Applicant should be able to read
Swedish; if he also can write, so much
better. If he has a good head, lack
of knowledge can gradually be
remedied. .
“Do you think I should apply for the job, Kristina?”
“You with your riches needn’t work any more!”
And she reminded him that the very first evening he had said that he had done all the work he intended to do and had had his last master.
His bad ear was turned toward her; probably he didn’t hear what she said; he was absorbed in his reading.
“Here is something for you, Kristina.”
He read aloud:
“Hemlandet has been considering the printing of a nice, neat Swedish A-B-C book. For this, however, several Swedish letters and decorative signs will be required, and the readers are asked for contributions of fifty cents each which can be sent to the printing office. We have also decided to print Luther’s Little Catechism, word for word according to the Symbolic Books, and without the improvements or worsenings which have been made to this little bible, in this country as well as elsewhere. This Catechism will be the first Swedish book printed in America.”
“That’s good news!” exclaimed Kristina.
“Yes, you said the other day Johan and Marta did not have any A-B-C book or catechism.”
“We need those books! I’ll tell Karl Oskar to send in money at once!”
She sat on the ground, the cloth she was sewing on on her knee. Robert was lying in the grass, reading. He had returned last Monday; today was Friday. He had been in their house four days. But she felt that during these four days as much had happened as during the four long years he had been gone.
If there was anything else of importance or interest, would he be kind enough to read it to her, she asked? He replied that there wasn’t much in the paper today except for a funny piece about a false Swedish priest — quite a long article.
Hemlandet warned against a self-styled minister who traveled about among the Swedish settlements in Illinois and Minnesota. He called himself Timoteus Brown, but it was a false, assumed name. He was not ordained, only a former student with a whiskey flask in his bag. But he preached, married couples, baptized children, and gave the Holy Sacrament. He had an unusual gift of speech and could entirely at will turn his listeners’ heads, and that was why many Swedes had been fooled and availed themselves of the services of the false priest. Timoteus Brown had such remarkable gifts that he could preach in any religion he chose; one teaching was as easy to him as another. If he came to a Lutheran settlement he preached the Lutheran teachings, but among the Methodists he was an accomplished Methodist preacher, and among the Baptists he preached the Baptist doctrine better than anyone they ever had heard. And he did call himself “the cleverest minister in America.”
Nor had Brown hesitated to falsify the Holy Sacrament: not one drop of wine had been added to the fluid in his cup; only water, into which fruit juice and vinegar had been mixed with syrup to make it sweet. In some settlements the participants had been seized with stomachache and diarrhea from his false sacramental wine. The self-made minister himself insisted that he gave the sacrament according to Christ’s ordinance which forbad alcoholic spirits. But this, the paper said, was a false interpretation, exaggerated temperance zeal. He not only hurt people’s bodies, but more important, their souls when he married trusting couples without being ordained. In the Swedish colonies, in Illinois and Minnesota, many otherwise honest and decent people now lived in sin and fornication, not knowing how deeply they had fallen in sin and iniquity.
Hemlandet urged the Swedish settlers to drive away Timoteus Brown, this blasphemer and derider. He was described as a wolf gifted with a sheep’s mild appearance which aided him in bewitching people.
Robert was interrupted in his reading several times by his persistent cough. Now that Kristina sat close, she looked at his face: it was caved-in, ravaged, wan. And his body was barely skin and bone; he had never appeared so worn-out as he did today. He must surely be suffering from a much more serious ailment than his bad ear.
She must try again:
“Have you never been to see a doctor, Robert?”
“Hadn’t thought of it. I’m only twenty-two. I can’t go to a doctor — I’m supposed to be healthy!”
“You have caught something dangerous. I don’t know — but it might lead to your death. .”
“Death. .?”
The word escaped him in a quick breath.
Robert pulled up his upper lip in a great smile, or sudden surprise, and exposed decayed teeth in the back of his mouth. He turned from the paper to his sister-in-law.
“Kristina — you don’t believe I’m afraid of death?”
“All people fear death!”
“Not I!”
“You too — now you only brag!”
“No, I mean it. Death cannot really do anything to me. It cannot touch me.”
“Stop! That’s blasphemy!”
Kristina’s body had straightened up with the last word, now she fumbled with the needle so that it pierced her thumb instead of the cloth.
“Do you mean you are above death? Above the Almighty?”
“All I said was, death cannot touch me.”
Robert threw down Hemlandet in the grass and rose to a sitting position. He leaned his elbows against his knees and bent his long, lean torso toward Kristina.
“No, not even death can hurt me or get at me any longer.”
“That’s terrible of you to talk like that! It’s arrogance! Conceit!”
Kristina stuck her thumb into her mouth and sucked a few trickling drops of blood. She sat and stared at Robert, horrified at his talk; was his mind affected? Even yesterday she had wondered if he wasn’t out of his head at times.
“Nothing touches me any more. Neither good nor evil affects me. Do you know why?”
“No, you must explain it, Robert!”
“Ill try. .”
The cough prevented him from going on. She sat in suspense, waiting for his explanation.
When Robert at last had finished coughing, it came slowly and simply:
“I have reconciled myself to my lot. That’s all.”
He had pulled up a few tall spears of grass and began chewing them. As he looked back on his life, he told Kristina, he understood everything that had happened to him. It was the way he was created that explained his life. If he had been an obedient and willing farm hand, he would never have tried to steal rest periods while he dug ditches, and then he would not have been given a hard box on the ear by his first master, and would have escaped his earache. And if he had had the temperament of an obedient and satisfied farm hand he would never have emigrated. And even if he had emigrated, he would have remained with his brother Karl Oskar and worked on his claim in Minnesota and been satisfied with that life. Then he could have lived his whole life in one place, in constant peace of mind.
But the way he was born prevented him; he couldn’t stay in Sweden, he couldn’t stay with his brother in America, he couldn’t stay in service. He himself drove peace and tranquillity from his mind, although without wishing to do so, since deep in his heart he wanted to live a peaceful life. But he couldn’t take a claim and be a settler; he might as well try to reach the moon, or walk across the water out there on the lake. He had been given those ideas about gold and riches and freedom, and he was forced to get out and pursue what was in his mind. This brought him into one bad situation after another. His misfortunes and sufferings were his own doing, as he himself had once caused the box on his ear. He was often accused of lying, but he never knew when he did lie, and if he did lie it was because he was forced to. All his hardships in life he himself had caused. Like yesterday — when he got into a fight with his brother — he alone had caused it. Everything that happened to him was because of the way he was born.