The Russlander

by Sandra Birdsell

  Nela fussed over Tante Anna, tucking a loose strand of hair into her black bonnet. The elderly woman looked frailer out in the open. She stared straight ahead, her chin high, ancient and dignified in the falling snow. Tante Anna had allowed herself to be led here and there and, at last, to be planted in this spot to wait to be taken away to live in a strange household, gloved hands clasped against her stomach, satchel at her feet.

  A wagon rumbled towards the railway-yard, and although years had passed since the first time Katya had seen the man in it, she recognized him as Bull-Headed Heinrichs. He glanced in their direction with curiosity, his eyes going from one to the other, and then coming to rest on her. He lifted his cap, and she saw that his straw-coloured hair was not as long as before, but still looked as though he had never pulled a brush or comb through it.

  Nela saw Katya looking at the guns in the wagon, three barrels filled with guns, their muzzles pointed at a sky heavy with snow clouds.

  “He buys them from the soldiers for wheat. There’s talk about what he does with them, who he sells them to. Talk from men who wish they’d thought to do the same, and denounce him now because they didn’t,” Nela said.

  Katya was surprised to hear such a speech coming from Nela, her defence of a person it seemed she hardly knew. Snowflakes melted on her eyelashes, and for a moment, Bull-Headed became a blur. She blinked, and he became clear again. He was still looking at her, and this was not the curious glance of a man wondering what family she came from. This was not a teacher’s look, a question, a greeting, patience, impatience. He was trying to pull something out of her. He smiled, and she felt heat rise in her neck. And then he wasn’t smiling any more, but astonished and looking beyond her. In an instant he had jumped from the wagon and came running towards her, his jacket open and flapping.

  What happened next happened in an instant.

  “What is it?” Nela asked, and then she was pitched forward onto the platform, her hat flying across it and onto the tracks.

  Katya could feel someone standing immediately behind her, she could hear movement, and then suddenly Tante Anna was thrown into her side, hard, the force sending her down onto the platform with Tante Anna on top of her. The boards shook with the pounding of feet as someone ran away, and Bull-Headed leapt onto the platform. She heard him shout for help as he went chasing after the fleeing person. She saw Nela rise to her knees, people moving towards them, felt Tante Anna’s weight against her body as the woman sighed and relaxed, lay still, a child going to sleep.

  The Ältester decided the funeral for Tante Anna should be held in Chortitza church to accommodate the number of people who wished to attend, who wanted to hear what had happened, to speak to those who had been bystanders to the tragedy, and to point out the survivors, Nela and herself, as though she and Nela had come near to God, had been brushed against by the angel coming for the old woman. After the funeral, Tante Anna was buried in the cemetery beyond the Orthodox church and the men returned to the church for a meeting that went on past supper, and passersby could hear a loud debate going on inside.

  The debate had degenerated into a shouting duel between two groups, her grandfather said when he returned with her father, who had been granted a day’s leave to attend the funeral. With them was Abram Sudermann. He had come to Chortitza on business, and in hopes of speaking to her father. A small number of men had overcome the majority with their voices and threats, as the subject of the debate had escalated from whether or not to arm the town watchmen, to whether or not it was time to do as the Gemeinde in the Second Colony had done, and form a self-defence unit.

  There was no reason to hold such a discussion, her father said. The death of the woman had nothing to do with hatred against Mennonites, but was the act of a madman. Tante Anna had died from shock, and thanks to the heaviness of Nela’s coat, the ice chisel had not gone through it, so her wound was not a wound, but a contusion. A half-quart of Red Head vodka was behind Trifon’s act, and not hatred towards Mennonites.

  “I agree with you. But it doesn’t change the circumstances. Your girl could have been hurt too, or worse, if Heinrichs hadn’t been there. If he hadn’t chased that hooligan off, he might have taken the time to come back at them again,” Abram Sudermann said. He sat in the parlour, his knees spread; on his lap rested the pumpkin that was his stomach.

  He had come to urge her father to reconsider an early release from service. He’d hired more Cossacks; there had been no trouble at Privol’noye, except for the usual thieving and beggars coming by on the road. The estate was suffering. The barns and building roofs needed repair. What horses hadn’t been requisitioned were neglected and in poor condition. Many gutsbesitzers had left their homes, and were hiding in the villages for the sake of safety, but someone had to take a stand.

  “In any case, you see what can happen in a village where it’s supposed to be safe. Peter, let David arrange things,” Abram said.

  The day was dismal with wet slush and the biting cold of February. On a similar day a man would come knocking on her door wanting her to speak stories into a small microphone he held, his knuckles chapped from the cold, his trousers damp around the cuffs. Bringing the wet smell of the outside with him.

  She told him that although she hadn’t been present during Abram Sudermann’s visit, she later heard how her father had hitched up his shoulders and taken a deep breath before speaking. He would agree to apply for an early medical leave and return to Privol’noye as overseer on the condition that Abram give him ten desiatini of land. Her grandmother enjoyed retelling the story, how Abram had sputtered and begun to perspire. Now, Peta, listen here, be reasonable. How could you oversee and, at the same time, farm? Yes, her father had said, I am a reasonable man. And, in turn, Abram should also be reasonable. Abram must give him the meadow land, he bargained in the end, and reluctantly, Abram gave in.

  And that was how, and when, and why they had returned to Privol’noye. Her father’s fate, their fate, sealed by a promise her grandparents had extracted from him, oh so many years ago, that he wouldn’t go and take their only daughter far away in his search for land.

  Katya had been to funerals in the past, of children and the elderly taken by illness, a young man who’d been struck by a falling tree. She had seen the photograph of her dead grandmother held upright by her sons, and a son of the photographer, unseen, crouching behind her with his back set against hers. But she hadn’t been present at the moment of a person’s last breath until Tante Anna, whose passing she’d felt in a weight on her chest. When she couldn’t sleep, her mother invited her into her bed as she had every night since the day of Trifon’s attack at the train station. Now as she lay beside her mother in the dark, the clock in the parlour struck the ninth hour, and the portraits of the Schroeder ancestors kept their watch. She knew she’d always been moving towards this moment.

  With each passing second – the clock’s striking finished, and the house settling once again into a deep silence – she realized she’d known this time would come. She might hear a voice calling, such as the voice she’d heard at the butter well, or perhaps a circumstance would arise: one minute Tante Anna had been sitting in a rocking chair telling her of the dream, and the next, she was in heaven and able to read all of their lives from the beginning to the end, Katya’s life, her misdeeds, unkind thoughts. She couldn’t sleep, not because the need for sleep wasn’t present, but because she was afraid she would dream and find herself once again in the courtyard, and in the presence of the millstone carved with names.

  She thought of Lydia’s silver cup and the jealousy, the anger that had caused her to drop it down the well. There was tension in her mother’s curled body, her breathing shallow, and Katya knew she wasn’t asleep.

  “Mama,” she said. She had waited too long, she had carried around the weight of the secret for too many years. Her mother lifted her head so as to listen with both ears.

  “Do you remember Lydia had a silver cup?”

  “What cup?” he
r mother asked.

  “The silver cup with two handles.” She couldn’t imagine how her mother wouldn’t remember. Everyone had gone looking for it, including her mother. “I threw the cup in the butter well.”

  When she’d finished telling the story, her mother sighed and rolled onto her back, her hand coming to rest on Katya’s stomach.

  “But why? Why would you do such a thing?”

  She recalled the impulse, but no longer remembered the reason behind it. She remembered the initials she had stamped out on the lake melting as the snow had melted, initials being wiped from a windowpane in spring, initials she’d stitched into the corner of a handkerchief becoming frayed with each washing. She remembered thinking that Lydia’s initials on the cup would last forever, for as long as a name chiselled in stone.

  “I never suspected you would have had anything to do with it. Well, what’s done can’t be undone. You’ll have to tell Lydia, and ask for her forgiveness.”

  But what was done had been undone. It was over, finished. She’d grabbed hold of the moment.

  “However much the cup was worth, we’ll find a way for you to pay for it,” her mother said. With difficulty and groaning she rolled onto her side and pulled her knees up to cradle her pregnant belly. “It’s good for everyone that you confessed. But most of all, it’s good for you,” she said.

  A spot of warmth centred on Katya’s forehead and spread into her neck and shoulders. She was being infused with a light that made her limbs weightless, her new breasts jelly sliding off her ribcage, and she could breathe more deeply now, draw in more air. Although at fifteen years old she was almost a woman, she had a child’s faith in the existence of angels, and a God who would arrange this day, the dream she’d had early that morning, in order to bring her into His courtyard.

  ARBUSOVKA March 2, 1917

  My dear Dietrich,

  I apologize in advance if this sounds like a lecture, but I have been forming what I want to say for so long, and I can’t think of another way to put it.

  I believe that friendship is of higher value than marriage, because God intended that the first man and woman were to be helpers to one another. It was only after the serpent accomplished what he set out to do that marriage came about. God intended Adam and Eve to be friends, and forever innocent. I know we aren’t living in the Garden of Eden and that God’s original intention for mankind had to change.

  However, for us, friendship seems to be our future. We’re privileged that this should be the case. As my friend you may expect my utmost loyalty, honesty, and love. You cannot, however, expect me to kiss you. Please stop asking. If you continue to ask for a kiss, our friendship must end. What a terrible loss that would be. It’s good that you’re back at Privol’noye, and that I remained here. (Although I’m going to miss your surprise visits very much.)

  My dear friend, do you think it’s wise to make Michael Orlov your close companion? His ways are not our ways. I know how difficult it is for you, being so far from like-minded people. Try and go to Nikolaifeld church as often as you can, even if the sermons put you to sleep. You need the fellowship.

  Please think about what I’ve said. Why a kiss? This intimacy would only lead to something else and destroy our friendship along the way. You know as well as I that the something else isn’t possible. If either of our parents refused their blessing, then most certainly we can’t count on God’s approval. You also know as well as I that when it comes to your father and mother, disapproval would most certainly be the case.

  With deepest love, as always,

  your friend, Greta

  PRIVOL’NOYE April 7, 1917

  Dear Margareta,

  I’m sorry it’s taken so long to write. Every day there seems to be something that needs attending. Now it’s the steam generator. We’re without power. Michael has promised to come and take a look at it. Between the two of us we may one day discover where the problem lies. The bigger challenge will be to find someone to machine a part for it, if it should come down to that.

  Nicholas and Alexandra are now twice the size as when I got them. They’re proving to be quite intelligent dogs, and ferocious, too. If we’d had them the night the marauders came and destroyed the Baptists’ tent, it’s likely nothing would have happened, as the men were cowards. They wore their caps low so we couldn’t see their faces, and some even went to the trouble of wearing sacks with eye holes cut in them. We recognized several voices, among them that of a man who used to work for the Koops in Rosenthal. But what he would be doing so far from home and with a gang of Lubitskoye hoodlums is beyond my reasoning. I’m certain it was Zhinka’s brother, brother of the girl who works for your uncle Bernhard.

  We heard recently that the Baptists managed to find another tent in Moscow, and that they have set it up near to the village of Eichenfeld. They have invited Tante Helena to join them when they conduct Easter services. Yashka, the old Jew, delivered a crate of Bibles on behalf of the bookstore in Nikolaifeld to Tante Helena, and so it appears as though she’s considering their invitation. It seems that books, Bibles in particular, are about the only item not in short supply these days. I wonder what that means? Although Papa is quiet when the topic of Tante Helena joining the evangelists comes up, I hardly think he would remain quiet if she should decide to go.

  It’s occurred to me that you likely don’t know what happened to the Baptists. Another reason I haven’t written sooner is because I thought I would see you soon, and could tell you in person all about our midnight adventure. Yashka said he would come back when he finished his rounds of the area, and I could go with him as far as Chortitza. But that was not to be. Old Yashka became sick at the Zachariases’ and remained there until he recuperated. By then, it was time to go out with the men on the fields. The Baptists’ tent was cut to shreds by men who came across country during the night. Papa’s Cossacks kept them from harming the preachers. There’s no reason for you to worry as I’m sure you especially will now that your family is returning.

  Now, what you said about Adam and Eve, friendship and innocence. Well, I suppose God might have kept on making sets of grown people out of clay and rib bones. Eventually he may have got around to making you and me, and we could have been best friends for an eternity. But likely not. The garden may not have been large enough for more than one happy couple. I can’t help but wonder why God let the serpent into paradise in the first place. Why did he put the tree there? It seems to me that, from the start, the underlying plan may have been that men and women were supposed to be more than friends (or less than friends, if we go by your argument).

  Why do I keep on asking for a kiss? If you would give me just one kiss, then I would know that you feel the same way about me as I do for you. I would be free to speak to Papa and to your father. Time changes things. People change. In any case, when it comes to my parents, I think you’re imagining more than you should. If not a kiss, then give me a word. I would, of course, prefer the kiss. (I can imagine your face turning red as you read this.)

  At Pentecost we’ll both be baptised. We’re ready to talk about this. I only wish that you would come to your home church to be baptised. Won’t the Krahns find a way for you to come? There are near to twenty girls who will take their place among the membership on Pentecost. I wish I would see your face among them.

  This extra-long letter should make up for not having written sooner.

  With love,

  your dearest friend, Deet

  n April they returned to Privol’noye, Katya a changed person. She had written to Greta, “Easter is coming. For the first time I feel joyful when I say the words ‘Christos voskres, voistenyu voskres.’ ” The carriage taking them back to Privol’noye travelled through the countryside, and she drank in the familiar sight of the dun fields patched with the brightness of spring flowers. She had seen cranes, watched their flight across the western sky, their elongated bodies and outstretched necks arrows heading towards a mark. Towards their nesting grounds, the end of thei
r migration from Africa.

  The sight of the cranes told her that Privol’noye and Ox Lake couldn’t be far away and when she at last came near to the estate she noticed that her father’s meadow had been ploughed. Black furrows ran from the road up to that ridge of trees she once called a forest. She was old enough now to see the grove of trees for what it was, nothing more than a weedy leftover park that once belonged to the Orlov family. She would, in a distant time, come across their name in a book of photographs intended to expose the decadence which had precipitated a people’s revolt. The Orlovs’ lands had been sold to pay off mortgages, the sons’ debts, and to keep their houses and apartments in the cities; this was to become a common story.

  The elder Orlov and his oldest sons, all officers in the service of the tsar, had gone to Petrograd at the beginning of the war, wrote David Sudermann in a letter to her father. One letter among the many she would take with her to a new country in a small oak box. “I am told that the oldest of Orlov’s sons was struck down by a mutinous Volynsky guardsman during the uprisings in Petrograd in February. And another son, instead of responding to the call to help keep order in that city, shed his uniform and went to Odessa. I saw him in a shipyard office, trying to arrange passage for his family, should the need arrive. The rats smell a sinking ship.”

  When at last the estate came into sight, it was as though her grandfather had read her mind, as he stopped the horses and said she and the children should get down and enjoy a moment. Gerhard and Johann immediately went in search of frogs and snakes in the damp ditches, while Sara went running down the road, the wind catching at her skirts and carrying her along. Running for the sake of running. To stretch her wiry limbs, which, she complained during their journey, ached with growing pains.