Six of the condemned — former soldier Pihl, maid Sissa Svensdotter, and four neighbors — returned to the fold of the church after serving their sentences. They expressed to Dean Brusander their deep repentance over their errors. Since they again confessed the only true and right religion, they were admitted to Communion with the rest of the congregation.
Only Ulrika of Västergöhl and her daughter remained in Kärragärde to follow the teachings of their master. Through the sentence of the county court Danjel’s little flock had been scattered. No new followers came to him. The danger of Åkianism in the parish was averted — with God’s help, and through the assistance of the secular authorities.
IX. THE AMERICA CHEST
— 1—
A whole year passed during which Karl Oskar and Kristina made preparations for their emigration, feeling as if they were already on the move. There was so much to do and to think about they could not sink too deeply into sorrow over their dead child.
Karl Oskar let it be announced from the church pulpit that his farm was for sale. News soon spread through the parish that the farmer of Korpamoen intended to move away from the country, intended to emigrate to North America, taking with him wife, children, and his only brother. There was much talk in the village about this strange projected undertaking. Whence had he got the amazing notion? Serious-minded older peasants shook their heads and came up to Karl Oskar on the church green on Sundays. To one who was younger they could speak as father to son, and they wished now — with the best of intentions — to dissuade him; how could he relinquish his farm, the parental home whose deed he had, and reach out for land in faraway North America, a country which neither he nor anyone else had seen? Wasn’t it like trying to catch the will-o’-the-wisp on a misty morning? The project seemed rash to them; he would enter into a dangerous game in which he might win a little, but lose all; this they must tell him as older and more experienced farmers. It was not that he was forced to give up his farm. The sheriff had been to many farms this last year but he had not yet come to take anything in pawn from Korpamoen. Many were harder pressed on their farms than he, yet they remained at home.
Karl Oskar answered proudly that he acted according to his own good judgment, and after much thought. He understood well enough that a peasant who had tilled his farm some fifty years might think himself ten times wiser and more experienced than he, who had worked Korpamoen only five years. But did anyone gain in wisdom from living on the same place and tramping in the same furrows all his life? If a man’s wisdom increased because he remained all his life on the patch where he was born, then the oldest farmers in the parish should by now possess more wisdom than King Solomon himself. But the fact was that most of them were squareheads.
Karl Oskar was considered arrogant and proud when he rejected his neighbors’ kind advice. His emigration was taken as a reproach, an insult even, to the parish as a whole and to each individuaclass="underline" the community and the people here were not good enough for him. The old story of the Nilsa-nose was remembered; Karl Oskar’s big nose protruded so far that he was unable to turn about in the parish. The whole of Sweden was not large enough to house his nose — he must travel to a bigger country, far away in the world, in order to be comfortable. And some wit started a saying which spread through the village: when Karl Oskar came to North America, his face too would be long.
Perhaps he thought himself such a bigwig that he could look down on his home community? Others surmised something wrong in his head; he was seized by a delusion of grandeur. Such ideas didn’t suit a one-sixteenth homestead peasant.
Karl Oskar knew that people poked fun at him and spoke ill behind his back. But he didn’t bother to get angry; after all, he tried to please himself, not others. If you spent your time worrying about what other people thought and said, you wouldn’t get much done in your life. Outside his home everyone was against his proposed undertaking; even within his home, only his wife was for him; but she was the only one he needed on his side. His parents were against him, though they kept silent. Their reserved rights would now have to be met by an outsider, and this was not to their liking.
Once only did Nils quietly reproach his son: “You take many along with you.”
“There will be six of us.”
“You take many more. Your descendants are more numerous than you know.”
Karl Oskar did not answer. He felt the grief he caused in taking the family from their own country to a foreign land.
“You have not asked the opinion of children and grandchildren,” continued the father.
“I must be the one to assume responsibility. I do think of my children.”
Nils sat on his chair, his fingers twisting the well-worn crutch handles; he answered softly: “I too think of my children.”
He had but two sons.
Karl Oskar understood his father, who now asked himself of what use it had been for him to clear the ground here in Korpamoen, when this ground was now no longer good enough for his own son. Those twenty-five years of fighting the stones must now seem to him a futile strife, as it did not benefit either of his sons.
His mother thought Karl Oskar showed a sinful ingratitude by discounting his gain here at home. He had done nothing wrong, he was not driven by the whip to flee the country. But neither she nor Nils wasted much time in persuasion — they knew Karl Oskar. They turned to the Almighty in prayers that He might change their son’s mind and make him give up the American journey.
Time passed — a summer sped by, and an autumn, and winter came again. But their prayers brought no apparent sign of change in Karl Oskar. Nils and Märta concluded at length that God had some secret purpose in their son’s and daughter-in-law’s emigration to the United States of North America.
— 2—
Robert returned home for his “free week” after a year’s service with Kristina’s parents in Duvemåla, where he had been treated well and given no chastisement. No one thought the sheriff would look for him any further and he remained in the parental home; Karl Oskar would need his brother’s help this last year on the farm.
With Robert the United States also moved into the peasant cottage. From his “description book” he knew everything about the new land. Long ago he had landed on the other side of the ocean and made himself at home on distant shores. On the map which he had made up in his mind were marked the lakes, rivers, plains, and mountains of North America, all roads, on land and on water. He insisted he would not get lost in the New World once he arrived there, and now he must help his brother and sister-in-law to find their way. Karl Oskar, too, had begun to read in his brother’s book, and every day he obtained new information from Robert.
In America the kine fed on a grass that stood belly-high.
In America wild horses and oxen existed by the thousands, the fields were overrun with them and one could easily catch a hundred in a day.
In America it would have been impossible for David to kill Goliath; if he had searched forever he would have been unable to find a stone for his sling.
In America one could say “thou” to the President himself, and one need never remove one’s cap for him, if one didn’t wish to.
In America any capable and honest man could step directly from the manure wagon to the presidential throne.