Vilhelm Moberg - The Emigrants

He did not faint; the whole time his head was bursting with pain. He thought his skull was broken, split in two like a piece of wood under the chopping ax; he thought he couldn’t live with his head in two pieces; he wanted to die to escape the pain. He had stopped shrieking and now he heard someone else shouting: the mistress stood on the stoop calling Aron to breakfast.

The master left, and the beaten farmhand rose slowly to a sitting position. His face dirt-covered, he tried to pick pieces of earth from his eyes. A sharp stone had scratched his nose; his mouth was full of dirt — he spat. He was still dizzy, the world around him still heaved, but the pain had abated a little.

Only once before had he received a box on the ear from the master — that day when he had entered the service. That time it was only a small box; today he had experienced a big box on the ear.

As soon as the pain from the blow had subsided, hunger returned. He stood up and attempted a few steps: the ground lay almost still under his feet; he followed his master home to breakfast.

Robert did not mention the box on the ear to anyone. He had been chastised, he was ashamed of it, it was nothing to talk about. He had been lazy in his work and punished for it. He had received what he had earned; there was nothing more to say. If a servant was lazy and disobedient, then his master had the right to discipline him. He knew this well, all others knew it, and if they hadn’t known it, much less work would have been accomplished for the farmers. So it was according to the servant law which Dean Brusander reiterated at the yearly examinations: “If a servant is inclined to laziness” the master must correct this through “suitable chastisement.” There was no other remedy.

Aron of Nybacken was his master, who according to God’s ordinance had fatherly power over him. It was Aron’s right and duty to administer suitable punishment; the little farmhand had nothing to complain about. He was not wronged by anyone; he had been given the box on the ear according to God’s ordinance.

He carried no hatred toward the master who had hit him. Once, when he was standing behind the barn, he had seen Aron beaten by his wife: she gave him a heavy blow across his neck with the byre besom; it was a big, rough besom, filled with cow dung, but Aron endured the blow without attempting to defend himself; he had looked frightened. Robert pitied his master rather than hated him.

When he went to bed that evening he could still hear a buzz in his ear from the hard blow; there was no sound around him, but there was a buzz in his ear. He lay there and listened to the humming sound and wondered what caused it. Outside in the yard as well as inside in the stable room complete silence reigned, but from inside his ear came a strange noise. He lay absolutely quiet and only listened within himself; he did not cause any sound; what could it be that buzzed and hummed so?

He let Arvid put his ear next to his own and listen. But Arvid couldn’t hear anything, not a sound. It was inexplicable: Robert heard a sound which did not exist.

He awoke in the middle of the night. His left ear throbbed and ached intensely, and the noise inside had increased, and sounded by now like the roar of a storm. And his heartbeats were felt in his ear like the piercing of a pointed knife. He lay there on his bed and turned and twisted in agony. Something must have broken inside to cause the throbbing. He counted his heartbeats: the knife’s edge cut and cut and cut in his ear; it felt like the sting in a fresh, open, sensitive wound. The stings did not cease, the ache did not abate. He counted and waited and hoped, but it did not diminish. He was alone in the whole world with his pain and he did not know what to do about it. He began to moan; he didn’t cry but he groaned quietly and at intervals. He folded his hands and prayed to God. He realized that the earache was in punishment for his laziness in the ditch, and he prayed for forgiveness. If God granted absolution He would also remove the earache. He had been a disloyal servant and he also remembered now that he had lately omitted reading “A Servant’s Prayer.” Tonight he recited it again in deep remorse: “Teach me to be faithful, humble, and devoted to my temporal lords. . Let me also find good and Christian masters who do not neglect or mistreat a poor servant, but keep me in love and patience. . ”

After the prayer he lay in darkness and waited. But the ache did not leave him, it throbbed and throbbed and he felt the sting of the knife edge in his sensitive ear a hundred times each minute. God would not remove the ache, he fought his pain alone, and he was helpless and could do nothing to alleviate it. Deep inside his ear in a roaring storm his pain lived on.

He arose and lit the stable lantern. Arvid woke and wondered sleepily what had happened.

“I’ve a bad earache.”

“The hell you have!”

“What shall I do?” Robert moaned pitifully.

The elder farmhand sat up in his bed and scratched his straggly hair. He cogitated.

The best remedy for earache was mother’s milk, he said. But where would they get hold of a suckling woman who had some milk left in her breasts this time of night? The mistress had never even had a child; she was a dried-up woman. And the maids were virgins with unopened breasts.

But Arvid rose and brought forth his brännvin keg. “We’ll try with brännvin on a wool wad.”

He searched for a while in his servant chest and found some sheep’s wool which he soaked in brännvin and put into his friend’s aching ear.

“It will smart at first, but not for long.”

The brännvin-soaked wool wad did smart so intensely that Robert almost pulled it out; he held his hands closed, cramplike, so as not to shriek. And after a moment the throbbing pain abated, as Arvid had said it would. No enjoyment can be greater than diminishing pain. He understood now that God had sent Arvid to help him; luckily there had been some brännvin left in the keg. Soon he glided into sleep, but some pain remained, mingling with his dreams: his left ear was filled with stinging wasps, a whole swarm of them, and they crowded each other inside and stung, only stung. And his ear swelled up and became one big sensitive boil where all the wasps’ stingers remained and hurt.

The pain in the ear was almost gone when Robert awakened the following morning, and within the next few days it disappeared altogether, but a thick, yellowish, malodorous fluid ran from his ear: it was the pain coming out. Something did remain inside, however: the strange sound which no one else could hear.

Yes, the buzzing and humming was still there; sometimes he heard it more loudly, sometimes lower, but he was always aware of it, inside the ear. It did not pain him, but he became tired and disheartened at hearing it follow him night and day. He put a bandage over his ear, he held his hand against it, he stuck a piece of wool into it, but the sound remained; nothing could silence it.

One night as he lay there and listened to his own ear he realized what this strange sound meant which existed for him only: he was listening to the rumbling of a great water, it was the roar and din of the sea itself; it was the voice of the sea in his ear, calling him, and him alone: he was chosen. The ocean called him, urged him, and the hum in his ear became a word, a word which always followed him, through night and day, calling: Come!

Not yet could he come; all gates on the road still remained closed.

— 2—

One Sunday morning Robert appeared unexpected at his parents’ home in Korpamoen. He had not been to see them since he began his service, and Nils and Märta were pleased. Last spring when he threw his clothes into the brook and rode to the mill instead of going to Nybacken the boy had become the laughingstock of the neighborhood, but since they had not seen him the whole summer they would not mention that now. Märta thought he was thin and his cheekbones sharp, but when she asked him how he fared with Aron he gave no reply.