Every evening Kristina read the “Prayer Against Persistent Drought” and sometimes he himself joined in. She was frightened by the lightning-fire which had burned down their meadow barn, and she believed the drought also was a chastisement from the Lord. Now she wished Karl Oskar would go to the dean and pray for absolution because he had blasphemed that time during the harvest; he must do it before they went to Holy Communion together again.
But he paid no heed to her admonition.
“Doesn’t your conscience bother you?” she asked.
“Not because of that sin.”
No. Karl Oskar would not turn to the dean: he had not committed murder, nor was he lying on his deathbed. What he had done in the field was done in sudden anger, which he had regretted, and God would by now have had time to forgive him such a small trespass and needn’t plague man and beast with drought because of it. Nor was God so petty that He burned down the barn because of that small tuft of hay. One mustn’t think the Highest One was an incendiary.
But Karl Oskar must know, retorted Kristina, that no one except the Omnipotent decided where lightning was to strike. And she continued urging: he ought to seek absolution before he prepared himself for his next Communion. No one except Dean Brusander could decide whether his sin was great or small. And they were on good terms with the dean, who commended them both as frequent churchgoers.
But she could not persuade Karl Oskar to seek out the dean; he was so obstinate he would not unbend even for God. And as Kristina looked back over the years of their marriage, she wondered if she ever had managed to sway him. What he wanted to do, he did; what he didn’t want to do was never done. His sister Lydia had said that her brother was difficult because of this stubbornness, but Kristina had never thought of him as being so before they married. Persistence was right for useful undertakings and good deeds. But Karl Oskar was equally stubborn in useless and foolish undertakings; large-nosed people were held to be stubborn.
“Your obstinacy is in your nose; that’s why it is so large.”
Until God gave him another nose he must use the old one, was Karl Oskar’s answer. But he had noticed that it extended far enough to annoy some people.
Otherwise Kristina had no reason to complain of her husband. He seldom drank more brännvin than he could handle, and he could handle a great deal; she never had to drag a drink-fouled husband from Christmas parties, as did other wives. And there were married men who went to Ulrika of Västergöhl, the “Glad One,” the most sought-after whore in Ljuder. To poor men she sold herself for twelve shillings or a quart of brännvin, but to homeowners her price was a whole riksdaler. In her youth Ulrika had been a beautiful woman, and she was not ugly yet. It was said that the churchwarden himself, Per Persson in Åkerby, had frequented the whore in her better days. Karl Oskar would never degrade himself to such an extent that he would stir in other pots.
But Kristina worried because lately he had been so closed-up, and at last she asked him point-blank what was on his mind.
“Worries about living,” he said. Where would food come from? And with more and more of them to feed.
Kristina was in her fifth month, soon they would be eight people in Korpamoen. The people increased, but not the land; the number of acres would never be more than seven.
Kristina did not like the reference to her pregnancy. “Leave the worries about the unborn to God.”
“If I only could!”
“Do you think you are wiser than God?”
“No. But I don’t think He would feed our children if we sat with our arms in our laps.”
Her temper flared up and she exclaimed angrily: “Is God supposed to feed all children you make?”
“Kristina! What do you mean?”
“I mean you must not blame the Lord when you make your wife with child!”
He gazed at her. “But, my dearest — I have never denied my part in it.”
She burst into tears. “You complain because we get to be more and more. Exactly as if it were my fault — because the lives come from me.”
“I’ve never blamed you!”
“I don’t want it! I’ve told you so! You mustn’t think that!”
“I do not think anything.”
“But now — when you walk about in silence, as if you accused me — what am I to believe?”
And she cried into her apron.
A pregnant woman was sensitive and easily hurt; he forgot it at times, and didn’t watch his words.
He left her alone till she quieted, then he asked: How could she imagine that he disapproved of her? He kept to himself because he was depressed from worries, that was all. And how could she think that he reproached her for being pregnant again? He was not so unfair! She must realize how happy he was over the children she had borne him before. His children and his wife were his dearest possessions on earth. This he had shown her. She must have noticed, for example, how attached he was to Anna. And he would surely be as devoted to the new one as he was to the other three. But it was natural that he worried about food for the children in years of adversity and crop failure.
Kristina was drying her tears. “Do you mean that you like me as well as you used to?”
“You must know that I do!”
“Is it the truth you tell me, Karl Oskar?”
“Tell me the time I ever lied to you.”
She could not. And he said they must remain friends, and stick together in adversity. For there was no other person in the world who would help them; they must help themselves.
Kristina realized she had acted foolishly; why she had behaved in such a way she didn’t know; if you took exception, any word led to a quarrel. But she sensed that she did it from fear, fear of diminishing attention from him.
His assurances made her almost glad of their quarrel.
— 3—
Karl Oskar went deeper into debt. This autumn also he went to Danjel Andreasson in Kärragärde and asked to borrow fifty daler for the mortgage interest.
He wore a solemn expression when he returned. Kristina asked anxiously: “Did Uncle refuse you the money?”
“No. I got every penny I asked for.”
“But why do you look so queer?”
“Something strange is going on in Kärragärde.”
“With Uncle Danjel?”
“Yes. Something has happened to him.”
Karl Oskar had been startled today as he stepped over the threshold at Danjel Andreasson’s. The house was full of paupers and loose people. Strangers sat at table with the house folk. There was Severius Pihl, a dishonorably discharged soldier, a notorious fighter and drunkard; the disabled maid, Sissa Svensdotter, the impoverished thief who now depended on the parish; but Karl Oskar had been most surprised to discover among these people Ulrika of Västergöhl, the old whore, as well as her illegitimate daughter. At first he thought that they must all, in their rounds of begging, have happened to reach the farm at the same time. But it came as a box on the ear when Danjel said that these people from now on would be living with him in Kärragärde. Inga-Lena, his wife, confirmed it: they all lived there together.
Kristina burst out in loud laughter. “Are you telling April-fool jokes in October, Karl Oskar?”
“Do you think I lie?” he asked, a little hurt.
“You must have made up a story to see if you could fool me.”
“It’s the truth — all of it! Go to your uncle’s house and see for yourself.”
Now Kristina approached him and smelled his breath: had he perchance been drinking today, so that he didn’t know what he was saying? Did he reek of brännvin?
“I’ve taken just two drinks the whole day.”