Vilhelm Moberg - Unto A Good Land

“It’s swarming with people here in New York,” she said. “Is there enough wheat bread for all of them?”

Karl Oskar said, that, according to what he saw with his own eyes, there must be plenty of food in this country; in several stores he had seen quantities of wheat loaves, piled high like stacks of firewood at home, and he had seen whole tubs full of sweet milk. He was sure that both she and the children could eat and drink all they needed to regain their strength.

The bundle at Kristina’s side began to move and a sound came from it; Harald had awakened and cried out. The mother picked him up and his cry died as soon as he felt the sweet milk in his mouth. The little one swallowed the unfamiliar drink in silence, he simply kept silent and swallowed: surprise overwhelmed him.

It hurt Kristina’s heart to see how fallen off her children were, how pale their faces, how sunken their cheeks, how blue their lips, how tired and watery their eyes. When she took them in her arms their bodies were light, their arms and legs thin, the flesh on their limbs loose; it was as if muscles and bones had parted from each other. They had dwindled this way from having been kept so long in the dark unhealthy hold below decks. How often had she worried about them when she lay sick, unable to care for them, while all three of them crawled over her in her bed. How often had she reproached herself because of her inability to give them a single bite of fresh food, or a mouthful of sweet milk. How she had longed for the moment when she could walk on shore with Johan, Lill-Märta, and Harald. These poor, pale, skinny children certainly were in need of America’s good sweet milk and fresh wheat rolls.

Johan had been told to guard his father’s coat lying there in the grass, and he said impatiently: “Father, you forget the apple! The apple for Mother!”

From the pocket of his father’s coat he took a shining red apple, almost as big as his own head. The boy handed it proudly to his mother.

“Have you ever seen such a big apple?” said Karl Oskar. “I got it for nothing!”

Near the pier, he told her, they had met a woman carrying a large basket filled with beautiful apples. Johan and Lill-Märta had stopped and looked longingly at the fruit. The woman had spoken to them, but they had not understood a word. Then she gave the children each an apple, which they immediately gulped down. He, too, had received an apple — which he had saved for her.

“Karl Oskar — you’re good. . ”

She weighed the large apple in her hand; it must weigh almost a pound, she thought; it was the largest one she had ever seen. The children’s eyes were glued to the fruit in their mother’s hand, and Kristina asked Karl Oskar to cut it in four equal pieces, so that all would get even portions. He pulled out his pocketknife and divided the apple carefully; each quarter was as big as a whole apple at home.

And the immigrant family ate and enjoyed their first American fruit, which was full of juice and cooled their mouths.

“Is it a new apple?” exclaimed Kristina when she tasted it.

“Yes, doesn’t it taste like one?”

“I thought it was fruit from last summer.”

“Here in America the apples ripen before Midsummer,” said Karl Oskar.

Yes, the sour-fresh taste in her mouth convinced Kristina. It must be true what Karl Oskar said — she was eating a fruit of the new crop; yet it was only Midsummer.

Midsummer — the holidays had passed, a Midsummer no one had celebrated. Enclosed on the ship, they could not celebrate, they could only talk of the Midsummer holidays in the land they had left.

Just a little more than a stone’s throw from where she sat Kristina could see the pier where the Charlotta was still tied up, discharging the rest of her cargo. She recognized the Swedish brig by its familiar flag. After unloading, it would sail back again. The ship would once more have to find her way across the restless, endless water. It had been a bleak and misty spring day when she left the Swedish harbor; perhaps it would be a bleak and misty autumn day before she returned to the same harbor. Then their ship would be at home. At home —the thought cut Kristina to the quick, and she chewed more slowly on her piece of apple.

Midsummer at home — Father putting young birches on either side of the door, Mother serving coffee at their finest table, which had been moved out into the yard and placed under the old family maple; Maria and Emma, her sisters, picking lilacs and decorating themselves for the village dance. The house would smell of newly scrubbed floors, smell clean, inside and out, smell of lilac blossoms and flowering birches. And when they gathered around the table under the family maple — the guardian tree of their home — they would all be dressed in their Sunday best, and there would be much fun and much laughter. At home it was always so for Midsummer.

Did they speak this year of one who had been among them before? Did they mention her name — Kristina, who had moved away with Karl Oskar to North America? Did they ask how it was with her this moment, this afternoon, this Midsummer Eve?

She knew how it was at home, but those at home did not know how it was here.

She had traveled a long road, almost endlessly long; she knew the sea that separated her from her homeland, that incomprehensibly wide water which separated home and here. She would never again travel that road, never again traverse the sea. So she would never again be with them at home.

Now for the first time she began to think deeply into this: Never again be with them at home.

The thought suddenly disturbed her profoundly, not less because she could still see the ship, over there in the harbor, the ship that was to turn about, to sail home again. This ship on which she had suffered so horribly, what did it mean to her now? Did she want to go back with it again? Did she want to stay another ten weeks in a pen in the dark hold? No! No! Why was it then that her tears were breaking through? Why? She did not understand it.

Karl Oskar sat down and wiped the perspiration from his forehead with his sleeve; even in the shade the heat was melting.

“We are to board a ship and ride on the river this evening,” he told her.

She was thinking of the road behind them — he was thinking of the way ahead.

“We are late getting started,” he said.

He was afraid they might have arrived too late in the season. No one could have imagined they would sail the sea until Midsummer. He had expected them to reach their place of settling by now and have time to hoe some land, sow some barley, plant some potatoes. What would happen to them next winter if they didn’t get something into the earth before it was too late this year to grow and ripen?

Karl Oskar agreed with what Kristina had said, and it worried him: this town of New York swarmed with people; perhaps the whole country was already filled up. No one in their group had ever seen so many human beings in one place. Great numbers must have come before them, this they could see with their own eyes, and every day new ships arrived, with great new flocks of people. Perhaps they had been deceived, perhaps it was too late, the best land already taken; perhaps America was entirely filled up with new settlers.

But he must not disturb Kristina with these thoughts on their very first day in the new land. He must, rather, try to cheer her up, she was so weak and depressed after her illness. He had just given her a foretaste of the delicacies offered them on entering an American store, and he must assure her that all he had seen and heard so far was promising.

“I think America is a good land. We need have no regrets; that I must write home.”