Robert now owned two books, one worldly and one religious. Rinaldo had said that all people ought to read these books — from one they learned about the body and all earthly things, from the other about the soul and things spiritual. The History of Nature contained all Robert needed to know about this world; the Bible, about the world hereafter.
But Robert was still in this world, and he must now go out and earn his living. His father made all the decisions for his minor son. Nils had arranged for him to serve one year as farmhand in Nybacken, about a mile from Korpamoen. But Robert did not wish to serve. He argued with his parents that he did not like to have a master; couldn’t he somehow avoid the service in Nybacken?
Nils and Märta were disturbed to hear their younger son speak thus, and reprimanded him soundly: What kind of poor wretch was he, unwilling to work for food and clothing when hale and hearty? Would he like to become one of the tramps on the roads, or a beggar from the squatters’ sheds in the wastelands? Or did he want to remain at home, a burden to his parents who lived but on reserved rights? And he soon fifteen! He ought to be ashamed of himself! His sister Lydia had been a maidservant for several years now. They were too many here in Korpamoen; Karl Oskar could not feed him, he could not afford a servant. Moreover, his father had hired him to Aron in Nybacken, and received the earnest money, according to the servant law — the contract could not be torn up and changed. Aron was to pay good wages: the first year Robert would receive thirty daler in money, one wadmal suit, and one pair of short-legged boots. He should be pleased, and he should also be thankful to his parents who had arranged this service for him.
So one May morning in 1848, at sunup, Robert Nilsson left his parental home to start his first service as farmhand. His mother had made a bundle of his belongings, tied in a woolen kerchief. She had gathered together his leather shoes, his wadmal pants, one Sunday shirt, and one pair of Sunday stockings. In one hand he carried the bundle, in the other three books, the Bible, the History of Nature, and the prayerbook which his mother had given him. The books were wrapped in paper so as not to become soiled.
It had rained during the night but now the sun shone down on the village road. A wet odor rose from the meadows on either side of the road where the rain had fallen on the fresh, new grass. The birches had just burst into leaf and shone green, and from the bushes came the twitter of birds at play. But the boy who wandered along the road with his two bundles felt no joy in the beauty of the spring morning around him. He was on his way to Nybacken, to begin the life of a farmhand, but he had never been asked if he wanted to become a hired hand in Nybacken. He dreaded the confinement of the service, he did not want to have a master. He was walking on the road to Nybacken but he did not wish to arrive. Now that he was grown older he was being pushed out from the home like a fledgling from the nest. He was the younger son, one of those without portion. And still, he did not envy his elder brother, who must poke between the stones, burdened with worries about the mortgage interest.
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.