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

places here in New York where one was served speedily and efficiently. The police never dared go near such places. One den at Five Points had been demolished a few years ago when more than a thousand corpses were found.
    Robert and Arvid felt their scalps tingle at the Finn’s stories. But, fortunately, remembered Robert, he carried nothing of value with him, and if you didn’t carry anything on a walk, you couldn’t be robbed. His inheritance had been used for the voyage, and only a few Swedish coppers remained in his purse.
    But Arvid clutched the watch chain which hung across his vest and whispered into Robert’s ear: He had brought along his watch, perhaps it was risky, what should he do about it? Robert didn’t even have a watch; no one could rob him even though each tenth person was a thief.
    The boys from Ljuder knew very little about towns. Before coming to New York, they had passed through only one town, Karlshamn. (Arvid had not even read about towns, as he couldn’t read; before Robert had shown him a geography schoolbook, he had thought the whole world consisted only of Sweden.) But the boys did not wish to appear ignorant, as though unused to people. Robert therefore asked the Finn, with an intonation reflecting familiarity with the subject: Were the women in the New York whorehouses born in this country or were they immigrants?
    The Finn answered that nearly all such women were born in the Old World; some had fallen into sin while crossing on the ships; others, perhaps, ran out of traveling money when they reached New York, and when they couldn’t get beyond the pier, they sold that which could be sold most easily and quickly. But a whore’s life in North America lasted only four years at the most. Then came death. That is to say, if she were healthy and sound at the beginning. Most of them became venereal cases, their bodies covered with stinking sores, their limbs rotting away, falling off one after the other. The poison buried itself inside their bones, he had heard; there it reproduced itself, from generation to generation. In this way God’s law was fulfilled, as it was written in the commandment of the catechism: the sins of the fathers were visited on the children, unto a third and fourth generation “of them that hate Me.”
    When they rounded a corner, their guide stopped and pointed to a stone pedestal near the street: “On that foundation stood the last king who reigned in America.”
    The mass of stone was at least twenty feet high. Robert asked: “What was the king’s name?”
    “I don’t remember. He was an English king. He was made of lead!”
    “Oh, I understand; it was a statue?”
    “That’s right, boys! It was a lead statue of a king!”
    The Finn explained: The English king reigned so poorly and so tyrannically that the Americans went to war to get rid of him. But they had a scarcity of bullets for their guns, so they melted down this leaden image of their king. When the English came to chastise the obstinate Americans, they were greeted by pieces of lead from their own king. The fine bullets hit them right between the eyes! So the Americans won the war and became a free people. That’s what happened to the last king in America.
    And who could tell—perhaps the European people one day would put their king statues in pots, and boil and melt them and make bullets of them. Then they too might be free.
    Robert nodded; he understood: because kings were forbidden in America, one might speak as one would about them.
    Now they turned right and entered a wide street. In great pride the Finn held both his hands out over the street as though to show something particularly his own, something his hands had made: this was Broadway, the most beautiful street in the world!
    They had been sucked into a solid mass of people moving slowly about their errands, as it was impossible to hurry, giving way always to the right to avoid bumping against one another. So the boys did likewise. The