A young person’s sudden death — a horrible occurrence, the farmer sighed. He added that fortunately the victim was old enough to have received the Lord’s Holy Supper, so one might hope he was now with his Saviour in eternal bliss.
The last bite of bread stuck in Robert’s windpipe; he coughed for a moment: the same man who had given him the bread believed he deserved a blissful heaven. He was a kind man, he must be thanked sometime.
Here at the mill Robert felt he might be recognized any moment; he must remain here no longer.
He knew in which direction he must go: he wanted to reach Karlshamn, the town by the sea; he must reach the sea.
He intended to ask if perchance any one of the peasants came from the southern part of the parish; perhaps he could get a ride part of the way. But just as he opened his mouth to ask, the miller himself came into the room, covered from head to foot with white flour dust. He seemed to be looking for someone; he eyed Robert sharply.
“Are you Nils of Korpamoen’s son?”
As he looked closer he added: “You’re barefooted, and you haven’t any jacket. You must be the one.”
It was too late to ask for a ride.
“Your master is here. He heard about you from the other farmers.”
Up the steps into the mill room came a big man with thick, fox-red hair covering his forehead. His cheeks were smooth and shone as if greased with pork fat, and he had small, piercing eyes. It was Aron of Nybacken.
Robert crawled backwards into his corner.
Aron smiled with a broad grin as he espied the lost farmhand.
“Well, well, if it isn’t my boy, that little helper of mine!”
And he extended his hands toward Robert, a pair of hands covered with long, coarse, red hair. They were heavy and rough as gnarled birch clubs, they were the biggest hands Robert had ever seen. And they were fastened to a pair of powerful arms, the arms of Aron of Nybacken; they hung from the man who was his master.
Robert tried to pull himself into his shirt, into his trousers, he wanted to become small, so small that the master could not get hold of him, could not see him.
But Aron sounded very kind now, his voice was mild and soft as sweet cream: “Too bad you lost your way! My little boy, you didn’t find Nybacken this morning — now I’ll show you the way. Outside the coach awaits you.”
And he stretched out his big hand and grabbed the boy by the shoulder.
“Pick up your bundles and come.”
Robert walked out of the mill room followed by the farmer. He was hired according to law, he was bound to the man who had the biggest hands he had ever seen.
Outside the mill stood the horse and wagon from Nybacken, and here the master and the hired hand were alone. Aron got a good hold of Robert’s ear, while his broad smile vanished: So-o, the little farmhand was of that sort of wool! So, he wanted to run away, did he! And he had tried to make people believe he had drowned! And had caused his master great trouble — the whole morning had been spent in dragging for the lost farmhand! Now, in the midst of the most pressing time of spring! So he was of that ugly breed that wanted to leave his service before he began it! Was it in this way that the little hired man honored his father and mother and revered and obeyed his masters? His poor parents had today mourned him as drowned and dead, tomorrow they would be ashamed of him as living. He was confirmed and grown, but he couldn’t walk a mile from home without disappearing. He, Aron, would tell his parents they must still hang the cowbell on their boy before they let him leave home.
“You’ve earned a good thrashing, my little hired fellow. But I shall let you off with a small box on the ear.”
And he gave his servant a box on the ear.
Robert was pushed backwards against the wagon wheel, and the world around him shook for half a minute, but he did not fall. The master’s hand could no doubt have hit him much harder, Aron could have given him a real box on the ear. Robert could hear, and he understood: it was only a small box he had received.
And so the farmhand rode back with his master, the whole stretch of road he shouldn’t have taken this morning, the whole road wrongly followed.
And when they arrived at the bridge over the mill brook, where in the morning he had taken the left road, the wagon now followed the right one.
So ended the day when Robert Nilsson tried to take his first steps on the road to America.
III. WHAT THE BEDBUGS IN A STABLE ROOM MUST LISTEN TO
— 1—
The farmstead Nybacken had a master and mistress, plus an old mistress on reserved rights, three maids in the maids’ room, and two farmhands in the stable room. Aron’s hired men lived in the barn next to the horses’ stalls. Their room had a deal table, a bench for each of them, two beds filled with straw, and a horse blanket each. In walls and beds lived bedbugs in great numbers, and they increased in undisturbed bliss, filling all holes and cracks.
Arvid, the elder farmhand, was grown, and sturdy and strong of limb, although a light, silky boy-beard still covered his chin. He had a reddish skin and old frostbites on his nose, which bled in cold weather. Aron called him his big hand; Robert was his little hand.
Arvid seemed slow of speech and shy with people, but the very first evening after they had gone to bed on their straw bundles in the stable room Robert began to ask his comrade in service about the master and mistress. What kind of place was Nybacken for a servant?
Before he went to sleep that night Robert had obtained from the elder boy a fair picture of their situation: Aron was hot-tempered, and if he became angry he might give his hands a box on the ear or a kick in the pants. Otherwise he was really a kind, decent soul who would harm no one. The mistress was less considerate: she hit the maids, and her husband as well, and Aron was afraid of her and dared not hit back. Both master and mistress were afraid of the wife’s mother, the old mistress who lived in a “reserved room” in the attic. She was so old she should have been in her grave long ago, if the devil had attended to his business; but apparently he too was afraid of her.
The service was demanding because the master was lazy; the hired men had to do nearly all the chores. The food wasn’t restricted in good years and they could eat as much bread as they wished. During lean years the farmhands and the maids must live on what they could get, here as everywhere else.
It was salt herring at every second meal — but in many places they had to eat herring every meal the year round, except Christmas Eve, and in many places the mistress herself cut the bread and portioned out the slices. So you couldn’t complain about the fare in Nybacken. Of course, it might happen that the bread was mildewed, the herring rancid, the milk blue sour, and the cheese rat-eaten, so they could see the marks of the small teeth. But only once had they found rat-dirt in the flour porridge; Aron himself had picked out the small black pebbles. Arvid had served at other farms where the bread was nearly always mildewed, the herring always rancid, the milk always sour, and neither’ the mistress nor the master had bothered to pick out the rat-dirt from the porridge. So one need not belittle the fare at Nybacken, he said.
So much the “little hand” learned from the big one during the first evening. And every evening thereafter Robert tumbled into bed tired and exhausted, and slept like a gopher in his hole, unconscious even of the biting bedbugs, until morning came and Aron awakened him, shaking him by the shoulders: “My little hired man, hurry on up! It’s four o’clock! My little hand, you know idleness is perdition! Don’t lie there and be lazy. Hurry up to your work!”