by Armin Wiebe
Makes that sense? I mean, I am just an old woman who never even to English school went, except for two years after the German schools were closed down and those that were against the English schools went away to Mexico, like Obrum’s family. Obrum told me once that his father wouldn’t have moved to Mexico except that all of his mother’s family was moving and Obrum’s father, Kjringel Kehler, knew that it would be impossible to live with his wife’s grommsauljing if he made her stay in Gutenthal. But instead of selling all his land, he gave Obrum the section of virgin prairie that he had gotten cheap from his older brother who went bankrupt when the railway between West Lynne and Horndean had to be ripped up because the law only allowed the CPR to run trains south of Winnipeg.
But where was I? My head must be getting tired. My throat is getting sore and they still won’t have any Wonder Oil and sugar to make it feel better. But yes, Beethoven Blatz talked to me while I was milking with frozen hands. It wasn’t easy for him for sure, but I heard him say Sonia’s name so often already that I just needed to know who this woman was. So I asked him if Sonia was his wife.
“Wife?” he said, and his voice squeaked like he was frightened and confused. Then he said, “Nein, Sonia not wife, not from village. Never such a woman could have come from the village.” His talk was hard to follow but I got from it that Sonia was a woman who played violin, a Russian woman, maybe even a gypsy. He told how she played a gypsy violin while he played Klavier. Blatz had left the village to live in Ekaterinoslav, a city where he was a student in a music school. “A student was this Sonia.” Blatz seemed to go far into a dream as he spoke. “Late in the night it was when we … schlikjed, you would say, into Übungstube … practice room that had a Flügel … a grand piano … grosses Klavier, ja. The Moonlight I played for Sonia with the moon shining on the keys.” I didn’t understand quite everything Blatz was saying but it seemed that Sonia teased him with her violin, teased him to try new music, not just Beethoven. What meant “new music” I didn’t understand because Beethoven music was very new to me—but what knows a simple woman anyways?
Blatz had sat himself down on a pile of hay while he was talking. When I finished milking, I stood up from the stool to carry the pails into the house, but Blatz spoke still. “Wheels the piano stool had … and while playing her violin Sonia on my lap sat … the stool away rolled from the Klavier …” His voice got so quiet I hardly could hear him, so I set the milk pails down beside the lantern and sat him beside on the straw.
Ach, then his story got grülijch scary. He told me how in Ekaterinoslav they heard that the anarchists had murdered the Czar and his family. “Soon after robbers schwarmed the villages over, stealing and killing.” Blatz’s voice squeaked when he said, “On women they forced themselves even where children could see.” A man from the village who had a freight business, Toews, I think he said, came to the city to seek Blatz out at the school with word that Blatz’s father was very sick and that his mother needed help. “I packed hastily to go home, but Toews I kept waiting while of Sonia I took leave. Toews saw me embrace this Russian gypsy woman and then while riding in the wagon, he mercilessly teased me about the Russtje Retz.” Blatz tried to shut out Toews’s swinish talk as he worried about his parents and even more about Sonia. Toews, Blatz said, put on a pious face in the village church but he was known for his dirty talk about Russian women, and other freighters said Toews boasted about having his way with them when he was hauling freight to Ekaterinoslav.
A few weeks went by and Blatz got a letter from Sonia and she told how it was getting dangerous in the city and that she would try to join him in his village. Blatz was torn apart. His father was dying and he couldn’t leave his mother alone. He feared for Sonia travelling through the countryside as the robbers started striking closer villages. In Blatz’s village some of the men organized a self-defence—Selbstschutz—and when the robbers came, there was shooting and many people were killed: men, women, children. Blatz had hidden with his parents in the cellar and so escaped harm, but after the ruffians had gone he went with the others to find the dead. On a field road they found Toews’s freight wagon. A woman’s body lay in the back. Only when her skirts were pulled down off her face did Blatz recognize Sonia through the bruises. Toews and his horses were never found.
When he finished telling me this picture, the lantern flickered out, and I held my breath as Beethoven Blatz’s tears leaked down to the straw. He called me Sonia then, and in the dark he reached with his fingers to push the loose hair from my face up under my kerchief. My fingers, still icy cold, reached up to stroke his cheek.
Ach heeat, what is it with people who have been living for six thousand years at least, if you just go by the Bible? And still we have to figure out the most important things all alone like nobody in the world has done the things that we have to do? Even with all the preaching and newspapers and books and televisions and catalogues full with underwear, we know so much, only we don’t know nothing, at least we behave like we don’t know nothing …
16
Koadel
The Schpikja House
When I remember Beethoven Blatz, I see him through my little boy eyes and my thoughts slip into the mingled patterns of my childhood tongues. I was four that summer Mahm and Pahp left me with Grossmamuh Susch and Grosspapuh Obrum while they drove away in the car. The car was full with suitcases and bed things, so full that I had had to sit on Mahm’s lap all the way from Osterwick to Gutenthal. Mahm was stinking a little bit from perfume, I thought, and her lips looked like they had some red smeared on. At the end of the summer I found out that Pahp had been going to summer school in Winnipeg and Mahm had played with some children while their mother lay half naked beside a swimming pool, painting her toenails red. Mahm told me stories of how she would take these two children, Jerry and Jane, for a long ride on the streetcar all the way to the zoo, where they would look down into this round cement hole to see the bears in the bottom, and then they would go look at the monkeys in a cage, and if it was a lucky day they would see this big green and blue peacock bird spread its long tail out like a fan. Later I found out too that we weren’t going back to the house in Osterwick to live because my father wasn’t going to be holding school there anymore and that it had almost been time for school to start again before Pahp and Mahm found a place to live in a school called New Darwin.
At New Darwin the teacherage was just a lean-to at the back of the school that looked like the schpikja house by Grossmamuh Susch. For sure Mahm cried a lot in the first few days we lived there, and Pahp grumbled about the baseball diamond that just had an old beckhouse door for a backstop and not even sacks with sand for bases. Pahp, by New Darwin, talked mostly English, and Mahm too tried to talk Flat German only when she told me things about Mexico where she had lived when she was a girl. New Darwin had mostly English kids in the school but for sure that didn’t bother me because I could easy talk English too. And Pahp told the New Darwin people that his name was Mr. Ike Kehler, and I thought that was funny because his real name was Isaac even if everybody in the Flat German Darp called him Knackbaul because my father always hit more home runs than anybody else. After that summer too Mahm said to me one day that I could call them Mommy and Daddy like the English kids. And she tried to remember to call me Charlie, especially if we were talking English. But when I called her Lena she laughed, then brought it by to me that it was not nice to call my mother by her name.
But on that day they dropped me off at my grandparents’, or “Oolasch” as Mahm called them, even I could feel something was wrong. I started to follow Pahp out to the field where Grosspapuh was, but he sent me back to Mahm, who was following Grossmamuh into the house. As I turned to obey Pahp I heard music from the schpikja house. “Nicht doa!” Pahp yelled, pointing at the schpikja house. “Not to Blatz’s house!” All mixed up, I flitzed off to Grossmamuh Susch’s door.
Later by faspa, my father and Grosspapuh Obrum were very quiet, grunting and
nodding when food was passed, but I was busy eating plum jam smeared over butter on a twieback bun. When Grossmamuh Susch said, “Why not let Lena stay here with the boy while you go to school in Winnipeg?” Mahm and Pahp hurry said “No” like they were talking out of the same mouth. I thought I saw Grosspapuh Obrum lift his eyebrows at Grossmamuh and then Grossmamuh Susch smiled at me and said that her big boy would help her get all the work done.
I tried very brave to be and only sippled a little when Mahm hugged me beside the car and gave me a kiss. Pahp reached my blue and white and red sponge ball from the car and he bounced it to me and I almost catched it between my hands, but I had to run after it into the grass. When I had picked the ball up, the car was driving away and I ran after it until it had gone around the curve that led out to the road. When I couldn’t see the car anymore, I turned and shuffled back to the house, looking at birds and gophers and mosquito eaters, and bounced the ball and ran after it. Grossmamuh Susch came out of the house, carrying a tray with a plate of food and a pint jar of coffee on it.
“Where are you going, Grossmamuh?”
“Bringing Beethoven faspa,” she said. “You can come with.”
I wondered if Beethoven was the same person as Blatz, but before I could ask, loud music really fast showelled from the schpikja house. Grossmamuh Susch walked in through the door without knocking.
“Faspa, Beethoven,” she said. The music still played, and I could see a man with a beard and long hair like a woman sitting on a bench, bending over by a piano, and his fingers from both hands were flitzing over the piano teeth like the wings of a frightened bird. Then the music stopped and the man turned and looked into my wide-open eyes. He stood up from the piano and said, “And who is this kleiner Mensch?”
“My grandson,” Grossmamuh Susch said. “He will be my kjnajcht this summer.”
Beethoven almost smiled, and as he stepped down into the kitchen he started to pat my head, but then he seemed to think better of it and he went over to the table to sit down to eat faspa. Blatz was dressed like a teacher, I thought, only it was summer holidays and there was no school, but he was wearing a Sunday suit, only for sure it wasn’t Sunday and his suit was different from the one Pahp used for holding school—Pahp’s pantlegs were wide and Blatz’s pantlegs were narrow like the pants that Inspector Dalton had on the time he got a ride in my father’s car and I was sitting in between. The ball on the gear schwengel was even with Inspector Dalton’s knees and I saw his narrow pantlegs and how his leg was shaking a little bit as the car was schtookering along the dirt road.
So Blatz sat down to eat the faspa that my Grossmamuh Susch had brought to him and I saw his knee in the narrow pantleg schtooksing a little bit like some men do when they are singing. I looked at Blatz’s white shirt sticking out from his button vest and he was wearing a necktie too, only the knot was tied different from the way Pahp tied it and the tie had sort of snake pictures all over it, not stripes like Pahp’s had. Blatz’s collar looked different too—it had round corners, not sharp like ordinary shirts—but the collar was hard to see because Blatz’s black beard was so long that the collar and the knot in the tie were hidden it behind except when Blatz looked up high or turned his chin sideways. His head seemed to be shaking along with his leg and sometimes his hand holding a piece of bun would wave around in the air the way a song leader in church does for the singing.
Blatz’s long woman’s hair was black with some grey stripes, and then I saw how his dark eyebrows reached together over his nose just like my father, Knackbaul Kehler’s, did, and when he turned his head, his dark eyes glanced off the sunlight coming through the window and it almost looked like he had lights in his head, and I laughed because sometimes when Pahp turned sideways to me in the sunlight, he looked like he had lights in his head too. I said, “Grossmamuh, Blatz’s eyes are lights, just like Pahp.”
For an eyeblink it was still as it is in church between praying and more preaching and then Grossmamuh Susch said, “What say you?” and then she grabbed me and pulled me onto her lap and said, “Ekj wensch, ekj wensch ekj weah ein kjliena Mensch,” and we laughed together until she stopped and said, “Beethoven, how goes it with the Klavier?”
Blatz stared into the corner where a spider web had caught a still-buzzing fly and he chewed slowly like he was twieveling over what to say to Grossmamuh Susch. Some kjreemels bread had fallen on his beard and then I saw his lips sticking out from his beard, sort of soft pinkish lips that made me think they were for a woman, even when I saw them on my father’s mouth. My mother and Grossmamuh Susch didn’t have lips like that at all and neither did I or Grosspapuh Obrum. I almost said something about that when I was still on Grossmamuh Susch’s lap, but then Beethoven Blatz said to the spider web in the corner, “Today in my head some notes I heard, but after I set the notes down on the paper I could not play them.” Blatz turned his face to us but I could see that he wasn’t looking to me, he was looking to Grossmamuh Susch. “Susch, the notes I could not find on the Klavier.”
“Still you cannot the Klavier right make?”
“Nein, Susch, no, it is not failure of Klavier. The faults in the tuning I understand.”
“Mean you, another Klavier would not such notes have? Could you try it on the one in the Mary’s Creek church?”
“Ah Susch, my wish is so easy it could be. Aber, how shall I say, it is like maybe when you cook somma borsch and the suaromp leaves a little too young are or a little too old and your tongue knows the borsch tastes not so good as it could.”
“Oh, I think I understand what you mean. Even more pepper or a ploomps vinegar doesn’t make it better taste.” Grossmamuh Susch sounded like she maybe didn’t quite believe it.
“Yoh, yes, Susch, the only way is to pick the suaromp leaves on the right day.”
“How can you such a thing do with Klavier music?”
“I must listen with my ears inside my head. And then I must play until I find the notes on the Klavier that make the sounds I hear in my head. Sometimes it takes five or eight sounds together on the Klavier to make the one sound I hear inside my head.”
“Making borsch isn’t so easy, is it, kjliena Mensch?” Grossmamuh Susch tightened her arms around me for a second, then she opened them up so I could slide off her lap. Outside I could hear Grosspapuh’s tractor brumming. “Obrum has brought the water from the creek so I can pour the garden. You want to help me, Koadel?”
I helped Grossmamuh Susch in the garden and it was fun dipping a syrup pail into the barrel of water and then pouring it on the tomato plants that had old shingles stuck in the ground around them. Grossmamuh showed me how to pour the water under the leaves to where the root was and then she showed me how to find the roots for the cucumber plants, which had yellow flowers where the cucumbers would soon grow, and then after, she pulled two carrots out of the ground and wiped the dirt off and told me to take one over to Grosspapuh Obrum, who was sitting on the lawnswing.
I had never seen Grosspapuh Obrum on the lawnswing before, for sure I had never seen any big people on the swing. I had only swung on it myself when I had played outside when we were visiting, but we never stayed for night even when it was late and I had fallen asleep already and Grossmamuh Susch would tubba Mahm and Pahp to stay for night already and drive home in the morning. But Pahp always said no to that, that driving home in the morning would febeizel half the next day and then he would be sucking the hind tit again for the rest of the week. And Grossmamuh Susch would schell him out for using such language in front of his own son and Mahm would hurry carry me to the car already to get away from this argument that always yet had to happen. My eyes would be sleeping already but my ears would be still awake and I would hear these things, even if I didn’t understand it all yet.
Grosspapuh Obrum had his eyes closed in the shade from his straw hat and he was pushing just a little with his feet on the lawnswing so that it was swinging very slowly, like a ro
cking chair after you have jumped it off and it still shuckels by itself for a while.
“Grosspapuh, here is a jalmäa for you,” I said and I stepped on the swing. Grosspapuh Obrum opened his eyes and put his finger to his lips and his other hand behind his ear. He smiled at me and then I could hear quiet piano playing coming from Blatz’s schpikja house. He took the carrot from my hand and pointed to the seat across from him, so I sat up there. My carrot knacked loud when I bit it and Grosspapuh Obrum put his finger to his lips again and so I sucked on the piece I had bitten off because I knew already that chewing hard carrots makes lots of noise. The piano music was a little louder now, but it was very slow, like a long-legged spider crawling on a wall, or a person walking fingers over a sleeping person’s arm. Grosspapuh had his eyes closed again and I stared at his red hair sticking out from under his hat, his red hair lying on his arms, but not so thick that I couldn’t see the freckles showing through. He held the carrot in his hand and I could see a black spot on his thumbnail like the one Pahp had after he had knacked his thumb with a hammer when he was fixing the chicken wire on the backstop by the Osterwick school. Grosspapuh Obrum’s other hand was on the swing seat beside him and I saw his fingers were sort of walking along with the piano music and so I started to do it too and it was fun trying to walk my fingers along with the piano playing. I closed my eyes and I felt like a spider walking over somebody’s shirt all the way to the neck and I almost walked onto this person’s face when the piano music stopped, and then I stepped slowly until I couldn’t hear anything.
