Vilhelm Moberg - The Emigrants

Robert stopped as he reached the bridge over the mill brook. What did it matter if he began his service half an hour earlier or later, at five o’clock or half-past? There would be ample time for work during the whole long year. He left the road and sat down at the edge of the brook. He took off his wooden shoes and his stockings and dangled his feet in the water. The brook rushed by, swollen with the spring rains. At last spring had come, and the water felt warm. It rippled around his feet, it whirled and bubbled between his toes, and he sat and watched it run away, passing by him, flowing under the bridge and hastening farther on. He saw the white bubbles of foam float on and disappear in the thicket of willows where the brook’s bed made a curve. This water was free; the water in the brook was not hired in Nybacken; it needn’t stay in the same place a whole year. It never remained in one place, it could travel anywhere. It could run all the way down to the sea, and then the way was open around the world, around the whole globe.

There would be no harm if he sat half an hour and watched the brook, a last half-hour before he became a hired hand.

In front of him in the creek bed there was a deep, black pool near a large stone. In this pool he had once drowned a cat, a gruesome memory. And there, beside the stone, a maid from Nybacken had drowned a few years ago. She had not drowned by will, she had slipped and fallen into the water as she stood on the stone and rinsed washing. The stone was so steep that she was unable to crawl up; her body was found in the pool. On the stone they had seen marks made by her fingernails: she had scratched and scraped with her nails, unable to get hold anywhere. Afterwards Robert had seen the marks and he could never forget them; the scratches told him of human terror at death.

A manservant could drown in that pool as well as a maid. When a hired hand sank into the water of the brook, no service contract would hold, and no earnest money which the servant had accepted on earth would have to be accounted for. A drowned farmhand had no master.

Robert considered this.

He unfolded the paper around his books. His mother had laid a little myrtle branch between the leaves of the prayerbook, and the book opened where the green branch lay: “A Servant’s Prayer.”

“O Lord Jesus Christe, God’s Son. You humbled Yourself in a servant’s shape. . Teach me to fear and love You in my daily work, and to be faithful, humble, and devoted to my temporal lords in all honesty. . What worldly good may fall to me I leave all to Your mild and fatherly pleasure. Teach me only to be godly at all times, and satisfied, and I will gain sufficiency. . Let me also find good and Christian masters who do not neglect or mistreat a poor servant, but keep me in love and patience. . ”

Through the myrtle branch between the leaves his mother spoke to the young servant: Read this prayer! And Dean Brusander required at the yearly examinations that farmhands and maids should “so act in their poor situation that they could say by heart ‘A Servant’s Prayer.’”

But now Robert had in mind to read a piece from his History of Nature. He had turned the corner of the page and he found the place immediately:

“About the Size of the Sea:

“Many might wonder why the Creator has left so little space on the earth as home for man and beasts. For almost three-quarters of the earth’s surface is covered by water. But he who learns to understand why water takes so much space shall therein see another proof of the Creator’s omnipotence and kindness.

“These great bodies of water which surround the firm land on all sides, and which have salt water, are called Sea. . ”

Robert looked up from his book. He thought of the sea which was three times bigger than the firm land on which he sat. No one owned the sea. But the land was divided in homesteads, in quarters, eighths, sixteenths, and the farmers owned them. The one who owned no land became a servant to a landowner.

He thought: On land there were many roads to follow. There were others besides the one which led to Nybacken. There was a parting of the ways close by, at the bridge over the mill brook: the right one led to Nybacken, the left one brought you to Åbro mill — and if you continued on that road you would never reach Nybacken.

If you turned to the left you could disappear from the neighborhood. There were people who had disappeared from the parish; their names were still in the church book, written down under “End of the Parish.” The dean called their names at the yearly examination, and inquired about them. Every year he called the name of the farmhand Fredrik Emanuel Thron from Kvarntorpet; not heard from since 1833. Someone always answered that no one in the village knew where he was. And the dean wrote about him in his book: Whereabouts unknown. This was repeated every year: Fredrik from Kvarntorpet was not heard from. For fifteen years — the whole span of Robert’s life — the lost farmhand’s whereabouts had been unknown. This was the only thing Robert knew about Fredrik Thron from Kvarntorpet, and because he knew naught else he wondered about the lost one’s fate.

It had happened before that a farmhand had disappeared, had taken the wrong road.

When Robert was ready to pull on his stockings he missed one of his wooden shoes. It had fallen into the brook; now it floated on the water near the willow thicket, far out of reach. He stood there, startled that his wooden shoe could float. Now it caught on the branches of the willows where the brook turned. The water gushed and swirled round the shoe and Robert stood there and saw his own foot kick and splash; he saw himself lying there, drowning in the brook.

What he had just now vaguely thought of had begun to happen by itself. It only remained for him to complete it.

He stuffed his stockings into the remaining shoe and threw it into the brook. Then he took off his jacket and let it follow after and was pleased when he saw it float on the water. Then he picked up his two bundles and went up on the bridge. At the parting of the roads on the other side of the bridge he turned to the left; he took the road that did not lead to Nybacken, he took the wrong road.

Caught on a branch of the big willow at the bend of the brook there now could be seen a boy’s little jacket. As the running water in the brook swung the branches back and forth, the arms of the jacket would wave to anyone passing the bridge, telling what had become of the hired hand on his way to Nybacken to begin his service: he had drowned in the mill brook, as the maid had done a few years earlier.

— 2—

The ground under Robert’s feet felt cold in the shadow of the wood: it was too early in the year to go barefooted. He had walked only a short distance when someone pulled up behind him. Robert prayed in his heart that it might be a timberman on his way to Karlshamn; then he would ask if he could ride with him. But it was only Jonas Petter of Hästebäck, their nearest neighbor in Korpamoen, on his way to the mill with grain. He stopped. Yes, Robert could sit up on the sacks beside him and ride with him to Åbro mill.

Robert crawled onto the wagon and sat down next to the farmer. Jonas Petter of Hästebäck was a kind man: he did not ask where Robert was going; he said only that it was dangerous to walk barefooted so early in the spring. Robert answered that he walked easier without shoes and stockings. Apparently Jonas Petter had not noticed the jacket as he passed the bridge.

In the mill room at Åbro there were already three farmers, waiting for their grind. They were unknown to Robert. He remained with them in the mill room, where it was nice and warm; a big fire burned in the stove, and the air smelled sweetly of flour and grain.