Vilhelm Moberg - The Emigrants

— 1—

One night Karl Oskar was awakened by Johan. The child stood at his bunk, pulling at his blanket.

“Father! Wake up!”

“What is it? What do you want?”

“Mother is bleeding!”

“What is Mother doing?”

“She is bleeding — I was to tell you.”

Karl Oskar was not far from his wife’s sleeping place, and he was at her side in an instant. On the floor beside her bunk stood a quart bottle with a piece of tallow candle in its neck. He lit this, and in the flickering light could see Kristina’s chin and throat streaked with blood, her white nightshirt smeared with blood. In her nostrils were stuck two cotton wads, soaked through with blood and looking like a couple of dark-red ripe cherries.

“My God, Kristina! What has happened?”

“I sent Johan—”

“Why didn’t you call me before?”

“I thought it would stop.”

Her lips were ash-white, her voice weak. She had been about to go to sleep when the bleeding began. At first she had thought she had caught cold, and had blown her nose. Then she had seen that her kerchief was full of blood. She had been lying like this for a long while, she didn’t know how long, and the blood was still flowing. She had lain still on her back without a pillow, but it didn’t stop. She had put cotton in her nostrils, but the blood ran right through. She didn’t know what else might help.

“I’m so tired. . I can’t last this way.”

The shining blood streaks on her thin neck made it look as if she had been stuck in the throat. Red cotton wads swam about in a pan by her bed like freshly drawn entrails. It seemed as if a slaughter had taken place in the bunk. Karl Oskar always suffered at seeing blood, and now he felt weak in his legs.

Kristina’s eyes were large and glassy. The last few days she had been so weak she had stayed in bed all the time, eating hardly a bite. She did not have the resistance she needed when the hemorrhage began. She lay there stretched out like a dead body, her gray-white complexion the color of a corpse’s. Karl Oskar understood what was taking place here: life was running away from his wife.

The number of passengers had decreased by three during this last week. All three were grown people, and all had died in this ship-sickness. It was actually growing roomy in the hold. Inga-Lena too had been very ill, but would not admit it, not wishing to disturb Danjel. And yesterday it was said that she had begun to mend. Tonight no sound was heard from the pen where the Kärragärde people stayed — they were sleeping peacefully.

“Are you in pain?” asked Karl Oskar of his wife.

“No. No pain. I’m only tired — so tired.”

“It’s because of the blood you’ve lost. We must stop the bleeding.”

Kristina moved her head slowly to look at Johan, who was sitting at the foot of her bunk. The red runnels from her nostrils increased from this little movement.

“Lie quiet — please. Still!”

A weak whisper came like a gentle stir of air from her mouth: “If it doesn’t slow down I suppose I’ll die.”

“It must slow down.”

“But if there is no help?”

“There must be help somewhere.”

Johan listened attentively to his parents and gazed at them with large eyes. He was not old enough to understand everything, but he had a child’s intuition. He began to cry: “I don’t want Mother to bleed any more. I don’t want her to.”

“Keep quiet, boy!” said the father. “Lie down and go to sleep!”

Lill-Märta and Harald were sleeping peacefully on the inside of the bunk against the hull. Outside the sea wailed, the waves broke and crashed against the ship. There had been a storm again during the day, and tonight it blew harder than before. A child cried in its sleep, somewhere in its pen. A woman snored noisily. Between the woman’s snorings the rolling masses of water could be heard breaking against the side of the ship.

The ship rolled heavily. Kristina lay there and rolled on her bunk, they all rolled — the sick and the healthy.

Someone shouted angrily because a light was lit: could one never sleep in peace? But Karl Oskar was oblivious to sounds, he heard neither the sea outside nor the people around him. He stood bent over his bleeding wife: this flow of blood could not go on for very long. If it didn’t stop she would die; if it weren’t stopped very soon, he would be a widower before the night was over.

He stood at the side of his fellow worker, his bedmate, his children’s mother, and life was ebbing away from her — from her who was the most indispensable human being in the world. Was God going to take her from him — as He took Anna? What must he do? Must he stand by, completely at a loss, wretched and helpless? He must do something. One must always do what one could, use one’s senses to the best of one’s ability, never believe matters were hopeless. He had never given up, and he could not give up now when Kristina’s life was at stake.

At home in the parish there had been many blood-stanchers; here on the ship he knew of none. But perhaps there was one human being here who could help.

“I’m going to call the captain.”

“We dare not—” Kristina’s voice was hardly audible. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“The captain must help us. He cannot refuse!”

Their captain had charge of the medicine chest on board, and was supposed to take a doctor’s place. He was austere and brusque and the passengers were afraid of him; the seamen too held him in awe. He had never shown feelings of compassion for the sick or dying in the hold. The sick obtained medicines from his chest until they recuperated or died, and when they died he officiated at their funerals and lowered the corpses into the sea. The emigrants thought he was a hard, unfeeling person. But Karl Oskar decided to seek him out. He could not deny help when one of his passengers was in the throes of death.

“Don’t go, Karl Oskar,” entreated Kristina. “It’s no use.”

Yes, he knew that Kristina thought it preordained that she was to die here on the ship, that she was never to reach America. But he did not agree. His thought was always that nothing was so definite as to be unchangeable. If one tries, perhaps one can change things. One is forced to try.

“I’ll be back at once.”

Karl Oskar rushed away. After some trouble he was able to open the hatch, and reached deck, feeling his way in the darkness. The weather was rough tonight. Heavy waves washed over and broke against the deck. He immediately became drenched to his waist. But he hardly noticed it. He must get to the afterdeck. He skidded and fell on the slippery deck planks, he rose and fell again. Tonight the whole ship was in danger, but he did not care: the ship might go down, anything might happen, but they must stanch Kristina’s blood.

He held on to ropes and lines and found his way to the hatch on the afterdeck through which a ladder led down to the captain’s cabin.

He knocked heavily on the door. Only at his third knocking could he hear a powerful, penetrating voice: “What in hell do you want?”

Karl Oskar opened the door and stepped inside. Captain Lorentz had been asleep, and was now sitting upright in his bunk. He had been sleeping with his trousers on. His gray hair was tousled and stood straight out over his forehead like the horns of a ram. If any man ever looked ready to gore, it was the Charlotta ’s captain at this moment.

“My wife is bleeding to death. I wanted to ask you to do something for it, Mr. Captain.”

Captain Lorentz had thought that some one of the crew was calling him for urgent reasons of duty — for other reasons no one on the ship would dare to disturb him — but nevertheless he had given out an angry grunt. When he now discovered that the trespasser in his cabin in the middle of the night was one of the passengers, his astonishment was so great that he could only glare at the intruder.