Vilhelm Moberg - The Last Letter Home

— 3—

Anders Månsson’s place had seemed completely desolate and deserted when he had arrived there. Not a living soul was in sight outside. The fields were neglected; a rusty plow lay in one field but no fall plowing had been started, some scythes had been left in the grass, the barn door hung askew on one hinge, and by the wall stood the old ox cart — the screech-wagon — with broken wheels. In the potato field were still the frozen, black stalks — the potatoes had not yet been picked in spite of the night frost.

The cabin door was bolted from the inside. Karl Oskar banged at it but no one opened. Not a sound inside. He tried to peek through the window but the curtains were drawn.

He could not discover a sign of life at this place and he got a feeling that something was wrong.

Looking again toward the potato field he noticed something unusual. In among the blackened stalks lay some sort of bundle, a gray pile, it looked like. He thought he recognized pieces of clothing and went over to investigate.

It was old Fina-Kajsa, stretched out on her back in a furrow. She had the hoe beside her. She lay as immobile and still as the earth under her body; her eyes were half-open and stared at the sky. There was something final and finished about the old woman’s position, something fulfilled and irrevocable. Karl Oskar guessed at the first glance how things stood.

As far as he could see Fina-Kajsa was dead. No one except a dead person could lie so peacefully in a furrow in a field. The old one had been hoeing up potatoes and it seemed natural that one laboring in the earth should assume this position at the last. Fina-Kajsa wore her dark gray shawl, the same color as the earth she rested on. Her body lay there like a hummock in the ground, as if it already were part of the soil.

At her head stood a basket, the bottom barely covered with a few great, oblong, reddish tubers, the best kind of America’s potatoes. Her hands still held on to the handle of the hoe. The old hands seemed only sinews and bone under the skin, almost bare bones, and the fingers branched out like thin, peeled twigs. Fina-Kajsa had been miserably lean and scraggly the last years — now she seemed small as a child. Her body seemed mainly a pile of clothing, a heap of bundled-together rags. Her mouth was open, a toothless hole. The caved-in face was brown and scabby but the whites of her eyes shone like white daisies in withered grass in early spring. In those eyes life had remained longest.

The furrow the old one had begun to pick was long, stretching from one end of the field to the other. She had hoed only a few yards when she fell; before her lay much unfinished labor, perhaps she had mumbled to herself before she fell, chewing on her disappointment: She was never to see the great farm and the handsome buildings her son had painted in his letters from North America.

Fina-Kajsa had been hoeing in long, forceful strides. Karl Oskar could see her work here on the field, he could hear her voice mumbling: Hoe on, hoe on! The furrow is long! The field is big! Ackanamej! America is a big country! I’ll never get there! Hoe on, Fina-Kajsa, old woman! Ackanamej! Ackanamej!

The farm woman from Öland, Sweden, had hoed her last in life. The furrows had been long, the field large, and in her basket were only a few potatoes at the bottom. Yet, even after death she had not let go of the hoe.

Karl Oskar remained standing there with the milk pail and the pudding from Kristina. Too late; now the gift could be used at her funeral.

But where was Fina-Kajsa’s son? At the German Fischer’s inn in Taylors Falls? Or did he lie dead drunk in his bed? Where to look for a son who let his worn-out, aged mother pick potatoes alone while he himself — well, where did he keep himself?

As if in reply a noise was heard from the log cabin. The heavy door opened slowly inward and Anders Månsson stepped out on the stoop. Karl Oskar’s banging a few moments ago must have awakened him. He did not look toward the potato field, but went to the corner to let his water.

Karl Oskar hurried toward him.

Fina-Kajsa’s son was bareheaded, his hair stood up straight as nails from the top of his skull, his cheeks were covered with a matted red beard. He was already stooping like a broken man. He peered at the caller with blood-shot, watery eyes as he greeted him.

“How goes it, Nilsson?”

Perhaps it seemed unusual to be lying inside in the middle of forenoon, a sunny, beautiful weekday, and he added apologetically, ashamed: “I was just resting a moment.”

He was still walking half in his sleep, it seemed.

Karl Oskar had no time for greeting. He said tartly, “Your mother lies in the potato field — she’s dead!”

Anders Månsson slowly opened his mouth, looking at his countryman as if he had not understood.

Karl Oskar took him by the arm and together they walked to the field. The son looked in silence at his mother lying so still on her back, her fingers clutching the hoe handle. Openmouthed he beheld the picture before him. Then he rubbed his running eyes and scratched his wild beard. After staring a few moments at the old body in the black-gray shawl he turned questioningly to his countryman beside him, as if Karl Oskar must explain this sight to him — as if he himself understood nothing.

Karl Oskar took him by the shoulder and shook him — wasn’t he awake yet? He stank of whiskey, his head was still in a drunken stupor.

“Are you still drunk? Can’t you talk?”

Anders Månsson had lost his power of speech at the sight of the dead one in the furrow. It was incredible to him that his mother could have laid herself down in this way out in the field, could remain lying so quietly in the same position regardless of how long he looked at her.

Karl Oskar felt sorry for him but couldn’t help showing his impatience: “You must know your own mother!”

At last a word came from Anders Månsson’s gaping mouth: “. . Mother. . oh yes, yes. . Mother. .”

Karl Oskar thought Fina-Kajsa had been dead for several hours, probably since early morning. And he also assumed that her son had been dead drunk since last evening and only now had awakened.

Now he stood here irresolutely and stared at his mother, and it looked as if he could stand like that indefinitely without any intention of doing anything with her lifeless body. Could he possibly have in mind to let her have her grave here in the potato field furrow?

“Help me, Månsson. We must carry her inside. .”

Karl Oskar loosened the hoe from the dead one’s grip. Anders Månsson bent down and took hold of her legs; his hands shook like those of a very old man. Together they carried her toward the cabin. Fina-Kajsa was not heavy, she was not a burden for one man alone, much less for two, but Karl Oskar felt that the son ought to help carry his mother home.

They placed Fina-Kajsa on her bed, and Karl Oskar pulled a blanket over the corpse.

He saw a whiskey keg beside the son’s bed, a five-gallon one from Fischer’s inn; Anders Månsson fed his drunkenness as long as the whiskey lasted. Karl Oskar would have liked to give the drunkard a good talking to: While drinking in bed he had let his mother work herself to death. But what use would there be in reproach? The dead body on the other bed was reproach enough.

In his soul Anders Månsson was a decent person, and now he had double sorrow: his regret over what he had done to his mother.

The two settlers went outside and sat down on the stoop. Karl Oskar said he would help as much as he could with the funeral. On his way home he would stop by at Jonas Petter’s and tell Swedish Anna to come and wash the body and dress it for the coffin. The Irish carpenter in Taylors Falls was sure to make the coffin.