Vilhelm Moberg - The Settlers

The man had already lived a whole year without a woman. But that which his body had been accustomed to for twenty-five years could not be denied without loss and suffering. He was not meant for a hermit’s bed. He was a sociable man and he valued highly the company of women, even outside the bed. In their presence he felt an increased well-being. And here he had a woman under his roof, within reach all day long. And so when evening came, bedtime, it seemed only natural to him to extend their companionship to include the night and the bed.

A person will suffer a loss more keenly if what he has lost is within view yet beyond reach. Thus it happened with this man; in the lonely night he lay awake, he pined and yearned. Only a wall separated the man and the woman. She was so close here in his house — so close and so unreachable. A few steps would take him to the woman’s bed, but those steps were longer than the distance between Sweden and North America. The man had emigrated to the New World to find peace. But when the woman came to his house, restlessness and distraction had moved in with her.

He was tempted to go in to her and confess his great suffering and plead with her to have compassion on him and satisfy his will. But each evening through the wall, he could hear her read her evening prayer and the confession in such a forceful and compelling voice that his courage failed him. How could a man go in to a woman who had just confessed her sins and try to tempt her to a new sin?

At length, however, the thought struck him that he could at least confess to the woman the sinful lust he felt for her. This confidence she could hardly take ill; it was only right for a Christian to lay bare his honest heart and his lustful thoughts and desires. At the same time he could use the opportunity to ask her forgiveness.

Thus one evening, shortly after she had retired, he went in and sat down on a chair beside her bed, timid and embarrassed; he had something important to tell her. And he confessed honestly that he looked upon her with desire.

She was not insulted, not even surprised. She replied that she had already guessed he was exposed to this great suffering. And she had read God’s Word as loud as she had just so he might hear it and gain strength from it against his temptation.

He said he would have liked to ask her to become his wife, but he already had a wife in the old country, and bigamy was a great sin with which he did not wish to burden his conscience. And anyway, here in the wilderness, he was unable to obtain the papers necessary to commit this sin.

The woman then told him something which stunned him: she too was married. She too had a mate alive in Sweden. They were equally bad off. She had married a miserable man who drank and caroused and lay about instead of earning a living for his wife and children. She had supported that good-for-nothing louse for many years, but when he rewarded her by whoring with other women, she had tired of stuffing his gullet; she had taken their two children and had emigrated. During the crossing both children had died of the ship sickness. She had arrived in the New World alone and without relatives, and she had decided to live alone ever after without menfolk.

He was a good employer, she told him, and she liked living in his house. But if she moved into his bed, or he to hers, then they would commit double bigamy, since both of them were married. And if an accident, or some other sudden death, should overtake her, and she had to depart unforgiven, she would be condemned to eternal fire in Hell for this grave sin against the sixth commandment. Therefore, everything must remain between them as it was.

To this the man replied that the sixth commandment was written many thousands of years ago on the Stone Tablets for a Jewish country with as many women as men, or perhaps more women than men. God could not have intended this law for settlers in Minnesota Territory, where women and men were so unequally proportioned as one to twenty. God could not have written laws for America many thousand years before that country had been discovered. He didn’t do things that far in advance. Therefore, the sixth commandment could not have been meant for Minnesota, at least not in all its severity. Here life began anew, as in Genesis, where God made a woman for the man. And the Creator’s intent was that even out here every man should be allowed to live with a woman for comfort and enjoyment. Why, then, must they be condemned by a many-thousand-years-old law on a stone tablet? Furthermore, Moses might have misunderstood the sixth commandment; he had grown rather old and his eyes and hearing were poor by that time.

And they got along well during the day, persisted the man. It could not be held against them as a great sin if they also had their bed in common.

The woman replied that in her marriage she had greatly enjoyed the bed play with her husband and that during her years of loneliness she had often missed it. But it was not indispensable to her and the pleasure was not of so great a duration that its price was worth eternal torture. Whoever was willing to pay such an outrageous price must be a big fool.

But she appreciated deeply his confession and she wanted to help him further to fight his desire — if it would aid him any she would read the confession still more loudly each evening.

The man had to leave the woman’s bedside, his purpose thwarted, and everything between them remained as before.

As time passed they grew more and more intimate. And at bedtime it seemed more and more difficult for him to part from her and repair to his own lonely bed. His conviction grew stronger for each day that the Stone Tablets from Mount Sinai were not meant for Minnesota.

A year passed, then one evening the woman came in to him after he had gone to bed. She in turn had a confession to make: they had lived so long under the same roof that she had become a victim of the same temptations as he.

A woman’s body too was made of flesh and blood, and it was not easy for her to live so close to a man for years, with only a wall between them. Many times a day she prayed to God for help against her temptation, unable to overcome it by herself, fragile human being that she was. But to her great consternation God had not answered her prayers. What could he mean by this? She had been at a loss for an answer. And the Lord’s ways were said to be inscrutable. Here she had been left to fight her temptation all alone. And she had long withstood it — it had begun to assail her many months ago — she had repelled it; again and again, she had been the victor. Scores of evenings she had been visited so grievously by her desire that she had been on the verge of leaving her bed to seek him out. But she had summoned all her strength to conquer her desire. At last her strength had given out, she was no longer able to conquer her desire. What should she do now, when her prayers hadn’t been heard? At last she could do nothing else but commit this weakness — sin — here she stood in all her weakness, beside his bed in nothing but her shift; she wished to comply with his desire. Why hadn’t God given her strength to fight off her temptation?

This the man could explain: a person’s prayers were heard only when asking for something good and useful. And it was good for neither her nor him that they slept in different beds. Why should they lie apart and suffer in two separate beds when they could enjoy themselves together in one bed? So now they could both see what God’s finger was pointing at: two miserable creatures in an empty wilderness; she missed a man, he a woman, and their Creator had taken pity on them and had brought them together for comfort and joy.

So the woman stayed with the man, and in his bed nothing was left undone during the night.