Vilhelm Moberg - The Emigrants

— 6—

So began the year 1848. Karl Oskar had bought an almanac from the schoolmaster, Rinaldo, for four shillings. He now read that the year was the five thousand eight hundred and fiftieth from the creation of the world. It was also the forty-eighth since “the High Birth of Oskar the First’s Majesty and the fourth since Its Ascendance on the Throne.” It was also the fourth of Karl Oskar’s possession and farming of Korpamoen.

He read about the movements and appearance of the greater planets in the new year. He was familiar with the constellations whose signs were printed in the almanac for each day: the ram, with his great bowed horns, the scorpion, with its horrible claws, the lion, with his wide and beastly jaws, and the virgin, so narrow around the waist and holding a wreath of flowers. Weather and wind and perhaps also the destiny of man depended on the meeting of the wandering planets with these constellations.

Before the close of the old year people had already noticed alarming signs: wide parts of the Milky Way where the stars used to shine clear and brilliant were now nebulous and dark — the heavenly lights had disappeared. This could mean war and unrest, rebellion and dire times, sickness and pestilence. Intense cold and a “crow’s winter” set in before Christmas; those who ventured out to the early service on Christmas morning came home with frozen ears. New Year’s Day opjened with high winds; the steeple in Elmeboda blew down, and also the great mountain ash at Åkerby Junction, and this the thickest tree along the whole church road. On the exposed wastelands where the spruce were poorly rooted in the sandy soil the wind mowed along like a sharpened scythe in morning-dewed grass. And Noah’s Ark, which had not been seen since the dry year of 1817, appeared again in the heavens, with all its sinister majesty. The Ark was formed by clouds stretching from east to west, thereby obstructing all running waters and streams and preventing rainfall for the coming year.

Throughout the winter and spring there were strange portents in the weather. February was warm, while the spring month of March was windy, dry, and cold. The winter rye fared ill: wide gaping stretches appeared in otherwise green fields after the winter snow had melted.

During the last week of April — the grass month — it seemed as if at last spring had arrived. And early in the morning of May Day Eve Karl Oskar pulled out the wooden harrow from its shed, intending to begin the preparation of the fields for the sowing. Then it started to snow; it snowed the whole day; in the evening a foot of snow covered the ground. The cattle recently had been let out to graze; they must now be put in their stalls again. The April snow covered flowers and grass which had only begun to grow. Again, the spring had frozen away.

Karl Oskar pulled the harrow back into the shed. He sat silent at the food table this May Day Eve, and went to bed with a heavy heart. As far back as men could remember it had never boded so ill for the crops as during this peculiar spring.

The young couple in Korpamoen lay together under the cover, the one Kristina had stitched. It had now warmed them at their rest during four years — more than a thousand nights. Many of these nights Karl Oskar had lain awake, thinking about the mortgage interest, and in many of these nights Kristina had risen to quiet the children when they awoke and cried. Four springs had stood green, four autumnal stubble fields had been turned since for the first time they enjoyed the embrace of man and woman under the cornflower-blue bridal quilt.

That evening in the autumn, when they had sat together on the potato basket in Idemo, now seemed so long ago — it might have been an experience in another world. It belonged to their youth, and they spoke of their youth as something long gone by; they had been young before they were married, and that was once upon a time.

Karl Oskar had recently had his twenty-fifth birthday; Kristina would soon be twenty-three. Not so long ago she was a child herself; now she had brought four children into the world. Three lived and slept now in this room; she listened to their breathing, ever anxious.

Kristina thought at times about the happenings of her young life and the relation of events. If she hadn’t fallen from the swing in the barn at home in Duvemåla, and injured her knee, she would never have gone to Berta in Idemo to seek a cure for gangrene. Then she would never have met Karl Oskar and they would never have become a married couple. They would not have owned and farmed Korpamoen together, and she would not have had four children by him. Nor would they lie together here tonight under the bridal cover which she had made. She would not have Anna, Johan, and Lill-Märta, those three small beings sleeping so close to them.

Everything important in her life had happened because once she had made a swing from an ox-thong, at home with her parents, and had fallen from it. God surely had willed that she put up the swing; He it was who had directed all this for her.

And she still enjoyed swinging; a little while ago she had made a swing again in the threshing barn, when no one saw her. She knew that her mother-in-law thought it was ill done by a farm wife who had borne four children — thought she should think of other things.

Kristina had blown out the tallow candle when she went to bed. Through the window she could see the glittering snow which had fallen the last day of April and — as it seemed — might remain.

Karl Oskar lay quietly at her side, but she could hear that he was still awake. She asked: “Are you thinking about something?”

“Aye. About spring. It looks ill for the crops.”

“It’s true. It seems ugly.”

Kristina’s eyes wandered through the window; when she and her husband arose tomorrow morning the month of May would be here — yet it was snowlight outside.

She said: “We must believe God will let things grow — this year as all years.”

“Believe! Yes — if faith were of help, we’d harvest a hundred barrels of rye this fall.”

He had never before shown such anxiety; now he seemed dejected, disheartened. His low spirits were contagious; she too began to worry about the coming days.

He continued: Including his parents there were now seven people who must find their food on this small farmstead — a one-sixteenth. If the year were lean and the crops failed, he would not know what to do.

Kristina thought of the children, now sleeping their sweet sleep in this room. Those who had brought the children into the world were responsible for them and must see to it that their stomachs were satisfied and their bodies clothed. The children’s welfare was much more important to Kristina than her own, and she knew Karl Oskar felt as she did.

Kristina folded her hands and said her usual evening prayer: “Turn Thy Grace to me and let me sweetly go to sleep this night. . ” Before she said her Amen she added tonight a few sentences she remembered from “A Prayer for the Fruit of the Earth”: “Give us favorable weather and protect the crops from all destruction. Bless us with corn and kernel. Through Jesum Christum, our Lord, Amen.”

Karl Oskar seldom said his evening prayer any more; he usually was too tired after he went to bed. But as Kristina prayed and he listened, it might be for both of them. God must look kindly on a farmer in a stone country.

He turned over on his side to go to sleep, and Kristina felt for his hand, for she went to sleep sooner if she held it in her own.

They both lay quiet; Karl Oskar kept hold of his wife’s hand. At her touch the desire of the body was awakened in him. He put his arm around her to pull her closer.

“No-oo, Karl Oskar, I do-on’t know. .” She struggled a little.