He kept the hide of the black ox to use for shoe leather, but sold the meat to German Fischer’s Inn at Taylors Falls for ten dollars, the sum he still owed for the animal. Kristina thought they should have kept some of the meat, but Karl Oskar said he would be unable to swallow a single bite of it. After having had to kill Starkodder, he felt the animal had assumed a sacrificial significance: not only had the ox given them his strength in life, he had given his life to save their oldest son.
VII. ULRIKA IN HER GLORY
— 1—
One Saturday afternoon, having fired the bake-oven and raked out the embers, Kristina was just ready to put in the bread when she heard someone stamp off the snow outside the door; Ulrika, warmly dressed, stepped across the threshold.
Sledding was good now along the timber roads, and Ulrika had ridden in a sleigh most of the way from Stillwater in the company of her husband, who had been called to preach in St. Paul on Sunday.
“I took the opportunity to visit you!”
Kristina had been standing in front of the hot oven, the rake and the ash broom in her hands; she forgot to dust the soot from the hand she offered to the caller, so glad was she to see Ulrika. She enjoyed no visitor more. Although Kristina had neighbors and had met the settlers’ wives, it was difficult for her to feel intimate with them. Perhaps it was the long isolation that had made her feel shy and awkward in company, but she never quite knew how to act with new people; she was afraid she might appear backward and foolish to them. In order to become friends with the neighbors, great efforts were demanded of her, and she rarely felt up to such efforts.
But when Ulrika came to visit her, however inconveniently, all guards were down and all concerns forgotten, even today — besides the baking, Lill-Marta was in bed with a cold and a throat irritation. Kristina quickly put a coffeepot over the fire. But the rising bread must be put in while the oven was hot, so as soon as Ulrika had removed her coat and shawl she took the bread ladle from Kristina’s hands to help her. She stood directly in front of the oven opening even though Kristina warned her she might get soot on her fine clothing.
Ulrika was in the last month of her pregnancy, and had grown ample around the waist and become clumsy in her motions. But she handled the ladle firmly and within a short time she had all the bread in the oven.
It had been an unlucky day for the children, Kristina said. Dan had crept too near the fire and burned himself on the forehead and she had had to melt sheep fat and put it on the burn. Barely had she attended to the little one when Harald, playing with a piece of firewood, had got a splinter under his fingernail and cried like a stuck pig before she could get it out. And the girl in bed was forever complaining of her sore throat and needed attention. All these things had more or less upset her household this morning.
But despite her problems, Kristina soon had the coffee on the table and could sit down with her visitor for a rest.
“You’re overloaded with work,” said Ulrika sympathetically. “American women have it much easier. The men scrub the floors and wash the dishes for their wives.”
Kristina said, “When Karl Oskar comes in from work in the evening he’s so tired out that I wouldn’t dream of asking him to wash up after supper.”
“If he were an American man he would offer to do it,” insisted Ulrika. “He is still too Swedish!”
Swedish men were ashamed to do women’s chores, she continued. Think of how it was back home. After eating, the menfolk just lolled about, resting and breaking wind, while the wives cleaned up and waited on those lazybodies. Weekdays and Sundays alike. And many women in Sweden had to do the men’s chores as well — carry in water and wood, thresh, plow, load dung. They were hardly better off than the animals. If they only knew how much easier their lives would be as wives to American men, the whole Kingdom of Sweden would be empty of women in a few weeks.
Kristina noticed how big Ulrika had grown since their last meeting. “You too will soon have more to do, I can see!”
“Sure enough!” Ulrika felt her enormous belly. “My priest was made in March. I’ll bear him before Christmas, I guess.”
She had had such horrible vomitings during this pregnancy, she was sure it would be a boy. A woman puked more when she carried a male child than she would carrying one of her own sex. This was only natural.
Kristina confided to her guest that she, too, was pregnant again.
Ulrika looked at her compassionately. “I thought you looked kind of pale-faced. But you have such a big household and so much to care for; you should really go barren and empty for a few years.”
It was a nuisance to protect and look after babies out here during the winter, said Kristina. She would never forget all the trouble she had with Dan the first winter. But this time she would bear in May, just the right time for a birth; the little one would come into the world in summer and warmth.
Ulrika looked about the cabin. “It won’t be easy for you with five brats in this little log hut. With five kids to care for you need space to turn around.”
“This is our last winter in the cabin. Karl Oskar has promised to have the new house ready by next fall.”
Kristina only worried, she told her friend, because his plans called for so large a house she was afraid he wouldn’t be able to raise it. It was to be two stories, with rooms both upstairs and downstairs. Everything he undertook was on such a large scale. She could never persuade him to be moderate.
“But he is an extra fine man!” said Ulrika with conviction. “He can use his hands and do everything for himself.”
She added that she had heard how he had managed in the blizzard and saved both Johan’s and his own life by killing the ox while the storm was at its height. The Swedes in the valley were talking about nothing else, and Karl Oskar was said to be both able and ingenious. Ulrika herself knew from earlier experience that he was neither a weakling nor at a loss as to what to do.
“I’m only afraid it’s going to his head,” said Kristina.
Karl Oskar was fearless and undismayed, and never gave up; he insisted it always paid to fight back however hopeless things looked. But he was getting so that he thought he could depend entirely on himself. And to tell the truth, however well he had managed during the blizzard, the saving of the boy was God’s miracle. He himself had frostbitten ears and cheeks, but Johan had not a frozen spot on him, and this was a miracle. What would Karl Oskar have done if the blizzard had continued to rage? Then he couldn’t have got to the boy in time and Johan would have frozen to death inside the ox belly. And that was just what Kristina had told Karl Oskar.
He had insisted that a person in danger had no time to spend on prayers but must try all the tricks he could think of to help himself. Waiting for someone else to do it would bring no result. And Kristina feared that his saving of Johan in the blizzard had had a bad influence on him; he called it his own doing, and this was arrogance. He was getting so big-headed that he relied more on himself than on God.
“Well, it seems at times the Lord wants people to help him a little when he performs his miracles,” said Ulrika.
Karl Oskar was after all one hell of a good man, no one could deny that, she insisted. And he made children one after another; for this he needed no one’s help, either. But this was one activity he ought to curtail. If he rested occasionally from his male duties it would be good for Kristina. But she guessed a man couldn’t hold back what he didn’t hold in his hand.
Someone else was stamping off snow outside, this time the heavy stampings of a man. Petrus Olausson entered the cabin. In his hand he held an enormous auger. He shook hands with Kristina, and looked questioningly at Ulrika. Kristina introduced them. “This is Ulrika from Stillwater, who has come for a visit.”