In the Distance

1.

Håkan Söderström was born on a farm north of Lake Tystnaden, in Sweden. The exhausted land his family worked belonged to a wealthy man they had never met, although he regularly collected his harvest through his estate manager. With crops failing year after year, the landlord had tightened his fist, forcing the Söderströms to subsist on mushrooms and berries they foraged for in the woods, and eels and pikes they caught in the lake (where Håkan, encouraged by his father, acquired a taste for ice baths). Most families in the region led similar lives, and within a few years, as their neighbors abandoned their homes, heading for Stockholm or farther south, the Söderströms became increasingly isolated, until they lost all contact with people—except for the manager, who came a few times a year to collect his dues. The youngest and eldest sons fell ill and died, leaving only Håkan and his brother Linus, four years his senior.

They lived like castaways. Days passed without a word being uttered in the house. The boys spent as much time as they could out in the woods or in the abandoned farmhouses, where Linus told Håkan story after story—adventures he claimed to have lived, accounts of exploits supposedly heard firsthand from their heroic protagonists, and narratives of remote places he somehow seemed to know in detail. Given their seclusion—and the fact that they did not know how to read—the source of all these tales could only have been Linus’s prodigious imagination. Yet, however outlandish the stories, Håkan never doubted his brother’s words. Perhaps because Linus always defended him unconditionally and never hesitated to take the blame and the blows for any of his brother’s small misdoings, Håkan trusted him without reservation. It is true that he most likely would have died without Linus, who always made sure he had enough to eat, managed to keep the house warm while their parents were away, and distracted him with stories when food and fuel were scarce.

Everything changed when the mare became pregnant. During one of his brief visits, the manager told Erik, Håkan’s father, to make sure everything went well—they had already lost too many horses to the famine, and his master would welcome an addition to his dwindling stable. Time went on, and the mare got abnormally big. Erik was not surprised when she gave birth to twins. Perhaps for the first time in his life, he decided to lie. Together with the boys, he cleared a spot in the woods and built a hidden pen, to which he took one of the foals as soon as it was weaned. A few weeks later, the manager came and claimed its brother. Erik kept his colt hidden, making sure it grew strong and healthy. When the time came, he sold it to a miller in a distant town where nobody knew him. The evening of his return, Erik told his sons they were leaving for America in two days. The money from the colt was enough for only two fares. And anyway, he was not going to flee like a criminal. Their mother said nothing.

Håkan and Linus, who had never even seen a picture of a city, hurried down to Gothenburg, hoping to spend a day or two there, but they barely made it in time to get on their ship to Portsmouth. Once on board, they divided up their money, in case something happened to one of them. During this leg of the trip, Linus told Håkan everything about the wonders that awaited them in America. They spoke no English, so the name of the city they were headed for was an abstract talisman to them: “Nujårk.”

They arrived in Portsmouth much later than expected, and everyone was in a great hurry to get on the rowboats that took them to shore. As soon as Håkan and Linus set foot on the wharf, they were sucked in by the current of people bustling up and down the main road. They walked side by side, almost jogging. Now and then, Linus turned to his brother to teach him something about the oddities around them. Both of them were trying to take it all in as they looked for their next ship, which was to leave that very afternoon. Merchants, incense, tattoos, wagons, fiddlers, steeples, sailors, sledgehammers, flags, steam, beggars, turbans, goats, mandolin, cranes, jugglers, baskets, sailmakers, billboards, harlots, smokestacks, whistles, organ, weavers, hookahs, peddlers, peppers, puppets, fistfight, cripples, feathers, conjuror, monkeys, soldiers, chestnuts, silk, dancers, cockatoo, preachers, hams, auctions, accordionist, dice, acrobats, belfries, carpets, fruit, clotheslines. Håkan looked to his right, and his brother was gone.

They had just passed a group of Chinese seamen having lunch, and Linus had told his brother some facts about their country and its traditions. They had kept walking, gaping and wide-eyed, looking at the scenes around them, and then Håkan had turned to Linus, but he was no longer there. He looked around, backtracked, walked from the curb to the wall, ran forward, and then back to their landing place. Their rowboat was gone. He returned to the spot where they had lost each other. He got on a crate, short-breathed and trembling, screamed his brother’s name, and looked down at the torrent of people. A salty fizz on his tongue quickly became a numbing tingle that spread over his entire body. Barely able to steady his quaking knees, he rushed to the nearest pier and asked some sailors in a dinghy for Nujårk. The sailors did not understand. After many attempts, he tried “Amerika.” They got that immediately but shook their heads. Håkan went pier by pier asking for Amerika. Finally, after several failures, someone said “America” back to him and pointed to a rowboat, and then to a ship anchored about three cable lengths off the shore. Håkan looked into the boat. Linus was not there. Perhaps he had already boarded the ship. A sailor offered Håkan his hand, and he got on.

As soon as they got to the ship, someone demanded and took his money and then showed him to a dark corner below deck where, among berths and chests and bundles and barrels, under swinging lanterns hanging from beams and ringbolts, loud clusters of emigrants tried to settle in and claim some small space of the cabbage- and stable-smelling steerage as their own for the long trip. He looked for Linus among the silhouettes distorted by the quivering light, making his way through screaming and sleeping babies, laughing and haggard women, and sturdy and weeping men. With increasing despair, he rushed back on deck, through waving crowds and busy sailors. The ship was clearing of visitors. The gangplank was removed. He shouted his brother’s name. The anchor was lifted; the ship moved; the crowds cheered.

Eileen Brennan found him starved and feverish a few days after they had left, and she and her husband, James, a coal miner, cared for him as if he were one of their own children, gently forcing him to eat and nursing him back to health. He refused to speak.

After some time, Håkan finally left the steerage cabin but shied away from all company, spending his days scanning the horizon.

Although they had left England in the spring, and summer should now have settled in, it was getting colder every day. Weeks went by, and Håkan still refused to speak. Around the time Eileen gave him a shapeless cape she had sewn out of rags, they spotted land.

They steered into unusually brown waters and anchored in front of a pale, low city. Håkan looked at the faded pink and ochre buildings, searching in vain for the landmarks Linus had described to him. Rowboats packed with crates shuttled back and forth between the ship and the clay-colored shore. Nobody disembarked. Increasingly anxious, Håkan asked an idle sailor if that was America. Those were the first words he uttered since shouting his brother’s name in Portsmouth. The sailor said yes, that was America. Holding back his tears, Håkan asked if they were in New York. The sailor looked at Håkan’s lips as he produced, again, that glob of molten sounds, “Nujårk?” While Håkan’s frustration mounted, a smile on the seaman’s face widened until it became a peal of laughter.

“New York? No! Not New York,” the sailor said. “Buenos Aires.” He laughed again, hitting his knee with one hand and shaking Håkan’s shoulder with the other.

That evening, they sailed on.

Over dinner, Håkan tried to find out from the Irish couple where they were and how long it would take for them to get to New York. It took them a while to understand each other, but in the end, there was no room for doubt. Through signs and with the aid of a small piece of lead with which Eileen drew a rough map of the world, Håkan understood that they were an eternity away from New York—and getting farther from it every instant. He saw they were sailing to the end of the world, to get around Cape Horn, and then head up north. That was the first time he heard the word “California.”

After they had braved the wild waters of Cape Horn, the weather got milder, and the passengers grew eager. Plans were made, prospects were discussed, partnerships and parties were created. Once he started to pay attention to the conversations, Håkan realized that most of the passengers discussed only one subject—gold.

They finally cast anchor in what seemed to be, strangely, a busy ghost harbor: it was full of half-sunken ships looted and abandoned by crews that had deserted for the goldfields. But the derelict vessels had been occupied by squatters and even converted to floating taverns and general stores out of which traders sold their overpriced goods to newly arrived prospectors. Skiffs, barges, and rafts went back and forth between these improvised establishments, ferrying customers and merchandise. Closer to the shore, several of the larger ships slowly foundered as their decaying frames were forced into the most whimsical positions by the tides. Intentionally or not, a few boats had run aground in the shallow waters and become lodgings and shops with scaffoldings, lean-tos, and even proper buildings attached to them, thus reaching dry land and extending into the city. Beyond the masts, there were large tan-colored tents pitched between smoke-grimed wooden houses—the city had either just sprung up or just partially collapsed.

It had been months since they had set sail, but when they docked in San Francisco, Håkan had aged years—the lanky boy had become a tall youth with a rugged face, weathered by the sun and the briny wind, and furrowed by a permanent squint full of both doubt and determination. He had studied the map Eileen, the Irishwoman, had traced in lead for him. Although it implied traversing a whole continent, he concluded that the quickest way to reunite with his brother would be by land.