The Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg Page A

know that God would not allow mockery. Frightened, she looked toward the sky as if she expected that the presumptuous one would receive his punishment immediately.
    “May God forgive you! May God forgive what you did!”
    Karl Oskar did not answer. Silently he began to rake together a new swath. He had indeed learned God’s commandments, he knew the Lord endured no mockery, and he felt a pang within him. He had lost his temper, the gesture with the hay would have been better undone, those words should not have been uttered.
    The clear words of the Bible proclaimed that man on earth should eat his bread in the sweat of his brow; he asked no better than to be allowed to do this. But as he gave his sweat, so would he like also to receive in return the bread. He did not think it too much to ask that all might happen according to God’s own words.
    In silence they continued to harvest their hay. But the meadow hay barn which in good years was too small was this year not half filled.
    The drought continued.
    Their well dried up and the people in Korpamoen carried water from an old spring in the forest. Hungry and thirsty, the cattle stood all day long at the stile, lowing plaintively. The fields were scorched as if fire had passed over them. In the beginning of August the birches turned yellow and began to lose their leaves. The summer had never had time to bloom and ripen before the autumn set in; this summer had died in its youth.
    Karl Oskar had a stiff neck from looking for rain clouds. At times clouds did appear, dry clouds, empty smoke rings that passed across the heavens, visions of deceit, a cruel mockery. A few tiny scattered drops fell at times; they were like scorn.
    The rye stood overripe, the grains ready to drop from the heads. At the cutting they must be careful not to lose some of the invaluable kernels. Karl Oskar and Kristina brought the quilted bedcover with them into the field, and spread it on the stubble before the swath of the scythe. They moved the quilt gradually, for the cut straws to fall on it and remain there while being tied into sheaves. Thus grains which might fall from the heads were collected on the quilt and saved. From the ground Kristina gleaned the broken heads, gathering them in her apron; when evening came they had collected in the cover a tenth of a bushel of the drop-rye, sufficient for a few loaves of bread. The rye field yielded only a third of its usual crop in this year of drought: what would one loaf of bread count when winter came?
    Kristina tied the corners of the quilt into a sack and carried it home under her arm. Four years ago it had been her bridal spread, her cover during the first night with her mate, when she was transformed from maid to wife. Now the bridal cover was with them in their field and helped to garner their bread; it belonged closely to their lives.
    Kristina thought: Four years ago, when this cover was new, Karl Oskar had more to say to me. Why is he nowadays so silent? She mused: Now he spoke mostly of work to be done; in the morning about what must be done that day, in the evening about tomorrow’s work. And at least once a day either he or she said: Still no rain!
    During this summer all people, it seemed, had become serious and sullen and short-tempered; the weather affected their minds. Talk was about the dire winter ahead, as though no one had a right to be joyous now because of the crop failure. Not even children dared show happiness: when a child laughed some older person at hand spoke harshly and silenced it. And all continued to speak of this: What would happen next winter?
    Karl Oskar blamed everything on the drought. When he returned empty-handed from a day in the woods with gun and dog, this was because of the dried-up ground: the dog could get no scent of game. When he pulled nets and lines empty from the tarn, he blamed this on the drought: heat drove the fish into the depths. And three times he had brought a cow to the bull with no result: this