Unto a Good Land by Vilhelm Moberg Read Free Book Online Page A

desire to see this terrifying ocean, never again would her feet leave solid ground.
    She felt thirsty, her tongue was parched, and her appetite was returning now that she was on land; she must eat well now that she had one more life to feed.
    She put her hand against her abdomen: again she could feel the stirring within her. Many days had passed since the last time she felt the child move, and she had begun to wonder if it still could be alive. It would not have seemed strange to her had it died, so ill and weak she had been from seasickness and scurvy. A joy filled her as she now felt it stir: once having conceived a child, she wished to bear it alive; a stillborn child was a shame and God’s chastisement—the woman was not worthy to carry into the world the life He had created within her.
    When was it due? She counted the months on her fingers: she had conceived it sometime in the middle of February—March, April, May, June—she was already in her fifth month. July, August, September, October, November—her childbed would be sometime in the middle of November.
    About half the time left until she was in childbed. Would they have a bed by then, a bed in which she could bear her child?
    The child was alive. A life that had traveled free across the ocean had come into the land. It stirred and moved in its hidden nest, stronger than the mother had felt it before. Not only had she herself come to life again, the child within her seemed to have gained new life, now that she had carried it into the New World.
    —3—
    “Are you asleep, Kristina?”
    She had dozed off. Karl Oskar stood by her side, wiping his sweaty face with his jacket sleeve.
    “What a heat! They can fry bacon on the roofs here!” He took off his wadmal coat and threw it on the ground. Johan and Lill-Märta came rushing to their mother.
    “Guess, Mother! Father has bought something!”
    “Guess what Father bought!”
    In one hand Karl Oskar carried a paper bag, in the other their own large pitcher. He held up the bag to Kristina’s nose. “You want to smell something?”
    “Look in the bag, Mother!” shouted Johan. “Father has bought sweet milk and wheat bread!”
    “Sweet milk and wheat bread!” Lill-Märta repeated after him.
    Kristina inhaled a pleasing odor which she had not smelled for a long time. She stuck her hand into the bag and got hold of something soft: fresh, white rolls, wheat rolls!
    “Karl Oskar—it isn’t true.”
    “Look in the pitcher!”
    “Mother! It’s sweet milk!” shouted Johan.
    Karl Oskar held up the pitcher, so full of milk that it splashed over.
    “Be careful. Don’t lose any,” she warned.
    “Now you must eat and drink, Kristina.”
    “Karl Oskar, I don’t believe my eyes. How could you buy it?”
    “The Finn helped me. Eat and drink now. We have already had some.”
    Sweet milk! Fresh milk! When had she last tasted it? Not one drop had they been able to obtain on the ship. It was in their quarters in Karlshamn that she had tasted milk last time; long, long ago, in another world, in the Old World.
    Kristina took hold of the pitcher with both hands, carefully; she mustn’t let it splash over. Tears came to her eyes; she had to see what milk looked like, she had forgotten. This milk was yellow-white, thick and rich; no spoon had skimmed off the cream; and it smelled as fresh as if it had just been milked into this pitcher.
    Karl Oskar opened the knapsack and took out a tin mug which he filled with milk from the pitcher. “Drink—as much as you are able to. You need it to get well.”
    Kristina held the mug. “But the children? Have they had enough?”
    No mother could begin to eat and drink before her children had been given food and drink. But Karl Oskar told her that Johan and Lill-Märta had eaten themselves full and drunk until their thirst was quenched back there at the store where he had bought the food.
    Kristina drank. She emptied the mug in a few swallows, and Karl Oskar filled it again; she