The Russlander

by Sandra Birdsell

  “Pretend it’s cocoa,” David said with a short laugh. “It pays to have a good imagination during these times. Some people are actually putting on fat using their imaginations. They go to bed imagining they’ve eaten cheese, meat, bread, and in the morning their stomachs are full,” he said and patted his midriff. “They keep their shutters closed so others can’t see them using their imaginations. Ja, ja. Just trust in God, He will satisfy your every need, even hunger. Those who wish to see us starve make us even more religious,” he said with a sardonic laugh.

  Once again Auguste reminded him to be quiet, and their voices dropped to a whisper. Katya noticed how Auguste hovered near the perimeter of the room. When she had finished serving them she went to a chair in a corner and sat there, eyes cast down and arms folded against her chest as though she were suddenly chilled.

  David fell into thought. He stared at his hands circling the glass of tea, into whatever darkness he was contemplating. Katya thought about her father then, and was almost grateful that he wasn’t there. It would be a terrible thing to see him as wounded as David. She wondered if the reason his daughters were so watchful and silent was because their father seemed to be defeated.

  David Sudermann had been among the men digging a trench on a factory yard, and when he saw her coming he’d straightened, and put aside his spade. He’d come towards them slowly, and she had wondered, who was this old, stooped-shouldered man? And then when he was certain it was them, and broke into a run, she realized this was David. She thought he would embrace her, but he stopped short of doing so, expressing concern that Njuta was too heavy for her to carry, and taking her sister from her arms.

  When he had told her that her grandparents no longer lived in their house, he spoke without looking directly at her, and she wondered if he ever would look directly at her. She wondered how long she would have to endure the certain looks, and avoidance. As if she needed to be reminded that her family had been murdered. David went on to tell her that her opa and oma Schroeder had moved across the street and were living in the little house at the back of the Siemenses’ property. Her uncle Bernhard and aunt Susa and their family continued to live in their own house, however. Who was in the grandparents’ house? You will see. You will be surprised to see, he said, without explaining why. As soon as they had something hot to drink and had rested, he would take them to their grandparents.

  She didn’t want to take the time to rest, she told him now as she sipped at her imaginary glass of cocoa. She was impatient to see her grandfather and grandmother. After being in the cluttered and noisy Krahn house, she was hungry for the dignity of their silences. Unlike Irma, they didn’t have a need for self-examination, a need to find meaning behind every occurrence. And she would be free, too, to think about Kornelius without his presence interfering with her thoughts. David said he would accompany them to Rosenthal, of course.

  As they neared the Mädchenschule, they heard the sound of children in the courtyard, and, except for the sounds of their play, Main Street of Rosenthal lay before her empty and silent. She noticed the absence of smoke in factory chimneys along the way, of the sound of iron striking iron; she noticed the deserted coalyards.

  As they passed by the school she saw that its brick façade was pocked with bullet holes; the wrought-iron railing on top of the stone wall was twisted, and sections of it were missing. The Reds had declared that the school was for both boys and girls now, David informed her. And it was closed more often than not for lack of heating fuel. When the Makhnovites had left the town months earlier, David and others cleaned the school to prepare it for classes. They found mounds of discarded clothing that seemed to be alive. What moved were the lice, he said. The lice were ankle deep in all the rooms, and in whatever house or building the Makhnovites had stayed. The lice spread from house to house, columns of insects coming in under the doorsills and through cracks in the walls and floors. People resorted to burying their infested clothing, baking them, hammering the seams before retiring at night. “The two-headed offspring of anarchists. Lice and typhus,” David said, speaking more to himself than to her.

  The burnt shell of a house pressed through the trees beyond the school. Many of the trees around the Teachers’ Seminary had been cut down. There were tree stumps in the yards of houses along the street, and up the sides of the valley. Fences were pulled down for firewood, David explained, barn boards stolen during the night, furniture broken up for the sake of heat.

  As they drew near to her grandparents’ house, David let them go on ahead, and moments later when she turned to look, he was going back down the street. He’d been rather mysterious about the inhabitants of her grandparents’ house, she thought.

  There were gloxinia plants on the windowsills, and the curtains appeared to be freshly starched. She saw movement beyond the windows in the summer room; it had been her mother’s room at the onset of the war, when her father served at the Lazarett. While she knew it was impossible, as she came near to her grandparents’ house she thought she could recall a time when her mother had been a child as young as Njuta. She imagined her mother in a white dress, squinting into the sun as she sat out on the platform on a hot summer afternoon, surrounded by aunts, uncles, cousins seated in rows on the steps and on chairs in the garden below. Her mother, a small girl, her hand rising to shield her eyes against a burning sun, watching her daughters coming down the street.

  Whoever lived in the house now took good care of it, she thought, vaguely aware that a woman had come out onto the platform. She was followed by another woman, and then she recognized Dietrich Sudermann as he came from the house, holding a child in his arms. Although his hairline had receded, he looked much the same as when she’d last seen him.

  “Katya, yes?” the woman said as she came down the steps. “I’m Barbara,” she said. Behind her was Justina, whose queenly demeanour was intact, as was her shiny blond hair twisted in its usual skein at the back of her head. But it was Lydia Katya wanted and waited for as Dietrich thrust his child into Barbara’s arms and hauled Katya into an embrace. His arms tightened, and she felt the quick thud of his heartbeat.

  “And here comes Lydia,” Dietrich said, and released her.

  Katya turned to see Lydia hurrying along the sidewalk towards them, her hair darkened now, the colour of old straw. Katya realized that her knees were shaking. Lydia, what have you been making of your life? Can you tell me, after your mother, who was next, and then who? Can you tell me how Njuta came to be in the house?

  She felt Lydia’s narrow body against her own, felt her shudder as they embraced. Then Lydia stepped quickly back. She’d been at the Seminary, helping care for the orphans, when she’d heard of their arrival, she explained as she tugged at the sleeves of her blouse, as though the cotton were chafing her skin.

  “Lydia has psoriasis,” Justina said.

  “Yes, I’m covered with it, from head to foot,” Lydia said with a sad small laugh, her eyes briefly meeting Katya’s and then flickering away. “Sara, how big you are,” she said, and Sara drew her shoulders up to try to make herself look even taller, causing the women to laugh. Dietrich stood rooted, his eyes clouding as they rested on Sara.

  “But I wouldn’t have recognized Njuta,” Lydia said.

  “Well, how could you? She was the age of this one when you last saw her,” Barbara said, indicating the child she held in her arms. She had spoken in an off-hand manner to fill an awkward silence, without realizing the tactlessness of referring to that day. Dietrich, his features strained and troubled, left them and went into the house.

  Katya felt rough in their presence, made so by their appearance, the women’s lawn skirts and crisp linen blouses, a string of amethyst beads at Justina’s neck.

  “How are you?” Lydia asked softly, the question meaning so much more than what it usually did. I am doing as well as expected, Katya thought. What about you? When their eyes met, Lydia looked as if she were in search of something.

  “We’re a little worn out from
our walk,” Katya said.

  “I know your grandparents are impatient to see you, otherwise I would invite you to come inside,” Justina said, and Katya felt that she was being told to go.

  “I’ll walk with you the rest of the way,” Lydia said.

  They went across the street, Sara and Njuta between them, and Katya realized that she and Lydia were now the same height, both of them tall for young women, and like most everyone else, rather thin. Lydia would rub the sleeve of her blouse, touch a shoulder, move her body as if to ease the itch of psoriasis against the fabric of her clothing. Again their eyes met, and Lydia was the first to turn away, spots of colour rising in her cheeks. As they neared the gate to the Siemenses’ house, Lydia took a step back, allowing for Sara and Njuta to enter first, and then she took Katya by the arm, indicating that she should stay. Katya felt the sudden dry heat of Lydia’s palm against her own, a slight pressure, as she squeezed. “It was horrible,” Lydia half-whispered, and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, they were wet.

  “They made you play the piano,” Katya said, her lips tingling suddenly, her face gone stiff.

  “Yes,” Lydia said.

  “And then the men came from the well.”

  “Katya, do you know about me?” she asked, her pale eyes widening. “Do people know, did Kornelius Heinrichs say?”

  “Kornelius only said that he found you, just as he found me, and Sara, too,” Katya said.

  Katya saw Lydia with Greta, sitting together in the classroom, their heads joined, their eyes shining with concentration. Lydia’s small hands washing creases in baby’s legs, soaping its tiny head, threading its limbs through arm holes and leggings. She was still rescuing children, apparently, although larger and more needy ones.

  Lydia looked at her sharply. “And were you and Sara. … Are you and Sara … Are you all right, then?” she asked, sounding like an older and caring sister.

  Katya remembered Franz Pauls’s question, Was Lydia laid on the ground, too? Had men done unspeakable things to Lydia while laying her out on the ground? Kornelius hadn’t said any more than that he had come upon all of them struck down where they had stood, all except Lydia, who had been left for dead but was resurrected in Orlov’s hayfield not knowing day from night, or who she was. “Yes, we’re all right,” Katya said, and found herself being embraced, felt Lydia’s breath on her neck, heard her say, “Oh, how I prayed that would be the case.” Then she smiled, her features softening for a brief moment.

  “What about you?” Katya asked.

  As they walked through the orchard at the back of the Siemenses’ yard, Lydia linked her arm through Katya’s, and they walked just as Greta and Lydia had once walked, Katya feeling the heat of Lydia’s skin, a wiry strength. “Well, I have the orphans to care for. It’s something that needs to be done,” Lydia said. Sara and Njuta were being joyfully received by their grandparents, judging from the noise. Lydia went on to explain that the Teachers’ Seminary had now become an orphanage, a temporary place to house homeless children until people could be found who were willing to take them in. The orphans brought pieces of amber, she said, rings, silver they’d stolen at the thieves’ bazaar in Alexandrovsk, copper pots. They came with their swollen stomachs, and stick-thin legs, wanting to exchange what they had stolen for food.

  “Opa, come look, here’s Katherine, she’s coming,” Katya heard her grandmother call, and she felt Lydia’s lips brush her cheek before Lydia turned away.

  Katya barely recognized the stooped figure who came towards them on the path, the round tanned face now pallid and hollow-cheeked, her mouth collapsed into her jaw. She reached for her grandmother, and in holding her felt she was cupping a wounded bird, and feeling its weak flutter against her palms.

  he sat with her grandparents in the semi-darkness, while across the room her sisters slept on a makeshift bed on the floor. She recalled the last time she’d been in the room, imagined the air still held the scent of ammonia and old cheese, remembered that her father had appeared to Tante Anna in a dream and told her that he was going home.

  They didn’t have any kerosene, her grandmother had explained, and so, like most, they usually went to bed at sundown. In order for them to sit and visit for a while this night, she had made a pracher, and the grease-soaked rag now burned in a saucer on the table between them, giving off the odour of animal fat and singed wool. The twist of flame illuminated the surface of the table and the space immediately around them, and the photographs of the Schroeder ancestors seemed to dissolve into the wall where they hung. She felt their sombre gazes penetrate the darkness, imagined that they’d heard the hoot of a barn owl coming from beyond a sandpit behind the house, listened now as her grandfather read aloud from a letter he’d received in reply to one of his own. “We think it’s best you stay where you are, as even here in Canada, there are hardships. English may soon become the language of our children’s schools. It seems everywhere in the world there is trouble. It may be best for you and yours if you remain where things are at least familiar.”

  There was much talk about going to Canada, her grandfather said with a sigh. The loudest voices in favour of it were those of the well-to-do, while others were willing to wait and see what changes the Soviets might bring. Contacts had been made in the United States, too, and food parcels were beginning to arrive from there, he told her. People were being given vouchers, which they were supposed to take to a central office in order to claim the parcel. But the office was nearly a hundred miles away, how would they get there?

  With some difficulty he refolded the letter, and when his shaking hands made it impossible for him to slide it back into the sleeve of the envelope, she did it for him. The foreign-looking script, the red-and-blue stamp holding the likeness of the king of England made her feel the letter was heavy with importance.

  “Speaking English yet,” he said and shifted his body away from her as though he did not want her to see his bitterness, as though she hadn’t heard it in his voice.

  “We wrote to them that we would be willing to learn Chinese, if we had to,” her grandmother said. “They don’t know hardship. Here, if we were fortunate enough to own a cow, we’d have to pay the government eleven million rubles in tax, eighty million for a horse.” She had heard of several cases of animals committing suicide, she said. A cow’s head had been stuck on a fence post, and a sign saying that life before the Communists had meant lots of hay and grain to eat, and now the cow was only given straw and had to deliver so much milk as a tax to the government that life was not worth living. A hen had done the same thing, complained of her owner’s demands for more eggs in order to pay the taxes.

  Her grandfather’s face lit up with a smile that quickly faded. “It’s funny, but would be very dangerous for the person who made the sign if they were ever found out.”

  It was no wonder so many wanted to emigrate, he said. He had put their names on a list along with the names of over seventeen thousand Mennonites who wished to emigrate. Countries such as Mexico, Paraguay, South Africa and the United States had been visited by a committee. But after two years of travelling and negotiations, they learned it was Canada, in the end, that agreed to take them in. The final arrangements were now being made with the Canadian Pacific Railway, for payment of transportation costs. Some people had already begun to sell their belongings in anticipation of needing to pay for their passports.

  He sounded breathless, and any physical exertion made him wheeze. Katya had noticed his laboured breathing when earlier, to ward off dampness, he’d lit a small fire in the stove. With great effort he had kept the fire stoked, and seemed almost relieved when the fuel, a sack of twigs and wood chips, was depleted. The stove had barely warmed the room when the meagre fire died. The sun had now set; the chill returned and dampness was seeping like smoke through the floorboards.

  Her grandmother got up and went over to a bench beside the door, returning with several pieces of leather, which she held out. “Look, your opa has beco
me a shoemaker,” she said, and went on to tell Katya that he had been hired by a kulak, supplied with the necessary leather, and promised a hundred rubles to fashion a pair of boots. “An application for immigration costs twelve hundred rubles. Twelve pairs of boots. There aren’t that many people in town who can afford new boots.” She shrugged in resignation and returned the leather pieces to the bench.

  Bernhard had taken the china dishes they’d stored in the attic to Alexandrovsk and sold them, her grandfather said, which had provided them with enough flour to get through the previous winter, and now they were without. What little money came their way went to buy food, if and when food staples could be found. A person did what he could. Her grandfather had been forced to acquire new skills, as had most of the men, David Sudermann included. He had made a window frame from scavenged wood, and sold it in the market across the river. He had even sold a fish or two he’d managed to catch in the creek.

  Across the room, her sisters were dark shapes on the floor, their breathing shallow and even. The owl hooted, an eerie sound that seemed to come from the bottom of a barrel, and not across the sandpit behind the house, from the yard of Teacher Friesen, a man who had answered a knock on his door one night and been killed by the blast of a gun.

  At least Friesen doesn’t have to see this, her grandfather said. He didn’t have to witness people meeting on street corners and trying not to say the words hungry, food, eat. Her grandparents had told what happened as though they were reading the event from a newspaper, as though they lacked energy for strong emotions and had become immune to grief. They had seized this opportunity to voice their worries, though in better times they would have waited until Katya, like Sara and Njuta, had fallen asleep. In the silence that followed, she became aware of the dampness, her feet and legs sweating and chilled, the feeble light barely illuminating her grandparents’ aged and colourless faces. They had become like animals huddled in a cave, she thought.