The Settlers (34 page)

Yes, dear Robert, I have now buzzed for you so long this evening it’s time to buzz you to sleep. At last you always get so tired you go to sleep. Sleep now!

Good night, gold seeker!

XVI

WHILE THE RICHES LAY HIDDEN IN THE HOUSE

—1—

Karl Oskar and Kristina often recalled to mind that week in June, 1855, when Robert had returned on a Monday.

Robert slept late on that June Tuesday morning of 1855, and no one disturbed him; he must be tired to death, they thought, and in need of rest. Karl Oskar had intended to do a day’s work on the church building, which had been started that spring, but as his brother had just come back, he stayed at home and did ordinary small chores. Kristina wanted to prepare good and strengthening food for the prodigal, so she robbed the chicken nests of fresh eggs, and for her brother-in-law’s breakfast she also made dumplings, which she knew he liked.

Robert rose at last and sat down alone at the kitchen table. After a while Karl Oskar came in; he had something he wanted to say to his brother which he should have said last night only everything had become so confused: a hearty thanks for the big bundle of bills—if now all this money was meant as a gift! He had inspected the bills, both by candle flame and in daylight, and as far as he could see they were real and must be good currency. He would put them in the bank at Stillwater at once. Nowadays so many bills were worth only half their face value, or nothing at all, that he hoped Robert would understand why they had been suspicious at first. To himself he thought that the only thing that troubled him about this money was the fact that he himself hadn’t earned it with his own hands.

Robert mumbled that he hoped his brother and sister-in-law would enjoy the money. Apparently he didn’t want to talk any further about the gift. He himself had little feeling for his fortune; last night he had handled the bills as if all he wanted was to get rid of them, the sooner the better.

By daylight his leanness was more marked. And his yellow skin was not a sign of health. Kristina now understood why Karl Oskar had wondered if he suffered from some gnawing disease. Perhaps he had had to sacrifice his health for the gold. And if he couldn’t buy back his health with it, he had indeed made a poor bargain.

They had many questions to ask Robert, as they wanted to know all that had happened to him during his four years’ absence. But he discouraged their questions; perhaps he would tell them more once he was rested. Now he was the one to ask: what had happened here since he left?

Karl Oskar and Kristina described to him the activities around the lake, the new houses that had been built, and told him the names of their neighbors, all new immigrants from Sweden. The population had increased so much they had now founded a Swedish congregation.

“We timbered up a schoolhouse last summer. Now we’re hammering together a church,” said Karl Oskar.

“Yes, at last,” added Kristina. “They crabbed a whole year about the location of God’s house.”

Well, each one of the settlers had wanted the church near his claim, said Karl Oskar. People had wanted it on both the north and the south, on the east and the west lakeshore, in every imaginable place. Ten different sites had been under consideration. Those Swedes who had come here were so stubborn and selfish; what could one do with ten heads, each with a different opinion and none willing to give in? It had looked as if they might have to build ten churches, for all had the same right to decide; and only with ten churches would all have been done full justice. But at last they had been forced to agree. A site had been selected on the Helsinge farmer Lars Sjölin’s claim, on a tongue of land across from Nordberg’s Island. It was a pleasant location on a promontory near the lake, as nearly as possible in the center of the Swedish settlement. It was really a good place for the church, only twenty minutes’ walk for them, so they couldn’t complain.

“But our parish is so poor we can’t even hang a bell,” said Kristina.

“We’ll raise a small steeple for the time being,” said Karl Oskar. “We can hang the church bell when we’re better off.”

To build a church was a difficult and tiresome job, that much he had learned. Everything was to be done voluntarily but some sort of organization was necessary: each household was to cut, rough-hew, and deliver three loads of lumber, and each grown man was to give twelve days’ labor. But no one could tell yet if this would be sufficient to complete the building. And many members were poor newcomers who barely had had time to raise a shelter over their own heads, and who must first of all see to their own needs. At least a thousand dollars in cash was needed to finish the church and as yet they didn’t know if they could scrape together this sum.

“They can’t agree on anything, these people,” insisted Kristina. “They quarrel about the slightest nonsense.”

“They had no chance to decide anything back in Sweden so now they make up for it in America,” said Karl Oskar.

There had been great fights about the little schoolhouse, too, before it was completed last fall. The parish elder, the Helsinge farmer Petrus Olausson, had forced them to build it on his land, half a mile from the church. The young pastor, Mr. Törner, had promised to act as teacher and kept school two months in spring and two months in autumn. During the winter there was no school as the children couldn’t get out on the roads because of the cold and snow: they couldn’t risk the children’s freezing to death in the drifts. Johan and Marta attended regularly, and Harald would begin this fall.

This was indeed news to Robert; great changes had taken place.

The children were curious about the stranger who had brought the sweets. Robert asked if they learned Swedish in school, and Johan wanted to show him how much he knew. The boy reeled off some Swedish words. Only once did he stumble, repeating from memory. Marta too wanted to show what she had learned; she found the schools reader and read the story “The Shepherd Who Lied.”

“A liar you cannot believe even when he tells the truth,” she concluded her reading.

“That’s an amusing story,” said Robert thoughtfully. “I was asked to read that story once for Schoolmaster Rinaldo.”

“The pastor says it will teach us not to lie, not even in fun,” advised Marta.

In a low voice Robert repeated the last sentence of the story while his eyes sought his brother’s. Karl Oskar quickly looked out through the window as if he hadn’t heard.

In the kitchen a silence fell. There was a feeling that anything could happen if the two brothers now exchanged a single word.

Kristina felt the silence must be broken. “The girl has a nice singing voice. Sing something for Robert, Marta.”

“What, Mother?”

“Something you’ve learned in school. This for example: ‘We’re Swedes, we’re Swedes, Although we’re small . . .’!”

The mother did not sing the words, she spoke them; she had no singing voice.

“That’s called ‘The Song of the Swedish Boys,’” said the girl. “I know a better one!” And Marta threw her flaxen braids over her shoulders, stood spread-legged in the middle of the floor, and sang in her clear, thin child-voice:

“We go to school,

We stand in row,

Our hands are clean,

Our faces also.

Now let us listen

With open ears,

What teacher says,

Or it’ll be lost.

Let’s hurry and learn,

Knowledge to earn

Which is better than silver

And gold . . .”

As the last words rang out Robert rose quickly from his chair; his spoon fell from his hand and clattered on the floor. He shied away as if the girl had hurt him; he stared wide-eyed at her until she backed away looking at him in fright.

Slowly he picked up the spoon. Then he sat down, silent and lost in thought. Karl Oskar and Kristina were puzzled by his behavior; Robert seemed frightened at the mere sound of a word in a song—the word “gold.”

—2—

In the afternoon they went out to inspect the farm. Karl Oskar and Kristina wanted to show Robert what they had tilled and planted and built while he was away. He was greatly surprised at the large field with sprouting corn, wheat, rye, and oats on the slope where only four years ago nothing had grown but weeds. And such smooth, even fields! His brother had indeed worked hard.

“If the farmers at home could see these fields they would die of envy!”

The brothers walked side by side along the edge of the field. Robert noticed that Karl Oskar dragged his left leg. “What’s the matter with you? You limp?”

The older brother replied, somewhat embarrassed, that it was only the old ailment in his left shinbone; the injury he had sustained when a couple of men had tried to rob him on their journey to Minnesota; it never had healed, it ached sometimes when he worked too hard, and perhaps he favored that leg while walking.

“You slave yourself to death on your claim!”

Robert seemed serious; nothing in this world was worth aches and limps. Not even the good earth of Minnesota was worth that much.

He was a youth no longer. He had grown so old that he advised his older brother.

They looked at the fat and well-cared-for animals in the stable. Each had been bred on the place except the cow, Lady. Robert had promised Karl Oskar money for a team of oxen but now his brother had raised a team himself. And this spring one of the heifers had taken the bull, so they would soon have five cows.

“I don’t want to have any more to milk,” said Kristina.

They went inside the deserted log cabin, which was now used as a toolshed and carpenter shop.

“Here I stand and fix things,” said Karl Oskar.

In the old log house he now spent rainy days at the workbench. The floor was strewn with shavings. On the wall, deer and calfskins had been nailed up to dry. It looked like a junk shop in there. But there they had lived for four winters. When Robert compared the log cabin with the new main house in the maple grove he could see that things had improved for his brothers family in New Duvemåla.

He asked about the shanty where they had lived the first fall, but Karl Oskar had torn it down, as the old shed only spoiled the looks of the new building. He had already built three houses for his family, and now he had begun the fourth in his head.

“Next time I build, Robert . . .”

But the most unusual thing they had acquired while Robert was gone Kristina had waited to show him last: a small tree that grew at the east gable of the new main house.

Could he guess what kind of tree it was? A little sapling, about five feet tall, its top reaching to Robert’s chest. The tree had large, deep green leaves, healthy branches and foliage. But he couldn’t guess. Some kind of plum tree perhaps?

“An apple tree from home!” said Kristina.

“Kristina’s own tree!” added Karl Oskar.

This Astrakhan apple tree had sprung up from seeds which Kristina’s parents had sent in a letter. It had grown to chest height in a few years. Now it stood here at their gable, thousands of miles from Sweden. Wasn’t it like a miracle?

Robert lightly pinched a leaf of the sapling; he ought to have recognized an Astrakhan tree from its wide, thick leaves with fuzz on the underside.

Kristina said that she guessed it would take a few years more before the tree bore fruit, and no one could tell if it would have real Astrakhan apples—those juicy, large apples, big as children’s heads, with clear, transparent skin that she had enjoyed at home. Their neighbors, Algot and Manda Svensson, had said that crab apples might grow on trees planted this way from seeds. Branches ought to be grafted on a trunk if one wanted to be sure of fine fruit. But she couldn’t believe crab apples would sprout in America from the fine Astrakhan seeds from Sweden.

Robert stroked the branches; the leaves felt soft to his touch. “It’s come from the old country . . . It too has emigrated . . .”

“That sapling is the apple of Kristina’s eye!” said Karl Oskar.

From the tremble in her voice Robert had already understood as much. Everywhere on this claim, everywhere in the good earth round Ki-Chi-Saga, a great many plants grew; the land was verdant with crops of wheat and barley and corn and potatoes. But of all the planted and tended seedlings, of all the sprouting, thriving growth, this sapling was obviously dearest to Kristina.

And he himself felt nostalgia as he touched the tree, he felt a strange compassion for the little life, a desire to protect and guard it. He felt as if it were a living being—as if four people instead of three were standing here at the gable, four immigrants.

“This sapling . . . it’s almost unreal!” said Robert.

And when they walked on he turned back to look, as if afraid the tender, sensitive life might not be able to withstand the merciless winter cold here in North America.

—3—

Karl Oskar had put out his precious copies of
Hemlandet
for his brother. Robert did not know that a Swedish paper was printed in America; in the part of the country where he had been he had hardly met any Swedes and he had never heard anyone talk of Sweden. Now he sat the whole evening and read the paper eagerly, and learned about the most important happenings in the world during the last year.

A great war was ravaging the Old World but Sweden had as yet not been dragged into it.
Hemlandet
had predicted that war sooner or later must break out in the New World also—in the North American Union—between the faction advocating love of humanity and liberty and those wanting slavery. Lately a group of courageous men in Kansas had organized the Free-States Union with the intention of driving out all slave owners. But in Georgia a white man had been fined ten thousand dollars for spreading the rumor that his neighbor had black blood in his veins. In one state slave owners were thrown out, in another it was a great crime to hint that a person was related to a Negro.

Robert said that was just the way things were in America; every place was different from every other.

“You must read the installment story!” suggested Kristina. “There you can see how the white lords torture the poor blacks!”