by Miriam Toews
For Marj
ricordo le risate
And for Erik
e ancora ridiamo
A NOTE ON THE NOVEL
Between 2005 and 2009, in a remote Mennonite colony in Bolivia named the Manitoba Colony, after the province in Canada, many girls and women would wake in the morning feeling drowsy and in pain, their bodies bruised and bleeding, having been attacked in the night. The attacks were attributed to ghosts and demons. Some members of the community felt the women were being made to suffer by God or Satan as punishment for their sins; many accused the women of lying for attention or to cover up adultery; still others believed everything was the result of wild female imagination.
Eventually, it was revealed that eight men from the colony had been using an animal anesthetic to knock their victims unconscious and rape them. In 2011, these men were convicted in a Bolivian court and received lengthy prison sentences. In 2013, while the convicted men were still in jail, it was reported that similar assaults and other sexual abuses were continuing to take place in the colony.
Women Talking is both a reaction through fiction to these true-life events, and an act of female imagination.
—MT
MINUTES OF THE WOMEN TALKING
Pertaining to the meetings in the Molotschna Colony on June 6 and 7, 2009, as recorded by August Epp.
Present:
The Loewen women
Greta, the eldest
Mariche, the eldest daughter of Greta
Mejal, a younger daughter of Greta
Autje, a daughter of Mariche
The Friesen women
Agata, the eldest
Ona, the eldest daughter of Agata
Salome, a younger daughter of Agata
Neitje, a niece of Salome
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
A Note on the Novel
Minutes of the Women Talking
June 6 – August Epp, Before the Meeting
My name is August Epp…
When I arrived in the spring…
June 6 – Minutes of the Women Talking
We begin by washing…
Greta Loewen, the eldest of the…
Note: Salome Friesen left…
We have reconvened.
I have returned to the meeting.
The women settle in for more discussion.
I have now picked up my pen…
Ah, the women are stirring, this reverie…
June 6 – August Epp, At Night Between Meetings
There has been an incident.
I met Ona later…
June 7 – Minutes of the Women Talking
It is very early, and still dark.
I blow out my kerosene lamp.
We have sung.
We have finished singing…
Nettie/Melvin has climbed the ladder…
June 7 – August Epp, After the Meeting
While I hid in a hay bale:
While waiting for the Koop…
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by the Author
Copyright
JUNE 6
August Epp, Before the Meeting
My name is August Epp—irrelevant for all purposes, other than that I’ve been appointed the minute-taker for the women’s meetings because the women are illiterate and unable to do it themselves. And as these are the minutes, and I the minute-taker (and as I am a schoolteacher and daily instruct my students to do the same), I feel my name should be included at the top of the page together with the date. Ona Friesen, also of the Molotschna Colony, is the woman who asked me if I’d take the minutes—although she didn’t use the word “minutes” but rather asked if I would record the meetings and create a document pertaining to them.
We had this conversation last evening, standing on the dirt path between her house and the shed where I’ve been lodged since returning to the colony seven months ago. (A temporary arrangement, according to Peters, the bishop of Molotschna. “Temporary” could mean any length of time because Peters isn’t committed to a conventional understanding of hours and days. We’re here, or in heaven, for an eternity, and that’s all we need to know. The main houses in the colony are for families, and I’m alone, so it is possible I may always, forever, live in the shed, which doesn’t really bother me. It’s bigger than a jail cell and large enough for me and a horse.)
Ona and I avoided the shadows as we spoke. Once, in mid-sentence, the wind caught her skirt and I felt its hem graze my leg. We side-stepped into the sun, again and then again, as the shadows lengthened, until the sunlight had disappeared and Ona laughed and waved her fist at the setting sun, calling it a traitor, a coward. I grappled with the idea of explaining hemispheres to her, how we are required to share the sun with other parts of the world, that if one were to observe the earth from outer space one could see as many as fifteen sunsets and sunrises in a day—and that perhaps by sharing the sun the world could learn to share everything, learn that everything belonged to everyone! But instead I nodded. Yes, the sun is a coward. Like myself. (I kept silent, too, because it was this tendency of mine to believe, with such exuberance, that we could all share everything that landed me in prison not long ago.) The truth is, I don’t have a catchy method of conversing and yet, unfortunately, suffer on a minute-to-minute basis the agony of the unexpressed thought.
Ona laughed again, and her laughter gave me courage, and I wanted to ask if I was a physical reminder of evil to her, and if that was what the colony considered me to be, evil, not because I had been in prison but because of what had happened long ago, before I became incarcerated. Instead, I simply agreed to take the minutes, of course—I have no choice other than to agree because I would do anything for Ona Friesen.
I asked her why the women wanted a record of their meetings if they wouldn’t be able to read it? Ona, who is afflicted with Narfa, or Nervousness—as am I, my name Epp coming from Aspen, the Trembling Aspen, the tree with leaves that tremble, the tree that is sometimes called Women’s Tongue because its leaves are in constant motion—said this in response.
She had seen two animals earlier, very early in the morning, a squirrel and a rabbit. Ona had watched as the squirrel charged the rabbit, running full tilt. Just as the squirrel was about to make contact with the rabbit, the rabbit leapt straight up into the air, two or three feet. The squirrel, confused, or so Ona thought, then turned around and charged the rabbit from the other direction only to encounter empty space once again as the rabbit, at the very last available second, leapt high into the air, avoiding contact with the squirrel.
I appreciated this story because it was Ona telling it, but I didn’t understand exactly why she was telling it, or what it had to do with the minutes.
They were playing! she told me.
Is that so? I asked her.
Ona explained: Perhaps she wasn’t meant to have seen the squirrel and rabbit playing. It had been very early in the morning, at a time when only Ona was roaming about the colony, her hair too loosely covered, her dress too untidily hemmed, a suspicious figure—the devil’s daughter, as Peters has named her.
But you did see it? I asked her. This secret playing?
Yes, she said, I saw it with my own eyes—which in that moment, in the telling of the story, were shining with excitement.
*
The meetings have been organized hastily by Agata Friesen and Greta Loewen in response to the strange attacks that have haunted the women of Molotschna for the past several years. Since 2005, nearly every girl and woman has been raped by what many in the colony believed to be ghosts, or Satan, supposedly as punishment for their sins. The attacks occurred at night. As their families slept, the girls and women were made
unconscious with a spray of the anesthetic used on our farm animals, made from the belladonna plant. The next morning, they would wake up in pain, groggy and often bleeding, and not understand why. Recently, the eight demons responsible for the attacks turned out to be real men from Molotschna, many of whom are the close relatives—brothers, cousins, uncles, nephews—of the women.
I recognized one of the men, barely. He and I had played together when we were children. He knew the names of all the planets, or he made them up anyway. His nickname for me was Froag, which in our language meant “question.” I remember that I had wanted to say goodbye to this boy before I left the colony with my parents, but my mother told me that he was having difficulty with his twelve-year-old molars, and had contracted an infection and was confined to his bedroom. I’m not sure, now, if that was true. In any case, neither this boy nor anybody from the colony said goodbye before we left.
The other perpetrators are much younger than me and hadn’t been born, or were babies or toddlers, when I left with my parents, and I have no recollection of them.
Molotschna, like all our colonies, is self-policed. Initially Peters planned to lock the men in a shed (similar to the one I live in) for several decades, but it soon became apparent that the men’s lives were in danger. Ona’s younger sister, Salome, attacked one of the men with a scythe; and another man was hanged by a group of drunk and angry colonists, male relatives of the victims, from a tree branch by his hands. He died there, forgotten apparently, when the drunk and angry men passed out in the sorghum field next to the tree. After this, Peters, together with the elders, decided to call in the police and have the men arrested—for their own safety, presumably—and taken to the city.
The remaining men of the colony (except for the senile or decrepit, and myself, for humiliating reasons) have gone to the city to post bail for the imprisoned attackers in the hope that they will be able to return to Molotschna while they await trial. And when the perpetrators return, the women of Molotschna will be given the opportunity to forgive these men, thus guaranteeing everyone’s place in heaven. If the women don’t forgive the men, says Peters, the women will have to leave the colony for the outside world, of which they know nothing. The women have very little time, only two days, to organize their response.
Yesterday, as I have been told by Ona, the women of Molotschna voted. There were three options on the ballot.
Do Nothing.
Stay and Fight.
Leave.
Each option was accompanied by an illustration of its meaning, because the women do not read. (Note: It’s not my intention to constantly point out that the women do not read—only when it’s necessary to explain certain actions.)
Neitje Friesen, age sixteen, daughter of the late Mina Friesen and now permanent ward of her aunt Salome Friesen (Neitje’s father, Balthasar, was sent by Peters to the remote southwest corner of the country some years ago to purchase twelve yearlings and still has not returned), created the illustrations:
“Do Nothing” was accompanied by an empty horizon. (Although I think, but did not say, that this could be used to illustrate the option of leaving as well.)
“Stay and Fight” was accompanied by a drawing of two colony members engaged in a bloody knife duel. (Deemed too violent by the others, but the meaning is clear.)
And the option of “Leave” was accompanied by a drawing of the rear end of a horse. (Again I thought, but did not say, that this implies the women are watching others leave.)
The vote was a deadlock between numbers two and three, bloody knife duel and back of horse. The Friesen women, predominantly, want to stay and fight. The Loewens prefer to leave, although evidence of shifting convictions exists in both camps.
There are also some women in Molotschna who voted to do nothing, to leave things in the hands of the Lord, but they will not be in attendance today. The most vocal of the Do Nothing women is Scarface Janz, a stalwart member of the colony, the resident bonesetter, and also a woman known for having an excellent eye for measuring distances. She once explained to me that, as a Molotschnan, she had everything she wanted; all she had to do was convince herself that she wanted very little.
Ona has informed me that Salome Friesen, a formidable iconoclast, had indicated in yesterday’s meeting that “Do Nothing” was in reality not an option, but that allowing women to vote for “Do Nothing” would at least be empowering. Mejal (meaning “girl” in Plautdietsch) Loewen, a friendly chain-smoker with two yellow fingertips and what I suspect must be a secret life, had agreed. But, Ona told me, Mejal also pointed out that Salome Friesen had not been anointed as the person who can declare what constitutes reality or what the options are. The other Loewen women had apparently nodded their heads at this while the Friesen women had expressed impatience with quick, dismissive gestures. This type of minor conflict well illustrates the timbre of the debate between the two groups, the Friesens and the Loewens. However, because time is short and the need for a decision urgent, the women of Molotschna have agreed collectively to allow these two families to debate the pros and cons of each option—excluding the Do Nothing option, which most of the women in the colony dismiss as “dummheit”—and to decide which is suitable, and finally to choose how best to implement that option.
A translation note: The women are speaking in Plautdietsch, or Low German, the only language they know, and the language spoken by all members of the Molotschna Colony—although the boys of Molotschna are now taught rudimentary English in school, and the men also speak some Spanish. Plautdietsch is an unwritten medieval language, moribund, a mishmash of German, Dutch, Pomeranian and Frisian. Very few people in the world speak Plautdietsch, and everyone who does is Mennonite. I mention this to explain that before I can transcribe the minutes of the meetings I must translate (quickly, in my mind) what the women are saying into English, so that it may be written down.
And one more note, again irrelevant to the women’s debate, but necessary to explain in this document why I am able to read, write and understand English: I learned English in England, where my parents went to live after being excommunicated by the bishop of Molotschna at the time, Peters Senior, father of Peters, the current bishop of Molotschna.
While in my fourth year of university there, I suffered a nervous breakdown (Narfa) and became involved in certain political activities for which I was eventually expelled and imprisoned for a period of time. During my imprisonment, my mother died. My father had disappeared years before. I have no siblings because my mother’s uterus was removed following my birth. In short, I had no one and nothing in England, although I had managed, while serving time in prison, to complete my teaching degree through correspondence. In dire straits, homeless and half-mad—or fully mad—I made a decision to commit suicide.
While researching my various options at the public library nearest the park in which I made my home, I fell asleep. I slept for an extraordinarily long time and was eventually gently nudged by the librarian, who told me it was time for me to leave, the library was closing. Then the librarian, an older woman, noticed that I had been crying and that I appeared dishevelled and distraught. She asked me what was wrong. I told her the truth: I didn’t want to live anymore. She offered to buy me supper, and while we were dining at the small restaurant across the street from the library, she asked me where I had come from, what part of the world?
I replied that I came from a part of the world that had been established to be its own world, apart from the world. In a sense, I told her, my people (I remember drawing out the words “my people” ironically, and then immediately feeling ashamed and silently asking to be forgiven) don’t exist, or at least are supposed to be seen not to.
And perhaps it doesn’t take too long before you believe that you really don’t exist, she said. Or that your actual corporeal existence is a perversity.
I wasn’t sure what she meant and scratched my head furiously, like a dog with ticks.
And after that? she asked.
Uni
versity, briefly, and then prison, I told her.
Ah, she said, perhaps the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
I smiled stupidly. My foray into the world resulted in my removal from the world, I said.
Almost as though you were brought into existence not to exist, she said, laughing.
Singled out to conform. Yes, I said, trying to laugh with her. Born not to be.
I imagined my squalling infant self being removed from my mother’s womb and then the womb itself hastily yanked away from her and thrown out a window to prevent any other abominations from occurring—this birth, this boy, his nakedness, her shame, his shame, their shame.
I told the librarian that it was difficult to explain where I was from.
I met a traveller from an antique land, said the librarian, apparently quoting a poet she knew and loved.
Again I wasn’t sure what she meant, but I nodded. I explained that I was originally a Mennonite from the Molotschna Colony, and that when I was twelve years old my parents were excommunicated and we moved away, to England. Nobody said goodbye to us, I told the librarian (I live forever with the shame of having said such a piteous thing). For years I believed we were forced to leave Molotschna because I had been caught stealing pears from a farm in the neighbouring colony of Chortiza. In England, where I learned how to read and write, I spelled my name with rocks in a large green field so that God would find me quickly and my punishment would be complete. I also tried to spell the word “confession” with rocks from our garden fence but my mother, Monica, had noticed that the stone wall between our garden and the neighbours’ was disappearing. One day she followed me to my green field, along the narrow rut that the wheelbarrow had made in the dirt, and caught me in the act of surrendering myself to God, using the stones from the fence to signal my location, with huge letters. She sat me down on the ground and put her arms around me, and said nothing. After a while, she told me that the fence had to be put back. I asked if I could put the stones back after God had found me and punished me. I was so exhausted from anticipating punishment and I wanted to get it over with. She asked me what I thought God intended to punish me for, and I told her about the pears, and about my thoughts regarding girls, about my drawings, and my desire to win in sports and be strong. How I was vain and competitive and lustful. My mother laughed then, and hugged me again and apologized for laughing. She said that I was a normal boy, I was a child of God—a loving God, in spite of what anybody said—but that the neighbours were perturbed about the disappearing fence and I would have to return the stones.
