Vilhelm Moberg - The Settlers

But after Karl Oskar had seen his neighbor’s cornfield he decided to plant some himself next year. He was never afraid of new ventures. And why shouldn’t a Christian Swede follow the heathens’ example, if it was good and useful? Why shouldn’t he grow the wild ones’ grain?

If the hot Minnesota summers made the corn grow an inch a day, the humid heat sucked one’s strength. In the evenings Karl Oskar fell asleep, completely worn out. A settler was said to get used to the heat after a few years, but to him it was the same ordeal summer after summer. The heat squeezed and sucked the sweat from his body until he felt completely dried out. The nights were the worst; the heat interfered with breathing and prevented sleep; hot, humid air penetrated his nose and mouth and made breathing heavy and cumbersome. It was as if wet wool wads had been put into his mouth. His lungs worked slowly and laboriously and his heart felt like a heavy invisible lump in his breast.

The cabin became unbearably sultry during the nights, so when Karl Oskar was unable to sleep, he walked outside and lay down on the ground behind the house. Here he had no bedding other than the cool grass, no cover except the dark night sky with the tiny star lights. Stretched out on this grass mattress he would at last go to sleep although only to dream tortuous dreams of choking.

— 2—

The shakes were ready to be put on the new threshing barn and Karl Oskar had asked Jonas Petter and Anders Månsson to help him. He himself placed the shakes in straight rows, Jonas Petter nailed them down, and Månsson acted as handyman, fetching and carrying up and down the ladder. On the roof, the sun burned like a branding iron; up there it was too hot even to fry bacon, said Jonas Petter; the sun would burn it to cinders.

The men had to quench their thirst every quarter of an hour; they drank gallons of cold buttermilk to which had been added fresh, cool spring water. Once every hour they rested in the shade of the maples, stretched out dazed and indifferent. Even Jonas Petter held his tongue for long periods, obviously not himself.

The Ölander, Månsson, was stingy with words in any company. His eyelids were swollen and there was also a swelling over his cheekbones; he did not look well. Time and again he went on a binge and ended “flat on his back,” his mother said. He neglected his claim because he was busy emptying whiskey kegs, and this spring he had had to sell a cow to pay his debts.

Jonas Petter had said to him, “Take a wife! Then you’ll have so much to do at night that you’ll have neither time nor strength to drink in the daytime! But if you must drink — do it in the morning when you’re sober!”

Anders Månsson had proposed to Ulrika but she had married another man. And how many women remained to propose to?

The Ölander said, “In this country a man is forced to live single.”

“A hell of a shame that a young buck like you must remain a bachelor!”

But Jonas Petter knew how things were — what could a man do here in the Territory, with one woman to twenty men? Nineteen of the twenty had to lie alone, sighing, lusting, suffering. Here men slept in their lonely beds night after night, year in, year out, until white moss grew on their tool.

Those who couldn’t stand it forever, continued Jonas Petter, must do as Samuel Nöjd did, he had taken an Indian girl to live with him. She was skinny as a bird and had a dirty face but had a pretty good shape. Jonas Petter himself had seen several Indian wenches a white man could get hopped up about. Their black eyes burned with something that roused a fire in one’s loins. But it was forbidden on the Tablets of Stone for a Christian Lutheran to spill his seed in the chambers of heathendom’s daughters. But perhaps the Tablets of Stone were not in force in a wild land with a scarcity of women. When God made Eve he told Adam he was giving him the help a man needed. According to the Bible, then, every man had a right to have a woman in his bed. And the Bible said nothing about a man and a woman having the same color skin in order to lie in bed together.

Karl Oskar said that as far as he was concerned he couldn’t have bed play with an Indian woman however long he might have to go without.

“If you had to, you would do it!” insisted Jonas Petter.

Anders Månsson said, “I know white men who have made children in brown women.”

“They’re all right in the hole, although too tight,” said Jonas Petter; “Yet, they drop their brats like rabbits; perhaps their children come on the thin, narrow side.”

Jonas Petter had figured out a remedy for the lack of women in the Territory: they ought to write to the authorities in Sweden and ask for a shipload of women. All men who lived alone must sign a petition, and then they would send it to Dean Brusander of Ljuder Parish. He could announce from the pulpit that unmarried girls were in demand as wives for the settlers of this women-empty country. He would have no trouble getting a shipful of fine women. Only honest, upright, chaste, capable women must volunteer, of course; no slut in the load.

And the women must have definite promises of marriage; each man who signed the petition would guarantee to marry a girl the moment she arrived in Minnesota Territory. No need to wait. The men must promise in writing to relieve the girls of their maidenheads on the day of arrival, or at least not later than the following night; they must promise this honestly and conscientiously as decent men and citizens. If any one of the women had her maidenhead intact the following morning at sunup, she would have a right to claim a thousand-dollar indemnity.

Anders Månsson laughed. Karl Oskar only smiled a little; ever since leaving their home village he had heard Jonas Petter’s continuous stories of women and bed play and it was beginning to bore him. Such talk might be excused in younger men who were familiar with the words but not the act; between grown men there were more important things to talk about. He had his own strong desires and he suffered greatly when pregnancies and childbeds prevented him from knowing his wife, but at other times they enjoyed each other and were well pleased. To him, this act belonged to secrecy and night and became unclean and profaned when men spoke of it in daylight openly and directly.

But Anders Månsson loved Jonas Petter’s tales. When the roofers took their next rest in the shade of the maples, Anders turned to him and said, “Tell us a good story!”

Jonas Petter dried his forehead slowly with a handkerchief stiff as bark from many days’ sweat. Today the weather was not suitable for storytelling; in this heat Jonas Petter’s head stood still. But he remembered a true happening that had taken place recently concerning a man and a woman here in North America. It was a serious story which anyone might learn from and find useful, for it was a story of loneliness.

This is what had happened:

A middle-aged man and a woman of the same age emigrated from the same land in the Old World and settled down in the same neighborhood in the New World. They met, and the woman was employed to run the man’s house.

In the old country the man still had a wife, whom he had left because they couldn’t get along; he was so tired of his life with her that, to be on the safe side, he had managed to put the Atlantic Ocean between himself and his marital bed. In the New World he sought peace. The woman who ran his house said that she had emigrated for the same reason. She had a good mind, a fine body, healthy and unused. Among her countrymen she was held in great esteem for her honesty, chastity, and religious devotion.

The man treated her well and they got along fine. She looked after his house, cooked his food, mended his clothes, prepared his breakfast in the morning and his bed in the evening. They never used evil or angry words between them. During the day they shared the work hours and the moments of rest and enjoyed each other’s company. Not until bedtime did they part; then they slept in different beds, in different rooms. Then the man became the master of the house, the woman, the housekeeper in his employ.