The Russlander

by Sandra Birdsell

  “What do you know about being punished?” she shouted. “Be still. Go home, and shut your mouth for once, you’re nothing but a small-minded puddle of cow shit.”

  She felt their silence, a force that pressed against her body. When Liese scurried back through the gate and rejoined the others, Katya was relieved, as she was angry enough to have struck her.

  Within moments they were at the garden, a strip of tilled earth Willy had prepared for whoever wished to use it. She found release as she hacked apart clods of earth with a hoe, and felt the impact in her elbows. She carved out a furrow, while Sara came behind dropping beans into it, Njuta behind Sara, filling in the trough with loose earth and then tamping it down with her feet. The village lay far beyond them, a single dusty street with houses on either side of it, the picket fences in need of repair and whitewash.

  The wind that had carried away the fruit-tree blossoms swept across the open land, raining dirt against their faces, flipping the leaves of a grove of poplars which had been planted as a windbreak beyond Willy’s fields. The lack of rain and uncommon spring heat, the wind, would bring drought; another punishment, she thought. He turns rivers into a wilderness, a fruitful land into barrenness for the wickedness of them that dwell therein. She was beginning to sound like everyone around her, those in church who nodded in agreement when the psalm had been read.

  She didn’t know that the villagers of Arbusovka were like many others in the colonies, like people in the Second Colony, and in Arkadak, Alt Samar, and Ufa in the north. In Kuban, Suvorka, and Terek beside the Caspian Sea. People who wanted to point fingers, to find reasons, to take the blame for having brought on the end of their world. They had somehow caused the Russian Revolution and the ensuing Civil War with their piety, their high-mindedness, greed, a worldliness. They had either been too arrogant, or too timid. They had eaten too much crackle and too many fatted calves. They were guilty of harbouring unkind thoughts, resentments, and had failed to make things right before taking communion.

  When she finished planting she sat in the wagon with Njuta on her lap, Sara sitting on the ground beside them, squinting as she stared out across the land. Katya thought of Kornelius, imagined his hands circling her wrists, his hands pressing against the small of her back, her breasts giving in to the boniness of his ribs and warming him, warming herself. Warming herself with his words: It’s not your fault. Put the blame on the shoulders of evil men. She was afraid of coming too close to him, of not being able to pull away in time to think her own thoughts and draw her own conclusions.

  Sara yanked at the hem of Katya’s skirt, disturbing her thoughts, and then pointed to a grove of poplar trees.

  A woman stood among the trees watching them, a dark figure, her face a white oval framed by a scarf that covered her head and shoulders.

  Katya held Njuta tighter and looked at the woman, at the wind rippling the woman’s skirt and the fringed edge of her headscarf. Katya knew they weren’t imagining her. They were looking at the wild woman. A hunger-crazed woman. A woman forced to live outdoors, and because of this, she had likely seen and heard things that disturbed her mind.

  “It’s Vera,” Sara said moments later.

  “Nanu, don’t be addled. That’s an old woman,” Katya replied.

  She had never heard what had happened to Vera, and didn’t want to know whether or not she lived at the estate with her family, was no longer sure that the world beyond the border of her nightmare had ever existed. That oasis – moths fluttering in the gardens on nainsook wings, the echo of cattle lowing from distant green pastures – was gone. Vera had crossed the border into the nightmare that was the present world. She had chosen to stand with the enemy in the biting morning chill, a sparse grey light, feathers trampled into the mud. Pravda had found his way to Rosenthal, and so Vera could have, too. She could be among the women travelling with the horde of anarchists, and perhaps by chance, or by design, she had found them here.

  The thought of Vera being the wild woman made her stomach lurch. She had given Njuta a piece of string from a ball of string used to mark out the row of beans, and her little sister was now binding it around the doll’s chest to keep the back of its dress closed. Sara had got up, and stood hugging herself and staring at the woman among the poplar trees, the woman unmoving, too, the oval of her face turned towards them.

  For days after, she went about thinking of the woman, thinking that whenever she turned, the dark figure had just stepped out of sight. She abandoned thoughts half formed – Njuta had been found in the Big House in Abram’s office, who put her there? Sentences went unfinished – Do you think? she asked herself aloud, bringing a quizzical look from Irma. She kept her sisters within sight, and at night held them more tightly while they slept.

  Within days there were strangers coming through the gate and up the walk to the house. Katya was in her room when she heard them mount the steps to the platform as though they had a right to be there. She went out into the hallway and saw them standing at the door, and Irma coming to greet them.

  “They’re asking for Willy,” Irma said as Willy’s son-in-law came up behind her at the door, a bulky and bearded man becoming smaller as his shoulders dropped in a slouch. He stepped in front of Irma to face the trio at the door.

  “Hello, Chaim,” he said, a limp attempt at joviality directed at the man who seemed to be in charge. He opened the door, his offer of a handshake ignored as the men pushed past him and into the house.

  “Yes, yes, come in, comrades, you’re welcome, you’re welcome,” he said. Katya heard movement behind her, and turned to see his young son standing in a doorway, the eruptions on his face brightening as he blushed and nodded at the man named Chaim, who appeared to be his age.

  Katya stepped back into her room and moments later, they came past the door, three self-important men wearing dark jackets and trousers, their boots polished and shining. Willy’s son-in-law came shuffling behind them in his slippers, saying Yes, yes, the parlour, it’s the last room on the right. She heard Chaim say they had come from the volost of Belenkoye, a nearby Russian town. The Revolutionary Committee there had received a complaint. An anonymous complaint had been dropped into the zhalobny yashtshik hanging on a wall outside the door of the store in Arbusovka. The complaint was that Katherine Vogt, kindergarten teacher, had wasted food.

  She heard her name mentioned, saw Njuta look up from where she sat on the floor, playing. Sara got up from her chair and stood rooted, listening. Katya heard the young man go on to say that although she had been accused of wasting grain for the making of table decorations, it was Willy they wanted. They wanted him on a charge more serious than wasting food. The kindergarten project marked Easter, and therefore constituted teaching religion in a school, which was prohibited. Because the kindergarten was in Willy Krahn’s house, he was to be held responsible.

  The men left soon after, taking the clay-covered jars with them, and Willy, his hands tied at his back. Katya listened as the sound of their horses and carriage faded, and in an ensuing silence went to the family room where Irma comforted Willy’s children.

  “No one could have foreseen this. Imagine, someone making a complaint out of such an innocent thing,” Irma said.

  “That someone was Liese,” Sara said as she came into the room, her voice implying that they should have known as much.

  “You don’t know what you’re saying,” Willy’s daughter scolded.

  One of the Janzen boys had seen Liese Peters at the store putting something into the complaint box, Sara told them. “She was angry because I borrowed one of her pins.”

  Irma cast a troubled glance in the direction of Liese’s closed door across the hall, and then she turned from them and went to the window, head bowed and her clasped hands tucked beneath her chin. “If it hadn’t been this, they would have found some other excuse to take Willy,” she said moments later. She sighed and slowly undid her apron strings. Then she left the house, going from door to door to let people know what had
happened, and to ask for prayers on her brother’s behalf.

  When she returned hours later, Katya was taken by her sense of accomplishment. Her step was light as she went about preparing the evening meal, her chin lifted with determination not to appear to be worried. She had left Willy in God’s hands, Irma said almost matter-of-factly. She had done the best anyone could do for him, which was to pray, and now, it was up to God. Then Irma’s attention was drawn to the window, and lit with pleasure. Katya saw the source of it, Kornelius Heinrichs coming into the yard.

  The moment news reached him, he had gone to Belenkoye, Kornelius told them. He had snooped around and discovered that Willy was being held there along with nine others, in a small hut. Sit, sit, Irma urged him, and he accepted a place at the supper table in Willy’s chair, a glass of tea, his hand touching Katya’s as he took it from her. She felt his eyes follow her as she went about setting the table and Irma explained what had happened. Before they took him away she had gone to Willy in the barn while the men were examining the evidence in the parlour, she told Kornelius. She brought him his wooden scuffs to wear in place of boots, and insisted he change his clothing for a pair of worn coveralls hanging in the barn because she’d heard that prisoners chosen for execution first were those whose apparel the guards coveted.

  “After supper, some of us are going to meet and pray for Willy. You’ll come, too, yes?” Irma said to Kornelius.

  Katya saw Kornelius shake his head and grin wryly at Irma’s manoeuvring. But when Irma went on to say that there was a reason why God had allowed Willy to be arrested, her meaning clear in the way her eyes moved between him and Katya, Kornelius winced in irritation.

  “Reason or not, that doesn’t excuse the person whose actions caused Willy’s arrest,” he said. “Everyone knows.” He had brought a sack of sugar with him and set it on the table, and he reached for it now. “Divide this up into small bundles and take them with you when you go to pray for Willy. See what you can sell. Money still talks,” he said. Meanwhile, he would find which authority he would need to bribe in Belenkoye.

  “Chaim,” Willy’s grandson said. He had slipped into the room unnoticed. He and Chaim once shared a bench at the Gymnasium, he said. Throughout the years Willy hired Chaim for the harvest. “Surely …” the grandson said, but left what he had begun to say unfinished.

  Just then, Willy’s middle-aged daughter and husband joined them, their faces knotted with worry. Then, as Liese Peters entered the room, they fell silent, averting their eyes as she went over to the table and sat down at her usual place. Kornelius cleared his throat before he spoke. Send the children out of the room, he said. When Sara, Njuta and Erika were gone he began to speak, and although he didn’t look directly at Liese, it was apparent that what he had to say was intended for her.

  There were always at least ten men kept as prisoners in the hut at Belenkoye, he said. Every morning one of those men was taken before a tribunal to answer for the complaint that had been made against him. And every morning the guards drew lots to see who would perform the execution. Who among them would be lucky enough to wear the clothes of the man they were about to kill. After the man undressed, they would escort him from the hut to a shed, where he was made to kneel and put his head against an anvil. Sometimes they delayed shooting him to see if he would begin to hope. To hear how loudly he might pray, see how badly he would soil his underwear.

  At this, Willy’s daughter gasped.

  “Be still,” Irma said sharply.

  Liese covered her face with her hands, and her shoulders began shaking as she wept.

  “Yes, cry your crocodile tears,” Willy’s daughter said.

  At that Liese began to howl, her head thrown back and face twisted grotesquely, causing Irma to become alarmed. She went to Liese and put her hands on her shoulders, held her against the swell of her stomach until she grew quiet.

  That evening while the others met to pray for Willy, Katya filled pails with water. She hadn’t asked God for anything since she’d stopped asking him to bring her family back, and she didn’t think she had the right to do so now. Instead, she would water the row of beans and the potato hills. She wanted to encourage the seeds to sprout. While the others prayed, she would try to coax life out of Willy Krahn’s land.

  She carried a pail of water from the wagon across a ditch and up onto the land but even before she reached her strip of garden she knew that something was wrong. The earth was disturbed, holes had been poked into the ground.

  She dropped to her knees and began digging in the dirt, certain that what she already suspected was true, someone had come behind her and hooked the beans out of the ground. No, not someone, several people, she realized, as the ground was patterned with footprints both large and small. She remembered the boy’s look of hunger as he stared at the bowl, the women’s veiled interest in it. She could see herself soon doing the same, becoming as watchful, looking for the opportunity to get something extra for herself and her sisters. She thought of Willy locked up, fearfully waiting to find out if he would be the one to be called up before the tribunal in the morning, and she was suddenly flooded with relief, realizing for the first time that it could have been her. That she could have been the one to be arrested. And then she was ashamed. The impulse to think of herself and her sisters above all else was beginning to set in, she thought. After all, her footprints were there, too, overlapping those of whoever had stolen the potatoes and beans she had planted. She knew she could not stay in Arbusovka any longer. She would not be able to forgive Liese’s treachery, which had made her thankful that someone else had been arrested, and not her.

  She went north across open country with Njuta on her back, Sara carrying a bundle of their belongings. At sunrise she had awakened her sisters and made them dress quickly and silently. They were going back to Opa and Oma’s, to Rosenthal, she assured Njuta. She left a note for Irma, not wanting to answer questions, or be persuaded against her will to stay. They went across land that was soft underfoot, their feet cushioned by wintered grass and weeds.

  “How do you know we’re going in the right direction?” Sara asked.

  “The trees,” she said. They would keep heading towards a brown smudge on the horizon beyond them, which more than likely were trees near to Rosenthal and Chortitza. And along the way they might encounter a Baba stone, she said to keep their minds occupied. They might see an old stone woman whose features would point the way to Rosenthal. If only she understood how to read them, she thought.

  The first house they came to in Chortitza was abandoned, its interior blackened as though with soot. She and her sisters stood on the doorsill, peering in, not wanting to go farther because of a sour smell emanating from the rooms, the dampness. Her call of greeting echoed. When she stepped inside, she saw there was filth everywhere. Heaps of refuse, shredded cloth, eggshells, broken bottles, mixed together with rotting vegetation and excrement. A fire had been built in the middle of the floor and eaten its way through the boards, its smoke blackening the walls and ceiling. Katya saw a rat’s tail disappear into a dark corner.

  She heard the sound of hammering from the adjacent house, and went outside. The gate hung askew on its hinges, and the yard was tall with weeds. She made Sara wait near the gate with Njuta. As she entered the house, the hammering stopped. She noticed that a room off the hall was completely bare of furniture; there were shards of glass scattered across the floor. An emaciated cat stopped prowling to stare at her. She turned and looked into the room across from it. There was a dead woman in a nightdress lying on a tabletop set on two chairs. Just then a man came into the room carrying a hammer, a man whose overgrown beard and long uncombed hair made him look wild. He was wearing a woman’s underslip. As their eyes met, his face caved in, and she thought he would weep. He looked down at himself, as though seeing himself through her eyes. He looked at his bare feet, the obvious fact that he was without underwear. “This is all the clothing I have,” he said.

  The dead woman’s lip
s were rimmed with black, her face sunken and yellow, mouth turned down as though in disappointment.

  “Go away from here. There’s sickness,” he said.

  She heard moaning come from yet another room, and then a woman called out for a drink; she was hot. “Papa, come, the fire is burning up the wall,” she called.

  It was the fever, the man said. He was the last one standing.

  “Your grandparents likely know by now that you’re here,” David Sudermann said. “The telephones aren’t working, but the word gets through; even better, without having to go through Valentina. And without becoming everyone else’s business in the process.”

  “Don’t talk so loud,” Auguste said sharply.

  Katya had been surprised to come upon the telephone operator, Valentina, at the clothesline in the Sudermann’s yard, just as the woman was surprised to see her. The town’s former postmaster and his family lived in the front room of the Sudermann’s house now, while another family occupied the remainder of it. She learned that, like many of the previously affluent in the towns of Chortitza and Rosenthal, David and Auguste were consigned to living in a single room in their own house.

  As Auguste poured tea into glasses, Katya saw that her hand shook. In the room was a table, a sleeping couch, sleeping bench and two chairs. Also a cupboard whose doors were missing, its shelves holding dishes and cooking pots; also a pile of bedding on a sewing machine. Sara and Njuta had joined Auguste and David’s three girls where they sat on the bench, leaning into the wall. Their girls seemed placid and withdrawn, Katya thought as she accepted the glass of tea from Auguste’s trembling hand.