by Armin Wiebe
“Isaac,” I said. “Want you not music to learn with other young people?”
“No,” he said. He pulled his pamphlet from his pocket. “This is what I want. Baseball camp by Carman. Two weeks, and if I’m good enough I can play for money.”
“Baseball is just Kinderspiel!” Blatz cried out. I stepped sideways to steady myself, so surprised I was by Blatz’s words. Obrum too raised his eyebrows. “Such dummheit,” Blatz went on. “Waste not your gift to please wild boys with no feeling for art. By music camp you will meet young people who understand Kunst.”
“Kunst?” Isaac shouted. “I will show you Kunst.” He dropped his bat on the ground and he stomped into the schpikja house and a minute later he was playing a wild schtooka on that piano so loud the windows rattled.
“Huy yuy yuy,” I said. This was wilder than anything I had heard from this schpikja before.
“Holem de gruel,” Obrum said. “What’s loose with him?”
We went inside and there he was standing up at the piano, fingers flying over the keys from one end to another, foot stomping on the pedal, and he was singing words about shaking and rattling and balls of fire. For an eyeblink I remembered how Obrum played “Chopsticks” just before this piano rolled off the wagon and started this whole Kjlietamoos situation we were all in. Kjrieseling thoughts pricked me again about where this piano had come from and the wedding dress too and how come had Obrum brought a Beethoven Blatz into my life. And I looked at Obrum, who was glutzing at Isaac with a mix of wonderment and anger, and then at Blatz, who had tears running down into his beard like he was seeing the end of the world. Then the piano storm slowed and drizzled into the opening stillness of the Moonlight Sonata and Isaac played that music like Beethoven Blatz had never yet played it, so hartsoft beautiful it was. To my poor ears at least.
Isaac didn’t look at us when he finished the first part of the sonata. He just pinched the music camp letter from Blatz’s fingers and stamped out the door. We three looked at each other and hurried out too. Isaac was striding off into the tall prairie grass like he had a long way to go.
“Go him after,” I said. Obrum looked at me with worried eyes, then hitzed himself after our son. Blatz tried to argue yet about the boy’s talent, sein Begabung, sien Begowung—all three languages he used to try to bring it by to me. But I couldn’t listen to that. “Not now, Beethoven,” I said. “Not now.”
There was a war in the tall grass. Blatz and I heard shouting. We couldn’t make out the words and the shouting wasn’t long. But then there was a long stillness when I could hear Blatz’s breathing beside me. He took my hand in his and squeezed. Salt water sippled down my cheeks. I couldn’t look at him, but I could feel how he wanted the best for his son. Even if he didn’t know how to be a father, I thought, and then I thought, none of us three knew how to be that. I looked around. Where was Grandmother Glootje Susch when I needed her? I wanted to know if she would sit up in her coffin and laugh. I pulled my handkerchief from my sleeve to wipe my eyes. Blatz let go my hand. Obrum and Isaac followed their long shadows back to the yard, almost together. They both had graveyard faces and neither would say a word.
Isaac didn’t go to music camp and he didn’t go to baseball camp. He wouldn’t go near Blatz’s piano, but he played baseball every chance he got. Mostly he was quiet at home—sometimes dark and brooding like Blatz could be when he was deep inside himself, trying to find the music. I thought sometimes that Isaac would be happier if he let his music out, but during that war he and Obrum had on the prairie it seemed that a barbed-wire fence was raised up between them and that neither one would crawl through. And Isaac treated Blatz like he wasn’t even there.
In some ways Beethoven almost disappeared, like a fog barely still in the air. He still made his music and he walked the prairie with his notebook. He seldom spoke when I walked with him and I could feel him shrink from me. Sometimes I would catch him looking long after Isaac walking off to a ball game. And the music from the schpikja house often sounded like a suffering soul.
Isaac finished Grade 10 with correspondence in the little Gutenthal School and then he told us that he wanted to go to the boarding school in Gretna. Halfway through Grade 12 something changed. Isaac seemed happier all of a sudden and he talked a lot about how he would go to Normal School and learn himself to be a teacher. Then flapping tongues told us that Isaac was going around with a red-haired freckle-faced woman, the daughter of people come back from Mexico. It turned out that Lena was relatives with Obrum’s Kehlers but not so close that people should get their underwear all weckeled into knots. Isaac had good marks on his Grade 12 examinations and then he went to Normal School in Winnipeg and learned himself to hold school. He married Lena and started holding school by Puggefeld, and I don’t think I ever saw him so happy as when the boy was born, all red-haired and freckled, and likening Obrum Kehler. Charlie, they called him in English, but Lena was still very Flat German, so most of the time we called him Koadel.
Yes, the breath slipped easier through our noses after that—mine, Obrum’s, Blatz’s too, I think. At least now and then the music from the schpikja house pulled heaven and earth together for me.
Isaac and Lena seemed happy when they came to visit or when we went to visit them by the school. Knackbaul played baseball whenever he could and his school team was always winning at the picnic. And Lena was good for him, I think, even if sometimes I wished she had been the kind of woman who would have pushed Isaac to the music that I knew was hiding deep in his heart. But music was not something Lena had a feeling for and for sure it was not my place to stick my nose in where it wouldn’t be wanted. Little Koadel had some interest in music, it seemed, and when he came to stay with us sometimes when Isaac went to play ball, I let him sneak into the schpikja house and play on the piano while Beethoven was wandering over the prairie. But for sure, I knew enough not to let the boy do that when his parents were around.
But nothing in this world rolls without bumps for very long. Yes, Isaac was a teacher and people often flapped their tongues about how easy it was for a teacher because he didn’t have to worry about if his crops had enough rain or too much, but really, teachers’ pay in those days made it hard for him to make ends meet and he and Lena would weed beets in the summer and he would work for farmers during haying and harvest so he could put gas in the car. He didn’t have enough money to go to summer school and for sure not to university for a winter to learn himself higher so he could maybe get more pay. So Isaac tried again to persuade Obrum to let him plough the prairie and farm it. Obrum had told me that the quiet part of the war in the tall grass that time had been about farming the land. Obrum had said no then, and he said no again.
Isaac couldn’t understand why the land had to be left alone just for Beethoven Blatz to wander on and hear music. Each time he came over he got more and more riled up and angry by the time he drove away. And for sure it didn’t help that at baseball games when he was batting, some would yell, “Blatz! Blatz! Knack it one, Blatz!” Tien told me she had heard this when she stopped her car to watch a game by Pracha Darp.
The last time he tried to persuade Obrum, the Gutenthal school picnic was on. Isaac’s school’s picnic was over already, but he came to Gutenthal so he could play in the men’s game in the evening. They drove into the yard in the afternoon, and Isaac and Obrum talked behind the barn while Lena came into the house to help me. Koadel was five, and while the two men argued, he wandered into Blatz’s schpikja house and started playing on the piano. Blatz had been wandering along Mary’s Creek and when he found the boy playing on his piano, he started to teach him a little bit how to play the notes right. The argument between father and son didn’t go well again, and when Isaac heard the piano music he stormed into the granary. He grabbed Koadel and dragged him out and threw him into the car. Obrum tried to reason with him, but Isaac just yelled to Lena to get into the car.
Blatz stumbled out of the schpikja h
ouse and hobbled after the car, but he just got all dusty from that. Beet red in the face, he held his side as he limped back to the yard, yaupsing for air. When he reached us, his words yesched out, “What have I done with that boy?” His knees wobbled and I worried he would fall.
“Help him sit,” I said to Obrum. “There—on the lawnswing.”
As Obrum settled Beethoven down on the swing it fell me by that I had never seen Blatz on that lawnswing before. A wondering flitzed through my brain. What would such wobbliness do to the music in his head? I hurry sat on the seat across from him and then Obrum sat me beside. Beethoven looked his trüarijch eyes at us and said, “My son I have forsaken.”
My spit I had to swallow then, and I didn’t know if I would breathe again. I felt Obrum’s boots push hard down on the swing floor and I could see Blatz’s words hovering in the air between us. Obrum raspled his throat beside me, but no words came out. Blatz said, “Such a fool I have been. My life I have wasted. The boy’s too.”
“What can you mean?” I said, frightened. Obrum tried again to speak, I think, as Beethoven halfway stood up. The swing rocked and he sat down again.
“Sonia too I have betrayed. Selfish and weak I have been. Hiding from the world, from my own son, hiding in—no—glorying in my darkness, refusing the light.” Beethoven looked into my eyes then—a far look, like a train coming years down the track. “Our son. I feared to love him. I feared my own gift. Ach Sonia, I had thoughts to keep pure your memory by choking off the music with the darkness of my sorrow.” Beethoven’s look streamed closer and stretched my eyes wider. Then his eyes twitched at Obrum for an eyeblink before his dark look reached for mine again. “I struggled to keep stifled the music even as it burned again to be released. I thought the torment I could escape by leaving the town for that village school—but then your Obrum called me to repair the Klavier.
“How could I say no? Foolishly perhaps, I heard something in this broken instrument that stirred the dying ember inside me and your listening—your hearing—my dear Susch, blew this coal into a flame. And your prairie, Obrum, your schpikja house, sheltered me from the hard world. Refuge I found in the schreck and sorrow that mixed with the glorious sounds of the steppe and I could squeeze and hammer out the music on this fallen piano.
“But then I … we had a son, and I would not know him … I used him only as a part of the muse you, Susch, were to me … I thought only of my own sorrows with the poor sonatas I was struggling to compose for Sonia and for you. I had dreams for the boy, yes, I saw his gift—and so young he was when he played the Moonlight from deep inside his soul, more masterly than ever I could hope to do. I was frightened—proud but frightened—I could not let myself get close to him. I helped him learn to play—I showed him Beethoven—but I showed him not how to be a musician in the world, because I had not the courage to take my small talent out from this sheltered haven you provided me. Weightier still, I had not the courage to reach out to support him when flapping tongues called him ‘Little Blatz.’ I was too weak to help him know who he is … too selfish to call him my son.”
My legs ached, my feet pressed hard on the swing floor, my heart froze so still I couldn’t feel it. Obrum too was stiff beside me. I thought I heard his hammering heart. We had no breath to speak.
“I must speak to him!” Blatz heaved himself up and the swing rocked. Obrum and I fell against each other as he stepped off. “Such anger comes from stifling his soul.”
I lay flopped on top of Obrum in the swing seat corner, my heart clappering now, my brain kjrieseling. I wanted not to move. I could not speak first.
Obrum’s truck motor started. I listened to Beethoven drive it away until I heard only our own breathing. Even then Obrum didn’t move until a mourning dove cooed behind us by Mary’s Creek. Slowly then, he wriggled his arm out from under me and folded it around me and laid his hand under my breast. He held me like that while the mourning dove cooed again and the swing creaked like an ache in the bones.
When Obrum spoke, his voice sounded like a thin wind through a door not quite closed. “Susch, we have things done, you and I.” My heart flickered like a candle flame in a breath of air. “And Blatz,” he said. I think that flame would have twitched out if Obrum’s hand hadn’t covered my heart. “I too feared to get close to our son. No, that is not altogether truth. Ach Susch, I wanted you and Blatz to … because my mumps I feared … so I went away when I knew a snowstorm was coming. You did what I wanted, you two. But still, deep inside, when the boy was born, I wanted him to liken me.”
My heart clappered so fast I had to stiffen myself before I could yesch the words out. “Obah Obrum, such I wanted too.”
“I know that, liebe Susch, I know that. And yet such dummheit kjrieseled through my head that I was aufjenstijch jealous over the thing that I wanted—that we both wanted, I think. Why couldn’t we talk with each other about what was plaguing us all?”
“We were frightened,” I said, without knowing what my head would give me next. “For sure at least, I was frightened—frightened to look into my own eyes and take hold of what I had done. I felt so alone with this, and more than anything, this weighty thing I wanted with you to carry. Ach, what have I said? You must think I have febeizeled my brain. But Obrum, believe me this, you brought me wondrous things with that piano, and Beethoven Blatz, wondrous things that I wanted to live with you. Not just the stormy night in the barn, that too, but more—Beethoven in the house with the piano, Beethoven playing such music I never knew could be, Beethoven walking through the tall grass listening, and I beside him listening to him listening—all that I wanted to live with you.”
Obrum shrugged underneath me and I sat up, my heart schtooksing against my ribs. We looked into each other’s eyes for a long time. We couldn’t blink. A trüarijch schmuista look came over Obrum’s face. I felt the same look warm my own face. I wanted to kiss him so hard and so long that we would be swallowing spit for a week. But there was more to say first.
So we talked together, telling each other what we thought our story was, filling in the holes, straightening out some furrows. We confessed everything, the wedding dress, Maria, why the piano had come, Beethoven, the prairie, and Isaac, our son.
The sun had long gone under when we saw lights slowly moving toward us on the far road leading to our prairie. “We must tell Blatz,” we said. “We three together must tell Isaac the whole story.”
“That truck is very quiet in the night,” Obrum said, as the lights crept onto our land. In the almost dark we could see that it was a car. It stopped beside the house and Tien got out. As she stepped around the front of the car, she put her hand on the hood to steady herself, before she slowly walked toward us.
25
Koadel
The Schpikja House
Yes, I remember the days leading up to that picnic. Dad was in a foul mood. I could tell by how quiet Mom was. Usually she was mostly talking, but now she was quiet even when Dad wasn’t in the house. The lean-to teacherage attached to the New Darwin school was cramped, just a kitchen and a bedroom, smaller even than Blatz’s schpikja house and not even as many windows. On the day of the picnic, it was hot and Dad had sent the children home with their yellow report cards. Mom sent me outside to play on the swings but the chains were too hot to hold, and so I wandered over to the shade on the window side of the school. Dad was still inside—he had complained that he had to balance the register and do his month-end and year-end reports before we could go to the Gutenthal picnic and ball game. So I sat against the school under a shoved-up window and watched ants crawling in and out of a hole in the centre of a little pile of dirt.
The door into the school from the teacherage squeaked open. My mother’s hard shoes walked on the school floor and stopped close to the teacher’s desk. A school bench creaked as it was put down and creaked again as my mother sat down. The first desk in the row by the teacher had a bench in front, so I knew
Mom was sitting close to where Dad was working. Without looking in the window, which was too high anyway, in my head I could see how my mother was leaning back, one arm leaning on the desk behind her, one leg crossed over the other so she could swing her foot a little. I almost wished I was still small enough to go ride on her foot. It was so quiet I could hear my father’s pen scratching on the paper. Some flies buzzed by the open window and a long-legged spider crawled over my shoe. The teacher’s desk drawer scraped open and for an eyeblink I wondered if it was the drawer with the strap in it. It was always scary to see it lying there like a snake, maybe dead, maybe not. I heard papers tapping on the desk so they would line up straight and then a rubbing sound. I knew Dad had shoved the papers into a big gold envelope, and I wished I was inside with him. I liked to watch him wind the red string around the little red wheels to tie the envelope closed. The envelope slapped on the table.
“Finished,” Dad said.
“Brought Anderson your cheque?” Mom’s voice sounded worried.
“Yeah, this morning after ‘O Canada.’”
“Said he if they will build a new teacherage?”
“He offered the second house on Paetkau’s yard. Fifteen dollars a month.”
“That’s a mile away.”
“Yes. And extra for hydro too.”
“We have it knaup enough as it is,” Mom sighed. “Hardly a red cent left at the end of the month.”
“And no more pay until the end of September.” Dad sounded like he had bitten into a cucumber that had lain in the garden too long. “Beetfields again for us this summer.”
“At least I won’t have to lie in the sun to get burned in.” Mom laughed a little. “My arms still show the lines where I burned in last summer.” Dad pushed his chair back and I heard the envelope wipe on the desk as he picked it up. Mom’s hard shoe stepped down on the floor. The bench squeaked as she stood up. “Would you like it if I lay in the sun and burned myself in all over?”
