When I Was a Child: An Autobiographical Novel

Chapter XVIII

There were only three weeks left before his ship would sail. A ticket had been ordered from the White Star Line agent. Valter had not written his brothers or his sister to ask for help; as they hadn’t offered, he wouldn’t ask. He wanted to show them that he could emigrate with his own money. The America-journey would be entirely his own doing. To his mother he had said nothing as yet. There was always the possibility that he would never return. The Lusitania had been sunk—who knew what might happen to his ship? Perhaps he would never again tramp the hills round Trångadal. And he began to view things with a perhaps-the-lasttime look. The thickets where the birds built their nests, the clear springs under the spruces, the meadows with their ancient oaks, the groves with their ever trembling aspens, the black pools of the moor where he and Gunnar had thrown out their net for pike. Perhaps he would miss all this in the New World. On Sundays he visited with neighbors in the cottages—some of the old people, intimately connected with his childhood, whom he wished to see once more. He did not tell them that he had come to  chapter xviii =' 18chap18_Layout 1 11/22/2013 12:34 Page 255  When I Was a Child say good-by; he would not mention his America-plans until the ticket had arrived and he had fetched his papers from the minister. Carpenter-Elof had been closely associated with his father’s death; he it was who had heard Father’s last words: “I’m not sad any longer.” Ever since that day Valter had held the old man in shy reverence. Now Elof suffered with rheumatism and could not leave his chair by himself. There he sat with the closed-in smell of his poverty-cottage, patient, gentle, sustaining his life on milk and potatoes and a big herring for holidays; he was beyond all desires for more tasty things—all else was worldly. The daughter attending him was nasty, ill-tempered, nagging, but nothing touched him: he did not hear evil words. He had a persistent ache in his back and limbs, but he did not complain: that was all worldly. He could see far beyond the ephemeral, transient life on this earth. In his silent patience he sat there and waited for God to take him to His heaven. The old man was worthy of respect. He had never hurt a single creature in this world. And perhaps he was right in believing that a Higher Being existed, someone who could be called God as well as by any other name. But Elof was not aware of his own poverty, or of the wretchedness of his neighbor cotters. If all workers were like old Elof, then the poor would always remain poor—forever they would live in poverty and wretchedness. Carpenter-Elof furthered the interests of the clergy and the upper-class: their theme was to dissuade the workers from seeking the good of this world and instead accumulate riches for the world hereafter; the riches of this world they wanted to keep for themselves. Shoemaker-Janne was still busy at his calling. He stood by his cottage wall and whittled his wooden shoes from alder logs, week days and holidays. Janne had never become entirely insensible to worldly success, and he refused to view his existence only as a 18chap18_Layout 1 11/22/2013 12:34 Page 256 c ha p t e r xv i i i  preparation for eternity. He loved the snuff in his box, and hated the new wooden shoes from Skåne which had begun to appear in the neighborhood and threatened competition with his own. He spoke degradingly about these “foreign” shoes that caused blisters on the instep and generally ruined people’s feet. He wondered if Valter’s local could do anything to help him fight the “Skånings.” Janne was remarkably healthy, except for a bladder ailment that attacked him in spring and fall when he wore old torn pants that allowed the cold wind free access to his groin. For fifty years Janne had taken care of the cotters’ feet. In his wooden shoes they had tramped at their daily labor, in his shoes they had trudged to and from their heavy work. Many...