The Russlander (33 page)

“Then why not let them stay? They may learn something useful,” Pravda said, his eyes once again coming to rest on Greta.

The locksmith's house where Sophie and Kolya had a room was dark, which she'd noticed when they'd come across the compound, and she had wondered where Sophie might be. She hadn't recognized any of the men, except for Dmitri. She saw his grave and grey old face as he stood, back to the garden wall, cap held to his chest, as they'd gone by, a quick nod in their direction. When the man had told them to come with him, they had all scrambled for their shoes, which were lined in a row beside the door. Her mother had for some reason stepped into a pair of their father's boots, and Katya had thought, well, he must be wearing his scuffs then, and hoped he had taken the time to pull on socks.

The boots her mother wore had clomped against the ground, her gait childlike, made more awkward by the lolling tongues of the boots' and trailing laces. “‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus.” Katya thought of the hymn they'd sung the night before. She and her sisters and brothers walked behind the man and smelled the pig manure caked on his rubber boots and trouser legs.
Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him, How I've proved Him o'er and o'er
They reached the
wagon, stood grouped together beside the horses. “Are these your children?” the man called Bat'ko Pravda had asked her father.

She saw Vera come from the garden toolshed now, followed by Kolya. Vera was wearing a black leather coat which flapped about the tops of her high leather boots as she moved through a swirl of feather snow.

Pravda's eyes followed Vera and Kolya now too, as the two of them, Kolya carrying a spade, went off into the east gardens.

He then turned to Katya's father. “Do you own a gun?” he asked.

“Yes, of course I have a gun,” her father said.

Pravda nodded approvingly and then leaned down and spat over the wagon wheel. “It's good you said so, because I know you do have one. You said the truth, that is good. But tell the truth now, would you use it against me?” he asked.

“Why do you ask this question?”

“Because I've heard all about what you people believe,” Pravda said.

“Well, so, then you know the answer. But why would I use a gun when I have nothing to fear?” he added, his eyes looking at him steadily. “You said so yourself.”

Pravda laughed, and Katya saw her father send her mother a look meant to reassure, and her mother's little nod in return. She rocked the sleeping baby, her eyes riveted to her husband's face, while little Peter clung to her leg, his face turned sideways against her thigh.

Katya could describe Pravda in every detail, this man who, despite his leather tunic and the two pistols stuck into his wide belt, still looked like a common beggar. Feathers lifted from his shoulders and drifted away across the yard.

“So you think it's wrong for us to do this,” Pravda said. He was a man baiting a dog, waving a stick and wanting it to jump and latch on.

“That is not for me to say,” her father said.

“But you must have an opinion. You think something, isn't that right?” Pravda said.

“Yes, I do. I think that whatever you want, you'll take. I have not tried to stop you,” he said.

“And what if I should take what belongs to you?” Pravda asked.

“I will help you carry it,” her father said.

Pravda laughed again, and her father, who had been so rigidly planted in one spot, relaxed and shifted his shoulders. By reasoning with Pravda, he was preventing anger from erupting all around them, and she felt his wisdom, a light shining out from his body, and they, her mother, sisters, and brothers were bathed in his light. He stepped closer to the wagon and rested a hand against its side, looking like a man who had stopped another to talk about the weather.

Beyond him she saw two buff-coloured heaps lying on the ground, the dogs, Nicholas and Alexandra, she realized, lying dead in a patchwork of muddied footprints and bloodied snow.

“Papa,” she said quietly, and pointed.

“Be still, my girl,” he said.

She was sorry that she'd pointed, as Daniel and Johann, when they saw the dogs, began to whimper. Greta went over to her brothers, drew their bodies into her own.

They all turned at the sound of glass breaking, as the kitchen windows shattered, one after the other. Men had gone down to the cellar and were coming up with jars of food. They were throwing the jars out the windows, and as a mound of pickled beets, crab-apples, cucumbers, pears, grew higher among the broken glass, Katya's stomach turned, and there was a strange metallic taste on her tongue. She didn't know yet that they had urinated in the flour and sugar bins in the bake kitchen, its shelves emptied and food scattered and trampled underfoot.

Each time a jar smashed, her father winced. “I must say something,” he said to Pravda.

“Bat'ko Pravda will always be willing to listen,” Pravda said.

“You asked me if I thought what you were doing was wrong. I have to say this, here, is wrong. Take the food, but don't spoil it. You could eat well this winter,” he said.

“We could eat cow dung this winter if we wanted to, and it would be our business. We're in charge now. It's not for anyone to tell us what to do,” Pravda said.

Katya saw fear rise in her father's face, which suddenly made him look haggard. He stared at Pravda as though seeing him for the first time. The man was not what he'd taken him to be – simple, part fool, a posturing beggar – but someone to be feared. Then her father turned and looked at her, and she understood his message, and took Sara in hand to show him that she had. Her scalp began to tighten, and sounds suddenly became sharper. She heard glass breaking inside the house, a burst of maniacal laughter. She didn't know if she could move. Her father's eyes then sought out Greta, but she was again turned towards the Big House.

“Greta.” He'd spoken through his teeth, but fiercely, the sound instantly catching her attention.

Greta nodded almost imperceptibly, the grey light washing all colour from her face; all of them shades of grey and darkness, like people in a photograph. Greta clasped Daniel and Johann more tightly against her body. Katya saw the tips of the boots her mother was wearing sticking out from under her nightdress, its hem trembling.

“They say you're a good man, is that so?” Pravda indicated with his whip to the workers' quarters.

“God knows whether I am or not,” her father said.

“They have no reason to say it, and so it must be true. Why don't you choose something from the wagons? Go ahead, working for
King Turd, there must be something. Take, choose, whatever you want, you can have,” he said. “Why not take that?” He pointed with the whip to Abram's sofa at the back of the wagon, the gramophone resting on its cushions, a lacquered box of player discs beside it.

“I have all I need,” her father said, his eyes taking them in, his sons, his daughters, his wife with a child in her arms.

“Yes, you have your little apples,” Pravda said.

“Let them go home now. Their mother will make a meal. I would be happy if you would come and be our guest. She's a fine cook,” her father said, his voice even.

His invitation went unanswered, as several men came round from the front of the house, struggling beneath the weight and bulk of Lydia's piano. One of them slipped on the snow-covered grass and, losing his grip, dropped the piano to the ground, its strings vibrating in a thrum of sound.

Now Katya saw Vera was coming back from the garden, coming through the arched gate, her black coat shining, and behind her was Kolya. She carried what looked to be a strongbox, and when Pravda saw it, he shouted at a man inside the house who was standing at a broken kitchen window to go and tell the others to come.

The man wearing the table covering came from the front of the house, wandered over to the piano, and began fingering its keys. He poked up and down the scale until Pravda shouted for him to leave it be. Feathers swirled up and around the feet of the men as they walked, carried up and away by a sudden gust of wind, over the wall, vanishing into daylight, mixing with what snow remained on the fields. Where patches of snow had melted, the burned vegetation spotted the land. Someone might come by on the road. They would see the wagons, the commotion in the yard. Orlov might hear the cows complaining and send someone to investigate.

She heard an inside door slam in the Big House, Abram's voice rise in anger. Moments later she saw Kolya again, this time coming
from the front of the house; behind him was Abram leaning heavily into Aganetha for support, and several men coming with Lydia, and the Wiebe sisters, who walked stooped and slow, clutching one another. Abram's nose was off-kilter, his nostrils black with clotted blood; rivulets of blood ran over his mouth and into his beard. They came near, and her father turned to Abram, his hand raised then lowered as if to say, Go slowly, be quiet. But when Abram saw Vera, he began to shout. She should go and milk the cows. She should go immediately, and tell the others to do likewise. What was he paying them for? he demanded, as though the men who had gathered around him were not carrying guns, revolvers tucked into their tunic fronts and belts, others with their
nagaikas
, such as the small whip Pravda played with constantly, or sabres hanging at their sides. Abram's voice was bubbly and nasal, and his Russian at the best of times was almost unintelligible.

“Abram Abramovitch asks that the women go milk the cows,” her father repeated. “If you like, let me send my girls. They can do it.” The animals' moans rose in waves and broke apart in hoarse screeches as they bawled for relief.

“King Turd wants his cows tended to, does he? Well, my men are happy to carry out his wishes. Go and look after them,” Pravda said to two men.

The Wiebe sisters, who had begun to weep when they'd come upon the battered dogs and the broken glass and food, continued to sob. Lydia went to her father, whose nightshirt was spattered with blood. She was the only one who was fully clothed, her hair freed of its combs and flowing across her shoulders.

When the first shot came from the cow barn, Katya's whole body began to shake. She hadn't understood that Pravda meant the men were to shoot the cows. The sound reverberated in the loft, and then came another shot, followed quickly by another, the horses in the horse barns beginning to whinny. Njuta awoke
and began to fuss; their mother jostled her and made shushing noises.

Abram sputtered, his massive head quivering as he stared at the barn in disbelief. Then he tore himself away from Aganetha, spreading his legs as he stood upright, his mountain of flesh jiggling beneath his nightshirt. The men around him moved back and fell silent.

They were all swine, they were pieces of dog dirt, snakes, sons of the devil, sons of immoral women, Abram shouted in Low German, and what more he called them, Katya would not say. Then, as if put off-balance by the velocity of his own swearing, he slipped and fell backwards, his body thudding against the ground. Aganetha cried out and was about to go to him, but Kolya pushed her aside and went to stand over Abram as he struggled to rise to his knees, his lard swaying, hanging close to the ground. His nightshirt rode up, exposing the shame of his enormous buttocks, and Kolya laughed.

Lydia muttered something, and looked as though she would say more, but Kolya turned and glared at her and she fell silent. Abram grunted and wheezed, his nose bubbling with blood, and the man draped in velvet cloth took it off and threw it over his exposed flanks.

Kolya cursed and tore the covering off of him. Another man approached and, with the butt of his gun, prodded Abram between the legs, causing laughter, a release of whatever fear and awe they might have still had for him. One after the other they touched Abram with a toe of a boot, in his belly, his flanks, his ribs; another with a sabre, pricking the skin of his neck, tentative nudges that ended when Pravda called for them to bring Abram to the wagon. The strongbox Vera had given to Pravda lay open on his lap.

“You said there was nothing. You said the girl wasn't telling the truth,” Pravda said to Abram. He lifted out a blue leather case, and took out a silver tiara.

Katya recognized the tiara; she had seen it on Aganetha's head in a family photograph taken on the day of their silver wedding
anniversary. A picture that she would see lying on the floor in the parlour, its convex glass smashed and ground underfoot, obliterating the image of Aganetha and the silver tiara that glinted out from her pewter crown of braids. There was a silence now, and moments later, the two men who had been sent to shoot the cows came towards them, their guns at their sides.

“There are other things hidden. Look in the well,” Vera said to Pravda.

Abram protested this wasn't so. They wouldn't find anything in the well.

“In what they call the butter well,” Vera said, and pointed to it.

“Yes, yes. I know. Once again, the girl is lying,” Pravda said to the now subdued Abram, who stood swaying back and forth beside Katya's father at the wagon.

When Pravda sent several men to search the well, Abram lifted his hands to indicate the futility of it.

But there
was
something in the well, Katya knew, and Vera seemed to know it too, as her eyes became hard beads of light shining across the distance between them. There is something in the well, Vera's eyes told her. Yes, she thought, there
is
something there, but how can Vera know that?

They stood frozen in place, Njuta beginning to cry now, and, desperate to quiet her, their mother rocked her harder and harder, shushing, jiggling, appealing to their father with frightened eyes.

“Who here can make music?” Pravda asked, and gestured at the piano.

Her father's eyes found Lydia, and then it seemed as though an idea had come to him. “Why not play something for us,” he said to Lydia; and, turning towards Pravda, “she plays well.”