The Russlander (15 page)

The Sudermann women and Dietrich had returned from Ekaterinoslav late in the night, bringing Lydia home with them, Mary said. Aganetha Sudermann wanted Peter Vogt to know there
was going to be a Faith Conference at Privol'noye. When Mary said
Faith Conference
, she wrinkled her nose. They all knew how Abram brought together a select group of people to admire one of his recent acquisitions, a thresher, an Arabian stallion. Abram called his gatherings Faith Conferences, invited church elders and ministers, and set aside half a day for sermons.

Staring at her feet and blushing slightly, Mary Wiebe delivered her message. She said she'd been sent to inform Katya's father that within ten days near to a hundred people would attend Abram's gathering, and he was to select three sheep for butchering.

Mary returned to the Big House, and soon Katya saw there were wagons in the yard, covered with tarps. She learned that Aganetha had not only come home with news of the pending conference, but also with a contingent of painters, upholsterers, and furnishings. Abram had sent Aganetha a telegraph from St. Petersburg saying there should be a gathering of people so the delegation could deliver its report, and Aganetha had got it in her head to refurbish his office in time for that gathering.

Throughout the following days Katya would see Vera doggedly plodding between the pig barns and dairy barns, her narrow face hooded by a red headscarf as though she wanted to restrict her vision to what lay in her immediate path. From a distance, the sight of Vera brought to mind an awkward fledgling, the skirts she wore either too long or too short, her shoulders sagging, and her step unsteady beneath the weight of a burden. Katya noticed Sophie's affection towards Vera, the occasional acts of tenderness, a braid tidied, a pat on the rear in passing. Their quiet, almost secretive talks in the evenings when Sophie went to sit on the steps of the women's quarters. Katya felt excluded, that Vera's presence had changed Sophie. She missed Sophie's attention as much as she did her stories, was put off by her preoccupation, how she was forever stopping what she was doing to gaze across the compound, saying God, God,
hoping to catch sight of Vera, to place her, learn where she was, before continuing on her way.

A pile of rubble grew in the yard as the renovations to Abram's office proceeded. The workers' wives would come to investigate, and salvage a bit of cloth, carpet that had been cut into strips, nails that they would straighten. So as to not cause them shame, Katya pretended not to notice them, and told this to her mother one evening as they sat together out on the steps shelling peas.

“What do they have to be ashamed about? They'll make good use of whatever they find,” her mother said.

The great bustards sauntered slowly through the meadow beyond, their size and colour making them look like sheep grazing. They were shy birds, and hard to get close to. Greta and Dietrich came into sight along the road, Lydia behind them, and one of the great birds raised its head, all the others then doing the same. Birds of a feather, Katya thought, the saying taking on new meaning. The birds began to run, long, loping steps, their broad wings moving slowly and their bodies looking too heavy for flight. When the bustards took off, the three stopped to watch until the birds had flown out of sight beyond the forest. Then Dietrich linked his arm through Greta's and drew her to his side as they resumed walking, Lydia staying back and looking on for a moment as the couple ambled along the roadside, their heads almost touching, their voices a quiet rising and falling.

Katya watched her mother watch them, her pea-stained fingers moving in her lap as though shaping a ball of dough. Then Katya saw Greta go over to the roadside and begin to gather wildflowers, while Dietrich stood waiting, hands in his pockets as he gazed at the sunset, his face and hair turned red-gold. Lydia's voice rose briefly, and then she turned and started walking back towards the avenue of chestnuts. Greta called after her, but Lydia kept on going, Dietrich and Greta watching her go.

“Oh, why don't those two come back already,” her mother muttered, suddenly active, scooping up unshelled peas and dumping them in Katya's lap.

Days later, the bustle of activity at the Big House had ceased. The rubble had been carted away and dumped behind a small Sudermann family cemetery near to the back of the estate. That evening, Katya went across the compound to the women's quarters and sat on the step. Although there were no clouds, the air felt like rain. She knew Vera would soon arrive for supper. When Vera did come across the compound, it was with her usual plodding doggedness, as though eating supper were another chore she had yet to complete. The front of her grey dress was wet; she had likely washed up at the water pump. As Vera saw Katya, she stopped, annoyed at having been taken by surprise. Then she left the path, as if the women's quarters hadn't been her destination.

“Vera, come. I would like us to be friends,” Katya called out in Russian.

Vera slowed, then returned, pulling at her scarf so that it fell onto her shoulders, her chin lifted.

“Sophie's my friend, and we could be friends too, yes?” Katya felt herself blush with the insincerity of her words. She wanted Vera to like her, more than she wanted her for a friend. Vera stood at the bottom of the steps squinting up at her, and Katya knew she wouldn't want to hold hands with her and go walking at the end of the day. Vera wasn't Sophie. Vera looked like a sharp-eyed animal that would bite the fingers of a person offering it food.

Vera swiped at her nose with the back of her hand, her scowl fixed as she came up the steps, and Katya smelled the day in her
skirts, barn smells, the chicken coop, the rooting of pigs, felt Vera's boot bump her elbow as Vera stepped around her and went inside.

Katya thought about how, on days when the air was thin and clear, she could see the village of Lubitskoye rippling on the horizon beyond her house. She imagined the river Dnieper to the south, alive with light, its rapids thundering; she'd heard from Lydia, whose arms were freckled from her summer holiday spent there, about the Azov Sea, and the boats of fishermen hugging its shore. As she worked with Vera Karpenko in a field beside the orchard, scrubbing a canopy that was to be erected for the Faith Conference, she thought of St. Petersburg, the city Abram had gone to with the delegation, and since returned from in a gruff mood. A city that had been built on water, she'd been told. At a cost of thousands of lives. She thought of the places she had learned about in geography lessons so she wouldn't think about being here, on her hands and knees scrubbing a mildewed canvas canopy with Vera, an outside worker who was so much more agile and quick than she was. She thought of mountain ranges on ocean floors, of floating ice seas, a circle of ice and snow capping and cupping the world, continents adrift on the earth's desperately thin crust, North America, East India, where Helena Sudermann was bound to go, even though her four brothers were against it. Her knees grew raw from the canvas, and stung, while Vera, her skirt knotted about her thighs, made energetic little soap swirls with her brush.

“Tell me what colour I'm thinking of,” Vera said suddenly.

A game. As Vera rose to her knees and put aside her scrub brush, Katya vowed that this time, she wouldn't decline to take part.

“Blue?” she asked, as Vera's skirt was blue.

“
Nyet
,” Vera said.

“Red?”

Vera nodded and her face broadened with a grin, revealing a mouth of crooked teeth pitted with decay. She unwrapped a tiny bundle she'd taken from her pocket; inside it was a candied cherry. She bit it in two and offered Katya half.

Katya hesitated, thinking of Vera's spotted teeth, but knew she must accept the offering. As she chewed the sticky confection, the thought occurred, where had Vera got it?

Their attention was taken as a
droschke
came along the road and approached the chestnut-lined avenue. Then Lydia emerged from the Big House, came down the steps, and stood waiting as her sister Justina and her husband arrived at Privol'noye, home for the upcoming party. Justina was dressed like a queen, as usual, and Katya watched as her husband helped her down, the skirts of a white dress flaring out around her as she hurried to embrace Lydia, and then they went up the steps to the vestibule where Aganetha and Abram stood waiting on the threshold.

She could imagine Aganetha Sudermann was anxious for Justina to voice her approval of Abram's new study. His gruff disposition had become even blacker when he'd learned of the slaughtering of six cows, and more so when he saw the refurbished room. Everyone on the estate became aware of his displeasure. He could be heard shouting at Aganetha. How was a man supposed to think in such a stink of turpentine and wallpaper paste? He hated the window drapery and door curtain. But eventually he stopped shouting to admire a lacquered cabinet built around the safe. He demanded that his chair and the gramophone be brought to the vine arbour, where a man could breathe. And so, late into the night, they were treated to the music of Caruso. A sobbing aria of
Pagliacci
, and then “Nessun Dorma,” played again and again, Enrico Caruso's voice floating out and across the meadow where the great bustards had begun to flock; the birds not sleeping either, Katya's father had said.

A red plush sofa scattered with small cushions covered in the same fabric as the window drapery now stood where Abram's work table had been. Matching plush chairs were arranged around an oval table of cherrywood. When Katya's mother and father returned from a meeting with Abram, her mother said she didn't know if the chairs were hard or soft. She supposed they were for looking at, as she hadn't been invited to sit.

Katya's parents were relieved and then discomfited that Abram had, indeed, been thinking about the education of their children. He'd gone so far as to pray about the matter, and had received an answer. He would replace the tutor, Franz Pauls. But in return, the children should be made available to do chores. Her parents agreed, but when, hours later, a list of chores came sliding under the door, they were quietly astounded.

Which was why Katya now found herself scrubbing a canopy with Vera, who was watching her, just as Katya had been watching Justina and Lydia.

“You people. You think we're no better than the oxen,” Vera said, and shifted her gaze to the Big House as the door closed behind the Sudermann family.

Katya knew Vera had thrown out a line to see what she might catch, and yet the words stung. “I'm not one of them,” she said.

“Then show me,” Vera said.

Katya waited behind the cow barn for Vera to return from the chicken coop, where she had gone without explaining why. A wire was strung between trees, and hanging from it were plucked and gutted chickens. There was a fire whose embers flared under a cauldron of water, and flies crawling over a plank table where the chickens had obviously been cleaned. Moments later Vera returned, struggling with a hen which she held to her side tightly to keep its
wings from flapping. As she took the chicken to a tree stump, Katya understood what test Vera had in store.

“You should know how meat gets into your soup,” Vera said.

She knew how meat got into her soup. She'd often gone with the Wiebe sisters to the storage cellar to collect the family's Sunday chicken, cooling on a hook along with all the other Sunday chickens. She had chanced upon the outside women butchering the hens, and been present on killing day, when the pigs went into the slaughtering shed squealing, and wound up hanging from the rafters, their bodies cracked open at the ribs.

Vera stroked the chicken's neck and its clucking grew less frantic. Then she pinched its beak and stretched its neck across the block. The mesmerized hen lay motionless, its eye turned to the sky.

From the Big House came the sound of piano music; Katya recognized the piece,
Liebestraum
, which Lydia had taught herself to play, and more than likely wanted Justina to hear. Wedged in the ground beside the chopping stump was a hatchet which Vera pulled free.

“You say you're not like them,” Vera said, and motioned for Katya to take it.

The piano music unfurled, distinct in its sound of longing; Katya imagined Lydia curled over the keys, minding its signature with her swaying body, nodding when it came time to turn a page of music – yes, now. Count the beats, the rests, watch how the notes go up and down on the page, Lydia would say, even if you can't read, you can follow, turn now.

“You are so like them. You sound like a bear but act like a mouse,” Vera said.

The hatchet felt different than one used for splintering wood into kindling. It was heavier, and seemed to hum with meaning. The hen's neck was no thicker than a stalk of rhubarb, she could do it quickly, without thinking, both hands, one swift chop. No, she was not
you people
. Justina, nose in the air, Aganetha, reminding the
world that she had once been to an opera house and heard Chaliapin sing. She was not Lydia home from a holiday summer at the Azov Sea. Even her young brother Gerhard knew that the pears in the orchard didn't belong to them, nor did the house they lived in, the furnishings in the parlour; the soup ladle in the pantry drawer, with its scorched ivory handle, was one of Aganetha Sudermann's cast-offs. But she was not like Vera, either, and taking up the dare would somehow put her on the same side.

“
Nyet
,” she said.

Vera laughed, grabbed the hatchet from her hand, and with one swift movement severed the hen's neck. Katya saw the crimson spurt, felt the heat of blood against her arm. The chicken's head lay on the block, its opaque eye blinking, body convulsing in Vera's grip.

“You shit-hole of a pig, that's how meat gets into the soup,” Vera said. And then she glanced around as though suddenly frightened. “You won't tell anyone, will you?”

The sound of hammering rose above the music, Katya's father in the carpentry shop repairing benches for the gathering at Privol'noye. She felt giddy with relief that she hadn't given in to the dare, and disappointed him.