by Miriam Toews
All this I told to the librarian.
She responded that she could understand why my mother had said what she did, but that if she had been there, if she had been my mother, she would have said something else. She would have told me that I wasn’t normal—that I was innocent, yes, but that I had an unusually deep need to be forgiven, even though I had done nothing wrong. Most of us, she said, absolve ourselves of responsibility for change by sentimentalizing our pasts. And then we live freely, happily, or if not altogether happily, without tremendous anguish. The librarian laughed. She said that if she had been in that green field with me, she would have helped me to have that feeling of somehow being forgiven.
Forgiven for what, though, exactly? I asked her. Stealing pears, drawing pictures of naked girls?
No, no, said the librarian, forgiven for being alive, for being in the world. For the arrogance and the futility of remaining alive, the ridiculousness of it, the stench of it, the unreasonableness of it. That’s your feeling, she added, your internal logic. You’ve just explained that to me.
She went on to say that, in her opinion, doubt and uncertainty and questioning are inextricably bound together with faith. A rich existence, she said, a way of being in the world, wouldn’t you say?
I smiled. I scratched. The world, I said.
What do you remember of Molotschna?
Ona, I said. Ona Friesen.
And I began to tell her about Ona Friesen, a girl my age, the same woman who has now asked me to record the minutes of the meeting.
After a long conversation with the librarian, during which I talked mostly, though not entirely, about Ona—how we had played, how we had clocked the seasons by the tiny lengthening of light, how we had pretended to be rebellious disciples at first misunderstood by our leader, Jesus, and then posthumously hailed as heroes, how we had jousted on horses with fence posts (running full tilt, like knights, like Ona’s squirrel and rabbit), how we had kissed, how we’d fought—the librarian suggested that I return to Molotschna, to the place where life had made sense to me, even briefly, even in imaginary play in dying sunlight, and that I ask the bishop (Peters, the younger, who was the same age as my mother) to accept me into the colony as a member. (I did not tell the librarian that this would also mean asking Peters to forgive me the sins of my parents, sins pertaining to the storage of intellectual materials and to the dissemination and propagation of said materials, even though the materials were art books, photographs of paintings that my father had found in the garbage behind a school in the city, and even though he was guilty only of sharing the images with other colony members, as he was unable to read the text.) She also suggested that I offer to teach the Molotschnan boys English, a language they would need in order to conduct business outside the colony. And she said that I should become friends, once again, with Ona Friesen.
I had nothing to lose. I took this advice to heart.
The librarian asked her husband to give me a job driving for his airport limousine service, and although I didn’t have a valid driver’s licence, I worked for him for three months to make enough money to purchase a ticket to Molotschna. During this time, I slept in the attic of a youth hostel. At night, when it felt as though my head was about to explode, I would will myself to lie as still as possible. Every night, in that hostel, as I lay motionless in my bed, I closed my eyes and heard very faint strains of piano music, heavy chords unaccompanied by voices. One morning I asked the man who cleaned the hostel, and who also slept there, if he had ever heard faint piano music with heavy chords at night. He said no, never. Eventually, I understood that the song I heard at night, when it felt as though my head was about to explode, was the hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” and that I was listening to my own funeral.
Peters, who wears the same tall black boots his own father once wore, or at least similar ones, considered my request for re-admittance into the colony. He finally said he would allow me membership providing I renounced my parents (in spite of one being dead and the other missing) before the elders and was baptized into the church and agreed to teach the boys basic English and simple math in return for shelter (the aforementioned shed) and three meals a day.
I told Peters I would be baptized and I would teach the boys, but that I wouldn’t renounce my parents. Peters, unhappy, but desperate to have the boys learn accounting, or perhaps because my appearance unsettled him, as I looked so much like my father, agreed.
When I arrived in the spring of 2008, there were only whispers, fragments of whispers, concerning the mysterious night-time disturbances. Cornelius, one of my students, wrote a poem called “The Washline” in which he described the sheets and garments on his mother’s washline as having voices, of speaking with one another, of sending messages to other garments on other washlines. He read the poem to the class and all the boys laughed. The houses are so far apart and there is no electrical light anywhere, inside or out. The houses are small tombs at night.
On my way back to my shed that afternoon I saw the washlines of Molotschna, I saw the women’s dresses flapping in the wind and the men’s overalls and the linens and the bedding and the towels. I listened carefully but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Perhaps, I now think, because they weren’t talking to me. They were talking to each other.
In the year after I arrived, the women described dreams they’d been having, and then eventually, as the pieces fell into place, they came to understand that they were collectively dreaming one dream, and that it wasn’t a dream at all.
The women in the Friesen and the Loewen families who have gathered for today’s meeting represent three generations each, and all have been repeat victims in the attacks. I’ve done some simple calculations. Between 2005 and 2009, more than three hundred girls and women of Molotschna were made unconscious and attacked in their own beds. On average, an attack occurred every three or four days.
Finally, Leisl Neustadter forced herself to stay awake night after night until she caught a young man prying open her bedroom window, holding a jug of belladonna spray in one hand. Leisl and her adult daughter wrestled the man to the ground and tied him up with baler twine. Later that morning, Peters was brought to the house to confront this young man, Gerhard Schellenberg, and Gerhard named the other seven men involved in the attacks.
Nearly every female member of the Molotschna Colony has been violated by this group of eight, but most (except for the girls too young to understand these proceedings, and the women, led by Scarface Janz, who have already chosen to exercise the Do Nothing option) have marked an X next to their name to indicate that they are content (and many ecstatic) not to attend the meetings about how to respond. Instead, they will contribute to the well-being of the colony by tending to the chores, which are manifold now while the men are away, and which if abandoned for as little as one day will result in mayhem, especially when it comes to the milking and feeding of the animals.
The youngest and speediest women in both the Friesen and Loewen families, Autje and Neitje, have agreed to provide the other women in the colony with oral reports at the end of the day, when all are back in their houses.
Now, in the hayloft of the barn where we have quietly gathered this morning, I wait to do as Ona has asked of me.
JUNE 6
Minutes of the Women Talking
We begin by washing each other’s feet. This takes time. We each wash the feet of the person sitting to our right. The foot-washing was a suggestion made by Agata Friesen (mother of Ona and Salome Friesen). It would be an appropriate symbolic act representing our service to each other, she said, just as Jesus washed the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper, knowing that his hour had come.
Four of the eight women are wearing plastic sandals with white socks, two are wearing sturdy leather shoes, scuffed (and in one case slit open at the side to allow for a growing bunion), with white socks, and the other two, the youngest, are wearing torn canvas running shoes, also with white socks. Socks are always worn by the women
of Molotschna, and it appears to be a rule that the top of the socks must always reach the bottom hem of the dress.
The two youngest women, Autje and Neitje, the ones wearing running shoes, have rolled their socks down rebelliously (and stylishly) into little doughnuts that encircle their ankles. On them, a swatch of bare skin, several inches of skin, is visible between the rolled sock and the dress hem, and insect bites (probably black fly and chigger) dot the skin. Faint scars, from rope burns or from cuts, are also visible on the exposed parts of these women. Autje and Neitje, both sixteen, are having difficulty keeping straight faces during the foot-washing, murmuring to each other that it’s ticklish, and coming close to erupting in giggles when attempting to say God bless you to each other, in solemn voices, as their mothers, aunts and grandmothers have done following each washing.
Greta Loewen, the eldest of the Loewen women (although she was born a Penner) begins. She exudes a deep, melancholic dignity as she speaks of her horses, Ruth and Cheryl. She describes how when Ruth (who is blind in one eye and must always be harnessed to the left of Cheryl) and Cheryl are frightened by one or more of Dueck’s Rottweilers on the mile road that leads to church, their initial instinct is to bolt.
We have seen it happen, she says. (After these short, declarative sentences Greta has a habit of lifting her arms, dipping her head and widening her eyes as if to say, This is a fact, are you challenging me?)
Greta explains that these horses, upon being startled by Dueck’s stupid dog, don’t organize meetings to determine their next course of action. They run. And by so doing, evade the dog and potential harm.
Agata Friesen, the eldest of the Friesen women (although born a Loewen) laughs, as she does frequently and charmingly, and agrees. But Greta, she states, we are not animals.
Greta replies that we have been preyed upon like animals; perhaps we should respond in kind.
Do you mean we should run away? asks Ona.
Or kill our attackers? asks Salome.
(Mariche, Greta’s eldest, until now silent, makes a soft scoffing sound.)
Note: As I have mentioned, Salome Friesen did assault the attackers with a scythe, whereupon the attackers were promptly rescued by Peters and the elders, and the police were called to the colony. At no other time in the history of Molotschna have the police been called. The attackers were brought to the city for their own protection.
Salome has since asked Peters and the elders to be forgiven for that indiscretion, but even so, her rage is barely suppressed, vesuvian. Her eyes are never still. Even if, one day, she runs out of words like a woman is said to run out of “eggs,” I believe that Salome will be able to communicate and to give life, fearsome life, to every emotion stemming from each injustice she perceives. There is no Inward Eye in Salome, no bliss of solitude. She doesn’t wander. And she is not lonely. Her niece Neitje, used to the gentler stylings of her late mother, Mina, but now in Salome’s care, keeps her distance. Neitje draws and draws, perhaps to balance the wild, lava-like outpouring of her aunt’s words with solid, silent lines on paper. (In addition to her drawing skills, I have been told that Neitje is also Molotschna’s reigning champion of knowing how much of anything—flour, salt, lard—will fit into any given container so that nothing and no extra space is ever wasted.)
Agata Friesen, unfazed by Salome’s outbursts (she has already referred to Ecclesiastes to describe Salome’s temper as nothing new under the sun, as the wind blows from the north, as all streams lead to the sea, etc. To which Salome responded that her opinions should not be slotted under hoary Old Testament headings, please, and wasn’t it preposterous that the women should compare themselves to animals, wind, sea, etc.? Isn’t there a human precedent, some person in whom we can see ourselves reflected back to ourselves? To which Mejal, lighting up a smoke, responded, Yes, I’d like that, too, but what humans? Where?), states that in her lifetime she has seen horses, perhaps not Ruth or Cheryl, fair enough—in deference to Greta and her high regard for her horses—but others who, when charged by a dog or coyote or jaguar, have attempted to confront the animal and/or to stomp the creature to death. So it isn’t always the case that animals flee their attackers.
Greta acknowledges this: Yes, she has seen similar behaviour in animals. She begins once again to talk of Ruth and Cheryl, but her anecdote is cut short by Agata.
Agata tells the group she has her own animal story, also featuring Dueck’s Rottweiler. She speaks quickly, often inserting asides and non sequiturs in a hushed, theatrical voice.
I am not able to hear or keep up with every detail, but I’ll attempt here to tell the story in her voice, and with as much accuracy as I am able.
Dueck had raccoons in his yard that he hated for a long time, and when the fattest raccoon suddenly had six babies, it was all that Dueck could stand. He tore his hair out. He told his Rottweiler to go kill them, and away the dog went, and the mother raccoon was surprised and tried to save her babies and get away from the dog, but the dog killed three of the babies and the mother raccoon could only save the other three. She took those babies and left Dueck’s yard. Dueck was fairly happy about that. He drank his instant coffee, and thought, praise be to God, no more raccoons. But a few days later, he looked into his yard and saw the three baby raccoons sitting there, and he became angry once again. He told his Rottweiler again to attack and kill them. But this time the mother raccoon was waiting for the dog, and when he came running at the babies she jumped on him from a tree and bit into his neck and his stomach and then, with every muscle in her body straining, dragged him into the bushes. Dueck was so mad, and also sad. He wanted his dog back. He went into the bushes to find the dog, but he couldn’t, even after two days of searching. He cried. When he came back home he walked despondently to his door and there lay one leg from his dog, and also the dog’s head. With empty eye sockets.
The reaction to Agata’s story is mixed. Greta lifts her hands over her head and asks the other women: What are we supposed to make of this? Are we to leave our most vulnerable colony members exposed to further attack in order to lure the men to their deaths so they can be dismembered and delivered in parts to the doorstep of Peters, the bishop of our colony?
What the story proves is that animals can fight back and they can run away, Agata says. And so it doesn’t matter whether we are animals or not, or whether we have been treated like animals or not, or even if we can know the answer to that one way or the other. (She inhales all possible oxygen into her lungs and then releases it with the next sentence.) Either way, it’s a waste of time to try to establish whether we are animals or not, when the men will soon be returning from the city.
Mariche Loewen raises her hand. One of her fingers, her left index, has been bitten off at the knuckle. It is half as long as the middle finger next to it. She asserts that in her opinion, the more important question to ask is not whether the women are animals, but rather, should the women avenge the harm perpetrated against them? Or should they instead forgive the men and by doing so be allowed to enter the gates of heaven? We will be forced to leave the colony, she says, if we don’t forgive the men and/or accept their apologies, and through the process of this excommunication we will forfeit our place in heaven. (Note: This is true, I know, according to the rules of Molotschna.)
Mariche sees me looking at her and asks if I’m writing this down.
I nod, yes, I am.
Satisfied, Mariche asks the others a question about the rapture. How will the Lord, when He arrives, find all the women if we aren’t in Molotschna?
Salome cuts her off, disdainful. In a mocking voice, she begins to explain that if Jesus is able to return to life, live for thousands of years and then drop down to earth from heaven to scoop up his supporters, surely he’d also be able to locate a few women who—
But now Salome is silenced by her mother, Agata, with a quick gesture. We will return to that question later, Agata says kindly.
Mariche’s eyes dart around the room, perhaps searching for kinship
on this subject, someone to share her fears. The others look away.
Salome is muttering: But if we’re animals, or even animal-like, perhaps there’s no chance anyway of entering the gates of heaven—(she stands up and goes to the window)—unless animals are permitted. Although that doesn’t make sense because animals provide food and labour, and we will require neither of those things in heaven. So perhaps, after all, Mennonite women will not be allowed into heaven because we fall into the category of animals, who will not be needed up there, where it’s always lalalalala … She ends her sentence in song syllables.
The other women, except Ona Friesen, her sister, ignore her. Ona smiles slightly, encouragingly, approvingly, although it’s also a smile that could serve as firm punctuation to Salome’s statement—that is, a silent request to end it. (The Friesen women have developed a mostly effective system of gestures and facial expressions to quiet Salome.)
Ona begins to speak now. She is reminded of a dream she had two nights ago: She found a hard candy in the dirt behind her home and had picked it up and taken it into her kitchen, planning to wash it and eat it. Before she could wash it, she was accosted by a very large two-hundred-pound pig. She screamed, Get that pig off me! But it had her pinned against the wall.
