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

gold diggers were traveling with their own engraved tombstones. How could people be so boisterous and happy, sailing with their tombstones? Perhaps, thought Robert, they were happy and sang because they were doing the wisest thing people can do in this world: their course might be perilous, but anyone wanting to get rich in America must, danger or no, head for the place where gold could be picked from the earth itself.
    “They have fun on that boat,” said Arvid with a touch of envy.
    “The men on the gold-rush ship are drunk,” explained the Finn. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they drink up their tombstones before they leave.”
    The Angelica —Robert looked at the clipper ship’s stern where the name was painted. Angelica and Charlotta were two women’s names. Charlotta was heavy, hard, dour, stern, harsh, and commanding; Angelica easy, soft, light, and gay. Charlotta sounded like the name of a fat farm mistress, authoritative, masterful; Angelica like a tender, delicate girl, like a bird’s twitter in a flowering meadow early in spring; there was joy and freedom in that name.
    The next ship he would travel on must have such a name.
    Now the passengers on the clipper ship began jumping about in wild leaps.
    “Those men must be dancing the polka,” said the Finn.
    “What kind of dance is that?” asked Robert.
    “It’s a new Hungarian war dance; in fact, an unchristian whore dance. Let’s get on, we’ve lots to see today.”
    Reluctantly, Robert left the Angelica with her fluttering red banner; there were many hundreds of ships in the New York Harbor, but only one he wished to board.
    They left the piers and turned off to the left, cut across the Battery, and went into town. If they wished to get a good view of Manhattan, the Finn said, they must go over to Weehawken; unfortunately, he didn’t have time to go with them, but once up there they could see thousands of houses and hundreds of churches; up there they could feel they were really seeing the world.
    In his description book Robert had read about New York, and he knew it was the New World’s largest, most active town, that houses were six stories tall, and streets sometimes seventy-five feet wide. Now he wondered whether it were true that half of the inhabitants were murderers, robbers, and swindlers.
    “It’s a little exaggerated,” said the Finn. “Only one-tenth are criminals.” And he added: It might be better to put it this way: every fourth house they passed was a saloon, every fifth woman they met was a whore, and every fifth man a criminal. Perhaps it would be better not to say exactly, but rather thereabouts, as far as a visiting seafarer could judge.
    Robert began to inspect the people they met on the street more closely, particularly the younger women.
    “Every fifth woman a whore, Mr. Mate?”
    “Yes, maybe thereabouts, yes, just about.”
    The Finn continued: There were in this town twenty thousand known and public sluts, besides all the private ones whom only God could count. There were two thousand whorehouses, open day and night, seven days of the week, except for the hours of service on Sundays. There were ten thousand saloons, and every saloon keeper had in his pay an undertaker, who came with his cart and dragged away the corpses of those who drank themselves to death. The American brännvin was the strongest in the world, and some saloon keepers even put a pinch of poison into the drink to make it smoother and more tasty; from childhood Americans had hardened themselves to spiced and poisoned drinks, but a foreigner might fall dead on the floor as he stood at the bar. In the most notorious nests, like the Old Brewery at Five Points, the saloon was on the first floor, the whorehouse on the second, and the morgue in the cellar. The guests got drunk in the saloon, then went upstairs to the girls, where they were robbed, murdered, undressed, and pushed through a chute to the morgue in the cellar. Yes, it was true, there were