Sophie stepped back and crossed her arms against her chest as though she expected to be buffeted by wind.
“Who is next?” Abram asked, breaking the silence, the only one in the room not to be astonished. While some of the Russian workers could speak a word or two of Plautdietsch, Sophie had recited in High German, the Mennonites’ formal church and school language.
By the time they arrived at the part of the program when Abram and his brothers presented everyone with a Christmas plate, the sting of Katya’s failure had subsided. Now, as she lined up once again with the other children, this time to receive a saucer of cookies and a glass of kvass, given the amount of jostling and excitement, she was sure everyone had forgotten. As she stepped up to the buffet, her eyes met Sophie’s.
“It’s wrong for someone to laugh,” Sophie muttered.
Aganetha clapped her hands for attention as she rose from her chair. Her taffeta skirts whispered loudly as she went over to the table and, except for the wavering flames of the candles clipped onto the evergreen tree, the room fell into darkness. Katya heard the collective intake of breath, felt the intense stillness radiating from the perimeter of the room, where the workers and children stood.
“And now, on again,” Aganetha sang as the chandelier above the table jumped with light. “And off,” she said, her cheeks flushed, a strand of pewter hair falling over one ear, plastered now against her slick face. “Off, ja?” she said with a childlike giggle, her bright eyes scanning the workers, who were trying not to be taken in by the electric lights as their children were, by the switch Aganetha held, which was on the end of the cord hanging from the chandelier.
“Enough is enough,” Abram grumbled.
“Once more,” Aganetha said.
The room went dark once again, then lit up again, the objects on the wooden plates disappearing and, much to the relief of the children, reappearing.
The clock had struck the hour, its pendulum sliding across the brocade wall; the candles on the tree had burned down to their holders when Abram wished everyone a good year and God’s blessings. Katya went out into the vestibule, its windows fuzzy now with the velour of frost. She felt the satisfying heaviness of an orange and a box of crayons knocking against her thigh as she wedged her feet into her boots and tied the laces. Salt crystals shattered underfoot as she went down the stone steps. The excitement of the evening left her unmindful of the immediate contrast of the heat of the house, and the frigid air. Ihr Kinderlein, kommet, she recited, the words tumbling out unbidden, the entire two verses of the song.
When she reached the back of the house where her family waited, they turned all at once, and together they went through the darkness. Her father’s reassuring clasp and then pat on her shoulder was what she needed to know, that her loss of memory was not taken as a failure.
As they passed through the shadows cast by the summer kitchen and washhouse, the inverted V-shaped hood of the butter well, the other workers returned to their identical brick houses which stood in a row near a stone fence and the Chortitza road.
Her family’s house was on the opposite side of the compound where, in warm months of the year, yoked oxen went through a gate two by two onto the fields, and where a buried pipe entered the compound from Ox Lake, bringing water into an engine shed. Katya’s house had been the house of Abram’s parents, built when they’d first arrived from Prussia, with a trunk of gold, some people said. How else could Abram’s father have managed to immediately buy up so much land from a Count Ignatieff? Abram had built the Big House while his parents were still alive, and they had chosen not to live in it, ending their days in what was now Katya’s house, and had been for as long as she could remember hearing the rattling of its shutters in a high gale, the creak of a floorboard underfoot, seeing the sun shining through an open door turning the polished floor the colour of butter.
She knew each scuffed door sill, the dent in a door frame made by a hammer her father had thrown across the room in a fit of unaccustomed anger. He’d chosen not to mend the gouged wood; it served as a reminder of a time when he’d been too hotheaded, and not what he had become, a willow bending over a creek bed, giving into the wind and not breaking; a soft man with a hushed voice that made people stop and listen, a smile sometimes pulling his face lopsided over an inner picture that had arisen. Katya knew there was a mouse hole in the pantry behind a bottom drawer, a drawer that held cooking utensils, a soup ladle whose ivory handle had turned brown when her mother had absentmindedly set it on the stove the day Gerhard was born. Everything in the house reminded her of something, a moment; a shaft of light moving with particles of dust brought to mind a time when she had sat on her mother’s lap, when all around her had been new and unfamiliar.
Tonight when she looked out the back window of her little attic room, she would see the steppe moving with light. From the front window she would watch the lights in the windows of the workers’ houses dim and extinguish. Look how one candle illuminates a window, a single lamp an entire room, and how the darkness is softened and made easier because of the light, her father had said. So let your light shine, and the world will be better for it. And God saw the light, that it was good: and divided the light from darkness. The crescent moon was bright and high, and tonight from the front attic window she might see beyond the forest to the Orlov estate, a dim suggestion of light from lanterns that were sometimes left burning all night in the sheep barns. She felt the orange knocking against her thigh and anticipated peeling it then scattering the pieces of rind on the windowsill to dry. Later she would put them into a drawer, the scent of Christmas lingering for months.
They were almost home when Katya suddenly realized something was wrong. She had the vague sense that she had forgotten something. When they had almost reached their gate she realized what it was. She dropped onto her haunches, her breath snatched away. The four little brass bells, two on each boot, were gone. She was eight years old and knew that thunder followed lightning, that if a sow had more piglets than she had teats, the smallest piglets would starve, that a hand held too close to a flame would soon feel its heat. But she had never known loss, and to lose something was incomprehensible. Oh, for the goodness of love, she cried out, bringing Gerhard to his knees beside her.
CHORTITZA February 12, 1911
Peace be unto you, my dear friend Peter Vogt,
It was good to have fellowship with you during Christmas and to see how your blessed family has grown, and continues to grow. Your dear Marie must have passed the recipe on to my Auguste during the season, as we just recently discovered that we’re once again about to be blessed in a similar way.
Further to our conversation around Tolstoy. This is bound to tickle your ear as it did mine. I was in the volost office when I overheard our favourite preacher say that he felt sorry for Tolstoy’s family as all he’d left behind were the books he had written, which, in the preacher’s humble opinion, wasn’t much to show for a man’s life. This is the same person who opposed the need for a Teachers’ Seminary. He fears too much education will ruin a person for life. It is my experience from living in the centre of our thriving burg, that the less informed a man is, the larger and louder his opinions.
Thank you for sending me a copy of the inventory, which should prove useful when it comes time to advising Abram on which twenty-three desiatini he should part with. I say this because I noticed that three hundred desiatini my brother recently acquired is not included in the records, which, in my opinion, it should be. The absence of this recent acquisition in the inventory is good reason for me to bring it to Abram’s mind when next we meet. Although I realize you would prefer the parcel of land near to Franzfeld and Cow Puddle Lake, I think Abram would be more open to giving up a piece of this newest purchase, which hasn’t yet felt his plough and oxen.
Auguste sends her greetings, and wishes you continued blessings, as do I, as always.
Your friend,
David Sudermann
n the final day of school t
he tall grass went running before them in the wind, the unbroken land around and beyond Ox Lake becoming like water, and the plumage of the grass like a silver mist rolling across it. She would say to the young man who, in another time and place would want her to tell old-country stories, that in spring the steppe smelled like licorice. It was the perfume of the wild iris; and then there was also the sweet smell of hyacinth which always made her think of Easter – had he noticed that on Good Friday the sky was often grey with clouds? In Russia the sky was cloudy too. Nature did that. Nature paid homage to the one who had willingly gone into the tomb. She imagined that the scent of hyacinth was like the scent of the oil the women had used to prepare the Saviour’s body.
But on that last day of school when she was young – her legs sometimes carrying her too fast, and she’d go rolling like a tumble-weed across the ground – she thought, such a waste, the iris and hyacinth blossoms shrivel so quickly and turn the colour of rust. You had to go slowly, search for them growing near to the ground among the steppe grass. She wondered if that was why they looked and smelled so extravagant, so they’d be noticed, even for a short time. The sight of spring wildflowers lifted a sadness she’d felt throughout the winter whenever she thought of the missing bells. She had expected she might yet find them when the snow had melted, but that was not to be.
Lydia called, and pointed out a steppe eagle riding the air currents far above them, and soon after they heard a grebe call out a warning from among the reed beds. They went round Ox Lake, the wind sweeping through the reeds, the sound a church of whispering, a dryness soon to be filled with green shoots and birdsong. In a field beyond the lake Greta startled a nest of newly hatched larks. She bent, hands on knees as she peered at them, the wind tearing her hair loose from its braids and whipping about her head. Look, when she moved, the birds opened their beaks. They became three apricot-coloured flutes as wide around as their bodies. If she should go close enough, why, she’d be able to see right through to their feet, yes? Let’s not, Katya told her; the sight of near-naked birds always made her shiver. They must remember what they’d seen, as their parents would want to know.
We saw baby larks in a nest.
We heard a water fowl of some kind.
We saw an eagle.
When we went close by the baby larks, we looked inside their beaks and saw a pile of wriggling worms.
Earlier in the day she had gone to the road with Lydia and Greta, had chased after a carriage taking Helena Sudermann to the train station at Ekaterinoslav. Their former tutor was off on a journey and would be gone for the entire summer. Who was going to yammer at them for bringing mud into the kitchen? Not Sophie. The Wiebe sisters perhaps, but they were so mild they couldn’t scold without weeping. Like Helena Sudermann, the Wiebe sisters hadn’t married and borne children. While the absence of such joy had made Helena as gritty and bitter as a grape seed, the Wiebe sisters were as malleable as butter.
Now they went far away from Privol’noye and the Chortitza road, the meadow and forest beyond it. They went away from the Orlov estate, which they were not to explore as they had once done, had gone near to its wooden Great House stained charcoal by the elements, its roof carpeted with moss and peppered with the growth of mushrooms. They had taken turns standing on an upended pail and looking in a window to see a dwarflike man dressed all in black, poking at a fire. Then they had peered in a front window to see a long table spread for Easter with two-foot-high paska breads and bowls of coloured eggs. They had been surprised to find the familiar, and wondered how the Russians had come to know their custom.
Greta and Lydia began to run, their gingham backs becoming a flutter of pink and blue amid the rolling plumage of grass. Katya, watching them move away from her, would see them that way when her hair had turned white, moving away from her like that, their arms swimming to part the air and grass before their faces, the clouds racing before them as the clouds beyond their classroom windows had all morning on their final day of school. Windows which looked out east and south, and on clear mornings Franz Pauls, whose red-rimmed eyes were sensitive to light, would draw the blinds against the sun. Draw the blinds to blind him to what was going on in the compound beyond. Especially at the parade barn, where Abram, if he had a visitor, would bring his prized red stallion out into the yard and put it through its paces.
“Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations,” Greta and Lydia had chanted as Franz Pauls’s slender frame passed in front of a window. He had the mincing and calculating step of a rooster; he would stretch his neck suddenly and poke his head in this and that direction, as though amazed at something he’d just seen. Katya’s earlier recitation of the Twenty-third Psalm had been almost perfect, and now Lydia and Greta were reciting the books of the Bible for the final test of the year. Lydia’s fingernails grew white half-moon spots as she gripped the back of her chair, standing shoulder to shoulder with Greta, whose dark eyes shone with concentration.
Franz Pauls raised a ruler as though he might stop them, but his attention had been drawn by the sight of Dietrich coming across the compound. Dietrich had returned home for the summer, which meant that his older sister, Justina, must have too. Katya guessed this was what occupied their tutor’s mind, from the way he began preening his rooster feathers, grooming the moustache he’d sprouted since coming to Privol’noye, smoothing it, twirling its waxed ends that curved so proudly up to his ears.
From the way Franz Pauls paced, only half listening to Greta and Lydia’s recitation, Katya guessed that their tutor was as impatient as they were for school to be over. A guitar rested against the wall beneath a window; he’d brought it with him intending to play it as accompaniment for his proposed choir. But they hadn’t done much choir-singing, after all. Instead, Franz Pauls frequently gazed out a window while he plucked the guitar, thinking of his town of Rosenthal, she supposed. Thinking of his pals at the high school he’d left a year early, going out into the wilderness to teach children who did not necessarily want to be taught. Thinking of the red stallion Abram, in a fit of good nature, had promised he would ride. Franz Pauls had bought new leather riding breeches which he wore on Sundays and holidays no doubt to remind Abram of his promise, but to no avail.
The sun came out from behind clouds, beaming full strength, and instantly the classroom was warmer. Brass chains looped against a wall brightened to the colour of gold. The chains were attached to the Swiss clock whose works were so efficient, she couldn’t hear the clock ticking above Lydia and Greta’s recitation. Beneath the face of the clock was an alpine house with two doors. A boy in blue trousers stood in one of the doorways, as though he couldn’t decide whether to come out and predict rain, or go back inside and let his red-frocked sister come out of her door to give them a day of sunshine. The light was reflected in the picture glass of a photograph of the tsar hanging on a wall opposite the windows, highlighting a diorama, a picture they’d painted depicting the zones of plant and animal life of a eutrophic lake.
A silence followed when Greta and Lydia finished reciting. Franz Pauls’s moustache went flying up as he smiled. “Very good, girls,” he said, and their last day of school was over. Katya heard a hollow click, like a key being turned in a lock. The boy in blue had gone back inside the house, and the red-frocked girl had come out. The remainder of the day was going to be a fine one to go roaming.
They had wandered only for a short time when the wind rose suddenly, pressing the purple globes of wild onion flat against the grass, its plumage becoming stiff brushes which chafed their skin. Soon they had to shout to be heard, and by the time they’d reached the pipeline path and were racing to the compound, Katya was soaked to her skin and had nothing to gain by running.
By summer, the larks they had come upon in the nest were fledglings, and Katya couldn’t tell them apart from their parents. When they perched on a marmot’s hill and sang, they too stretched their crested heads and dipped their tails when they trilled.
How do you know tho
se are the same birds? Gerhard asked, his voice full and rough-sounding. Her brother was eager to know what Katya knew, and more, his shoulders already squared in anticipation of gaining a seat on a bench in the classroom following the harvest.
Greta said she couldn’t be sure it was the same nest, but Katya recognized the indentation of the earth where it sat.
“Yes, it’s possible to know,” her father said.
He had something to tell them, and so he’d come walking with them, his long legs pulling him through the weeds, a wide-shouldered, sinewy and work-fit man with a pie-shaped and flat face, a fringe of brown beard decorating its edge. You wait, they’ll be back soon, he’d called to Lydia, who’d stood on the road watching them go. Just his own this time, he told her without explaining why.
He took them out into a field, where they startled a flock of birds, hundreds of starlings rising up at once, twittering, their wing pinions squeaking. As the birds flew off, they became a broad ribbon wavering above the steppe. The ribbon began rising at each end, the ends finally meeting at centre sky and forming a circle. It brought to mind Jeremiah’s chariot, her father said as they watched the birds wheel from one end of the horizon to the other.
He said they should notice how certain plants turned the edges of their broad leaves to the sun, rotating as the sun travelled from east to west. They did so to preserve precious moisture. Notice the downy stem hairs, which drew in what moisture there was from the air. The plants’ thirsty roots spread deep into the soil under their feet. Which was what he wanted for them, he said. He wanted his sons to put their roots down into their own soil. For his daughters to learn how weeds in a vegetable garden disguised themselves in similar-looking foliage, mingled with the food plants in order to escape the eye of a gardener. He wanted them to take lessons from the garden, to become good stewards of their future husbands’ efforts, to become precious rubies. He wanted them to know that the next harvest he brought in would be their own. Over here, there, or there, he told them, gesturing with a wide sweep of his arm, west, east, south, their harvest brought in from whatever land Abram and his brothers saw fit to sell to him. Beyond them the grass lay flattened in a swirl, as though crushed by the body of a huge sleeping animal.
The Russlander Page 4