18 New friends of novel fortune
There were only two other Icelandic families in West Duluth, the Halsons, and certainly they were odd enough to arouse any one’s interest. Two brothers, as different as day from night, had married women of whom the same might be said without a figment of exaggeration. The elder brother, whom I shall call John, was a solemn priestly individual, who discovered too late that the Lord intended him for scholarly pursuits and not common ordinary labour. Much too late, one might say, for by now he was saddled with four hearty youngsters and a stout maternal spouse, whose natural destiny had nothing to do with books. John, unlike lesser men, however, had managed to strike a satisfactory compromise with his fortune. He had completely converted his little hostages and his big wife to an utter and passionate belief in his god-like qualities. Papa was much too good to sacrifice himself to crude labour. He had withdrawn from the rigours of life, and sat from dawn till dark in the warmest room in the house, surrounded by stacks of papers, magazines, and tattered, paper-bound books that lined the walls almost to the ceiling. ‘The lazy creature has made a perfect firetrap of that dump!’ my aunt announced unfeelingly, but with wisdom, as was soon to be seen.
Master John had another accomplishment. He played the organ, and so, of course, somehow or other, the family had scraped up money to buy him a little folding instrument, which was only used on Sundays and for family prayers. For John was as religious as he was learned—his head as full of salvation as it was overflowing with ill-assorted bits of information on all sorts of useless subjects. But what did that matter? Papa John was an oracle to whom the whole family looked with humble, adoring respect. They lived only to please him. The children hunted odd jobs, my aunt rustled up clothing to cover them, and the various hotels in the city gave them scraps of food.
Every evening Julie, the second daughter, or Johnnie, the only son, started off with a basket to gather up these scraps. Emma, the eldest daughter, was never subjected to these humiliations, because it was recognized by every one that she took after papa. She must be brought up like a lady, and therefore sat at home doing fancy work and assisting mamma in seeing to papa’s comfort. There was talk of letting her attend a business college whenever the money should be found, and the inference was that my aunt would one day realize what an exceptional deed of virtue such an act would be.
A crazy household, some said, but, for all their queer ways, they were a kindly lot, and their poor cluttered four-room house breathed genuine goodwill and affection. There was not a mean streak in any one of them, nor was it ever known that harsh words passed between them. Of course, Mr. Halson poked out his head from that holy-of-holies now and then if the youngsters got too noisy, and, like Moses on Mount Sinai, reminded his progeny that life was a serious affair—had they not better see to their lessons, the empty baskets, or the wood-pile?
Sunday was unique in that house. No matter if they ate scraps all week, on this Holy Day dedicated to God and papa there must always be hot chocolate and cakes after prayers, and every one must observe the sanctified proprieties. No smuggy faces, no wrinkled stockings, not a hair out of place. Even the patches on Johnnie’s pants seemed to efface themselves and piously merge with the original cloth of the sabbath garment.
Since both Johnnie and the youngest girl were near my own age, I was eagerly invited to join these solemn Sunday festivals. I surmise that Mr. Halson, knowing my father through his journalism, was really concerned with my spiritual health, and quite possibly thought to snatch me, a brand from the burning, by the power of these blessed moments under his pious roof-tree. How little he guessed the depths of my sin! How shocked he would have been to know that Fia, his dearest baby, and I, had a sort of sign language by which we communicated our restless thoughts to one another while we sat, meek as lambs, on the hard benches that served for chairs, waiting for the inspired prophet to be done with his sermon. On and on and on rolled the sonorous voice, unfolding the plan of salvation and the dark destiny of sinners. Writhing on our little sterns, Fia and I shaded our faces from the wrathful light of papa’s transfixed countenance, and, under cover of hot little palms, mouthed a hope that the end was in sight—that soon we might escape to the creek in search of minnows, for which we had a passion, or up into the hills, where luscious patches of sauerkraut grass offered a delicious forbidden diet.
Yes, now the final stretch was come. ‘Let us join in solemn prayer,’ boomed Mr. Halson. ‘Let us bare our sins to the Father of Mercies, whose wrath is terrible, but His patience longsuffering.’ So down we scrambled to our knees, Mrs. Halson audibly creaking in every joint, and puffing like a weary camel as she settled her billowing petticoats neatly about her kneeling, corpulent form. An incense of sins floated up to the Almighty, sins of the flesh and sins of the mind and sins of the spirit, all properly seasoned with the spice of poetic humility. And not until we lay there exposed in all our variegated iniquity, not so much as a fig-leaf of vanity left to cloth us, were we permitted to rise and join in a gloomy hymn.
That final ordeal ended, Mr. Halson rose from the organ stool and beamed upon the sinners, who, in turn, beamed back, like so many little starlets suddenly freed from a smothering cloudbank. Mamma Halson, glowing with pride, hurried forward to kiss the head of the house for his dear devotion, and then scurried into the kitchen, where chocolate was simmering in a black iron kettle at the back of the stove. All the young sinners followed suit. ‘Thank you, dear papa! Thank you, dearest papa! Thank you, darling papa!’ they murmured, and were solemnly kissed in return. No doubt I should have kissed the good man also, for he always waited patiently for my lame little gesture, for my limp little paw that hypocritically expressed the thanks I did not feel. Then, too, I was always in mortal terror lest Mr. Halson, who towered over us in the awful dignity of his Sunday vestments, should address me in particular, and require an honest answer. From this nightmare I was always rescued, however, by the joyous voice of Mrs. Halson calling from the kitchen: ‘Come, my dear ones, be so good as to partake of a little refreshment!’
Dear Mrs. Halson! How she gloried in that humble hospitality. How eagerly she filled the cracked cups with her thick, sweetened chocolate, smiling as a summer moon upon the harvest of love’s labour. Not one cup, but two, we must have, and all the cake and cookies—made from the same batch with very little shortening—that our stomachs could hold. To refuse a second helping would have been a reflection, not only upon her cooking, but upon the goodness of her deeply maternal heart. All the week long she waited for this blessed moment—for the unspeakable joy of pouring out the best she had for those she loved, and whosoever these previous ones called friends. In her patched alpaca and spotless white apron, she stook at the head of the long table—which was made of pine boards on trestles, and covered with oilcloth and a centrepiece of cotton, embroidered by Emma—swelling with innocent rapture, waiting for her tithe of thanks, which was willingly forthcoming when we youngsters filed from the board and kissed her moist, smiling face. Yes, even the high-minded master soberly kissed his kindly wife, giving her a little pat on her thick, stooping shoulders.
The other Halson household was not presided over by the mistress, but by her spinster sister-in-law, a small immaculate female, as crisp as a baker’s bun. The mistress was a semi-invalid, a thin little woman, with a great wealth of hair which she wore in braids down her back, and who limped about on a crutch, swinging her withered limb with a jerky, side-wise motion that gave her the air of a sloop tacking before the wind. She was an intelligent woman, given to reading and needlework, and was always very cheerful, as perhaps she had cause to be, since both her husband and his maiden sister looked upon her as a delicate trust. Her husband, Einar Halson, was a short, apologetic person, of whom I remember nothing except his shy affection for the invalid, and that he had a bristling moustache which struggled vainly to impress masculine virility upon an otherwise hairless and extremely meek countenance.
Gossip waxed fat on this second household also. Mrs. Halson was only half a wife, it was said—a statement which at that time I understood as applying to her withered leg. She had peculiar haemorrhages, which were spoken of in horrified whispers as a perversion of nature, for the lady was not consumptive, but had suffered this periodic distress every month since puberty. But, although Icelanders have no mock modesty about the human body and its functions, I was not much enlightened on the mystery, even when I overheard Stina, our Gossip (of whom more later), exclaim sympathetically: ‘Poor creature! It’s a cross the Good God laid on her for sure. The devil knows it’s bad enough to be a woman when your insides work the right way round!’
Naturally, I was fascinated by Jorun Halson after that. On the few occasions when she paid us a visit, swinging down the narrow sidewalk with her swift, uneven gait, her neat black dress flapping against the clumsy crutch, the sun picking out the soft gold of her beautiful plaits of hair, I was all agog with excitement. Would the lady’s insides maintain equilibrium or would they take this unhappy opportunity to display the curse of God? Would this ethereal being, whose habits were such a mystery, fix upon this moment to ‘give up the ghost,’ as Stina predicted that she might do without warning, ‘between two breaths?’
Sometimes the sister-in-law, Helga, came with the invalid, and, by her tough brittleness, defeated my earnest hope. She was so attentive, so watchful, so practical, with her quick attention upon draughts, and her hand ever ready with a shawl for the tender shoulder of her charge, that even I understood that Death himself would have a tussle to steal away her beloved. Nothing would happen between the two breaths unless Helga had her head turned the other way! These visits had their own tang, none the less. Mrs. Halson was delightful to look at as she sat with her little white hands folded in her lap, the profile of her delicate face traced against the sunlit window-pane, her whispering voice filling the room with an illusion of ghostly charm. For her talk was more often of marvellous dreams and forebodings than of everyday matters: of a misty borderland, where the spirits of men departed yet fettered to earth by ties of love or hate, mingled with the souls of questing dreamers. Nor was it difficult to imagine how readily the eager spirit, looking out from her clear blue eyes, would seek some such finer world, where the ills of the flesh neither stay nor hamper the flying wings of yearning. Her speech was gentle, all her manner restrained and resigned, yet even to a child, it was manifest that the undertow of her thoughts were fierce and earnest. Life had cheated her, but death would be kinder. In that far green land whose bounds were illimitable and eternal, the God of the Meek and Lowly would fully compensate each broken hope. Over the bitter coffee drunk to the accompaniment of this Elysian murmur, I found myself catching hold of the garments of Prophecy and soaring to fanciful heights. For I, too, dreamed dreams—was it because my own insides were ill assorted?—and who should say that I might not one day have visions, see the shining hosts that sing before God’s face, and count the wheeling planets that form His living rosary? Who should gainsay that flaming possibility, when little Mrs. Halson, who was scarcely a whole woman and only half a wife, spoke so unerringly of the winged powers of the deathless spirit?
Very different from the ethereal Mrs. Halson was Stina Olson, who became a devoted friend to the family. She was a woman with a past! Hard though it was to believe it, when one studied her unprepossessing person, she had had a lover, of whom gossip said he was handsome, years younger than herself, and quite a dandy. What puzzled me still more was the added information that this lover was none other than the son of my dignified homeopathic doctor. How any one so scrupulously well behaved could have a scapegrace for a son struck me as a most unrighteous state of affairs. God was much too free with his afflictions, that I perceived, and shuddered in my bones.
Stina had worked for the old man, so it was said, and what could you expect of a spinster whose charms were flitting away as rapidly as a witch on a broomstick, when she suddenly found herself alone in the house with a fledgeling male as full of hungry curiosity as a mouse in a cupboard? No one was the least surprised, unless it was Stina herself, when the curse of Eve came upon her. But at that there were no tears. Stina was gaunt, almost toothless, and her hair was colourless as dried straw, but the springs of her heart were rich in humour and goodwill. What was a baby to growl about anyway? Goodness knows she hadn’t expected so much of life. Without the least rancour she betook herself to other quarters and cheerfully waited the blessed event. She was well rewarded. The baby was a beautiful child—a dear son who never was to cause her a day’s uneasiness. And she loved him as fiercely as only such a derelict can love.
Now she had drifted to Duluth, and if you please, had got herself a husband. A little bantam of a man, a perfect pepper-pot, always spilling over with indignation at the injustices of the social order. ‘I’m a union man!’ he would shout, ‘I’m a socialist—ja, let them fire me, the dirty rapscallions! I stay by the union and starve, God help me!’
Fired he was, from job after job, and not always because of his devotion to justice. He had a weakness for the bottle that equalled his passion for the rights of man. ‘Ja, well, I have to drown my grief like a hero. I have to bear up somehow,’ said Sam, and shook his round head that was thatched with black and white patches of tenderly nursed hair. ‘Sure, and what else,’ Stina agreed cheerfully. ‘It’s a queer world, and that’s a fact. Now try a bite of herring for your health’s sake.’
So Sam continued to drown his grief periodically, never offensively, you understand, for he was a tidy little mortal with every pinfeather always neatly in place, and his peppery crowing was entirely without malice. Stina kept the pot boiling by one means or another. Sometimes she lent a hand house-cleaning or washing, but when we met her she was mothering another rudderless soul, a huge dock-worker whose past was one long friendless buffeting. If he had a surname I never knew it. Every one called him Big Tom, and big he certainly was, a mountainous creature who shuffled through the world in melancholy isolation. He rarely spoke, and what few words he uttered were monosyllables half whispered from the corner of his mouth. He gave the unhappy impression of always having existed on sufferance, and to be patiently waiting the next swift kick of fortune. Sometimes, when Stina was waiting at table, hovering over him with kindly anxiety, a sort of paroxysm would twist his rugged face, as though he were about to cry, so strange it seemed that any one should take the least thought for his comfort. Still, he never thanked her, unless these surprising grimaces and the dog-like devotion of his eyes, were meant for thanks. But on payday, when he came home from the docks, reeking with sweat and black as Satan, he dumbly handed out his board money the moment he crossed the threshold. ‘Ja, sure, it is enough to make you weep,’ Stina told my mother, weaving to and fro on her nervous feet. ‘Out comes the money like I was waiting there with an axe in my hands. Now, can you tell me what devilry has done the like of that to a decent creature? No you can’t! God Himself will scratch His blessed Head and that’s a fact. For mind you, my dearie, it isn’t just that the poor brute has no friends—neither kith nor kin nor even a hussy to steal his pay—it’s like he was dead at the core. If you ask me, I’d say he was killed in the cradle—ja, I’m thinking he had no mother, the poor little poppet—more like she ran out on him, the wicked scullion, and left him to the Devil’s jobbing!’
Well, now he had found a haven. Little Sam had discovered him one noon, sitting, lonely and abstracted, away from the gabbing workers who were taking their midday ease. Sam, bubbling with indignation over the inequalities that smirch the Lord’s footstool, thought he might discover an attentive ear in that huge, silent figure. Nor was he far wrong. Little Sam bristled and barked, beat his fists together, and kicked up clouds of powdered iron ore, covering himself and the motionless listener with a clogging film of dust like pulverized blood. Never had he enjoyed such an understanding audience! The big man sat there, dim amazement slowly giving way before a vast admiration, as the qold little cockerel hopped and howled. Though he said nothing, it was plain this was an accomplishment for which he would gladly have exchanged a span of years. And when the little Union Man finally ran out of wind, Big Tom unscrewed the top of his round dinner pail and poured out a mug of brackish coffee, which he silently offered for the easement of the orator’s palate. When the six o’clock whistle blew clever little Sam was on hand waiting for the amiable giant, whom he adroitly manoeuvred into the nearest bar, and, over twin mugs of foaming beer, learned all that ever could be learned of the big man’s past. He was alone in the world; had always been alone in the world; he had a room near the waterfront.
‘What kind of a room, my friend?’ demanded Sam. ‘Ha! I can guess what they think is right for a working man—especially for a fellow who isn’t a union man. Now, my wife is that clean a fly has to wipe its feet to enter through a knothole. Such a nice room she has behind the kitchen, with a comfortable bed you could have for next to nothing. What do you say, Big Tom? Why don’t you come home with me and taste the bean soup? You won’t have to hunt for the beans in the pot water, I promise you!’
‘Ja, that was the way of it,’ Stina informed us, and giggled, as she was wont to do at the end of every sentence. ‘He came slinking in with Sam, the big ninny, and, let me tell you, he took some feeding to get the green look off his bones.’
Stina was our most frequent visitor while we lived in that desolate, barn-like house near the school. Always out of breath from unnecessary haste, whatever the weather, her starched print dress billowing in the endless wind, she blew into the house puffing and giggling, her small son neat as a doll, trotting behind her. ‘God give you health! How are you? Wouldn’t you think the Holy One would quiet the wind! Don’t tell me it was ever worse in Iceland … Bless my soul is that the same baby? Now don’t screw your mug up, my angel, its just old Stina taking note of the new inches. Kiss the baby, Valdi, like a good boy, and behave yourself, my rabbit!’
That was our Stina, The cheerful sinner who refused to be burdened with a sense of shame for her stolen escapade on the primrose highway. She was always welcome, but I remember one bitterly cold autumn day, with iron rain sleeting the windows, when her sudden appearance was nothing short of a miracle. For some reason, papa’s slim allowance had not reached us, and all that day mamma had beguiled our hunger with tall tales of heroic splendour, washed down with cups of hot water. Stirring tales, to be sure, but somehow or other my spongy spirit kept veering, like a rudderless skiff, from the fine feats of the ancestors to the gratifying vision of flatbread and butter. Mamma grew a little sharp. ‘Listen here, my lamb, there are worse things than an empty stomach! An empty head, for instance! Would you like to hear the story of the Twelve Wild Ducks?’
Well, of course that would be nice, I admitted, with a dampish sniffle. Though to tell the truth, I wondered a little that I should even have thought the tale fascinating. Yes, now it struck me that the queen whose woe it was to have twelve sons and no daughter might well have restrained her tears. The little princelings had all the pigeon-pie they wanted. But there it was—the silly woman moped and moaned, and finally pricked her royal finger, the red blood dropping to the white snow outside her window. ‘Oh, that I had a daughter with cheeks so white and rosy!’ cried she, completely forgetting the bounty of her bouncing sons. And instantly up pops an ugly creature from nowhere with previous comfort. ‘Give me your sons,’ says the horrid thing, leering like a drunken turtle, ‘and you shall have your heart’s desire—the fairest in the world.’
‘Really?’ cries the queen. ‘Well, take the little brats! I’m sick to death of keeping tab on all their boots and buttons—’
So here we were, off to a good start, with the princess as good as born and knowing quite well what hardships she must endure to recover the twelve brothers so carelessly mislaid by the queen. But at that we never compassed the royal christening, for, all at once, there was a scraping of feet on the doorstep and the next instant in flies Stina, beaming her toothless smile, a mysterious bundle under her arm, and the small son tagging behind.
‘God bless us, what dirty weather!’ says she, shaking the rain from her ancient ulster. ‘Valdi, did you wipe your feet, my lambkin? Well, well, off with your cap then and speak like a Christian.’
‘My dear Stina,’ said mamma, in a queer weakish voice, ‘what on earth brought you all this way in such biting rain?’
‘What indeed!’ exclaimed Stina with a giggle. ‘Well, then can you believe it, I got such an itch for a bit of a walk the divil himself couldn’t have kept me from coming. What’s more, thought I to myself, Stina you’re a queer one if now and then you can’t return a little cheer to them that always treated you to victuals with an open heart. So my dear, if you’ll be taking it kindly, I’ve brought a loaf of bread fresh from the oven and coffee enough to drown a tom-cat!’
For a terrible moment I thought mamma was going to cry, her face turned so white, and crinkled so queerly about the lips and eyes as she swept Stina into her arms, kissing her on each windbeaten cheek. Instead, she said softly, almost gaily: ‘Dear good Stina ! I should have known when God gives us friends He foresees all our needs. Lara, put on the kettle and get out the best table-cloth.’
Well, there you are. What did we care about the lost princes after that? The kitchen hummed with merriment, the old stove crackled, and the kettle sang. The cat came out from his favourite corner and arched himself round Stina’s leg as much as to say, Madam, even I worship before you. Out came mamma’s finest porcelain cups, with the purple pansies and dabs of gold on the rim; and of course the huge newly baked loaf was displayed in all its glory on the very best cake plate. The coffee was good and strong and set our pulses singing with warmth and happiness, although Stina insisted on a thousand apologies for the brand.
‘Arbuckle’s coffee isn’t the best,’ said she, giggling. ‘But for eighteen cents you can’t expect a miracle—especially when you get a coupon thrown in for nothing. My Sam is saving up for a newfangled razor, and Valdi there wants to get a watch, the little sparrow. So you see, the more we drink the richer we get, and that’s the holy truth, my dear!’
Oh, we were very gay indeed, but when Stina had departed in the drizzly dusk mamma stood at the window, watching the thin figure till it faded from sight. When only the thickening rain and the crowding shadows were to be seen in the desolate street, she crossed to the stove where the dishpan was heating. ‘Now you see how foolish it is to listen to the grumblings of the stomach,’ she said, smiling at me through a mist of shining tears. ‘Put the rest of that blessed loaf away. It will do us till papa’s money comes.’
Sure enough it did! We had scarcely finished the last sweet crumbs when the postman’s whistle announced the safe arrival of the delayed letter with its sorely needed stipend.
‘What did I tell you!’ laughed mamma, a little shakily. ‘Gracious me! An extra dollar! And papa thinks he may be coming in a week or two. That calls for a real celebration. What do you say to liver and onions for supper?’
