No mother could begin to eat and drink before her children had been given food and drink. But Karl Oskar told her that Johan and Lill-Märta had eaten themselves full and drunk until their thirst was quenched back there at the store where he had bought the food.
Kristina drank. She emptied the mug in a few swallows, and Karl Oskar filled it again; she drank until she felt satisfied; never before had she realized that milk could be so good. She herself had sat on the milking stool and pressed out hundreds of gallons of milk from cow udders, she had strained milk for her children morning, noon, and night, she had fattened calves on milk, she had brought up piglets on milk — during her whole life she had never longed for milk until she started on this voyage. Now she accepted the pitcher of milk as a gift from God; she felt she would cry.
She said the milk was cream-rich and good. Then she took a roll from the bag and looked it over; this roll was almost as big as a small loaf at home.
They still had a little left in their food basket. The ship’s fare had been rancid, bitter with salt, smelling of old chests and musty barrels; Kristina still had a taste in her mouth from the dried, hard rye loaves. Toward the end of the voyage there had been worms in the bread, and they had been forced to soak it in water and fry it in pork fat before they could eat it; much of the fare they had been given on the ship had been little better than pig food.
After those hard loaves, how delicious it was to bite into a soft, fresh wheat roll! The rolls looked a little puffy, but she soon saw that they were well filled under the crust. At the very first bite she felt that she was eating festival food.
“They bake mighty fine bread in America,” said Kristina.
“Here they eat wheat bread on weekdays as well as on Sundays,” said Karl Oskar.
“I’ve heard so. Can it be true?”
Kristina was a little skeptical. To her, wheat bread had always been a food for holidays and festival occasions. She used to buy a few pounds of wheat flour for a baking at Christmas, Easter, and Midsummer. Then she counted the loaves and locked them in the bread chest so the children couldn’t eat them unless allowed; such food had to be carefully portioned out, each one getting his share.
“It’s swarming with people here in New York,” she said. “Is there enough wheat bread for all of them?”
Karl Oskar said, that, according to what he saw with his own eyes, there must be plenty of food in this country; in several stores he had seen quantities of wheat loaves, piled high like stacks of firewood at home, and he had seen whole tubs full of sweet milk. He was sure that both she and the children could eat and drink all they needed to regain their strength.
The bundle at Kristina’s side began to move and a sound came from it; Harald had awakened and cried out. The mother picked him up and his cry died as soon as he felt the sweet milk in his mouth. The little one swallowed the unfamiliar drink in silence, he simply kept silent and swallowed: surprise overwhelmed him.
It hurt Kristina’s heart to see how fallen off her children were, how pale their faces, how sunken their cheeks, how blue their lips, how tired and watery their eyes. When she took them in her arms their bodies were light, their arms and legs thin, the flesh on their limbs loose; it was as if muscles and bones had parted from each other. They had dwindled this way from having been kept so long in the dark unhealthy hold below decks. How often had she worried about them when she lay sick, unable to care for them, while all three of them crawled over her in her bed. How often had she reproached herself because of her inability to give them a single bite of fresh food, or a mouthful of sweet milk. How she had longed for the moment when she could walk on shore with Johan, Lill-Märta, and Harald. These poor, pale, skinny children certainly were in need of America’s good sweet milk and fresh wheat rolls.
Johan had been told to guard his father’s coat lying there in the grass, and he said impatiently: “Father, you forget the apple! The apple for Mother!”
From the pocket of his father’s coat he took a shining red apple, almost as big as his own head. The boy handed it proudly to his mother.
“Have you ever seen such a big apple?” said Karl Oskar. “I got it for nothing!”
Near the pier, he told her, they had met a woman carrying a large basket filled with beautiful apples. Johan and Lill-Märta had stopped and looked longingly at the fruit. The woman had spoken to them, but they had not understood a word. Then she gave the children each an apple, which they immediately gulped down. He, too, had received an apple — which he had saved for her.
“Karl Oskar — you’re good. . ”
She weighed the large apple in her hand; it must weigh almost a pound, she thought; it was the largest one she had ever seen. The children’s eyes were glued to the fruit in their mother’s hand, and Kristina asked Karl Oskar to cut it in four equal pieces, so that all would get even portions. He pulled out his pocketknife and divided the apple carefully; each quarter was as big as a whole apple at home.
And the immigrant family ate and enjoyed their first American fruit, which was full of juice and cooled their mouths.
“Is it a new apple?” exclaimed Kristina when she tasted it.
“Yes, doesn’t it taste like one?”
“I thought it was fruit from last summer.”
“Here in America the apples ripen before Midsummer,” said Karl Oskar.
Yes, the sour-fresh taste in her mouth convinced Kristina. It must be true what Karl Oskar said — she was eating a fruit of the new crop; yet it was only Midsummer.
Midsummer — the holidays had passed, a Midsummer no one had celebrated. Enclosed on the ship, they could not celebrate, they could only talk of the Midsummer holidays in the land they had left.
Just a little more than a stone’s throw from where she sat Kristina could see the pier where the Charlotta was still tied up, discharging the rest of her cargo. She recognized the Swedish brig by its familiar flag. After unloading, it would sail back again. The ship would once more have to find her way across the restless, endless water. It had been a bleak and misty spring day when she left the Swedish harbor; perhaps it would be a bleak and misty autumn day before she returned to the same harbor. Then their ship would be at home. At home—the thought cut Kristina to the quick, and she chewed more slowly on her piece of apple.
Midsummer at home — Father putting young birches on either side of the door, Mother serving coffee at their finest table, which had been moved out into the yard and placed under the old family maple; Maria and Emma, her sisters, picking lilacs and decorating themselves for the village dance. The house would smell of newly scrubbed floors, smell clean, inside and out, smell of lilac blossoms and flowering birches. And when they gathered around the table under the family maple — the guardian tree of their home — they would all be dressed in their Sunday best, and there would be much fun and much laughter. At home it was always so for Midsummer.
Did they speak this year of one who had been among them before? Did they mention her name — Kristina, who had moved away with Karl Oskar to North America? Did they ask how it was with her this moment, this afternoon, this Midsummer Eve?
She knew how it was at home, but those at home did not know how it was here.
She had traveled a long road, almost endlessly long; she knew the sea that separated her from her homeland, that incomprehensibly wide water which separated home and here. She would never again travel that road, never again traverse the sea. So she would never again be with them at home.
Now for the first time she began to think deeply into this: Never again be with them at home.