Vilhelm Moberg - The Settlers

“Laugh at me, Karl Oskar! Poke fun at me! I’m a fool. .”

Why had she been so dumb as to try to speak English when she knew she couldn’t? Why hadn’t she asked Jonas Petter or Swedish Anna to help her buy the flower seeds? And where had her senses been when she was planting — she knew the difference between flower seeds and grass seed. She had thought the flower seeds looked unusual, but then, everything in America was different. .

It was a little annoying, said Karl Oskar, but nothing to take seriously. He too in the beginning had made mistakes when he bought things. The English language was so confusing, it was hazardous to speak it, some words were so mixed up in that tongue. He had had great trouble when he bought seed rye: as long as the rye grew in the field it was called crop but as soon as it was harvested and threshed it was called grain, even though it was rye all the time. She was not the only one to make a mistake.

But Kristina was a perfectionist. Therefore, it was of no comfort to her that Karl Oskar could make similar mistakes. It did not worry her so much that she made a fool of herself to others, but she felt a fool in her own eyes, dejected, and that was worse.

“Someone like me ought to stay home. I ought not to poke my nose beyond the claim. I am so stupid in English I ought not to mix with other people.”

“But this mistake is easily remedied!” exclaimed Karl Oskar.

She could plant the bed with new seeds; he would buy the right ones for her next time he had an errand in Taylors Falls or Stillwater.

But after all her worry and concern for the plants she had thought would become flowers, she did not wish to start all over again this summer.

She pulled up the grass plants, each and every one, hoed the bed, and planted cabbage instead.

She should have learned this much by now: it was, and remained forever, difficult to transplant the homeland in foreign soil. A person could not change countries and make a foreign place into home overnight. Perhaps she would not even live long enough to do that.

One thing was sure — it would be some time before she again tried to speak English.

— 1—

Spring brought potent growing weather; it was dry during seeding and planting time, then when the fields were prepared a generous rain fell for several days without letup; it poured down in sheets from low-hanging, pregnant clouds. The cabin’s sod roof began to leak and the Nilssons brought out all available vessels to catch the drip. The roof had never leaked before, but this was the most persistent downpour they had experienced in Minnesota.

During one of the rainy nights Karl Oskar was awakened by his wife touching his elbow: “Someone is knocking on the door!”

He sat up in bed and listened. Out there in the black night the rain was pouring down, beating against the window. It dripped from the ceiling and splashed in the vessels on the floor. But above the sounds of the rain came a heavy banging against the door.

“There’s someone out there — it woke me,” said Kristina.

Karl Oskar pulled on his pants and lit a candle on the table. Who would come at this hour of the night? Someone must have lost his way and was seeking shelter from the rain.

Kristina too slipped out of bed and pulled on her petticoat. She whispered, “Ask who it is before you open!”

It might be one of the new neighbors in need of help. But they could expect unfriendly callers day or night and must not be taken unawares; their door was always well bolted at night.

Before Karl Oskar had time to ask, a man’s voice was heard through the cloor: “I’m a lone wanderer. Please give me shelter, good people!”

These pleading words were in Swedish and that was enough for Karl Oskar; he pushed back the heavy bolts.

A man in a long, black coat and a black, broad-brimmed hat stumbled across the threshold, his legs unsteady. His coat was covered with mud and soaked through with rain; it hung on him limply. Water splashed in his boots with every step. He sank down on a chair, collapsing like an empty sack, and breathed heavily, “Much obliged. Thank you, my good Swedes.”

Utterly confused, Karl Oskar and Kristina eyed their unexpected night caller, a thin young man with a pale, narrow face and large blue eyes. He carried a handbag of shining black leather, and his muddy clothes were of fine quality. He had white, well-cared-for hands, like those of a scrivener or a nobleman. The stranger looked like a gentleman, not a trapper or a settler. Why was he wandering about in the wilderness in this ungodly weather?

The man removed his hat, and the water ran in runnels from the brim; his hair, too, was thoroughly wet and clung to his skull. From his coat and pants water ran onto the floor and formed puddles round his chair.

Kristina pulled on her night jacket. “You’re out in evil weather,” she said.

“Where do you come from?” asked Karl Oskar.

“I’ve walked from St. Paul.” He panted for breath, exhausted from fatigue. “I’m worn out. .”

It was evident to both of them that he was in a sorry condition.

“Make a fire so he can dry himself!” said Kristina.

Karl Oskar pushed aside the kettles and bowls, earthen crocks and cauldron lids, which stood on the floor half filled with water, and made a passage to the fireplace. He found some dry kindling behind the chimney and soon a great fire blazed on the hearth. It lit up the room so that he could see the stranger more clearly. What he saw shocked him: on the man’s forehead and on his neck were horrible, bleeding spots.

“You’re bleeding! Has someone stabbed you?”

“I was attacked by many enemies. .”

“Enemies! Where? In the forest?”

“I was asleep. . they came over me. . in a whole swarm. . they pierced me with their arrows. .”

“The redskins? Are they on the warpath?”

A few weeks earlier a message had come from Fort Snelling that the Sioux had been active in Carver County along the Minnesota River. Some of the settlers had fled to St. Paul. But a few days later they had heard that the rumor was false. They were, however, still uneasy; before the second message had arrived they had been prepared to hide in the forest.

Kristina listened intently, turned her eyes quickly to the sleeping children. “The Indians! Are they coming this way. .?”

“No. . it wasn’t the Indians. I was attacked by. . mosquitoes. .”

The stranger pushed his chair to the fire and began to pull off his boots; the water splashed round his feet; on one boot the leather had burst at his big toe, which stuck out through the hole.

“A swarm of thousands of mosquitoes attacked me in the forest,” he explained. “They made these wounds with their sharp stingers. .”

Kristina breathed more easily; she was familiar with those torture bugs. She preferred them to Indians on the warpath, their faces smeared with red paint.

The guest took off his dripping coat as well. His pants were torn, his shirt stuck out through a hole in the back.

The poor man must be hungry, thought Kristina, and she took some of the barley porridge left from their own supper and put the kettle over the fire. She poured fresh milk into a bowl, and put out bread and syrup.

Their guest’s appearance and way of talking indicated he was an upper-class man, and Karl Oskar did not use the familiar “du” in talking to him. Not wanting to seem curious, he told the man his own name and the place in Sweden he came from, hoping the stranger would do as much. His suspicion of strangers would not leave him.

“My name is Erland Törner,” the man said. “I was born in Östergötland.”

“Are you here to claim land?”