From the kitchen came soft murmurs, bubbles of laughter as the servants, the Wiebe sisters, went about preparing the evening meal. The voices of small children rang out from an upstairs room where they played under the watchful eye of their nianka. They were the children of Jakob and David Sudermann. David’s daughters had just come through whooping cough and were still pale to the point of being transparent. They had not been allowed to join in the play in the classroom, and for that, Katya was relieved, as they made her feel as though she were a gust of wind they had to protect themselves against.
She had decided to draw the scene of the nativity the Christ child in a manger beneath two palm trees. She would suspend the Bethlehem star between the trees, and the entire scene would happen on an oasis, and therefore she would set the manger on grass, and not desert sand. I was born on an oasis, she thought as she tucked her chin into her neck and licked salt from her skin.
Finally Sophie Karpenko appeared. “The hut is warm, and the ponies are hitched to the sleigh. They can come now,” she announced from the doorway of the classroom. She loosened her headscarf and shook it onto her shoulders, where it lay across her sheepskin coat, a splash of red colour, as red as her wind-chapped cheeks.
“Manya is waiting outside. She says her toothache is stronger,” Sophie said to Helena.
“Still? Liebe Greta, you’re a good girl. Go and tell Mary to make some clove-wax for Manya,” Helena said.
Greta got up quickly, forgetting that she was still attached to Lydia.
“Ow, ow, ow. Let Sophie go and do it,” Lydia said hotly, and held onto her braid to keep it from being yanked from her head.
“I can tell Mary, it’s easy enough,” Sophie said with a shrug.
“Did I say so? Did I say, Sophie go and tell Mary? No, I did not,” Helena said, but before she could finish, Dietrich finished for her.
“The gypsy queen is supposed to go,” he said.
“Ja, that’s what I said. Greta should go,” Helena said, her voice rising in annoyance.
“Oy, oy. This is a story,” Sophie said as Greta and Lydia, their braids still tied together, manoeuvred their way across the room to the door. “Are you girls going to go skating like that?”
The bells fastened to the laces of Katya’s boots jingled as she left the table, the sound making her think of muscular hares bouncing across a horse’s path, their hind feet kicking up licks of snow. The bells said, I am coming, here I am, I am going. When she reached the hall she went off in one direction, while Dietrich nonchalantly strolled down the hall in the other, following the sound of a metronome and piano music coming from the parlour. Justina, playing a choppy rendition of the “Blue Danube Waltz,” and faster than it was meant to be.
“Don’t worry. Greta’s coming with toothache wax,” Katya consoled a forlorn-looking Manya, who stood shivering outside the back door, her jaw lopsided with a swelling.
She turned and went down the steps, savouring the bright clash of the bells as she followed a well-trodden path through the snow, going home before skating to make sure that her mother was there, her little sister Sara, and Johann the baby asleep in his cradle, as usual. The path home was one spoke in a giant wheel that circled the Big House, other paths leading off it across the compound. Smoke trailed above the roof of the summer kitchen and washhouse, the buildings blind to winter with their shutters fastened down tightly. The smoke came from the greenhouse chimney, she saw now. The building’s sloped glass roof and windows ran with water, and although she could only see the blurred shapes of two people moving among the greenery, she knew from the breadth of shoulders and tumble of auburn hair that her father was one of them. The other, a thin shaving of blond wood, was David Sudermann. Her father and David were inside Eden, where mist watered the earth, the flats of peat moss set out on tables in preparation for tomato seeding. The two men had been friends since their Gymnasium years, when her father studied Agriculture in a technical institute in Alexandrovsk, and David, Russian. Whenever David visited his brother’s estate he’d spend most of his time with his old school friend rather than Abram.
“We live on an oasis,” she told them, even before the greenhouse door had closed behind her.
“Hots-ducent! An oasis, yet. So then where are the camels and fig trees?” her father said, his laughter vigorous and deep. She made two fists, and her father cupped them in his hands, her stiff arms vibrating with his happiness as he lifted her and set her onto the table that ran the length of the greenhouse. Then he stood back, crossed his arms, his teasing nature shining in his green eyes. “Go ahead, show Teacher Sudermann here what you can do. Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias, Tsar of Moscow,” he said, challenging her to recite the names of the tsar.
“Tsar of Kiev, Vladimir, Novgorod, Kazan’, Astrakhan,” she recited without the shyness that ordinarily would have tripped her tongue, but David Sudermann was her father’s friend, and although they weren’t related, he was like an uncle to her, more so than her real uncles, whom she seldom saw because she didn’t live in one of the many towns and villages in the colonies, but here at Privol’noye, which was far out on the flat palm of the steppe.
“Of Poland, of Siberia, of Tauric Chersonese,” her father prompted.
“Prince of Estonia, Livonia,” she said, and gulped the moist air, felt her expanding lungs push against her ribs.
“Whoa,” David said and laughed. “Isn’t Tsar of Georgia in there somewhere?”
“Your head is on Christmas holiday, yes?” her father said. “That’s what comes from eating so many honey cookies. You also missed Tsar of Lithuania, among others.” He poked her in the stomach before lifting her down from the table.
“And what about King of Kings and Lord of Lords,” David said.
The titles of the tsar were framed and hung beneath the monarch’s portrait in the classroom, and although she couldn’t read Cyrillic yet, she had heard Dietrich rhyme off the twenty or so titles enough times to have remembered almost half of them, and she couldn’t remember having heard of King of Kings and Lord of Lords. When she said this, the two men laughed.
“Some people might also want to call him Blood-Sucker,” David said.
Her father’s laughter died and his eyelashes flickered as he looked out through the misted windows. “I’ve heard that very thing said several times now. In reference to us. Just the other day. I went for a load of coal in Nikolaifeld, and a man made a point of saying rather loudly that foreign blood-suckers ought to be made to pay twice as much.”
“He was likely feeling his drink,” David said.
“Even so, usually they don’t speak so openly. We’re to blame for everything, it seems. From bad weather to the taxes St. Petersburg puts on kerosene and vodka. Why they want to blame us is beyond me,” her father said.
“Because it’s convenient. Because the Russian peasants see what we have in comparison to what little they possess, the poor souls, and that’s all they see. However, we Mennonites could set an example by paying higher wages. Make more of our schooling available to them,” David said.
“Yes, not less,” her father said with a hint of sarcasm. Katya knew that as Abram’s overseer, he wouldn’t say more. He’d voiced his disapproval loudly at home when Abram discontinued school lessons for the workers’ children.
“Count Leo Tolstoy, champion of the peasant, that’s my brother Abram,” David said with a bemused look. “They’re going to come in the hundreds to sing at his funeral, too.”
“Funeral?” her father said in surprise. He hadn’t heard that the writer had died.
“Last month. The newspapers were full of reports. The so-called enemy of the autocracy has gone to claim his reward,” David said.
He went on to say that Tolstoy had been travelling when he’d become ill, and was taken off the train at a station called Astapovo. “Once the news spread that he was dying, the peasants came in crowds to say farewell. They were forbidden to sing hymns on threat of arrest,” he said. He shook his h
ead as though he couldn’t believe his own words.
Beyond the steamed windows Katya saw the indistinct shapes of Greta and Dietrich going to the carriage house where the ponies and kindersleigh stood waiting.
“In any case, I don’t think a person should give too much credence to what those Lubitskoye loaf-abouts say,” David said. “Blame the Jews, blame us. The peasant will spout the jingoism of whoever will promise him cheaper vodka.”
“The talk’s becoming too big for small ears. If you’re going skating, girl, you’d better be off,” her father said. “Schnell.”
She made her way through the unheated potting shed and its dampness, its spiders’ webs shredded silk hanging from windows and rafters, mulling over the words foreign and blood-sucker.
Loaf-abouts, the loaf-abouts, she practised saying as she walked down the path towards home. Lubitskoye loaf-abouts, she said as she touched her mother’s skirts in passing before scurrying up the ladder to her attic room to fetch warmer clothing. Touched her mother in the way her own children would one day touch her, a soft pressure, long enough for them to feel her warmth and be assured that the world was real.
She walked gingerly towards the centre of the lake to a patch of untouched snow, the bells on her boots tinkling, the sky high and farther away than a summer sky. The cold air was a hand pushing against her breastbone, her breath a white cloud in front of her face, her scarf matted with crystals and rough against her chin. Her father had once shown her the thickness of the ice when he’d gone to harvest their winter supply of water. Thick enough to support the weight of Percherons and a wagon.
The workers’ children had beat them to the ice, had already cleared their spot across the lake before she’d arrived with the others in the kindersleigh. Over a dozen children, their twittering voices like wrens, probably carrying as far as Siberia. No, not Siberia, she thought, because the wind was from the north. Not Siberia, where some of their own had gone for land, and had lived on potatoes in a hole in the ground for an entire winter.
She could see Kolya playing with the children today, Kolya the furnace keeper, who was the same age as Dietrich, and the oldest among them. His barklike voice carried across the lake. Kolya the yell-throat, informing the entire world of his presence.
Greta and Lydia came skating past her, their arms linked, their skate blades inscribing the ice with their synchronized push and glide, while the sister cousins struggled to catch up. The cousins had kept them waiting while they’d changed their velveteen dresses for skating clothes, emerging from the Big House in rabbit-trimmed wool skirts and matching muffs. It was what they wore when they went skating in Einlage, they’d explained primly. Einlage being the town where they lived, and where their father, Jakob Sudermann, owned a wagon factory. Katya had heard that he walked the streets in a black homburg and mohair coat to distinguish himself, an industrialist, from the farmers. As though that was something to be proud of. There once was a time when a man would be ashamed to admit that he was anything but a farmer. But that was long ago, and now many had become other than what God intended, storekeepers and factory owners, buyers and sellers of goods who travelled between countries as frequently as they did the colonies.
Dietrich skated around the perimeter of their patch of ice, hands clasped against the small of his back, his legs scissoring in easy strokes, while Gerhard took running slides in his felt boots, which carried him far across the shining surface.
“Where are you making?” Gerhard asked Katya as he glided to a stop beside her, his arms extended like wings, cheeks reddened, eyes lit up like candles.
“I’m going where I’m going,” she told him. Wait and see, and soon you’ll know. She hoped he wouldn’t want to follow.
His arms came down and across his brown wool chest. “Anyway, it’s more fun here,” he said.
She approached the stretch of snow. Beyond it was the patch of cleared ice where the workers’ children played. The snow was laced with the three-toed prints of birds, and the footprints of rabbits. A lapwing flittered by, startling her for a moment with its giddy and erratic flight, a male in his winter attire, a green metal spoon stirring the air.
She stepped onto the snow, satisfied that it was loose, and as light as flour. She began to stamp out the initials of her name, while beyond, the workers’ children ran screaming in a game of crack-the-whip, their voices overlapping, waves of sound echoing amid the frozen hillocks.
When she had formed her initials, she retraced the letters, keeping her feet together, shuffling up the lines to broaden them. K for Katherine, her father’s mother, who had died before she was born. Known for having a green thumb, and for cutwork embroidery. She had been trampled to death by a runaway horse on a day when plans had been made to have a family portrait taken. They went on with it, let the photographer come, and her father’s mother, held upright by her sons, was included in the photograph. A wideawake-looking person, but who seemed flat, as though she were a picture of a picture.
She grew aware of the absence of voices, saw that the workers’ children had lined up like fence posts and were turned towards the Chortitza road, where a vehicle was approaching. If it proved to be the Orlovs’ rickety omnibus, then it would go on past the gates of Privol’noye to the Orlov estate. But as it drew nearer, she realized it was too small to be the omnibus. A visitor was coming to Privol’noye. The droschke slowed as it approached the service road leading to the barns and provision house, and then, as the driver apparently became aware of the main entrance beyond, the droschke went on past the service road to the stone gate posts, and an avenue of chestnut trees leading to the front of the Big House.
Their curiosity satisfied, the workers’ children returned to their play, running and sliding across the ice and falling, the little ones scrambling after the big ones to catch a ride on their coattails. If there should be any cocoa milk left when she and the others were finished having faspa in the skating hut, Manya of the lopsided jaw would go across the lake and bring it to them. The children would clamour for a gulp, wipe their runny noses on their coatsleeves when they were done, then see who would fart the loudest. They were rough and stubborn children, unrestrained, heading for the door as soon as they could walk, as though they knew how soon they would be harnessed for work. A child shouted, and then another began to cry as Kolya’s voice rose in anger.
“Little shit-puddle,” Kolya shouted. “I’ll trounce you to paradise. I’ll teach you not to fool with me.” He was kneeling on the ice beside one of the boys and hitting him about the shoulders and head.
Katya turned to the other shore and called for Dietrich, and when he continued his long and lazy gliding stroke around the perimeter of the ice, she knew that her voice was too thin and high to carry. Other children came running to the rescue of the smaller child, tried to jump on Kolya’s back, yanked at his arms, but he flung them aside as though they were nothing more than a nuisance.
“You little chicken-fuckers, piss-pot lickers,” Kolya shouted.
Her chest ached at the unfairness. Kolya was picking on such a small boy, and on Christmas holidays, yet. He set a bad example with his fighting, which the others were eager to take up, choosing sides, those who were for and those who were against Kolya, the big against the small, raising their fists and spitting at one another.
“You there, stop fighting.” Don’t swear, don’t cry, don’t pound at one another, rub faces in snow, tear at each other’s hair. Their cries, snot-noses running, mouths contorted in hurt feelings and anger, disturbed God’s air, the high clear sky given to them for the day. No one paid attention to her, and so she ran towards them, obliterating the letters she had tramped out in the snow. She would make her presence known, light into Kolya. She would pull his hair, pinch an ear, make him stop trouncing the little ones.
“Katya, Katya,” Greta and Lydia called.
“Katherinaaaa,” the girl cousins called, their young voices warbling like old women’s.
“Katya, you come here. Right
now,” Dietrich called.
She was relieved that Dietrich was at last paying attention, was skating towards the patch of snow at the centre of the lake, and she turned and went to meet him. He would make Kolya stop acting as though he were a dog that had gone mad. She saw Sophie and Manya coming along the ridge of the pipeline path, carrying a pail between them, and baskets which held their faspa – buns, cheese, and jam – she knew. Jars of sugared cocoa to mix with heated milk. Kolya shouldn’t be given any of the leftover cocoa.
“What were you going to do?” Dietrich asked.
“Make them stop,” she said, her lungs burning from running and inhaling cold air. The children’s voices had subsided, the skirmish over with.
“And how were you going to do that?” he asked.
She was glad for the diversion as Greta came skating over. Her answer to Dietrich’s question wouldn’t have been the honest one: I was going to talk with them. I was going to make them reason.
“You lost your temper,” Greta said.
No, she hadn’t, she explained. She’d held onto it. It was in her pocket, balled inside her fist.
“Well, show me, then,” Greta said.
She opened her hand to reveal a crumpled soft square of sheepskin that her father had given to her and named Temper. She was to hold it and recite a psalm until her anger subsided. She hadn’t lost it, she said, meaning she had called, and asked for help. Which she would not have had to do in the first place if the yell-throat hadn’t started fighting.
The Russlander Page 2
