pounds of wheat flour and three pounds of fresh butter, his wages for the sermon. In the doorway, he took his wife in his arms and patted her devotedly on the cheek with his big, hairy hand.

“Ollrika, my dear, forgive me! I’m late. My dearest Ollrika—and we have a dear guest . . . !”

The pastor welcomed his wife’s good friend warmly. With blessing-like gestures he took Kristina’s hands and smiled at her, the same good, kind smile she remembered.

Ulrika’s husband had put on weight since Kristina had last seen him. His cheeks had filled out, his pants were tight around the waist, his stomach had begun to protrude. Ulrika had said, “I cook good food for Henry, don’t forget it!”

The Jacksons spoke to each other in English, and Kristina again was left out. Once more she felt like a deaf-mute, excluded from the company. But Pastor Jackson was not one of those who would laugh at her, he talked to her through his wife. Was everything well with them on the claim, how were the children, had they enough food, was there anything he could help them with? And she replied through Ulrika that all was well at home, that several new neighbors were moving in this summer, beginning with a farmer from Sweden with his wife and three children.

But after a while it became rather tiresome to speak to another person through a third one. Nor was she sure her own words always were interpreted correctly. Kristina wished dearly that she could use the English language, if for no other reason than to be able to talk to Pastor Jackson directly; he was her true friend. Without understanding a single one of his words she felt the warmth from them in her heart.

—2—

Ulrika made a bed on the living room sofa for Kristina. She would leave early next morning on the lumber company’s ox wagon.

When the sun came up and Kristina had eaten breakfast, she thanked her friend for the hospitality and made ready to pick up her basket of groceries. Ulrika, to her surprise, brought her another basket, new and made of willow. A cloth was spread over it.

“A small present from the two of us, Kristina!”

Behind Ulrika stood Pastor Jackson, nodding eagerly as if he understood the Swedish words.

Mysterious cackling and chirpings could be heard from the basket. Kristina lifted a corner of the cloth and peeked. In the bottom of the basket sat a live brown-and-white speckled hen. But hers was not the only life in the basket: tiny chicks poked their heads through the wings of the mother, the little beaks shining like pink flower buds.

Kristina cried out joyfully. “Chickens! A hen!”

“We hope you like them! She’s hatched twelve, a whole dozen!”

Pastor Jackson smiled his kind smile: “Twelve young chickens!”

Ulrika said, “Henry is as proud of the chicks as if he himself had hatched them. The hen was given to him by a young couple in Taylors Falls as payment for a marriage service.”