Vilhelm Moberg - The Settlers

“A hell of a lot! That sounds bad!” Ulrika was deeply concerned. “I read somewhere a person only has about three quarts in the body!”

“Well, I guess then I have only about half left.” Kristina’s pale lips attempted a smile.

In Alex Turner’s drugstore in Stillwater, Ulrika had bought several kinds of medicines, pills, and powders for her friend, which she arranged on the bedside table. She knew what was needed for a woman who had lost blood from a miscarriage. Here were the excellent blood pills; no one less than Mrs. Sibley, the governor’s wife, had written a testimony to their excellence; they had healed her. And this was the blood-rejuvenator-powder, discovered by a Swedish Methodist priest in Chicago; his pills were really miraculous even though he was lost in religious matters. And then she had brought a bottle of medicine called Gift of Blood, which had been manufactured in Washington, and she felt sure anything made there, especially medicines, must be first-class, for undoubtedly the President himself was sure to test and try the products of the capital.

But Kristina felt better from Ulrika’s presence alone. She looked at the label on the bottle: Gift of Blood. “Gift!? Does it mean the medicine has poison in it?” 1

“Oh no! Not a drop! I wouldn’t want to poison my best friend!”

Kristina was overwhelmed by her thoughtfulness and concern. Tears of appreciation came to her eyes: “My dear Ulrika — you’ve gone to a lot of trouble for my sake. .”

“You never take care of yourself, Kristina. I’ve told you before: you have too much to do. You wear yourself to a frazzle!”

Now she must rest and gain strength after her miscarriage, emphasized Ulrika. Staying in bed was utterly important. And she mustn’t do any heavy work for a long time. She would send Miss Skalrud over to take care of the household for a while. That Norwegian was a stubborn, bull-headed woman, but very capable if you left her alone and didn’t interfere with her work. Norwegians were easy to get along with if you let them have their way.

“Skalrud helped me through my last childbed.”

Last winter Ulrika had borne her third child since her marriage to Pastor Jackson. This time the ministerial family had been increased by a son.

Kristina asked, “How’s your little one?”

“My little priest! He’s wonderful! He weighs twenty pounds already. He eats like a pig, my boy. He’s as fat as a bishop. Who knows — perhaps the Ljuder parish whore has borne a bishop for America! Wouldn’t that be something, Kristina!”

The Lord had finally heard Ulrika and given her a male child, whom the mother long in advance had dedicated to the Church. She had been granted the deep grace to carry in her womb for nine months a man of the Church, and she enjoyed the honor, several times a day, of offering her breasts to a future dignitary of the Church. Only now did she feel fully recompensed for having once been denied the Holy Sacrament in Ljuder and excluded from the Swedish Church. By giving her a son, God had meant to poke the Swedish Church in the nose, give it a hell of a poke.

One of her wishes, however, could never be fulfilled. She had wanted to write Dean Brusander of Ljuder and tell him that in her marriage to an American minister she had herself given birth to a minister. Then Karl Oskar had told her the dean had died, and there was now no earthly post office where she could direct her letter. The dean had died before he knew whom he had pushed out of his church. Anyway, she was willing to let bygones be bygones and forget about the old insults and let them rest in their grave in Sweden. Perhaps God, too, was willing to forgive that devil’s ilk, the Swedish priests.

“Well, I guess I mustn’t be too proud and vain because I’ve borne a son,” added Mrs. Jackson in quiet modesty. “A human being mustn’t blow himself up till the skin bursts.”

Before she left she took Karl Oskar aside and warned him that undoubtedly Kristina’s misfortune had been caused by her heavy work. Why couldn’t he help her with the worst chores from now on? By now he ought to be Americanized enough to scrub the floor, milk the cows, and wash dishes.

And Karl Oskar retorted that quite often it happened that he milked the cows and washed dishes. But he was still Swedish enough so that he had never scrubbed a floor. Perhaps he had better rid himself of this Swedish trace.

— 3—

Kristina enjoyed eight days of bed rest while Miss Skalrud took charge of the house for her. Meanwhile, Ulrika returned at intervals to see that her friend followed her advice and took the blood-giving, blood-strengthening, and blood-renewing pills, powders, and medicines. But rest itself was Kristina’s best medicine. Her births had become more difficult each time because she didn’t have the strength for them, thought Ulrika.

Kristina as well as other settler wives ought to learn from the Indian women; they lay down on their backs and rested completely for two days each time their period came. That was why they had such easy and quick labor. It was quite simple for a squaw to have a child: she simply squatted down to expel the infant, in the same way as she took care of her needs.

The wife at New Duvemåla was soon on her feet again, but she was still weak and tired. She must do only lighter chores for some time. Karl Oskar lugged in wood and water and milked the cows for her; she need not do any outside chores this spring. Marta, now twelve, was willing and handy and quite a help to her. After some weeks Kristina again felt fairly well physically, but her spiritual welfare was far more important to her at that time.

A killing frost had this spring ravaged her apple tree and her womb. A life that had grown and increased for more than twenty weeks inside her had suddenly left her body. As it left, she had felt as if part of her inner organs had gone with it, a part of dead, bloody tissue. She had managed to give it only one horrified look; it appeared as if the life had been choked by her own blood. While the child was still within her, she had felt it move many times. It had been alive in her womb, but it could not live outside it. A human being had begun its life inside her but had been forced from its mother-shield too early and had perished. And the mother who was unable to become a mother to her child did not even have a grave to tend. The child in her dream, born on the church steps, had also been taken from her, but it had been alive, and its cries, as Samuel Nöjd carried it away, still echoed in her ears. Her stillborn child had been mute, a lifeless lump of flesh and blood. Thus the dream had come true in one way, but not in another: a half-true dream, as it were.

After her miscarriage, Karl Oskar had taken the child away, and she realized he must have buried it somewhere in the forest. Where was the. .? she had once asked. He would never tell her, he had replied. And perhaps it was as well. She knew herself: the child had been returned.

One secret remained between God and her. She had prayed to be relieved of another birth, and she had been. He had granted her prayer. He had taken the child back. He had not dared trust it to her, for she had prayed to be relieved from fertility and wished for barrenness, she had rejected blessing and prayed to be cursed. Now it was clear to her: she had sinned with her prayer in the oak grove on the hill that evening last summer.

And she had committed a still greater sin with her dark doubt in the night last fall. She had doubted the Almighty — in a moment of great weakness her faith had faltered until she had doubted that God existed.

She had been given her reply; she had been rebuked. He had taken his creation away from her womb.

Thus Kristina had encountered the father in heaven in all his severity. His punishing hand had fallen on her that her blind eyes might be opened and she might see what she had done. A blessed woman had received the answer, both to her prayer and to her questions of doubt in a moment of despair. God had shown her that he existed, and he had shown it to her in such a way that she never again need doubt.