The Last Letter Home by Vilhelm Moberg Page B

thought they were her periods coming at an unexpected time and had paid no attention to them. She had also had pains low down in her abdomen. She still had these—they came and went.
    Karl Oskar looked up, startled: “What’s that you say? You’ve never mentioned that to me!”
    “I didn’t think it was worth mentioning.”
    “How long have you suffered with it?”
    “This last year.”
    “This whole year?” He looked in consternation at his wife. “Why haven’t you told me?”
    “I didn’t think much of it.”
    “If you ache inside, then something is wrong.”
    “Karl Oskar is right!” interrupted Ulrika. “You shouldn’t have kept it to yourself!”
    “Well, maybe not. But you can’t go around and complain every time you feel a little pain.”
    “But it’s not right to have a sickness and not seek a remedy against it!”
    “Not right?” Kristina looked at her. “You mean I have sinned with it?”
    “Yes, you have, because God wants people to take care of their health.”
    Both Karl Oskar and Ulrika reproached her for having kept her sickness secret. Then all three of them were silent for a few minutes. The only sound was the crackling of the fire as great flames enveloped the dry wood. Karl Oskar kept stroking his thighs in great concern. A spark from the fire hit his cheek and left a red mark but he didn’t seem aware of it.
    He only felt this: Something must be done immediately about Kristina.
    Ulrika said, “You must get your wife to a doctor, Karl Oskar!”
    “That was my first thought when I heard what she said a while ago.”
    “It might be something dangerous in the womb!”
    “It’ll pass,” said Kristina. “I don’t think I need a doctor.”
    Ulrika took her hand imploringly: “You’ve lost a lot of blood! It can’t go on like this! You’ll ruin yourself! You must see a medical man!”
    Kristina had never in her life been to a doctor. She had heard that doctors treated people horribly, using evil instruments when they looked for ailments in the body. And now her sickness was in a part of the body which a woman would be embarrassed to bare.
    Karl Oskar asked Ulrika: There were doctors in St. Paul and Stillwater—where should he take Kristina?
    “We have a new one in Stillwater, Dr. Farnley. I’ve gone to this medical man myself!”
    “Is he better than the old one?”
    “Much better!”
    Cristoffer Caldwell, the old doctor in Stillwater, was also a carpenter and blacksmith, Ulrika said. Caldwell made sturdy tables and benches and no one could shoe a horse better than he. But he was not the right man to handle sick people, for his hands were big and rough and he had some ailment of his own that could only be cured with whiskey. Dr. Caldwell was really a drunkard and he stank of liquor yards away. But Farnley, the new one, was no self-made doctor like Caldwell. He had gone through certified schools and had big thick books piled up along the walls of his room. She had gone to him last spring when she scalded her right knee while cooking syrup. He had been so gentle with her—he had put ointment on her wound and bandaged it as carefully as if he had been swaddling a newborn babe. He didn’t have those sledgehammer hands like Caldwell, his hands were soft and clean, he didn’t use them to sharpen scythes and shoe horses. She had never imagined a strong, husky man could handle a woman’s sore knee so carefully and tenderly. And because the new doctor was so tender—and for no other reason—she had gone to him many more times than she really needed to and let him rebandage her knee.
    “You must take Kristina to Dr. Farnley,” concluded Ulrika. “I’ll go with her and interpret for her!”
    Karl Oskar replied that there would be no delay in that journey. As soon as he put the new iron runners on his sled they would drive to Stillwater.
    “But I don’t want to go to any doctor!” said Kristina with determination, and stood up. She went to the kitchen to put on their