But nothing eased the suffering of the child. Berta said the barley grains had swelled in the bowels of the little girl to twice their original size, thus causing something to burst. She could not take responsibility for healing such damage.
Anna cried loudly and asked someone to help as the pain grew agonizing. Again and again she asked her parents’ forgiveness for having disobeyed: she had known that no one should touch the porridge before evening when the guests returned.
During the night she became delirious at intervals. Berta said that if she didn’t improve before morning, God might fetch the child home; she wanted to prepare the parents to the best of her ability.
Anna heard her words and said she did not wish God to fetch her home; she wanted to remain here. She was wise for her years, she used to ask many strange questions which the grownups couldn’t answer. As her suffering increased she called her father to help her; she wanted to get up and go with him to the cobbler for the measurements of the shoes she had been promised. Her cries could be heard out into the byre, where the cows answered with their bellowing, thinking someone was on his way to feed them.
Early in the morning the child died in her agony.
Anyone who spoke to Karl Oskar during the next few days got no answer. Nor did a second or third attempt help much. At length, he might answer with a question, showing that he had heard nothing at all.
Nils asked if he should go out and make a coffin for Anna. This time Karl Oskar heard, and answered at once: The coffin for his dead child he wished to make himself; nothing else could be thought of.
He went out to the work shed where he kept a pile of well-sawed spruce boards; there was more than enough lumber for a coffin. Nor would many boards be required for a coffin to enclose Anna’s little shrunken body. The father began to examine the pile, he wanted to choose straight, fine, knot-free boards, clear and without bark. But he discarded every one his hands touched; all were either crooked or warped, or outside boards, or knotty. He picked up one plank after another, inspected it, and threw it aside; it was impossible to find a single one in the pile that he could use, that would make a coffin good enough for Anna.
After a while he tired of searching for good boards and remained sitting on the chopping block, doing nothing. He sat there and listened to the child who had only lately spoken to him: “It hurts to die, Father. I don’t want God to fetch me if it is so painful; I want to stay home. Couldn’t I stay home, even though I ate the porridge? I’ll never again taste anything without permission — please, let me stay home! You’re so big and strong, Father, can’t you protect me so God won’t take me? Oh, Father, if you only knew how it hurts! Why doesn’t anyone help me? I am so little. Would you like to die, Father? Do you want God to come and get you?”
As long as the father could still hear calls for help from his dead child, the living ones around him would receive no answer; he did not hear them.
In the evening Nils asked his son how he was getting along with the coffin. Karl Oskar answered he was still choosing boards.
The following day, also, no sounds of hammer and plane were heard from the woodshed. Karl Oskar’s only explanation was that he was looking for boards.
On the third day, when it still remained silent in the shed, Nils hobbled out on his crutches and sat down at the workbench. He then made the coffin for the dead one while Karl Oskar looked on.
When the work was finished the son said: “It’s not good enough.”
Now, Nils in his life had made more than one hundred coffins, and all who had ordered them had been satisfied — not one had ever been discarded. For the first time he had completed work that was not accepted, that was discarded by his own son: he had used one board with a big ugly knot, another was cut crookedly, and here a nail stuck out. Was Anna, his little girl, to rest on sharp nails? Karl Oskar found many faults with the coffin his father had made; he took an ax and smashed it to pieces.
Nils was hurt, his eldest son once and for all was an impossible person; nothing suited him. Now Karl Oskar must make the coffin himself. At last he found some straight, knot-free boards, which he accepted; he carried them to the workbench, where he remained through the night; in the morning the coffin was ready.
It was a father’s labor, done during a lonely night of sorrow, in the dim light from the lantern out in the woodshed. Those who saw the coffin perhaps didn’t understand. Perhaps, indeed, there was no difference between this coffin and the broken, discarded one. But this one was made by a father’s careful hands, it was nailed together by fingers which still were reaching out for something lost.
God gave to two parents a child to love and care for, and when they had had time to grow attached to the little one, deeply, then He took her back. Had they committed some sin to deserve this? What evil had Karl Oskar done that he must make this coffin?
During the same week, christening and grave ale were held in Korpamoen. Karl Oskar carried his child’s coffin in his arms to the grave, where the dean filled his shovel with earth and said that Anna would now be like the earth on that shovel, and would not live again until awakened on the last day.
The child had eaten of the barley porridge.
Of the wretched barley which grew last summer they had garnered only a few bushels, and of this a small portion had been ground to grits. From the last grits Kristina had cooked porridge for the christening. But when the barley field stood green, no one had said to the child: If you eat of this you shall surely die!
Anna had died because the earth here was cursed. It must be so; this field where the deadly barley had grown must be stricken by the Lord’s word to Adam.
Karl Oskar beheld the pale beggar children wandering about, searching for sustenance in the refuse piles, and he thought: My child found good food, her bowels burst from sugared and buttered barley porridge. Yet she too was a pawn to hunger.
For many weeks after the funeral Kristina was crushed; most of what she did she did wrongly, and other chores stayed undone. A thousand times she reproached herself, asking: Why didn’t I hide the bowl of christening porridge where no one could find it? Why didn’t I let the children taste it before putting it away? If I had done this, Anna would be alive.
A long time elapsed, and the parents had not mentioned the name of their dead child. They never spoke of the little girl they had lost; their sorrow would have become doubly heavy if it had been brought out into clear daylight, and its power acknowledged. Now they tried to push it away, not let it penetrate beyond thought. As long as words didn’t help, why use them? Exchanged between two mourning people, they were only a dissonant sound, disturbing the bitter consolation of silence.
A month had passed since Anna’s funeral when Kristina one evening said to Karl Oskar: After what had happened, she had now changed her mind; she was not averse to their emigration to North America. Before, she had thought she would be lacking in responsibility if she endangered her children’s lives on the ocean. Now she had learned that God could take her little ones even on dry land, in spite of her great care. She had come to believe that her children would be equally safe on the stormy sea, if she entrusted them to the Highest. Moreover, she would never feel the same in this place again. And so — if he thought it would be best for them and their children to emigrate, she would comply. They could know nothing of what was in store for them in so doing, but she wanted to take part in the emigration, she wished to go away with Karl Oskar.