The Russlander

by Sandra Birdsell

  The next morning the fog had lifted, and as she walked with her grandparents and sisters to church, it was through a world hung with lace. Ice crystals sparked iridescent fires, a brilliance that made her squint. The hoarfrosted trees and underbrush spread across the valley slopes like orchards in bloom.

  The church service was at the halfway point when Katya heard a name being whispered, and then a rustle of clothing and creak of benches as people shifted in their seats. As the singing gradually faded, she turned and saw Kornelius striding down the centre aisle, his hat in place. In the moment of silence that followed, the air bristled. Then the Ältester stood up and went to the pulpit. Did Kornelius wish to speak? he asked.

  No, he did not. He had come to listen, Kornelius said, and made a motion as though to sit down with the other men, but although there was space on the bench, those on the outside did not move over to make room for him.

  There was a proper way for this to be done, the Ältester said. In order to be among them and to listen, Kornelius first had to come before the ministers and speak.

  At that, Kornelius laughed and shook his head. I have twenty thousand rubles, he said. Will that be enough?

  Katya heard gasps of shock, a rising murmur of voices; saw looks being passed around. The ministers, sitting on the front bench, Nela’s old father among them, stood. Kornelius didn’t wait to be escorted to the door, but left using the centre aisle, his hat still in place on his head. Separated from the church, and therefore separated from God. Trying to buy his way into heaven, Katya heard when she walked outside after the service, and then down the street, not wanting to linger, fearful that people might have made a connection between Kornelius’s visit at her grandparents’ house and his sudden appearance at church.

  She was at the gate when a sleigh stopped in front of the house. Her grandparents and sisters had accepted a ride home with Olga Penner and her father, and with them was Nela Siemens. They were about to go riding in the country – would Katya like to come? Nela asked. Her grandmother suddenly fussed with Njuta’s bonnet, pretending that she wasn’t praying that Katya would begin to take in some of the world around her and agree to go, while Njuta gazed into the empty air as though something had caught her attention. Who had taken her to Abram’s office? Had it been an act of kindness, or a whim? Could she remember? Perhaps she was attuned to the invisible, hearing voices, a clink of a spoon against glass.

  They left the village of Rosenthal, then Chortitza, the land still snow-bound from a late and recent storm that muted the sounds of the sleigh and harness bells and the sing of runners against the packed trail. She sat beside Olga, warm beneath a sheepskin. Nela faced them, her hands buried inside a muff, her sharp features softened by a fur muffler that covered her chin and met the edge of a muskrat-trimmed hat, her pale eyes shining as she looked down at Olga’s black mongrel curled around her feet.

  Katya had forgotten how satisfying it was to ride through the countryside. Their breath escaped in white puffs, which were pulled sideways and shredded by the wind. Barbara and Dietrich were going to have a baby, she learned from Olga. They would all change, grow older, while Greta remained the same. Beyond them, there was movement in a field, white moving on white, a rabbit bounding away, and then another. The dog got up onto its haunches and sniffed the air.

  Rabbits, Olga shouted, and her father stopped the horses. The dog leapt out of the sleigh and ran across the field, going in one direction and then another, barely able to keep track of the rabbits that sprang out of a thicket of bushes, their ears pricked. Soon the dog became a black spot moving against white, until Olga called and the animal returned to them, its tongue bright red and mouth steaming. Laughing, Katya thought.

  The sleigh followed a well-worn trail, which soon dipped into a shallow valley and curved round a pond, its surface stippled with the footprints of birds. Then they left the pond behind, and as they neared a group of houses, Olga’s father urged the horses into a gallop. The houses were the beginning of a new Russian settlement, he told them. Haystacks stood behind twig fences; there were goats in a yard, and a dog that yapped frantically as they approached. Then the sleigh emerged from the shallow bowl of land, and beyond them the countryside spread out flat and broad, the sky dropping to meet the tufts of yellow grass where the wind had skimmed the crests off snowbanks, flattened drifts, and exposed the frozen earth.

  They were going to Arbusovka, Olga said. They would drive to the end of the village, where there had been a soap factory which had been shut down. Her father heard there were moulds stacked out on the yard. If there were any left, the boards and iron rods might prove to be useful.

  As they went round a bend in the trail a broad street opened up, Main Street of Arbusovka, lined with the familiar red-brick houses with their arched attic windows and grey roof tiles. When they neared the centre of the village, Nela pointed out a buff-coloured stone house, a rambling low house partially covered in vines and trimmed dark green. That was Willy Krahn’s place, where Greta stayed, she said. A wagon and sleigh were parked outside stone gate posts which flanked the entrance to a barnyard. As they approached the house, the door opened and Willy stepped out onto the platform. As though he’d been expecting them and watching, Katya thought as the man waved and called that they should come and stay a while. Olga’s father pulled the horses back and as the sleigh slowed down, the dog jumped out and bounded over to the gate – deciding for them, Olga said, laughing.

  The man’s window curtains were plain white cotton, and not hand-painted with pictures, a bright border of sunflowers; the next time he might surprise us with a geometric pattern, or vines, Greta had written. Standing behind Willy in the doorway was David Sudermann, looking as hollow-eyed and worn-out as he had in church that morning. He pushed past the man and came down the stairs.

  “There you are, Heinz Penner, a toad among the roses,” David called to Olga’s father.

  When he saw Katya, David’s grin collapsed and he averted his eyes. Behind him came a greying stout woman – the widowed sister of Willy, Nela explained. Hanging onto her skirt was Frieda and Willy’s child, a curly-haired girl with saucer eyes. Auguste and David’s three daughters came skipping down the steps. They grabbed Olga by the hands and escorted her into the house, ignoring Nela, who looked on in bewilderment, her eyes pained.

  When Katya went into the parlour, Auguste Sudermann rose to greet her with a dry peck against a cheek. There were several other women present. An elderly woman peered nearsightedly at a coat she was snipping apart at the seams, while others were mending and knitting. They nodded hello without missing a beat of their lively, intense conversation. Olga and Nela went from chair to chair, greeting each of the women in turn. They were putting together a box of clothing for refugees, Auguste explained. The circumstances were such that it was necessary they meet on a Sunday to do so. Across a hallway, the men had gathered in another room and as Olga’s father and David Sudermann entered, the men’s voices rose.

  From the far reaches of the house came the muted sound of chirpings, what could be children’s voices scratching against the walls, Katya thought as Auguste explained that a village near Arbusovka had been routed and women and children had come on foot across country, bringing only what they’d had on their backs. The women had arrived wet and shivering in their washday aprons and thin house dresses, their children without shoes and frostbitten. Several families whose houses were burned down or occupied had been taken into homes in Arbusovka until other arrangements could be made.

  “Aren’t you going to say who this girl is?” Willy’s sister asked Auguste moments later.

  “Katherine Vogt. From Privol’noye,” Auguste said, her cheeks flushing.

  Katya felt the women’s immediate stillness.

  “Margareta’s sister?” the woman asked, and when Auguste nodded, she set aside her handiwork and came across the room to engulf Katya in an embrace. Katya felt the heat of the woman’s breasts and stomach, felt her own legs begin to shake, and
she didn’t want to let go of the woman for fear the others would see the tremble of her skirt. But the longer she allowed herself to be held, the worse the shaking became, until her entire body was caught in spasms of shivers.

  “Would you like to see where your sister stayed while she was here?” the woman asked in a whisper.

  She followed the woman out to the hall. The men looked up as she came past their door, their voices stopping in mid-sentence, smiles frozen, a brow becoming heavy, or, like David Sudermann, their eyes turning away as they became lost in a thought, a scene, a discomfort her presence aroused in them.

  They went deeper into the house and she heard the clinking sound of glass being set down on glass, the tinkle of a spoon in a cup, a woman’s voice, a child’s reply coming from behind a wall. As they approached a closed door, Willy’s sister stepped aside so Katya would be the first to enter the room. She turned the knob and pushed open the door. A woman sat at a table with children, their white faces turning to meet her. Her mother, sitting at the table, Gerhard, Johann, Peter, and Daniel with her. From somewhere far away she heard herself screaming, felt the floor hard against her back and her skull rocking against it. She heard the screams become cries, and then sobbing. Willy’s sister knelt beside her, and then she felt the woman’s weight against her body, her hands pressing against the sides of her head to keep it still, her arms holding and rocking her.

  The people in the room where Greta had once stayed were refugees from the ransacked village near to Arbusovka, and not an apparition. Their presence had brought a release, and the feeling she’d had of being a stick of wood vanished. Her limbs became liquid, and too long for her body, and for a time she walked crookedly, bumped into door jambs and tripped on stairs. The sound of laughter in a street brought tears, as did sunlight touching a snow-covered roof, sparks of frost cartwheeling around her when she went walking.

  In summer she would take her place among women hoeing in the community gardens, crouch to notice how weeds growing near to the carrots resembled carrots; potatoes, in the potato patch. She saw how vine weeds threatened to choke out the lentils, the grasp of their tendrils so strong she had to cut the vine rather than pull it and risk uprooting a bean. She stopped weeding to listen to the coo of a mourning dove in an evergreen tree, warblers singing in an oak grove on the slope of the valley. When summer arrived she was sixteen, and although she sometimes appeared to be far-away, it was because she chose to be. She had begun writing in her notebook once again.

  KREJKELMOOSS

  My mother’s recipe, as given to me by Oma Schroeder

  damson plums or prunes (if using prunes, add a few handfuls of raisins)

  water to cover

  enough starch to thicken

  sugar to taste

  cream if you have it

  If using fresh fruit, scald and remove skins and stones. Boil with water and sugar. Be patient when you add the starch mixed with cream, or there will be lumps. If you use red plums, it will turn out differently.

  The primroses are blooming.

  CHORTITZA March 15, 1918

  My dear nephew Dietrich, and brother Isaac,

  Jakob Klassen arrived safely yesterday and immediately delivered your parcel. I received it in good condition, and with thanks. It is indeed a blessing to find ourselves the benefactors of Abram’s foresight, and thanks to the presence of the Whites in Spat, the funds are still intact. But for how much longer, I wonder?

  At first we were told that cheques would be accepted, and then not. Those of us who had already sent cheques to Alexandrovsk also learned that they wouldn’t be returned. Which is how I suddenly found my funds depleted and myself facing our delegation who expected yet another donation to take to the extortionists. What a scandal if a Sudermann was seen to have failed to contribute to the rescue of our Chortitza Ältester. On top of it, Mary and Martha Wiebe’s father came to see me, looking rather the worse for wear. According to his account, Abram owed his daughters a year’s wages. I had no way of knowing if that were the case or not, but I gave him what little I had and he went away satisfied.

  The two million rubles has finally been scraped together, thanks to the efforts of the delegation who travelled throughout the entire colony asking for donations. The delegation will go to Alexandrovsk tomorrow with the last instalment, and should return the same day bringing our Ältester with them. I’m grateful for your generous response, as I wouldn’t want the demise of our pope laid on my conscience (as the extortionists pointed out when they took him away).

  If anyone else from our colony were held for ransom, we’d be hard-pressed to meet the extortionists’ demands, as we’ve been bled dry. The Reds don’t believe this; the bandits, either. They think our resources are unlimited. First the Bolsheviks came demanding a quota of guns. Some people went out and purchased guns in order to fill that quota. Now taxes, requisition, redistribution, outright extortion, whether coming from the hand of the Reds, Whites, Petliurists or Makhnovite bandits, has taken all of our cash, and most of our belongings and resources. In this way they force us to our knees and will keep us there.

  When Klassen delivered your parcel he came with a story which has brought home a truth. In Einlage, bandits lined a father and his sons up against a wall, and were threatening to shoot them. Present in the room was a girl – I should say a young woman – and she, naively thinking she could save her family, carried an infant in her arms and walked back and forth between her family and the bandits. The noble young woman thought that as long as she did so, the bandits wouldn’t risk firing. She, in her purity of spirit, which our young women so endearingly possess, was appealing to their higher nature. She thought she perceived in them a spark of decency; that they were not yet immune to pity. But they proved to be the animals they really are, and shot her dead. We’re in danger when we regard these men as being human. If they are, then they’re possessed by evil spirits.

  More and more, my sense of humour fails me. But here is a recent incident: the other day the soviet called a meeting. All men between the ages of eighteen and fifty-five years were required to attend. The leader of the soviet, Fedor Sawchuck, a man who used to sweep floors in Koop’s factory, said we were to divide into two groups. The bourgeoisie should go to one side of the auditorium, the proletariat to the other. When no one made a move to divide, he kept pleading over and over, Comrades, comrades, won’t you please cooperate. Who among you are bourgeoisie? Of course no one ventured to raise his hand. You see, the soviet had decided that there should be some ditch-digging. What the ditch was needed for wasn’t clear. It appeared that they wanted the so-called bourgeois to dig for the sake of digging.

  A discussion began over the exact meaning of the words proletariat and bourgeois. Someone pointed out that the workers now owned as much, and in some cases had more possessions, than the people they once worked for. The workers had become the bourgeoisie, not? The poor befuddled Fedor couldn’t keep order. In desperation he went to the telephone central to call headquarters in Ekaterinoslav to get the meaning of the two words.

  In the meantime we waited in the Mädchenschule auditorium as instructed. We could hear the girls in a classroom below us reciting Maikov’s poem “The Hay Harvest.” Someone began mimicking their recitation, and then another took it up in earnest, “… The poor old horse who draws the cart stands rooted in the heat, with sagging knees and ears apart, asleep upon his feet.” Many in the room knew the poem, and we recited the final verse, proletariat and bourgeoisie alike, half-singing the words, “But little Zhuchka speeds away in barking brave commotion, to dip and flounder in the hay as in a grassy ocean.”

  When Fedor returned, we got down to business. It was decided that although I was a school worker, because my brothers owned factories I was a bourgeois. Just as I went to pick up a shovel, it was noted that I had been in military service, and so my name was struck from the list. So my dear nephew Dietrich, and brother Isaac, at the end of the day I found that I was neither one nor the other.
You see what madness we must endure, and on a daily basis.

  As to your enquiry about the Vogt girls, I see them from time to time, mostly at church. Whenever I have the occasion I speak to Katya. She seems well enough, but rather withdrawn, which, given the circumstances, is understandable. We can only continue to hope that one day she’ll be whole again. In my opinion that would be a miracle. Auguste and the other women have been trying to draw her out of her shell.

  Please give my greetings to Jakob. Tell him that while I agree that we must put our trust in God, I also put my trust in that which I failed to surrender, quota or not. You would be wise to do the same. If the times should dictate that we join you in Spat, then we will do so. In the meantime, the education of our children is of utmost importance. When this madness ends, they, at least, will be ready to take their place in this world.

  Auguste sends her warmest regards to you, Dietrich, and to your dear wife, Barbara. I understand that you will soon be blessed with one of your own. A fifth grandchild for my dear brother Jakob, which should please him well.

  Your uncle, and brother,

  David Sudermann

  atya came up the stairs to the attic, and knew by the stillness that the silkworms had reached the end of their fourth period of feeding. The worms would be reared up, their glossy black heads fixed in a trance as they dreamed their new skins. One more week of feeding and their silk glands would be ready to produce. As she stepped up into the room, the sound of band music coming from the town of Chortitza grew stronger. The windows in the attic were open at either end of the room to clear the air, and had been ever since her grandfather had set the eggs to hatch on the feeding bed. However, the days had been too heavy with humidity to allow for a crossdraft to clear the odour, which was both sweet and sour. The smell had seeped into the rooms below the attic, prompting her grandmother to say that, had she remembered what a strong smell the worms gave off, she might have had second thoughts about revisiting such a venture. But thread was scarce; out of necessity, old skills were being revived.