The Last Letter Home Read online

  The whole section was now empty of people. But one morning a rider from the legislature in St. Paul came by and asked the way to Taylors Falls. He had no special news about the Sioux uprising, which had happened so unexpectedly, but he felt sure Colonel Sibley would choke it. Several thousand settlers from the counties around St. Paul had also gathered and been armed.

  The rider spoke of the prices on Indian scalps: Tuesday, last week, twenty dollars had been paid for a redskin scalp in St. Paul, but by Thursday the price had risen to fifty dollars, and by Saturday to a hundred. With each new report of the Sioux cruelty to the whites the value of their scalps rose. The man from the legislature thought the price of redskin scalps would reach two hundred dollars before the end of the war.

  Karl Oskar pondered the remarkable in this: Only when dead was a red man valued highly. Before the uprising no white would have offered a tenth as much for a living Indian.

  The days which he marked on his stick slid away from him in a strange drowsiness. He sat watch by his wife night and day, he dozed for short intervals sitting on the chair. Daylight and darkness followed each other, but day and night mingled in one endless, monotonous, unchangeable day. Time did not move forward one second. It had stopped still for him. Yet when he picked up the knife to whittle a new notch he knew another day had again passed.

  He worked his way forward on the stick to Tuesday, August 26. And still Kristina did not recognize him.

  —6—

  Karl Oskar lived his present life in the events closest to him. Therefore, he didn’t know afterward on which of his watch-days the report finally came—the message that the Indian uprising had been put down.

  A couple of settlers on their way back to their deserted farms told him about it. He thought he knew them, but later he couldn’t recall their names or where they lived. They said that Colonel Sibley had come in time to relieve Fort Ridgely and New Ulm, and since the Sioux couldn’t storm those portals to the Minnesota Valley they would not be able to reach the St. Croix Valley. The settlers could now return to their chores. All the refugees on the Chisago Lake islands could return to their homes.

  Karl Oskar seemed rather surprised at the men’s tale; he listened to their report as if it didn’t concern him, as if the Indian fright in some way had not pertained to him. The panic was over? The redskins were stopped! All could return home? But he was already home. He had been in his house all the time. He was on his farm, he need not return.

  He was the only settler in the St. Croix Valley who had remained in his house during the Indian panic those August days. He had kept watch over his wife as long as her life lasted.

  XV

  THE ASTRAKHAN APPLES ARE RIPE

  —1—

  The sun had just risen; it shone through the gable window and slowly searched its way to the bed where Kristina lay. She had opened her eyes. On her forehead near the hairline drops of perspiration glittered; her complexion was refreshed and rosy. Her cheeks blossomed: A young girl’s coloring had returned to her after twenty years.

  A moment before she had complained faintly in her sleep. Karl Oskar had picked up a towel and gently dried her moist forehead. When he bent over her, he saw in her eyes that she recognized him. For the first time in three days she knew him again.

  Her voice was so low he had to make an effort to catch the words.

  “Is it already morning?”

  “Yea—but pretty early.”

  “So quiet—the others aren’t up yet?”

  “No . . .”

  “The children . . . all of them are asleep . . . ?”

  “I think so.”

  “Only you up . . . already?”

  “I have not been in bed.”

  “You’ve watched over me?”

  “Yes . . .”

  “How kind of you. I must have slept long . . .”

  “You have slept a long while.”

  “I dreamed I was swinging . . . you remember the ox thong I used to put up in the barn at home . . .”

  The blanket on Kristina’s chest rose and fell in rapid, short movements. Her breathing had been quicker and panting these last days.

  “I was at home in the barn, swinging and carrying on . . .”

  “Can I give you something?”

  “Only a mouthful of water. I’m thirsty.”

  He held the pitcher to her mouth and she tried to lift her head but it sank down on the pillow again. His left hand steadied her at the back of her head.

  She drank slowly, swallow after swallow.

  “I can’t swallow very well . . .”

  A few big drops escaped and ran slowly down her chin; the sun glittered in them. When his hand touched her he felt the glow of fever that burned in her body.

  “Thanks, dear Karl Oskar . . .”

  She made a motion with her shoulders as if wishing to sit up.

  “Better lie down, dear . . .”

  “But I’m not sick. Only mightily tired . . .”

  “You must rest, you aren’t strong yet . . .”

  The silence inside was unbroken again, but down in the chicken pen the rooster started his shrill morning crowing. Something dark fluttered past the gable window, wings flapped; a bird had just lighted in the apple tree. The boughs of the Astrakhan tree were loaded down with fruit as big as newborn babies’ heads. Against the dark green leaves the apples shimmered golden-red.

  The sun moved and spread its golden squares over Kristina’s blanket. By and by it reached a bottle and a spoon on the table beside the bed. The bottle was empty. It had contained the medicine for childbirth fever.

  Every time Karl Oskar moved on his chair he was conscious of a fatigue from his long lack of sleep which threatened to close his eyes.

  Suddenly Kristina put out her hand and fumbled for support.

  “I’m falling! Hold onto me!”

  “Don’t be afraid—you’re safe in your bed.”

  But her fingers clasped his anxiously.

  “The thong! The swing! I’m falling out!”

  “It’s all right. Nothing to be afraid of . . .”

  “Karl Oskar! Please . . . hold me . . . hold . . . !”

  She tried to raise herself in the bed. He took her by the shoulders, helped her to lie down again, and comforted her.

  —2—

  Once again Kristina is thrown by the swing she has made of the ox thong in the barn at home in Duvemåla.

  She swings from floor to ceiling, from ceiling to floor again. She rides up and down in the thong, she feels dizzy and cries out in fear and joy. She is playful and giddy and happy, like other young girls. She skips lightly on her feet, she plays and carries on and enjoys herself while youth is still in her body. Soon enough she will grow old and heavy on her feet, and then she can no longer ride a swing.

  But she is thrown high, so high—far, far away from her father’s barn. Frightened to the bottom of her heart she looks about and does not recognize her surroundings. She is not swinging in the ox thong any more, she is on a ship, sailing on a great water, and on that ship she is thrown up and down through the air. She is on an ocean with high waves, and the waves lift her heavenward and lower her into the depths. She flies through the air, she is flung into the black abyss, she is dizzy again and cries out. But she is entirely alone out on the sea, no one hears her cries, no one answers her, no one comes to help her.

  Where is Karl Oskar? Why doesn’t he hear? Why doesn’t he come and help her away from here? What’s she doing here on a ship anyway? Why did she go to the sea?

  It was Karl Oskar who wanted it. She must go with him, he didn’t give up until she promised. She didn’t want to, but a wife must do what her husband wants.

  The swing slows down, and she gets off again. She is a wife, a mother, a woman who bears children. She has returned from her journey. She is already old. Karl Oskar and she have been married for many years, and she is a tired and aged woman. She’ll never be able to swing in the barn again. She has been through man
y childbeds, she has borne living children and dead. Once she carried a child without life in it which Karl Oskar buried somewhere out in the woods, she doesn’t know where.

  But now once more she must go through it, one childbed more, but only one more. She will survive her tenth childbed. And then . . . !

  Then—oh, then she’ll rest, rest till she gets rid of her immense tiredness. To lie still, sleep! To sink down in wonderful, sweet sleep! If she only could rest all she wished, then she would get well again. Then she would pull through. There is no cure for her other than this: sleep, sleep!

  —3—

  For a long time she had been in a coma but kept her hand about his fingers. He had been sitting without making any motion. Consciousness left her one moment and came back the next, but for three days it had not been with her long enough for him to talk to her as he had wished. There was something very important he wanted to tell his wife, something he wanted to ask her. During all the time he had been watching at her bed he had had the words on his tongue, in his thoughts he had spoken them innumerable times, mumbled them to himself, whispered them, stammered them:

  Don’t die and leave me! Stay with me yet!

  It was she herself he wanted to ask. Unlike Kristina he could not ask another One.

  Beads of perspiration appeared on her fever-sick forehead, and he dried them as lightly, as gently as he could. But she felt his touch and opened her eyes. She spoke as if short of breath:

  “You’re here, Karl Oskar . . . ?”

  “I guess I woke you.”

  “I fainted away. Did I cry some . . . ?”

  “Not a sound.”

  “I have no pain any more.”

  “But you’re weak.”

  “I’ll pull through. All I need is enough sleep.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Don’t worry! But you must need some sleep yourself, Karl Oskar!”

  “Forget about me!”

  “You’re black under the eyes. You’ve been up watching me. You’ve worn yourself out!”

  “It’s nothing.”

  She was short of breath from her effort to speak. The movements under the blanket increased.

  When her fast breathing subsided somewhat, she resumed:

  “I am really better!”

  “Truly, Kristina?”

  “Yes. You needn’t watch over me any more. Tonight you can sleep.”

  Karl Oskar blinked as if he had something in his eyes. He swallowed hard a few times as he looked intently at his wife in the bed.

  “Remember: Tonight you can sleep!”

  The noise of fluttering wings was heard again from the apple tree outside the window. Karl Oskar looked out. A bird was sitting on a branch, pecking at an apple. The Astrakhan apples were soft and juicy, and the birds went after them greedily.

  Often this summer Kristina had felt the apples with her fingers and wondered: When will they be ripe? If the birds now were after them they must be ready to eat.

  Karl Oskar rose and went out. He walked to the tree and from one of the lowest branches he picked a large, beautiful apple. He could feel it was soft, it must be ripe. It was still moist from the morning dew; through the skin he could see the juicy meat.

  He went inside and put the big apple on the blanket before Kristina. “Look—your Astrakhans are ripe!”

  Her fever-inflamed eyes looked at the fruit; they stared at it as if she hadn’t understood what he meant.

  “You must taste our first apple, Kristina!”

  He put it in her hand and she held it.

  “It’s the first from your tree, Kristina!”

  The sick woman did not understand; she couldn’t grasp that she held an apple in her hand. She moved it slowly toward her mouth, as if curious as to what she held in her fingers. Her lips touched the clear, dew-washed fruit. The transparent skin was like the tender skin of a small child.

  She did not bite into the apple, but only caressed it with her lips.

  “Aren’t you able to taste it?”

  “Yes, yes. It feels soft . . .”

  “It’s ripe and juicy.”

  “It smells good.” She stared at the apple in her hand.

  “Can’t you take one bite?” He added, encouragingly, “Astrakhans have a fresh taste.”

  Kristina moved the apple toward her teeth and bit off a very small piece. The juice moistened the corners of her mouth.

  “Where did you get it, Karl Oskar . . . ?”

  “From your tree out there, of course! The first one picked from that tree!”

  Kristina did not swallow the piece she had bit off. She still looked in wonder at the fruit.

  “I guess you aren’t strong enough to eat it?”

  “Oh yes, I’ll eat it . . .”

  At last she seemed to understand: “Now I can see—it’s an Astrakhan . . . !”

  And her voice vibrated at the discovery she had made.

  “I recognize it now! It tastes like our apples! Our apples at home!”

  Again she moved it to her mouth. But her teeth did not bite into it again, only her lips parted.

  Suddenly the mouth grew stiff, the lower jaw stopped in an attempted motion. The eyelids twitched and the whites became enlarged. Her breath was drawn out while the voice grew even weaker. “I recognize it . . . our Astrakhans are ripe . . .”

  Then there came only a soft sigh as she breathed out:

  “Our apples are ripe. I’m home . . .”

  There was a spasm in her arms, then they lay still and the hand’s hold on the fruit loosened. The big apple rolled slowly down the slope of the blanket and fell with a thud on the floor near the bed.

  Karl Oskar bent down and picked it up; he put it back in his wife’s open hand.

  But this time she did not take it, her fingers did not grasp it, her hand did not close around it. Kristina’s hand lay still and open on the blanket, and the apple fell for a second time to the floor.

  Karl Oskar looked at it and rose with a start. He bent over his wife and saw the blanket over her chest rise slowly and sink down just as slowly. Then it did not rise again. The movement was not repeated.

  “Kristina!” he cried out. “Stay with . . . !”

  Karl Oskar stood bent over his wife. Her eyes were half-open, and the whites glittered in their rigidity. The blanket over her chest did not rise again. No movement was visible in her—in her eyes, in her chest, in her limbs, nowhere in her body. The light in her eyes was extinguished and no breath flowed from her mouth.

  In one corner of her mouth the little apple bite remained.

  Karl Oskar stood as rigid as stone for a long time, staring into her unseeing eyes, listening for her lost breath. Only this moment she had tasted an apple—it was incomprehensible to him that she no longer saw him and that her breath didn’t come back.

  XVI

  THE THIRD COFFIN

  In the old log cabin where the family had lived during their first years as settlers there now shone a night light. This cabin had been built to serve as a home but after the completion of the new house it had been used as a workshop. A large carpenter’s bench stood against one wall. Now a man stood at the bench and worked in the light of a candle lantern which hung from a beam in the ceiling; he was making a coffin for his wife.

  To him fell a task which could not be delayed and which he must complete during the night. Hurriedly, untiring, his plane moved over the wood, as he smoothed boards that had been cut from oak timber. But the boards had been intended for another use. They had been sawed and stacked for the building of a house. They were meant for a new main house that he would build, but now they must be used for another purpose. The oak boards would not form the walls of a house where he and his wife would live out their lives. Of the boards he built instead her home after death.

  Earlier he had built houses and homes for himself and his wife for life’s time which in fleeting years would pass by, but the room he now built was for the time of death, which had no e
nd. In this house she would stay.

  Many times he had said to her: Next time I build . . .

  That time had come. But now he built only for her.

  The plane moved its even path back and forth over the board and spewed out long shavings which coiled like white snakes on the floor. The light from the candle in the lantern above the carpenter’s head fell in a circle over the bench and lit him in his work with its fluttering rays. Round about him in the cabin were dim shadows. On the walls skins of animals had been nailed up to dry; shrouds that had belonged to four-legged beings hung there, limbs outstretched, as if crucified.

  The plane dug and bit with its sharp iron tooth and tore shavings from the board. The shavings gathered in piles, coiled around his wrists, and rustled under his feet. The oak board was prime timber, hard under the plane, first class. It was white oak—no timber existed that lasted longer, no wood was better suited to wall a permanent resting place.

  Twice before in his life the man at the workbench had made coffins. The first he had made in his homeland for a daughter who from hunger had eaten herself to death. That time he had stood out in a woodshed and worked. That time he was still a beginner in the carpenter’s handicraft, his hands unused to plane and hammer, and he had had poor lumber for the coffin: only old boards, knotty and badly sawed, cracked and warped. He had chosen and discarded—very little had been needed for the girl’s coffin. She had died early in life, when she was only four years old. It had not required many boards to enclose that little body. But he had sought out the clear and knot-free ones, he had chosen the finest planks he could find.

  It had been difficult for him that time, for his plane was dull and unsharpened, the hammerhead flew off, refusing to stay on its handle, and it had been his first coffin, his journeyman effort.