Vilhelm Moberg - The Emigrants

Karl Oskar had a stiff neck from looking for rain clouds. At times clouds did appear, dry clouds, empty smoke rings that passed across the heavens, visions of deceit, a cruel mockery. A few tiny scattered drops fell at times; they were like scorn.

The rye stood overripe, the grains ready to drop from the heads. At the cutting they must be careful not to lose some of the invaluable kernels. Karl Oskar and Kristina brought the quilted bedcover with them into the field, and spread it on the stubble before the swath of the scythe. They moved the quilt gradually, for the cut straws to fall on it and remain there while being tied into sheaves. Thus grains which might fall from the heads were collected on the quilt and saved. From the ground Kristina gleaned the broken heads, gathering them in her apron; when evening came they had collected in the cover a tenth of a bushel of the drop-rye, sufficient for a few loaves of bread. The rye field yielded only a third of its usual crop in this year of drought: what would one loaf of bread count when winter came?

Kristina tied the corners of the quilt into a sack and carried it home under her arm. Four years ago it had been her bridal spread, her cover during the first night with her mate, when she was transformed from maid to wife. Now the bridal cover was with them in their field and helped to garner their bread; it belonged closely to their lives.

Kristina thought: Four years ago, when this cover was new, Karl Oskar had more to say to me. Why is he nowadays so silent? She mused: Now he spoke mostly of work to be done; in the morning about what must be done that day, in the evening about tomorrow’s work. And at least once a day either he or she said: Still no rain!

During this summer all people, it seemed, had become serious and sullen and short-tempered; the weather affected their minds. Talk was about the dire winter ahead, as though no one had a right to be joyous now because of the crop failure. Not even children dared show happiness: when a child laughed some older person at hand spoke harshly and silenced it. And all continued to speak of this: What would happen next winter?

Karl Oskar blamed everything on the drought. When he returned empty-handed from a day in the woods with gun and dog, this was because of the dried-up ground: the dog could get no scent of game. When he pulled nets and lines empty from the tarn, he blamed this on the drought: heat drove the fish into the depths. And three times he had brought a cow to the bull with no result: this too because of the drought. Such an opinion did not seem reasonable, as part of the blame might be laid on the bull. But Karl Oskar said that his neighbor, Jonas Petter of Hästebäck, was also unable to get his cows with calf because of the heat.

One night toward the end of August Kristina was awakened by a great thunder. She was afraid of storms and she called her husband.

Karl Oskar sat up in bed and listened. It rumbled and thundered, and lightning flashed past the window. Shirt-clad only, he ran to stand on the porch, hands outstretched. An occasional fat raindrop fell; once it began there would be heavy showers. He could go back to bed and sleep again in the blissful knowledge that there would be rain.

He returned inside. Kristina was comforting the children, awake and frightened by the lightning and thunder.

Anna, the oldest child, was now in her fourth year and all were of the opinion that she had a mind far ahead of her years. She was wont to follow Karl Oskar in his work outside, close to him everywhere; if he drove or walked, the child was with him. He called her his big helper. Wise as an eight-year-old, he said.

The thunder boomed again, and Anna asked: “Will the lightning kill us tonight, Mother?”

“No! What nonsense! Who has given you such an idea?”

“Father. He said we are to die — all of us.”

“Yes, yes, but not tonight.”

“When will we die, Mother?”

“No one knows, no one except God. Go back to sleep now!”

And Kristina’s eyes turned questioningly to Karl Oskar: What had he said to the child? He smiled and explained. When he had gone with Anna through the pastures recently they had found a dead baby rabbit, and then she had asked if they were to become like the rabbit, if they were all to die. He had replied in the affirmative. He could not lie about such things to a child. But ever after the girl asked whomsoever she met when they were to die. The other day she had embarrassed her grandmother with the same question. He had had to assure his mother that the question was the child’s own idea. She was a strange child, Anna.

Karl Oskar was very proud of this daughter, his big girl.

A clap of thunder sounded, louder than before, and the lightning pierced their eyes, sharp and blinding.

Kristina let out a shriek.

“Did it strike?”

“If so, it was near.”

But the heavy rain was slow in coming; only an occasional few drops smote the windowpanes. Karl Oskar could not help the rain to fall, and he went back to bed. Before he was asleep the window was again brilliant, with a new light; but this time it was not lightning cutting through the dark and disappearing. This time the light remained, mobile and flickering.

The young farmer leapt up.

“There is a fire!”

“My dear God!”

“It’s burning somewhere!”

As Karl Oskar reached the window he could see that the light came from the hay meadow.

“The meadow barn! The meadow barn has caught on fire!”

He ran outside, only half dressed, followed by his wife. By now Nils and Märta also had awakened in their room, and Kristina called to them to look after the children.

Karl Oskar ran to the well where two water buckets stood filled from the forest spring; he thrust one bucket at his wife and they rushed down the meadow with a pail each in their hands. The water splashed to and fro, and when they arrived at the burning hay barn hardly more than half of it was left. Nor did it matter; the fire by now had reached such proportions that a couple of buckets of water would be of no help. The whole barn was burning, flames leaping high from the dry shingled roof which went up like tinder. A fierce, voracious lightning-fire was burning, and it had found delicious fare: an old dry barn filled with the harvested hay.

The owners of the hay barn — the young farm couple — approached the fire as closely as they could for the heat. They stood there, water pails in their hands, and watched the fire; they just stood and watched, like a pair of surprised, amazed children listening to a cruel and horrible tale which — God be praised — could not be true.

People from neighboring farms had already seen the fire and come running. They too soon realized it would be hopeless to try to stop this fire. The conflagration had the barn within its scorching jaws — no one could hinder it from swallowing its’ prey.

Luckily, there was no wind. But the neighbors remained to see that the fire did not spread; what might not happen once it were loose in the drought-dry woods?

Already the rain was over; a few heavy drops had fallen, hardly enough to wet the stones on the ground.

Swiftly the meadow barn was burned, and hay and all became embers and sullen ashes. Karl Oskar and Kristina walked back to the farmhouse; there had been nothing for them to do, they had done nothing. On the way home they walked quite slowly, they did not run, nothing was urgent any more. In their hands they still carried their buckets, half full of water; without thinking, they, carried the water home again.

At the meadow stile they met Nils on his way to the fire, hobbling on his crutches. He had managed half the way when his son and daughter-in-law told him to turn back. But he sat down on the stile to rest; for many years he had not walked so far from the house.