by Armin Wiebe
I would want a man to play. A woman wouldn’t be the same, unless it’s my grandson Koadel’s daughter Michelena. For sure I don’t want Klaviera Klassen or one of the other church players to play, no, not those women. What am I saying? I must be febeizeling my brain. But yes, if a man would play, then I could go to my grave happy. I can see him already in my head, playing on the piano, his tongue sticking out between his lips, just like Obrum when he sat down with me on the piano bench and we played “Chopsticks” together.
Ach yoh, I had thought Obrum’s lawnswing was as wrisplijch as things could get with a man but I had a thing or two to learn yet. You see, my father was a Fäasängah in our church where we didn’t have a piano. He had a shtemm gaufel tuning fork, which he would bang on his knee to get the right note to start off a song at the front of the church. But that was about as far as it went with music in our house. My brother got a little mouth organ in a popcorn box once and we all blew it full of spit but we never quite figured out how to make a song with it.
But Obrum Kehler that day had a tear sippling from his eye corner as he crunched away on that carrot I had given him. His tear didn’t make sense to me then, just like the piano on the wagon didn’t make sense to me, a person who couldn’t even stay on a tune for more than three notes in a row. I mean, Obrum knew that even before we got married.
The day I first went to the sod house, Obrum took me by the hand and led me along the middle road between the fields and I was a little bit nervous about this because I hadn’t told my father that I was going any place. At the same time I didn’t want to let go of Obrum’s hand because my knees were still shaking from being on the lawnswing and so I only looked back once to make sure my sister wasn’t schlikjing along behind. She wasn’t, so I just let myself be pulled along in Obrum Kehler’s warm hand.
It was a hot summer day with a bit of wind that ruffled through Obrum’s long red hair and blew his tie over his shoulder as we walked. I still had my hair pinned in my Sunday bun but as I watched the wind blow through Obrum’s hair, I felt like I wanted to let my hair loose with the wind too, only I didn’t do that. I just walked along and listened to him whistling a song that I hadn’t heard before. For sure it wasn’t a church song, only it made me feel like poplar leaves trembling outside a church window.
But then Obrum stopped and held his finger to his lips. I listened. I heard frogs croaking from Mary’s Creek. I looked at Obrum’s face and saw his Adam’s apple move like he was swallowing his spit and then his lips made a circle and my heart vrunsched a little because I figured he was going to try to kiss me and I didn’t know what I was going to do. But he didn’t turn his face or even his eyes to me. Then he cooed like a mourning dove. A few heartbeats later a mourning dove cooed back to him. Again Obrum cooed … and again the dove cooed back. He turned to me.
“Now you do it,” he said.
I laughed then and shook my head. But he wouldn’t listen to no. My squeaky voice wobbled a little off the tune, but when we listened, the mourning dove cooed back, and I got a feeling that was scary and comfortable at the same time.
You know, God could have made us different. Who knows? Maybe God tried making people who were born old and then they couldn’t do anything except die. I don’t know but it seems to me now that if we knew everything when we were young that we know when we are old, we would be too scared to make it through to old age. At least, it seems that way now, that if I had known everything that I know now I would never have … no, I would never have climbed up on that wagon and sat down on the piano bench beside Obrum Kehler.
“Where did you get such a thing?” I wanted to know. That dunkel schwoakj wiped off his face.
“Get up on the wagon,” he said, and before I could argue he had helped me climb up and made me sit down on the slippery, shiny piano bench. He climbed up after me and sat so our hips touched and he lifted up the lid. I laughed. Those black and white keys made me think of Fiestane Friesen’s rotten teeth. But I hurry swallowed my laugh when Obrum started to play piano.
Yeah, Obrum Kehler played piano. Oh, not like a person nowadays who has had piano lessons. No, Obrum never learned real piano playing, but he could play that song he liked to whistle. He didn’t tell me till years later how come he had learned to play such a song, but then in those days a woman just figured a man would know things and she never asked where he had learned them.
But right then I didn’t ask. I was so yralled up with watching his farmer fingers bouncing on that piano that I wasn’t even bothered by the trembling poplar-leaf feeling the tune always gave me. Later, I thought our hips had been touching and far apart at the same time. Over and over he played that tune, louder and louder, faster and faster, his tongue sticking out from his lips like bologna between pieces of bread. It got so loud that the dog started barking and the swallows flew out of the mud nest under the eaves of the barn. Then he stopped, and he turned to me with his you-can’t-say-no look and he said, “Susch, now you play ‘Chopsticks.’”
“What mean you, ‘Chopsticks?’” I said, and shrugged away from him. But he reached me around and took my right hand and he used my forefinger to slowly pick out the high notes of the song. A few times he played the song through with my finger, but it was his hand playing piano with my finger, not my finger doing my will, and something inside me wasn’t altogether happy with that. Then he started bouncing notes with his other hand and I was squeezed in between as the piano got louder and louder and I was happy for sure that we didn’t live in the village where everybody would come to look at these two schnorrijch people making such a schtook machine noise that the big spokey wagon wheels were starting to rock back and forth.
And then Obrum started doing another thing. He started pressing his foot down on one of the pedals, and because he was a short-legged man and he was sitting a bit to the side to give me room, he had to stand up a little so his hind end was bouncing on the piano bench yet. I was bouncing right along with him whether I wanted to or not, knocking back and forth between his arms, his bouncing hip knocking mine. The dog barked harder than in a thunderstorm and over it all I heard the cows mooing.
Then the whole world sank down. I felt it in my stomach like going fast down a hill in a car. I clawed out for the piano keys but that piano had bounced up over the board Obrum had nailed in front of the wheels, and it was all we could do to shove the piano bench back and get our feet out of the way as the piano rolled right out off the end of the wagon and schtooksed down to the grass.
For a long eyeblink the piano looked like it would tip over on its face … then it leaned back and settled on its wheels. Before we could let our breath go, the front panel above the keys let loose and clattered to the ground. The yard was as still as it must have been before the world was made.
“Holem de gruel!” I said. Right away I saw that something was winjksch with that piano. The corners weren’t quite square anymore and one of the front legs was almost broken off. The lid had closed over the keys but was lifted up on one side like a crooked lip. Then I saw the tears sippling down Obrum’s cheeks again.
I should have cried too and I almost did as I felt him around with my arms and then wiped his cheek with my garden hand, leaving a patch of mud on his red stubble. Yes, I should have cried along with him, only when you have once lost your footing with a man like Obrum, it is easy to believe that the world is a ball and it is spinning so fast we are lucky we don’t fly off. Besides, it is hard to cry along with your man, who, at your wedding, when the preacher has just asked the most important question of a person’s life, drops the wedding ring so it rolls all the way to the piano player. If the piano had stayed on the wagon, maybe I would have cried then, but all I could think of to say was, “Well, at least now we won’t have to schlep it with to Peace River.”
“Peace River?” Obrum said, looking me on funny.
“At breakfast you said we should maybe move to Peace River.” His eyes stil
l looked at me but I don’t think he was seeing me. “Anyways, what want we with a broken piano there, or here?”
“I know!” he said. “Blatz!” The next thing I knew he had pulled me by the hand to the Model T and my heart was clappering along with the rattling car as we schtooksed along the road to find Blatz, whoever he was.
Holem de gruel, so fast I didn’t know that a car could go. I yelled to Obrum, “What can a Blatz do?” But the car was so loud that even if he heard me, he wasn’t listening. I gripped onto the seat so I wouldn’t get boompsed out of the car yet. Soon we were driving into Puggefeld village and Obrum turned in by the school. I was a little frightened to stay in the car by a strange village, so I followed Obrum into the school. Nobody was in the classroom, but even I could see that the teacher wasn’t keeping order here. The desks were shoved every which way and books and scribblers were scattered all over. A naughty picture was drawn on the blackboard with chalk and the floor hadn’t been swept for a week it looked like.
Obrum knocked on the door that led to the lean-to teacherage, but there was no answer, even after he called out, “Blatz!” Then he sat down at the teacher’s desk. He dipped the pen he found there into an ink bottle and with his careful handwriting he wrote a note to Blatz to tell him that he would pick him up after four on Friday so he could fix a broken piano. This is Tuesday, I remember thinking, but I couldn’t say why it mattered to count the days.
My heart still clappered when we got home again and we were so tired that, after the milking was done, a cold supper with hot tea was enough. I put sugar in both our cups even if I usually just liked mine black, and we went to bed before we had to light the lamps. Such things people could do if they didn’t live in the village. When the ten strokes on the clock woke me up, I heard the rain drizzling against the tarp that covered the piano and I wondered why it had come. Obrum felt so warm lying with his arm across me, his cheek shrubbering my shoulder, and I wondered if I should let that piano into the house in the morning. All night long I saw that piano lid lifted up from the keys on one side like a crooked lip, laughing at me like Obrum Kehler had the first time I saw him in Yelttausch Yeeatze’s machine shop, brushing red paint on that lawnswing.
11
Susch
Darpslied Elders Villa
That rain held up the thrashing gang at the neighbour’s on Wednesday and I thought Obrum would maybe want to bring that piano into the house, and even if I didn’t want to think about it, I couldn’t help wondering where we could put that thing. But at breakfast Obrum said that we would go across the river to pick saskatoons. I don’t think he was really interested in saskatoons, and for an eyeblink I wondered if maybe he didn’t want to think about that piano neither. For sure he wanted an excuse to drive the Model T he had bought in Winnipeg after the wedding. Obrum was so eager to drive the car that he didn’t even go to the beckhouse after breakfast, which was almost like having the sun stand still in the sky, because in those days I could set the morning clock by his visit to the two-holer.
I hardly had tied loose my apron and put on my straw hat before he already was honking the Model T horn. He had a dozen syrup pails piled in the back seat with two ten-gallon cream cans and I schmuistahed to myself that Obrum was thinking he would get a bumper crop of saskatoons. Not that I had anything against having saskatoons to put some colour on the table during winter.
Besides, I liked riding along with my man in the Model T after a rain when the road was too wet for dust. And I liked watching how he gripped the wheel and looked straight ahead through the window glass—until he saw something to laugh about. Like how that cow in the ditch looked like Milyoon Moates or how the new telephone poles looked like a row of upside-down women’s legs with high heels on. I saw too how he was shrugging himself around a little oftener than seemed necessary to be comfortable, even on those Model T seats.
Sure enough, as soon as we had picked saskatoons for maybe five minutes, Obrum febeizeled himself into the bush and I didn’t see him again until I came back from emptying my syrup pails into the cream can in the car.
And yes, we picked a bumper crop of berries, both cream cans and all the pails full, and before we went home we sat on the shade side of the car and ate jreeve schnetje and drank cool coffee from a jar and even popped a few saskatoons into each other’s mouths. If this Indian family hadn’t stopped their horse and wagon right beside our Model T, who knows what Obrum Kehler would have started there in the shade so far away from Gutenthal. The Indians soon picked their way into the bush and only the horse was left there to see, but an eye is an eye, even when it is looking out from the side of a horse’s head.
Later, I was happy for sure that it was so schendlijch hot that night we each had to stay on our own side of the bed. I mean, in those days Obrum took it seriously what the wedding preacher had said about being joined together and with no children yet in the house a woman could let herself go too but this night it was good it was too hot.
The sparrows tsittered early outside the window on Thursday when I heard a mourning dove. I listened to hear if Obrum would coo back to it the way he liked to do. But instead he jumped out of bed and ripped his combination underwear off so fast the buttons flew all over the room. Before I could even say, “What’s loose?” I saw that his middle was covered with gnauts, the poison ivy itch, front and back, between the legs, all over everything, and he danced as broad-legged as he could without falling down.
I shouldn’t have laughed at him like that, but sometimes a woman forgets to remember her place, and besides, if it had happened to me, his dear wife, Obrum would have laughed at me and blabbered the story to all who would listen, even unto the day when I will be lying in my coffin waiting to be buried in my best dress.
How could I help it? Could God himself have kept a straight face looking at Obrum dancing naked from one leg to the other in the morning light?
But at the same time I had to cry too because such itchy gnauts between the legs had to be a bigger plague than anything God sent down to Job in the Old Testament. And I was happy for sure that it had been too hot in the night for any joining together into one flesh.
“What wiped you with yesterday in the bush?” I asked when I had stopped shuddering enough to talk.
For once Obrum couldn’t say anything.
I tried to wash him with warm water and lye soap but the red blisters were so sore and so itchy he screamed when I touched him, even with a soapy bare hand. I filled the washtub and when he sat down in the soapy water, he felt a little better and I gave him his porridge to eat. With his hands busy at least he didn’t try to scratch himself. But every few minutes the itch got so grülijch strong he shrugged himself and schulpsed water all over the floor.
He was still sitting in the tub when I came in from the milking. “Susch,” he said to me. “The thrashers are coming today. What will I do?”
“You can’t wear pants with such gnauts, it would rub the skin too much.”
“And I can’t go naked to thrash barley.”
“I’ll just have to tell them that you are sick and they will have to thrash without you.”
“No. I’m not sick. I just have gnauts. I just need some kind of clothes to wear that don’t rub me between the legs. There must be something.”
“Well, I don’t know,” I said as I poured fresh milk through the strainer into the separator bowl. “Even wide pants would rub together and a person can’t walk around broad-legged all day.” I speeded up the separator crank until the bell on the handle stopped ringing so I could open the spout. The morning air blew in through the wire window and I felt it come up my legs under my skirt. That’s when I laughed at Obrum again.
I didn’t think Obrum would really do it, and I could see that it wasn’t easy for him. At first he wanted a manly dress, like one of my dark winter skirts, but the wool made him kjriesch out with hurting. And he didn’t want flowers, he said, as he stro
ked each dress and skirt to see how smooth it was. But every dress that was light and cool had flowers and he just couldn’t bring himself to wear flowers on the thrashing field. He kept coming back to my black winter skirt.
I could see what he was thinking. With that skirt he could wear his own shirt, and from far off the dark skirt wouldn’t show so easy and with no flowers he wouldn’t feel so much like a woman. If only the wool wasn’t so scratchy.
I looked at Obrum’s freckled bow legs and his blistered hams. I looked at the long, paper dry-cleaning bag at the end of the row of hanging dresses. I thought of how I would feel if it hadn’t been too hot for loving in the night. Still, it was a hard thing for me to do.
The silk underskirt from my wedding dress fit him quite well, looser than it fit me, because a man doesn’t have to have room to give birth to children. With his workshirt tails out and the black skirt covering up the slip, Obrum Kehler stepped out the door to face the thrashers.
I don’t know how much ribbing he got as they pitched the sheaves into the thrashing machine, but at mealtimes not a word was said about Obrum sitting at the head of the table with the air from the wire window blowing up his skirt. Maybe it was because he kept telling one funny story after another so they forgot to laugh at his dress. Still, the few times I had a chance to look out to the thrashing field, I saw that more people than necessary were stopping to watch.
Each night while Obrum sat in the soapy water I washed the barley dust out of the silk and hung it on the line to dry for morning. I cried on the second night when the spots of gun grease wouldn’t wash out even after I rubbed till my hands were sore.
The thrashing wasn’t finished yet on Friday, so Obrum didn’t go to pick up Blatz. Then on Saturday at noon Preacher Funk drove into the yard just as the men were washing up for dinner and I heard the preacher say something about how he had heard that the Catholic pope was helping with the thrasher gang. I didn’t hear what Obrum said back to him, but Preacher Funk didn’t stay long after that and I thought I could see in Obrum’s eye that look he got when he was planning something for a surprise.
