Jonas Petter himself had once participated in a fight in the snake forest; a swarm of Blekinge men had surrounded him, buzzing and hissing like wasps on a hot summer day, cutting and hitting at any part of his body they could reach. When he returned home after that journey his body was cut up, open as a sieve. For many months he could keep no fluids in him because they ran out through the holes which the Blekinge men had cut through his body. It was half a year before he could drink brännvin again.
Robert’s eyes shifted from side to side in the semidark underbrush of the forest, looking for men armed with knives, ready to waylay the travelers. But Jonas Petter assured him that it was much more peaceful on the Blekinge road nowadays, and they might feel especially safe from the evil-tempered people since there were so many in their company.
Jonas Petter continued to shorten the fifty long miles by his talk. Robert was busy opening gates; he had by now counted thirty of them. The gates had lately been closer together — the travelers were nearing inhabited places.
The forest came to an end and they drove into a large village. They were in Eringsboda, almost halfway to Karlshamn. This was their first resting place. The wagons came to a stop in front of an impressive-looking building with iron rings in the wall for the horses’ halter straps; this was the inn. The travelers came down from their seats, and the horses were unharnessed.
Big as well as little ones felt frozen, and their faces were blue from the biting wind. The children’s noses were running, making tapers, as it was called.
“We must get inside and thaw out our young ones,” said Kristina anxiously.
Her own children had on warm woolen mittens which she had knitted for them especially for the journey, but the children from Kärragärde were barehanded. Inga-Lena’s last-born, a girl only a few months old, began to cry. She was hidden somewhere in a huge bundle of woolen shawls. Through an opening in the coverings her mother spoke comfortingly to the baby. Danjel came by and nodded and smiled at the little one, the child conceived in the couple’s true, God-inspired marriage, after they were living in the spirit. But not even the father could silence the crying baby. Then the youngest boy from Korpamoen joined in the crying, and the two children tried to outdo each other.
The company of emigrants entered the barroom of the inn with their two loudly crying children.
Nearly every day the maids in the inn saw peasants from Småland with their loaded wagons stopping in on their way to Karlshamn, but never before had they brought along wives and children. Now a question could easily be read in the maids’ staring eyes: What was the idea of dragging suckling children along the roads in this bitterly cold spring weather? But it was warm in here in the barroom, a tremendous fire was roaring on the hearth. The maids busied themselves heating milk for the children and preparing coffee for the grownups.
The emigrants found benches and chairs, sat down, and opened their food baskets. They cut long slices from their rye breads, and brought out their dried lamb quarters. Jonas Petter and the Korpamoen brothers shared a quart of brännvin. Kristina had baked a potato pancake which she divided among husband, children, and brother-in-law; as yet she would not open the butter tub.
The fire sparkled and all enjoyed the coziness of the inn after the cold road. Their senses as well as their limbs thawed. There was an odor of food and brännvin, snuff and chewing tobacco, greased leather and warm, wet wadmal, there was a fragrance of mothers’ milk as the women suckled the children.
The people from Korpamoen and those from Kärragärde were gathered around their respective food baskets, but Jonas Petter sat alone with his. He had left wife and children behind. It was said he had left without forethought: one evening he quarreled with his wife and next morning packed his America chest. But no one knew how long this had been in his mind. He willingly told what he knew of other people, but about himself he never said a word.
Kristina sat and thought of how some in the company still were strangers to each other; as yet she had not exchanged a word with Ulrika of Västergöhl, nor shaken her hand. Before their departure she had told her Uncle Danjel the truth: she could not stand that woman. Must she endure her as a traveling companion? Danjel had opened the Bible and read to her about the meeting of Christ and the harlot. What the Redeemer had said to her, he, Danjel, had said to Ulrika: Sin no more! And Ulrika had obeyed him, she had discarded her old sin-body. Now it was Christ’s body that lived in her, and anyone saying unkind words to Ulrika said them also to Christ. But Kristina could not help herself — she still could not endure that woman.
Nor did she notice any difference in Ulrika. She was good to her daughter; when the two spoke to each other she was sweet and careful in her words. Otherwise she was as foul-mouthed as ever. And one could never misunderstand her manner of looking at men; there was always something of a come-and-let’s-get-to-bed look in her eyes. Hadn’t she today looked at Karl Oskar in that way? She had long taken advantage of Uncle Danjel, who fed and clothed her and her daughter and now paid their passage to America. Uncle Danjel was credulous and easy to take advantage of. Perhaps Ulrika still carried on her whoring in secret, whenever she had the opportunity. At least she acted like a sow in heat.
Good-looking she was, the bitch, no one could deny that. Now she was sitting in front of the fire, combing her daughter’s hair and tying a red ribbon in it. The whore was as haughty as a queen, with her bastard a princess being decked to wed a prince. One could wonder what kind of virtues that woman had instilled in her child, poor girl who had to wear old women’s cast-off clothing.
Sven was the eldest boy from Kärragärde, and he had already torn his jacket on a nail — now his mother was mending the hole with linen thread and a darning needle. Inga-Lena and Kristina got along well together. But Danjel’s wife was easily led, quite without a will of her own; she let her husband decide and rule in all matters. Kristina felt a little ashamed of her when among women.
Inga-Lena had suckled her baby, which was quiet now, after being freed from its bundle of shawls. But presently it began to cry again. The mother opened her blouse and offered the breast to the child once more. But the little one threw up what she had already eaten.
Kristina’s thoughts turned to the impending sea voyage as she watched the child vomit.
“I wonder if we will be seasick on the ship,” she said.
“Seasickness is no real ailment,” said Karl Oskar.
“Nevertheless, one has to throw up.”
Ulrika gave Kristina a meaning glance: “I guess it feels like being in the family way.”
Kristina’s cheeks flushed a flaming red. Ulrika apparently knew how things were with her. They had both gone to the outhouse when they had arrived, she must have noticed. And now Kristina was provoked by the color in her face. Why must she blush? She was married, and no man except Karl Oskar had touched her. She had a right to be with child a thousand times if she wished. Was she to blush because of that woman who had borne four bastards and given her body to hundreds of men?
The baby stopped suckling, and as Inga-Lena buttoned her blouse over her breasts, she said: “They say seasickness is painful.”
“Are you afraid, Inga-Lena?” asked Danjel.
“No, no, of course not!” Her worried voice contradicted her. “But when one never has been to sea before. .”
Danjel went up to his wife and laid his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t you remember my words? Have you forgotten what I’ve told you?”