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Updated: May 4, 2025
'You shall go to my Holy City, Jerusalem, it said. Have you all heard it in the same way?" "Yes, yes," they cried, "we have all heard it." But now old Eva Gunnersdotter began to wail. "I have heard nothing. I can't go along with you. I'm like Lot's wife, and may not flee the wrath to come, but must be left behind. Here I must stay and be turned into a pillar of salt."
Karin and Halvor came forward to greet her, looking even more gloomy and low spirited than the other Hellgumists. "It's plain they know now that the end is near," she thought. Eva Gunnersdotter, being the oldest person present, was placed at the head of the long table. In front of her lay an opened letter, with American stamps on the envelope.
There was a long silence in the living-room at the Ingmar Farm. Old Eva Gunnersdotter was as silent as were the others, waiting for the Voice of God to speak to her. She interpreted it all in her own way. "Why, of course," she thought, "Hellgum wants us to go to Jerusalem so that we may escape the great destruction.
"Let us all join in singing number two hundred and forty-four." And the Hellgumists sang in unison, "Jerusalem, my happy home." Eva Gunnersdotter heaved a sigh of relief because the dreaded moment had been put off for a little. "Alack-a-day! that a doddering old woman like me should be so afraid to die," she thought, half ashamed of her weakness.
Shortly afterward, they were joined by Hök Matts Ericsson, his son Gabriel, and Gunhild, the daughter of Councilman Clementsson. All these people in their gayly coloured national costumes made a pretty picture walking along the snow-covered road. But to the mind of Eva Gunnersdotter, they were only doomed prisoners being led to the place of execution, like cattle driven to slaughter.
At the close of the hymn Halvor took up the letter and began unfolding it. Whereupon the Spirit moved Eva Gunnersdotter to arise and offer up a lengthy prayer for grace to receive in a proper spirit the message contained therein. Halvor, with the letter in his hand, stood quietly waiting till she had finished.
She had become furiously angry, and once more they saw before them Eva Gunnersdotter as she had been in her younger days strong and passionate and fiery. "I want nothing more to do with you!" she shrieked. "I don't want to be saved by you. Fie upon you! You would abandon wife and children, father and mother, to save yourselves. Fie! You're a parcel of idiots to be leaving your good farms.
Who could wonder at it if this parish were to be punished as was Sodom, and overthrown like Babylon!" As Eva Gunnersdotter wandered through the village, she could not look up at a single house without picturing to herself how the coming earthquake would shake it and crumble it into dust and ashes.
There was scarcely a person among them but had his or her own notion as to who it was. Tims Halvor thought it was old Eva Gunnersdotter. The strange cart accompanied them all the way, but not once did the woman draw the shawl back from her face. To some of the Hellgumists she became a person they loved, to others one they feared, but to most of them she was some one whom they had deserted.
But that day it was enframed in a wreath of green whortleberry twigs, so that it instantly caught the eye of the caller. Eva Gunnersdotter saw it at once, and remarked under her breath: "Aha! Now the folks on the Ingmar Farm know that we must perish. That's why they want us to turn our eyes toward the Heavenly City."
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