by Armin Wiebe
I slip the corrected stack back into the bench and pick up the sheaf from the music rack again. I puzzle over “Der Sohn” as I look about the room for a violin. The free-standing closet holds only a tattered white shirt and a mouse-chewed dark suit. The shelf above the clothes bar holds only a felt hat.
Back to business, I think, and turn back to the piano. After measuring it with my eyes, I fold back the top lid and peer down into the dusty chamber. “Not enough room,” I mutter, “unless I gut it.” I notice the specialized screw heads and wonder if I have tools to fit when I remember and breathe, “Of course.”
I kneel to look under the bed. A sturdy black satchel rests beside a wooden apple crate. The satchel feels heavy as I drag it out. Inside, Beethoven’s piano tuning tools. The violin still on my mind, I drag out the apple crate. A cobwebbed flour sack covers the contents. I hesitate, look at the sunny window to set off a sneeze, then lift the sack. A clutter of school exercise books, envelopes, a bundle of sheets of manuscript music that appear to be even earlier drafts of the Susch sonata, and three hard-cover books—one a novel by Goethe, the other two embossed with the word “Tagebuch.” The first diary falls open to a page filled with minute handwriting.
Gretna, Manitoba
Die Mennonitische Schul August 20
Ich bin hier in Kanada. What will I here? They tell me if I qualify myself with englisch I will get permit to be Lehrer in the approved government schools. The Prinzipal of die Mennonitische Schul Herr Schapansky tells to me that the Dorfenschulen have desperate need of teachers with education in hochdeutsch also. The Kanadier deutsch is corrupted with plattdeutsch and so the language is barely suitable for speaking outside of the barnyard. So I am making attempt to write my thoughts in this englisch, but always I slip into deutsch. Ach ja, solche Schweinarei sind Ich herein gefallen.
“What will Grossmamuh Susch say about this?” I mumble as I rummage through the crate to see if there are more. “Will her eyes be strong enough to read Blatz’s tiny script?”
I gaze at the piano, Blatz’s journals in one hand, the pages of his Sonata 15 in C draft in the other. The son, I think.
14
Susch
Darpslied Elders Villa
Mensch, could that Beethoven Blatz play piano. Sure, he played in the Mary’s Creek church by our wedding, but I was so dizzy with getting married I can’t remember really if I heard that piano. And Obrum had only said that Beethoven Blatz was a piano tuner, somebody who knew how a piano was made, knew how to fix it so it would play good. And how was I supposed to know different? Pianos were still a seldom thing in those days and it was only years later that a blind piano tuner would come around and tune all the pianos in the district. For sure, the first time I saw a blind person in my life it was a piano tuner, but that was years later.
Beethoven Blatz wasn’t blind, even if he had asked me to look at a crack in the soundboard for him. Of course, I couldn’t see any better with my eyes than he could with his, but I sure could smell him kneeling beside me, and I could feel warmth coming from his thin body—and I could still feel his fingers brushing my hair out of my eyes. The next few weekends I often caught him looking at me, especially when Obrum wasn’t in the house. No, I don’t mean that he stood glutzing at me with his tongue hanging out, no, nothing like that, it was just that when I looked up from the stove or I walked past the sitting room door, I would see him leaning over that piano with a wrench in his hand and I would feel like he had been watching me. And a shiver would go down my backstring that was maybe scary, but like his fingers stroking my hair too.
He didn’t tell me why he had said what he did when we heard the shot. He didn’t say who he thought was coming again. I was frightened too. I mean, shooting is always scary, but Obrum had said earlier in the week that he thought a skunk was living under the shed, so once my heart started clappering normal again, I figured Obrum had borrowed himself the rifle from Hauns Jaunses’ Fraunz on the next farm and shot that skunk. For sure, when Obrum came in for faspa, that’s what he said he had done.
But Beethoven Blatz, even after he had heard what had happened, seemed whiter than he usually was and he ate only half a slice of bread and drank only half a cup of prips coffee. And I was shrugging around on my chair, still feeling Blatz’s fingers tucking my loose hair under my kerchief. I could feel Obrum looking at me while he chewed, but I couldn’t look at him, and when Obrum reached for me in the night I couldn’t let myself go, not with that other man in the house. And I kept waking up each time the clock struck and then I thought I heard sniffling through the two granary walls that stood between us and the broken piano.
It must have been the fifth or maybe sixth Saturday that I heard Beethoven really play on that broken piano. I was just bending over to put some more wood into the cookstove when I heard the first note. It schtootst the firewood out of my hand and I got a sliver in my finger. I don’t know why it scared me so much, but the sound of that note tsittered my backstring like that rifle shot must have tsittered through Beethoven Blatz.
At first the notes sounded grülijch terrible because none of the strings were in tune yet, and something about strings not in tune shivers a person’s skin. Maybe that is how people figured music out long ago, that bad sounds made people feel bad and good sounds made people feel good. At first the piano sounds made me feel grizzlijch. Beethoven Blatz seemed not concerned with music at all, only concerned with the workings of the keys. Obrum came in from outside and watched. He always liked to figure out how things worked, and later I wondered how come he hadn’t tried to fix that piano himself. With all the gadgets he invented to try to make life easier on the farm, it was a wonder that he never rigged up a washing machine motor to make that piano play by itself. But like I said before, I had only lived with Obrum for two years and I still had lots to learn. One thing, though, on that Saturday when Beethoven Blatz played the first notes, I noticed that when Obrum was in the house, Beethoven pounded on those piano keys a lot harder than when he was alone in the house with me. Not that he was pounding on the piano the whole time, no, but when he had fixed one key he tested it out before he went to the next key and then he pounded on all the keys he had fixed already, making such a thunder noise that I thought the window would break.
After faspa when Obrum had gone outside again, Beethoven just didn’t hit the keys so hard—sometimes he played them so quietly that I could hardly hear them. I took a peek at him through the door and saw how he pressed on the same key again and again and again. Then I saw a tear drop from his cheek to the black key beside his hand. That tear was as big as a drop of rain and it fell on the black key, where it ran down the slanted front edge into the crack between the white keys. There must have been lots of salt in that tear because afterward I always saw a stain on that black key. I never told anybody about that stain. I was scared that nobody else could see it except me, but I was always really careful with the dust rag around that key.
It was the next Saturday, I think, when I sat down at the table while Blatz clanged on the piano with the door closed. I had been up since early so it was easy to let my head fall on my arms on the table as I listened to Blatz’s piano noise. Before I knew it, a shadowy fühlenzing dream wrapped me around with murmuring voices that muffled Blatz’s piano clang. Sometimes Preacher Funk, sometimes Tien, sometimes Obrum mumbling about mumps. Through my fühlenzing ears I heard the outside door open, but it would anyways be Obrum so I stayed head down with my eyes closed half asleep. I waited for him to say something schpuchtijch to me but instead I heard his steps across the floor, then his knuckle knocking on Beethoven’s door. “Blatz,” he said, not loudly but in a tone that wasn’t joking, “come once outside. I need you to help me something.”
I kept my eyes closed but my ears were wide open now. I heard Beethoven’s voice but I couldn’t make out what he said. Obrum knocked again. “Blatz, come once outside. I need you to help me something.” I wondered why
Obrum didn’t just push open the door and go into that room. “Come, Blatz, I’ll be outside.” Then I heard steps go back across the floor. The outside door closed. As I sat with my eyes closed, waiting to see what would happen, holem de gruel, a sudden sadness came over me about how Obrum and I reached for each other often in the night but my belly stayed flat as a cupboard door. Beethoven’s door opened and his footsteps crossed the floor and the outside door closed behind him too.
When I opened my eyes, my backstring ached with such wanting I was frightened to stand up. Then I was frightened to sit still, so I stood and tiptoed to the window to see what Obrum needed Beethoven for. I saw Obrum lead Beethoven around the corner of the barn and then they were gone.
I puttered around making supper so it would be warm on the stove when I came in from milking. The men hadn’t come back to the house and each time I peeked out the window, I couldn’t see them. I wondered how Beethoven could stay outside so long with just his schoolteacher clothes and not even long underwear, but I hurry pushed that out of my head when I pulled my milking stockings on. I put my milking dress on over my housedress and tied my kerchief under my chin and then put on my old coat and stepped into the felt boots that I used to go to the barn.
I thought of schlikjing myself around the barn corner to see if I could see the men, but it was windier than I liked and Elsie Schemmel mooed from inside the barn, so I figured I would just stick to woman’s work. I mean, if a woman doesn’t do her work, nobody will, and then where would those schnorrijch men be? I had finished milking Elsie Schemmel and had just sat down beside the other cow, when I heard voices, like the wind was blowing them from far across the field. I milked half a pail full and then I heard the voices again, louder like the men were arguing, both voices, but with the wind I couldn’t tell which voice was for which man. I had never heard Beethoven speak loud, leave alone shout, so it was a bit of a wonder that both men were yelling. Then it got quiet and I heard only the wind, so I started milking again and didn’t stop until I finished the other cow.
It was almost altogether dark when I carried the milk to the house, lighted on the lamp, pokered around in the stove, and put in another piece of wood so the food would heat up while I creamered the milk. After I put away the blue milk and the cream, I set the plates on the table. I stood still for a minute but I couldn’t hear the men. So I stepped into my barn boots and opened the door. “Owendkost!” I yelled. I heard my voice showell in the cold air. Nobody answered, so I cupped my hands in front of my mouth and hollered, “Supper! Fuats oppe shtäd!” Then I turned and slammed the door so hard I heard the piano strings shiver.
I had eaten half my plateful when they came stomping in. Both men were laughing but something in their eyes made me suspicious that they weren’t laughing over anything funny. Obrum’s face was redder than usual from the cold and Beethoven’s red nose had a white tip just like the edges of his red ears. He sneezed as he took off his thin coat. Obrum didn’t say nothing to me so I took my plate and got more food for myself from the stove and didn’t say nothing neither. The men washed their hands and then they took their plates to the stove and shovelled a pile of food on, even Beethoven. I figured that Obrum’s work had sure given them both appetites, and that can make a woman feel good.
I kept my nose pointed straight ahead but I sneaked peeks at them as they ate. They didn’t speak, and they didn’t look at each other, but there was something between them that made me think of two schoolboys made to sit still close to each other, who, as soon as the teacher turns his back, will be rolling on the floor again, ripping each other’s ears off. And then I saw Beethoven Blatz shivering and I thought of his bare skinny legs inside his pants, and before I knew it I had said, “Leave the door open for that room, it’s not good for a piano to get so cold.” I heard laughing and for an eyeblink I saw Grandmother Glootje Susch warming herself by the stove.
15
Susch
Darpslied Elders Villa
On the next Saturday the notes sounded more like music, what with Beethoven Blatz climbing up and down those keys like angels on Jacob’s ladder. I would hear the notes go up and down over one part of the piano and then he would stop and I would hear clinking as he did some tuning on those hundreds of wires in the back, then he would play up and down the notes again. Sometimes I would hear the ping of a tuning fork and I would half expect him to start singing like my father would in church. But that was something Beethoven Blatz never did. I never heard him sing, not even along with his piano playing, not even a hum. Years later I thought about this, and it seemed strange to me then, because usually people who play piano can sing too, though now that I think about it, Klaviera Klassen, and her mother before her, played piano in church for years but never once did I hear them sing. Beethoven Blatz didn’t sing, but he did play. After he had played note ladders up and down the piano maybe a hundred times, he started to play something like a song. He didn’t play it all the way through at first, only a few notes, then he stopped, tightened some wires, then started playing again. Later, I found out that the music he was playing was called Moonlight Sonata made up by the real Beethoven from long ago, but right then, of course, I didn’t know such a thing. We had no radio or gramophone yet in those days and we for sure never went to Winnipeg to hear music in that auditorium beside the Hudson Bay store.
Obrum must have gone away somewhere after dinner because he never came back into the house, not even for faspa. Beethoven Blatz played that Moonlight Sonata beginning over and over, each time moving the song a little farther along before stopping to do more tuning, while I leaned against the table where I was pressing Obrum’s Sunday shirt with an iron I heated up on the cookstove. At long last he played that sonata all the way through without stopping and I wanted to smile and cry at the same time, it was so beautiful, like a mourning dove cooing back to a person early in the morning. If I had been kneading bread, I would have floated my soul up past the moon all the way to the stars. But I was pressing clothes and when the music stopped, I heard the cows mooing outside and my hot iron had browned a corner of Obrum’s shirt.
I shivered then beside the hot stove and the iron clattered as I set it on the black top where the edge of the round lid showed a sliver circle of orange flames underneath. I heard sniffling from the piano room, and I shivered again. I was suddenly frightened to be in the house with him and was thankful that the cows were mooing.
The wind almost blew the door off the hinges as I stepped outside. The sky was dark already and there were no stars. The clouds seemed almost low enough to touch. It was a cold fall with no snow on the ground yet even though it was into November already. I knew my way across that yard, I mean, I went that way three or four times a day at least, but that night the dark seemed almost like a wool cap pulled over a person’s face, and that moonlight piano playing still rang in my ears with the sniffling from the piano room. I didn’t even feel the frozen ruts under my feet and then I bumped my bent head into the barn door.
In the barn the dark was even blacker. You have to remember that this was twenty years before we got hydro on the farm so a person couldn’t just reach in and switch on the light. You have to remember too that this barn was the sod house that Obrum lived in before we got married. Now it was where we kept the our cows, though, through that cold winter in those granaries, I sometimes wondered if we wouldn’t have been better off living in the sod house, because whenever I stepped into that little barn with the two cows inside, it always felt warm, while in that clappered-together granary house, it felt like the wind was blowing through a wire window. I felt fekjlämt always, even under the quilt beside Obrum. But once I was in the barn with the lantern lit, hucked down on the three-legged stool beside Elsie Schemmel, schtripsing milk into the pail, the whole world felt lots warmer, and as I leaned my head against the side of Elsie Schemmel’s belly I could almost forget that I was living in a cold granary married to a man who had broken a piano at my feet ins
tead of building me a warm house.
I had the first pail three-quarters full when the door opened and the wind blew in like ice. “Make that door closed!” I called out. “Where have you been so long?” I didn’t stop milking. I felt the door close and the barn warmed up a little again. “How come you didn’t tell me that you wouldn’t be home for faspa?”
I heard a throat rasple. “I am sorry … this is Blatz.” I stopped milking. Elsie Schemmel swatted my head with her tail as if she had felt a swarm of flies.
“Is my man home?”
“No,” Blatz said. I started milking again and for a few minutes only the milk strulled through the foam rising in the pail. I was afraid to stop. Maybe Blatz too was afraid to speak because he didn’t say anything more until the pail was full and Elsie Schemmel’s udder hung empty. I stood up and carried the milk over to a box beside the door and set it down. Blatz was leaning against the door, and even in the shadows from the lantern hanging from the roof beam, his face looked like the moon in a cloudy sky. Outside, the wind whistled and snow clittered against the door.
“Snowing, yes?” I picked up the empty pail. I didn’t look at Blatz, I just stepped back between the cows to pick up the stool, then I moved around to the other side of the brown cow that never had a name. I settled down beside her and tried to schtrips myself away from Beethoven Blatz there in the barn and from the thought that my man Obrum Kehler was out someplace in the blowing snow. Then I got mixed up because along with worrying about Obrum I was thinking about how Beethoven had brushed aside my loose hair with his fingers when I had my hands buried in bread dough. Maybe it was another woman’s hair his fingers had stroked but it was my skin those fingertips touched.
But when the milk was deep enough so that the squirts didn’t zing against the bottom of the pail anymore, Beethoven Blatz spoke. His voice was almost like the beginning notes of that Moonlight Sonata piano, only a hundred times sadder than that. “Such a night it was,” he said. “Wind and the snow came us between and Sonia I never saw again alive.” My fingers went cold and not even the heat from the cow’s tits warmed them up again that night. Nothing was warm about the story he told me. Well, he didn’t exactly tell me a story, not a story that went from beginning to end, no, not like that, maybe more like a verse from in the middle of the Bible, a verse that doesn’t make sense except if you know all of the Bible from beginning to end, because each word in the verse reaches out to other words in other verses somehow.