The Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg Page B

too because of the drought. Such an opinion did not seem reasonable, as part of the blame might be laid on the bull. But Karl Oskar said that his neighbor, Jonas Petter of Hästebäck, was also unable to get his cows with calf because of the heat.
    One night toward the end of August Kristina was awakened by a great thunder. She was afraid of storms and she called her husband.
    Karl Oskar sat up in bed and listened. It rumbled and thundered, and lightning flashed past the window. Shirt-clad only, he ran to stand on the porch, hands outstretched. An occasional fat raindrop fell; once it began there would be heavy showers. He could go back to bed and sleep again in the blissful knowledge that there would be rain.
    He returned inside. Kristina was comforting the children, awake and frightened by the lightning and thunder.
    Anna, the oldest child, was now in her fourth year and all were of the opinion that she had a mind far ahead of her years. She was wont to follow Karl Oskar in his work outside, close to him everywhere; if he drove or walked, the child was with him. He called her his big helper. Wise as an eight-year-old, he said.
    The thunder boomed again, and Anna asked: “Will the lightning kill us tonight, Mother?”
    “No! What nonsense! Who has given you such an idea?”
    “Father. He said we are to die—all of us.”
    “Yes, yes, but not tonight.”
    “When will we die, Mother?”
    “No one knows, no one except God. Go back to sleep now!”
    And Kristina’s eyes turned questioningly to Karl Oskar: What had he said to the child? He smiled and explained. When he had gone with Anna through the pastures recently they had found a dead baby rabbit, and then she had asked if they were to become like the rabbit, if they were all to die. He had replied in the affirmative. He could not lie about such things to a child. But ever after the girl asked whomsoever she met when they were to die. The other day she had embarrassed her grandmother with the same question. He had had to assure his mother that the question was the child’s own idea. She was a strange child, Anna.
    Karl Oskar was very proud of this daughter, his big girl.
    A clap of thunder sounded, louder than before, and the lightning pierced their eyes, sharp and blinding.
    Kristina let out a shriek.
    “Did it strike?”
    “If so, it was near.”
    But the heavy rain was slow in coming; only an occasional few drops smote the windowpanes. Karl Oskar could not help the rain to fall, and he went back to bed. Before he was asleep the window was again brilliant, with a new light; but this time it was not lightning cutting through the dark and disappearing. This time the light remained, mobile and flickering.
    The young farmer leapt up.
    “There is a fire!”
    “My dear God!”
    “It’s burning somewhere!”
    As Karl Oskar reached the window he could see that the light came from the hay meadow.
    “The meadow barn! The meadow barn has caught on fire!”
    He ran outside, only half dressed, followed by his wife. By now Nils and Märta also had awakened in their room, and Kristina called to them to look after the children.
    Karl Oskar ran to the well where two water buckets stood filled from the forest spring; he thrust one bucket at his wife and they rushed down the meadow with a pail each in their hands. The water splashed to and fro, and when they arrived at the burning hay barn hardly more than half of it was left. Nor did it matter; the fire by now had reached such proportions that a couple of buckets of water would be of no help. The whole barn was burning, flames leaping high from the dry shingled roof which went up like tinder. A fierce, voracious lightning-fire was burning, and it had found delicious fare: an old dry barn filled with the harvested hay.
    The owners of the hay barn—the young farm couple—approached the fire as closely as they could for the heat. They stood there, water pails in their hands, and watched the fire; they just stood and watched,