reticence. One evening she began repeating it to us Perhaps it
was because we had just been complaining that Papa was none
too companionable. "He was, indeed ... he was Oh! if only
you knew!" protested Agn&s. And it was another strange thing that, while he was still alive, we spoke of my father in the past tense, perhaps thinking of another aspect of his personality, long since disappeared.
At the time in question, Papa was especially well pleased with the colony of White Russians or Ruthenians established at Dunrea. For a reason unkown to us he called them his "Little Ruthenians." Of all the groups he had settled, this one prospered best. It had not yet been established for a full decade; a short enough time in which to build a happy settlement out of a handful of suspicious and illiterate immigrants, let alone clear the land, build houses, and even make God feel at home with icons and votive candles. Yet all this and much more had the Little Ruthenians accomplished. They were not a people absorbed in vexations, like the Dukhobors. Agn&s seemed to remember that they, likewise, were Slavs, probably from Bucovina. Certainly the past counted for something in their lives -a past deeply wretched—but it was in the future, a wonderful and well-founded future, that the Little Ruthenians above all had faith when they came to Canada. And that was th^sort of settler Papa liked: people facing forward, and not everlastingly whining over what they had had to leave behind.
Agn&s told us that Papa had described his Dunrea settlement
as a sort of paradise, and that was precisely the word he used -a paradise.
He had to traverse ten miles of scrub, of swamp, of bad lands, constantly swept by the wind, to reach Dunrea. And suddenly there came into view well-shaped trees—aspens, poplars, willows—grouped in such a way that they seemed to constitute an oasis in the bareness of the plain. A little before arriving at this clump of greenery you could already hear, my father said, water flowing and gurgling. For among trees, so verdant and so healthy, almost hidden beneath them, ran a shallow little stream called the "Lost River." Could it indeed have been Papa—so close-mouthed and sad—who had furnished Agn&s with all these details? And why her? No one but her? "Is it surprising that Papa so deeply loved this Lost River?" said Agn£s. "Just think: he himself had created it, in a sense."
One day he had chanced to miss his way in the course of his rounds and had stumbled on the dried-up bed of this river; polished pebbles along its bottom and the placement of a few trees showed that here there had been water. And Papa fell in love with this nook of ground, once grassy and certainly charming, which with little care would recapture its former loveliness. He promised himself to settle some hard-working colonists here, good colonists, intelligent enough to glimpse what they could make of it with patience and a little imagination. Now the Little Ruthenians, when he brought them and showed them the bed of the Lost River, grasped at once what Papa liked about it, what he so clearly saw; they decided to remain there. And when Papa urged them to plant many trees near the Lost River, so as to hold the dampness in the soil, his Little Ruthenians had followed his suggestion. Thus from year to year the river yielded more water, and in places reached a depth of six feet. Thereafter, of their own accord, all sorts of other little trees began to grow along its shores and interlaced their branches and created a kind of tunnel of verdure through which flowed and sang the Lost River. For, even when rediscovered, it continued to be called the Lost River.
And it seems Papa told Agnes that what he liked best for his settlements was water. In that Saskatchewan, so lacking moisture, the resurrection of a river was a major business. "Fire," he had said, "and drought are my settlers' worst enemies; running water their greatest friend."
The Little Ruthenians, having placed their confidence in Papa's prediction that water would return here, had built their
houses along the dry stream bed, to such good effect that ten years later, all their houses lay within the soft and murmurous protection of the trees and the water.
Papa, when he clambered out of his wagonette and' hitched his mare Dolly to the edge of the well of Dunrea, beheld a ravishing landscape: scattered in the greenery lay a score of half-hidden little white houses with thatched roofs; there were as many outbuildings, equally clean, whitewashed every spring; and besides all this, beehives, dovecots, lean-tos of leaves and branches where in the heat of day the cows came for shelter; throughout the village there wandered freely flocks of white geese which filled it with their amusing clatter. And yet, Papa said, the houses were not really white; you realized that their gleaming color was softened by an extremely delicate tint, almost indiscernible, and due to the Ruthenian woman's covering their walls with a thin lime wash to which they had added a dose of bluing. In the windows, which were small and low, they had red geraniums in pots. And Papa said that after having jogged for miles through a dismal countryside of stiff grass and wild vegetation, nothing could be more attractive—yet more surprising, too—than Dunrea. Each time he saw it, he had to rub his eyes before he could credit them and thank God.
Maybe, also, when he set foot in Dunrea, Papa felt the great joy of having been right on that day when the future of this small corner of earth had revealed itself to him; and maybe his joy sprang even more from the fact that his Little Ruthenians had so well fulfilled his dream.
The moment he stepped down from his rig, Papa found himself surrounded with children; he patted their cheeks, tweaked their ears ... a strange thing, for with his own children Papa never did such things. Yet perhaps those children, more than we, had confidence in Papa; after all, we often enough saw how tired and disappointed Papa looked; we knew he did not always succeed in his efforts; whereas these people believed him endowed with an almost supernatural power. Who can ever know what peace of mind, what certitude Papa felt among his Little Ruthenians ? Isolated, far from any other village, not yet even speaking their neighbors' language, they must have relied wholly upon Papa, and the trust between them was total. ,
The geese, the hens, the young turkeys scattered in front of him as Papa walked along through the mass of flowers. He always said that when settlers planted flowers, it was a sure sign
The Well of Dunrea 75,
of success, of happiness. And among his Little Ruthenians sweet peas clambered on the fences, rows of tall sunflowers slowly turned their enormous faces; pale poppies spilled their smooth petals to be scattered by the wind. The women even set out flowers along the paths that led from the houses to the little privies; and it seems that Papa had laughed at this excess of adornment.
Papa, however, was a serious man, and his first concern was to look after the crops. Now for miles around the village it was always uniformly beautiful; the lands of the Little Ruthenians were free of weeds and well tilled; wheat, the various grains, alfalfa, lucerne, clover—all did splendidly. In their methods, too, the Little Ruthenians had followed Papa's ideas: he had advised them not to overburden the soil by trying for continuous heavy crops, but to rotate, to be patient, and they had heeded him. And maybe that is why he called his Dun-rea settlement paradise. Was he not obeyed there as God had once been in His Eden? He was confident and had never yet been mistaken in all the things he had ordained for his Little Ruthenians. Yet these Little Ruthenians, Agnbs elaborated, were not at all small; on the contrary, they were almost all of average stature, some of them even very tall and sturdy. Papa called them the Little Ruthenians for a reason unconnected with their size, but Agn&s could not remember precisely what it was. Though, said she, it seems that in their intensely blue eyes there lingered something of childhood.
Papa made the rounds of the kitchen gardens, for he was interested in the rare vegetables the women raised there; there were garlic, cabbages, and turnips, as in all such gardens, but also dill, very large, succulent black beans, cucumbers, Papa said, as sweet as nuts, and a great many other things—melons, for instance; the Little Ruthenians were very fond of melons. Papa went here and there surrounded by an activity which hummed from every direct
ion and yet remained invisible. He would go into one house, then another. On each threshold, the women came to kiss his hand, but Papa pulled it back; he was embarrassed by this gesture of submission. Followed by his interpreter, then, he was among his own. "For I forgot to explain" Agn£s added, "Papa had had time only to learn a score or so of words in their dialect, and their English was not much better. Despite this, how well they understood each other! How they trusted the interpreter when he said: 'The gentleman sent by the government informs you that such and such measures
should be taken . . .' or else, 'Boris Masaliuk respectfully inquires whether.
Then the meal was ready. While the men talked business, the women had prepared the food in so great a silence that, each time, Papa was startled to hear soft words spoken near his ear: "If you please, Mr. Government, do us the great honor of coming to our table...."
The men sat down; not the women, whose role now was to remain standing behind hosts and guests, attentive to pass them the various dishes. Was Papa sorry for them, was he fond of them, these silent, shy women, who hid their lovely tresses beneath kerchiefs and murmured, as they served the men, "If you please ..." ?
He had told Agnes that Ruthenian women's voices were the same as a murmuring of water and of silence. It is certain, though, that he would have preferred to see them seated at the same time as the men at their own table. This was the only fault he found with his Little Ruthenians—that they were absolute masters in their own families. Several times he was tempted to speak to them about this, to invite the women also to sit down at table... but he was not entirely at home.
Papa often spent a night at Dunrea. There he slept like a child. The women's voices were never high or screeching. They seemed happy. "But what does that prove?" Papa wondered. "The slaves of other days were certainly happier than their masters. Contentment is not necessarily the servant of justice." So the lot of the women at Dunrea was the only thing that upset him. He listened to them humming their babies to sleep .. . and soon he himself slipped into slumber as into a whole and deep submission. When he awoke, it was to the good smell of strong coffee which the women were preparing for him downstairs.
All that was too beautiful to last, my father would have said.
How did it happen that here alone peace and plenty reigned? Everywhere else his settlers encountered obstacles. Look how it was with his Dukhobors! Among them the Devil's malice borrowed the very teaching of Christ the better to sow confusion. Indeed, in their effort always to act as Christ would have done in our epoch, to fathom the meaning of His 'acts, of His parables, the Dukhobors committed folly after folly. Had they not decided, on the eve of winter, to set free all their domestic animals, because, said they, "Did not our God create all creatures free, beasts as well as men?"
The Well of Dunrea 77
But how were we to know what God wished us to do with the so many little lives committed to our care? thought Papa, and he had said this to his Dukhobors, that one must not too greatly rack one's brain over this subject, that the important thing was not to mistreat any animal. None the less, the Dukhobors remained tortured by the idea that they must not infringe any of God's wishes . . . and they set free their flocks; which meant that they had to drive them out of their stables and pens.
The poor animals, upset and troubled, wanted to return to their captivity. But they were prevented. The snow came. The animals found nothing to eat; they almost all perished; in the spring only a handful—and they no more than fearful skeletons—came back toward the dwellings of men. Thus among the Dukhobors the young children suffered a series of illnesses for lack of milk. Among the Mennonites it was folly of another sort. Many were the misfortunes in Saskatchewan in those days . . . and almost always through excess of good will, through eagerness to understand God perfectly.
And why was Dunrea alone spared? The men there were well behaved, true enough; they believed in God. Perhaps, even, they believed that God loved them better than He loved the Dukhobors and the Mennonites; this notion apart, they seemed to dwell in wisdom.
And Papa himself began to wonder why God seemed to love the Little Ruthenians better than the others. He was careful not to confuse their simple, naive minds; he did not too severely try their good will. And from then on Papa felt a kind of anxiety. He blamed himself for having certainly been too proud of Dunrea.
Whenever influential government people, top men from the Ministry of Colonization, asked to visit settlements, Papa always took them to Dunrea. And Dunrea helped his career, earned him consideration. The railroad companies sent photographers to make pictures of the Lost River; and the Canadian Pacific Railway produced a large number of Dunrea photos, sending them to places all over the world, to Poland, to Romania, to attract immigrants. For the C.P.R. made a great deal of money from the transportation of immigrants. My father one day met a poor Czech who confided to him that he had come to Canada only because he had seen a very tempting poster: a river, golden wheat, houses "just like those at home ..." and now this Czech was working in a mine.
When Agn£s told us this, we understood why Papa hated all 78 Street o! Riches
lies, and even lies by admission; why he suffered so much because Maman dressed things up a bit; but that is another story. ... At Dunrea, despite Papa's fears, the wheat continued to grow, the fine cattle to multiply. And since they prospered, the Little Ruthenians believed themselves better and better loved by God. They thanked Him for rains that came when they were needed, for sunshine in due season. They had no least expectation that God's gentle hand would ever weigh heavily upon them.
II
Delicate and sweethearted as she was, how could Agn£s have kept to herself so long the spectacle she at last described to us ? In those days, Papa had told her, prairie fires were always smoldering somewhere in Saskatchewan. This province, so lacking in rainfall and so windy, was truly the land of fire. So dry was it that the sun alone, playing on straw or a bottle shard, could set the prairie aflame! Ajid if the slightest active breath of air should then make known its presence, at once the fire began to run like the wind itself. Now the wind in this part of the world was already a furious, mad thing, which beat the harvests to the ground, uprooted trees, and sometimes tore the roofs from buildings. Yet satanic as it was, it still left behind it the grasses cropped close to the soil, some living thing. But behind the fire, there remained nothing save the carcasses of young fawns, of rabbits pursued by the flames, overtaken by them, sometimes
fallen dead in full flight And for a long time these carcasses
poisoned the air, for in the place where fire had passed, even the birds of prey took care not to come to eat the eyes of the dead animals. This was a not uncommon sight in many areas of Saskatchewan, and a man's heart could little bear to see a ruin so complete.
The Little Ruthenians had always been very careful of fire; when, from time to time, they had to burn stumps or weeds, they waited for a very calm day; and once the fire had done its work, they put it out by scattering the coals and then covering them with moist earth. Moreover, in their ever-damp oasis, within earshot of the murmuring Lost River, how could they truly have feared fire ?
Now that particular summer was burning dry. Even in the Lost River the water level went down several feet. And a fire started, probably ignited by nothing more than the sun, twenty
miles north of Dunrea. At first the wind drove it in another direction. My father was camping eighteen miles farther on, in a region he was looking over with a party of surveyors. During the night he awoke. The wind had changed. It was stronger and laden with an acrid smoke which hurt eyes and throat. A little later a messenger arrived on horseback. He said the fire was moving toward Dunrea. My father jumped into the wagonette; he made no attempt to follow the road, which was far from straight in that part of the country; as much as possible he took short cuts through the brambles and small, dried-up swamps. Dolly obeyed him faithfully, even though she was wounded by the sharp point of the briars. Behind him, as he
crossed these gloomy stretches of scrub, my father saw the fire following him from afar, and he heard its rumble. He prayed for the Lost River. He hoped for another change in the wind, which would sweep the fire elsewhere, no matter in what direction save toward Dunrea. This sort of prayer, he admitted, was perhaps not a good prayer. Indeed, why pray for his Ruthenians rather than for the poor, lonely farms along the Lost River road? Is the misfortune that strikes those one loves greater, my father asked himself, than that which strikes those unknown to us?
Arriving at Dunrea, he ordered the men to take their horses and plows and quickly to turn under a wide belt around the village. He set other men to digging ditches. The sky had become bright red . . . and that helped along the work, since one could see by it as though it were broad daylight. But how strange a daylight! What a dreadful glow silhouetted the terrified animals, the running men, each gesture and attitude of every moving shadow, but without disclosing their features, so that all these living beings looked like black cutouts against the horizon ! Then the fire grew more intense; it divided and came from two directions at once toward the settlement. Papa ordered the women to leave, taking with them the children and old people. "The fewest things possible," he cried out to them. "Quick! . . . Leave your furniture . . . leave everything. . . ."
How astounded he now was at these women he had believed to be so docile! At first they did not want to leave the trenches they were digging alongside their men. Papa ran from one to the other, even grasping a few of them by the shoulders and shaking them a little.
Oh, those stubborn women! Once in their houses, they began collecting a hundred useless articles: mattresses, quilts, sauce-80 Street of Riches
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