Petrus Olausson immediately suggested that the families hereabouts meet every Sunday at each house in turn to enjoy the comfort of religion and help each other with matters.
At these Sunday meetings, Olausson read from the Bible and gave a brief explanation of the passage he had read. Each time he mentioned the punishment he would have suffered in Sweden had he there attempted to explain the Bible.
He told them about the persecution he had experienced at the time he and his wife were Erik Janson’s apostles. The prophet had one day come to their home at Alfta to sell wheat flour — he was called Wheat-flour Jesus. At that time Janson was of a world-renouncing mind and adhered strictly to the Bible, considering all other religious books to be false. Because of this, the clergy had asked for his imprisonment and sent the sheriff after him. For several weeks they had hidden him under their barn floor. Three or four times a day they had carried food to him and later they had followed him to North America. The prophet from Biskopskulla had founded Bishop Hill, Illinois, where he intended to build the New Jerusalem. And Erik Janson had seemed to his followers as humanity’s great light, sent by God to restore Christianity. Here in America he would found a new and cleansed Lutheran Church.
His teachings had been honest and humble in the beginning, but he soon became puffed up with self-righteousness and destroyed himself thereby. No longer was he God’s representative on earth, he set himself above God. On the Illinois prairie he treated his people worse than the Americans treated their slaves; he ruled them as if they were his personal possessions. When a married man wanted to sleep with his wife he must first report his desire to Janson. And when the prophet gracefully had condescended to the bedding, then it must take place in full view of the whole congregation. Such was the shameless man’s pleasure. When people grew sick or old or useless for work, he simply commanded them to lie down and die. If the sick did not obey him and failed to die the same day, they were excluded from the colony.
The overbearing man brought on his own evil end: a murderer’s bullet.
And Petrus Olausson spoke of the Lutheran Church and the Reformed Church, of Baptism and Methodism, and explained the differences in the religions which decided where a human was to spend eternity — in Heaven or in Hell. To Kristina the whole seemed confusing and difficult to understand. But she understood how easily a person could become ensnared in a false religion which would lead to eternal damnation. God himself had not given clear instructions about the right road, and an ignorant, simple sinner like herself could not find it without guidance. That was why ministers were essential.
Man did not obey God when obeying authority, said Olausson, and that too sounded strange and confusing to her. As a child she had been taught that no authority existed except that which derived its power from God. But her previous instruction, it now seemed, was a falsification of the Swedish clergy, according to the Helsinge farmer. The sheriff who had chased Erik Janson under the barn floor and put Bible-reading persons in prison on bread and water had not received his office from God but from the Crown. The provincial governor was a successor to Pilate, who had sentenced Christ to crucifixion. And nowhere in the Bible did it say that God had ordained sheriffs to plague Christian people who read the Bible in their homes. The sheriffs in Sweden were successors to the Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus at the order of civil authorities.
In her catechism, however, Kristina had learned that she ought to respect and obey authority for the Lord’s sake, and she often felt that her neighbor was mistaken.
Petrus Olausson urged the Swedish settlers in the valley to get together and build a church without delay. Karl Oskar pointed out that they also needed a schoolhouse; their children were growing up and they needed Christian schooling unless the parents wanted them to become heathens. Johan was already of school age and Lill-Marta only a year younger. He and Kristina had tried to teach the brats as best they could, but they had no Swedish spelling book and no catechism. Karl Oskar had taught Johan the letters of the alphabet from the Swedish almanac, but it was not very good for spelling since it had so few words in it. The boy learned too slowly in this way, and Karl Oskar was not much of a teacher. And both Johan and Lill-Marta would soon need to learn the contents of other books as well; it would be useful for both the boy and the girl to be able to read and write.
Karl Oskar had often discussed the building of a schoolhouse with Danjel Andreasson. There were three children in New Kärragärde, older than their own, whom their father had instructed so far.
The Olaussons too, had instructed their children, first and foremost in the true Lutheran religion, in order to instill in them from tender years the pure faith. Olausson thought they could use the church they intended to build as a schoolhouse, but Karl Oskar thought they should not wait — building a church might take several years — and they could not get along without a schoolhouse for so long, or their children would have become too old to go to school.
There were many matters for the settlers to attend to. They must build and build again — temples for God, houses for people, schoolhouses for children, shelters for the cattle, barns for the crops, storehouses, implement sheds. Karl Oskar had laid the foundation for a new living house which he hoped to have roofed by next year, and that was only a poor beginning. As he thought of the coming years he could see himself constantly occupied with eternal carpentry, eternal sill-laying for new buildings.
— 2—
In order to please Kristina, Karl Oskar had named his new home Duvemåla, and had written to his wife’s home for apple seeds and had planted an Astrakhan apple tree for her: this was his remedy for her homesickness. He wanted to know if it had helped and asked her if she still suffered as much as before. She replied that she thought perhaps her longing for home had died down a little.
Now Kristina could say: I live again at Duvemåla, this is my home, I hold it dear, here I will stay as long as I live. And she was pleased with the little seedling that had grown from the apple seeds. She looked after it constantly and tended the small plant as if it were a delicate living being.
Thus far all was well. But neither the name, Duvemåla, nor the seedling could divert her thoughts from her old home. On the contrary, they now turned more often to her native country.
Even during the night she would return in her dreams, in which she moved back to her homeland, with husband and children. Happily there, she wondered over her foolishness ever to have undertaken the long journey out into the world. What business had she had far away in America? She had a good home here. Well, anyway, everything had turned out all right, all of them were unharmed, back in their old village. She might even dream that the whole emigration had been an evil nightmare.
But in the morning she always awakened in America.
Kristina tried persistently to suppress this longing, this desire for and loss of something she would never have again. She wanted to conquer her weakness and be as strong as Karl Oskar. She had made her home here forever, she must learn to feel at home, become part of the foreign country. But in this, her will would not obey her; something in her soul refused to obey.
And spring in Minnesota, with its dark evenings, was her difficult season; then she yearned for the land with evenings of another hue. She longed for Sweden as much as ever, but she kept this from her husband. She must carry this incurable soul-ache in secret, hide it like a shameful disease, as people hid scabby and scurvy sores on their bodies.