“Karl Oskar — are you asleep?”
She had been dreaming that she was washing and ironing hundred-dollar bills. She had moved the ironing board out into the barn and there she had pressed the long green bills, so large they had hung over the sides of the board! Karl Oskar too had been in her dream: he had the big shovel and shoveled so fast that the bills flew all over the place and up against the roof of the barn. She dreamed that they had harvested a whole crop of hundred-dollar bills and now were about to thresh them — she ironed and ironed while perspiration ran off her body.
“I was so glad when I awoke. For after all, I had dreamed the truth!”
For it was still this Monday evening when the gold seeker had returned; when he stepped across their threshold and had brought riches into their house.
XIV. BUT THE RETURNED GOLD SEEKER DOES NOT SLEEP
What does Robert’s injured ear tell him during the night?
His left ear buzzes and rings and keeps him awake. As soon as he puts his head on the pillow in the evening the ear begins to roar and thunder, it sings and rings and tinkles, songs are heard, bells toll, shots are fired. The buzz and the roar can be of such intensity that it sounds like a storm at sea in there. In bed at night his heart moves up and throbs in his ear. Each beat feels like a wasp’s sting, like a knife point. It is difficult to sleep when one feels the heart-sting in one’s ear with each beat.
It cracks and crackles, it peeps and weeps and wails. It is too crowded with a heart in there — it swells and pushes, it boils and seethes and aches. He has one heart inside his chest and another in his ear, and the ear-heart stings him many times a minute as he counts its beats.
The gold seeker lies awake and counts the beats. They are his own sounds, those he keeps hidden in there. No one can hear them except he himself; they belong to him only; what his left ear tells him at night is his secret.
It has been aching since that day when he lay on his back under the open sky, whistling and singing, although he had been told to dig a ditch. His master had come upon him and lifted the biggest hand he had ever seen on a human being. The enormous, heavy fist had hit him smack on his left ear.
He had emigrated to get away from masters, but his ear accompanied him with its buzzing and turmoil. He had run away from service, he had crossed the ocean, but the sound in his ear remained with him. He had fled the Old World for the New, but the aching ear accompanied him. It followed him on the road to California, and now it had come back with him. He had traveled over lakes and rivers, he had walked across plains and deserts, he had journeyed thousands of miles over land and water, but the ear still pursued him. He had not been able to escape from it — wherever he fled it followed him, clung to him. The echo of a box on the ear in the Old World still reverberated; his persecution by his left ear was the punishment he must suffer because be did not want to dig ditches.
And now he has come back to his brother’s house, and the ear is with him in the bed where he rests. And his heart moves into his ear again, where it pushes and roars and fills his head. He feels the sensation of stinging pain in sensitive tissue each time his heart beats. He turns his head on the pillow to the left, he turns it to the right, he raises it, puts it down, but the ear is the same. He rests on his right cheek, he changes over and lies on his left cheek, he rests on his forehead, but the knife-cuts remain inside the Ear.
He had fled from his service, he had fled from his homeland, he had fled from his masters, but wherever in the world he flees, he has a guardian he cannot escape, a pursuer he cannot get rid of, a master he cannot flee from: the ear.
And so he has been forced to get along with his eternal companion, who keeps him awake during the night hours. He lies still and does not try to escape any more, for he knows he can’t succeed. The pursuer forces his company on him; the ear forces him to listen to all its sounds. It tells him, relates to him in detail, all it has recorded: human voices and animal cries, laughter and weeping, sounds of joy and of pain and of sorrow, his own words and those of others, the voice of his friend Arvid, shouts, the swearing of men whose names are foreign to him. He hears the creaking wagon wheels in the desert sand, neighing horses, bellowing oxen, lowing cows, braying mules. The whipping, wind-driven sand, the pelting rain, the noisy great rivers, the sweeping storm over the prairie buffalo grass. It is the echo of shots and barking dogs, of muleteers hollering, fighting voices, drunken men’s slobberings, voices in delirium, calls, danger warnings, nature’s forces at play — every audible sound and noise.
The ear remembers much he himself has forgotten, or has tried to forget — the ear digs up the forgotten past and makes it vivid and present. So did it happen! Exactly so! And he lies awake and listens as it brings back to him every one of the four years of days and nights on the California Trail.
What does the injured ear say to Robert during the nights?
XV. THE FIRST NIGHT — ROBERT’S EAR SPEAKS
(There you lie — and here I am! You’ll never be rid of me! We share our secrets. But don’t worry: no one except you can hear me! My voice belongs to you only. All I say remains between us! It stays right here, with. If another ear tried to listen in — how silly! It wouldn’t hear the slightest little buzz, not the smallest whisper! So don’t worry! Not a peep from me!
Listen closely to me now! How was it? Do you remember how it happened — that first summer — that time when Arvid wanted to — well, you remember what he had in mind. .?)
— 1—
It was April when they started on their journey.
On the paddle steamer from Stillwater they got jobs as dishwashers in exchange for free transportation to St. Louis. Together they had twenty-five dollars, well hidden in a skin pouch.
The last time they had traveled on the Mississippi they had gone upstream on the Red Wing; now they traveled downstream on the New Orleans.
On his first journey up the Mississippi — the world’s greatest moving water — Robert had heard a song about liberty and freedom: I will be free, as the wind of the earth and the waves on the sea. . Ever after he had been lured by that song and had trusted its promise. But then he had been a passenger; now he was a dishwasher below deck. He and Arvid sat in a dark, narrow, dirty galley and peeled potatoes for the cook. Whole barrelfuls of potatoes were rolled up to them, and as soon as they saw the bottom of one, another appeared. During the whole long, light spring day, as the New Orleans glided by the verdant river shores, Robert and Arvid sat in the galley, the peelings wriggling like snakes about their feet. By afternoon the heap of peelings reached their knees, by evening it was up against their thighs.
“A helluva lot of potaters they grow in America,” said Arvid.
“America is the homeland of the potato,” said Robert. “The Indians invented this root.”
“Then the heathens must be quite brainy,” said Arvid, who liked potatoes.
Late in the evening, when the piles of peelings had reached all the way to their groins, the youths were liberated and could go onto a lower deck. They were forbidden, however, to go onto the upper deck, where the paying passengers promenaded and viewed the wonders of the shores along the world’s broadest river.
As they steamed south, the days grew warmer and it became oppressive in the narrow galley. Any grown person can with equanimity peel potatoes for a few hours, perhaps a whole day, and a patient individual can perhaps peel for a few days, even a whole week, without despairing. But from morning to night, day after day, week after week, penned up in a dark corner on a ship during beautiful spring days, would be enough to make the stoutest heart fail. Arvid sat half buried in a nest of peelings sad and depressed. But Robert comforted him; they must keep this in mind: admitted, they were on a boat peeling potatoes — but they were on their way to California: they were peeling their way to the Land of Gold! Once there they would sit buried in gold sand up to their thighs! And when they returned from the gold fields it would be as passengers on the upper deck, where they would promenade, smoking cigars and viewing the scenery! They would wear broad gold watch chains across their vests and heavy gold rings on each finger, every pocket of their clothing would be filled with large, rustling bills!