The Russlander (4 page)

After supper her mother heated water and brought the bathing tub out from the pantry. She set it on the floor in the family room, arranged chairs around it which she draped with towels. Because
they would attend the Sudermann's annual Christmas Tree gathering at the Big House, this was their second bath this week. Greta had been invited to play crokinole at the Big House, and stay for supper. It was understood that Katya didn't play board games, not until she could lose without anger, without sending game pieces flying. She sat now, enclosed in moist air that held the familiar odour of their evening meal of fried potatoes and onions, absorbed in the sight of her wet skin, the dimple of her navel. Her body was an oasis in the tub of water, and everything came to it, the soap bubbles, a cloth she had used to wash. She had bathed Sara, and then it was Gerhard's turn, but her brother had begun to object to being scrubbed by his sisters and so he'd been left, as her father would be, to her mother's hands.

After they had all bathed, tension began to permeate the house as her mother fretted over loose threads, a spot of chicken gravy on a pair of trousers which required sponging. While her mother rushed about, Katya stood on a stool and recited the two verses of
Ihr Kinderlein, Kommet
to the room.

“
Sehr gut
,” her mother said when she finished reciting. The only thing she needed to remember was not to tuck her chin into her neck and pinch off her voice.

She went with her family across the compound, the bells on her shoes jingling musically amid the sound of voices, as other people came from the workers' houses, people whose feet were familiar with the pathways that eventually connected to a single lane of packed snow leading to the back door of the Big House.

She wanted to widen the distance between herself and her family, and hurried on ahead. As she passed the stairwell of the Big House cellar, she sensed a presence. Then the darkness below was pricked with a sudden glow of light, and her legs went stiff. It was Kolya, she knew, the coachman's son and keeper of the furnace.
For thou art with me
, she thought as she stuck her hand in her dress pocket and held
the square of sheepskin, not because she was in danger of losing her temper, but for uneasiness. Kolya exuded an energy that made her wary. His bark is bigger than his bite, her father had said, and praised Kolya for being strong and willing to do the work of two men. He kept the Big House warm in winter, slept on a mattress in the furnace room, made trips across the yard with a wheelbarrow to a stack of manure bricks which he piled at the cellar door, a supply that kept the house heated throughout the night. He emerged from the dark stairwell, and she was relieved when he greeted her with a nod, drew on his cigarette and blew the smoke heavenward.

Beyond her, the snow at the side of the house was lit up from the kitchen windows, and she passed through the light as quickly as she could, and then the light from the servants' quarters, and her parents still hadn't noticed the distance opening between them. She wanted to enter the house from the front door, to see the land beyond turned to silver by the winter moon. The windows in Helena's, and in Abram and Aganetha's room, were in darkness, and so the remainder of the way to the front of the house stretched before her dark with navy-blue shadows.

She reached the front of the Big House, where halos of soft lamplight illuminated the entrance way, and stone steps, cleared of snow and sprinkled with salt crystals, led to a vestibule. She was about to go up the steps when her mother called. She hesitated, and when her mother called again, she returned to the corner of the house and stood where they could see her, and she them. More workers and their families had begun to arrive, and several were gathered in a dark cluster near the platform at the back door. She waited for her father to say that she should come and go into the Big House through the back door with them, and when he didn't, she waved and returned to the front entrance.

She wanted to see the spectacle that could be viewed from the front door: sleigh-runner tracks along the avenue; chestnut trees
spreading their spindly shadows across the yard. Beyond the Chortitza road lay the meadow, a stretch of radiant snow edged by the trees of Abram Sudermann's forest. The brittle tree branches along the avenue rattled and clicked, and she listened, not wanting to hear anything other than frozen branches, not wanting to hear a baby crying in the forest, the cackling of Baba Yaga as she came flying in her mortar bowl, banging her pestle against its side as she hurried through the winter night with some evil intent. She didn't believe in fairy tales, and so she didn't want to hear Baba Yaga coming to pinch her arm to see if she would make a lean or fat meal.

She believed that Cain had slain Abel, that an angel had protected Daniel against the lions, that Jonah had lived for a time in the belly of a behemoth. She believed the stories told by people around her. Stories which, on a dismal blustery day in the distant future and in another place, she would suddenly be asked to tell. An earnest, friendly young man with a tape machine would come knocking on her door, someone's grandchild on a journey into the past. Wanting her to tell the stories of the people she had sat next to in church – yes, we went as often as we could, when the weather permitted us to go, she would tell him. It wasn't always easy. Too cold or too wet. Too much snow. She and the man were in some way related; his grandparents had lived in the same colony she'd been born into. A colony of believers called to live in the world, but to remain separate from it, peace lovers, non-resisters who believed in turning the other cheek.

Katya entered the vestibule, the bells jingling softly as she removed her boots and set them on a sisal mat already lined with boots of various sizes. She entered the front hall and the house surrounded her with its warmth, its cooking odours, the sound of laughter.

Justina Sudermann stood in the doorway of the parlour, a slender young woman in a blue wool dress trimmed with pleated
taffeta at the cuffs and yoke. Her hair was bound up at the back of her head like a skein of wool, a blond knot that shone whenever she moved. She was an older version of Lydia, a student in her third year in a
Mädchenschule
in Rosenthal. When Justina noticed Katya, she turned and beckoned to someone in the parlour. A stranger came to her side, a young man wearing a black Sunday coat, his Adam's apple protruding sharply overtop his shirt collar. A fox, Katya thought as he took her in with his small red-rimmed eyes.

“Is this one of them?” she heard him ask Justina, not taking his eyes off Katya.

“Katya, come over here and greet Franz Pauls. He's going to be your new tutor,” Justina said.

She was struck silent by the news.

“Oh ho. So this is Katya. I saw the picture you made. It has lots of colour, doesn't it?” Franz Pauls said.

Did he mean too much colour? Had she put herself forward with too much colour?

“Do you like to sing?” Franz asked, bending slightly at the waist as he spoke.

There were voices and movement down the far end of the hall. Katya's parents were the first to enter, her father carrying baby Johann, with Sara in hand. She was about to go to them when Franz Pauls said, “I'm sure you do like to sing. I think we could have quite a nice choir, don't you think?”

She didn't know what to think. He had asked three questions, and so fast, she hadn't had time to come up with an answer for the first one. Gerhard came behind her mother, and was the last to disappear into the dining room, a room halfway down the length of the hall.

Dietrich was at the piano, no longer looking like a sheepdog with his slicked-back hair and his trousers tucked into his knee-high boots. Only Greta, Lydia, and she took school in the classroom now
that Dietrich went to
Zentrakchule
in Chortitza town. There would be four of them once Gerhard began. Do four people make a good choir, she wanted to ask him, but he was leafing through a music book on the piano as though he could read the notes flying up and down its pages, trying to look loose, like a high-school student. Beyond him, on a settee beneath a window, was Helena, fanning her face with a handkerchief.

Abram's coachman was the next to come, wearing his uniform, his scarlet cap held against his chest. With him was his wife in a blue striped dress of cotton madras, her head bound in a scarf and decorated with paper flowers. Their six children followed single-file, with Kolya, the oldest, in the lead. They were hushed and solemn, each one pausing before entering the dining room to peer up at the electric lamps lighting the hall, both mesmerized and confounded by the sight.

“And those children?” Franz Pauls asked.

Justina shook her head. “Some of them go to school in Lubitskoye. My father provides a man to take them, and a wagon. Those who aren't inclined don't attend, which is most of them.” She spoke curtly, as though the question had rankled her.

The coachman was followed by the blacksmith, his eyes owlish, the skin around them, compared to his smoke-tinged complexion, startlingly white. His wife walked with him, a child in her arms, and behind them came another eight children, shuffling along in their sock feet, their hair shining as though wet.

The gardener and his family came down the hall next, and then the locksmith, who was keeper of the provision house and granaries, followed by Abram's head groom, an old bachelor, with two unmarried assistants. Last of all came the outside women, looking freshly scrubbed and wearing embroidered holiday blouses and red skirts. Manya was among them, the skin of her jaw stretched taut and shining with its swelling. Unlike the others, the outside women
looked down at the floor, shy, and too overwhelmed to take in the sweep of lilies and ferns on the wallpaper, the electric sconces on the walls shedding their pale orange light. The Wiebe sisters and Sophie made their entrance behind the outside women, flushed and self-conscious in the frilly white caps and aprons they were required to wear with dark flannel dresses on special occasions.

Helena Sudermann got up from the settee and came over to Katya, extending her hand. “I can see you're surprised to have a new tutor,” she said. “Everything in this life comes to an end, but something new begins, yes?” Katya took Helena's hand, feeling the scratch of thick calluses against her palm, and they went down the hall to the dining room where everyone had gathered.

Helena must have been in a woman's time of night-sweating and heat when she'd asked Abram to hire a tutor to replace her. There was much about Helena Katya didn't know and would only learn years later, when Helena's life was unravelled by others in another country, an old sweater taken apart piece by piece and knit into something that bore little resemblance to the person Katya remembered.

“Now let's go and sing our very
best, ja
? Let's go and make those little bells ring,” Helena Sudermann said.

After much tugging and whispering by Helena, Katya lined up with the other children in front of the Christmas tree. The smallest – David Sudermann's children and her sister Sara – made up the front row, while she stood between Greta and Gerhard in the middle. The Sudermann sister cousins and Lydia, being the tallest, formed the back row of their choir.

The reflection of lit candles on the Christmas tree quavered in the glass front of a cabinet across the room. Shelves inside the honey-coloured cabinet were laden with Aganetha and Abram's wedding china, pieces which Katya had held to admire, how each rose pattern was slightly different, the gold inscription of their names, and date of
marriage. Behind locked doors, shelves held chests of silverware, boxes of candles wrapped in tissue, silver candle holders, mono-grammed napkins and table linens that smelled of lavender. Linens such as the damask cloth that covered the dining table in the centre of the room, a table which was usually spread with a velvet cloth. On the table were small wooden plates, each holding an orange, a scattering of mints, and a chocolate. Silver coins for the adults, spin tops, tiny mirrors, mittens, and stockings for the children.

“All together, pay attention. Watch me,” Helena Sudermann whispered. She raised her arm, the fabric darkened at the armpit by a circle of sweat. She waited for their attention to turn from the people in the room, from the wooden plates, from the toes of their stocking feet, to her face, which strained with expectancy. If we're going to do this, then we'll do it right, yes?

Kling Glöckchen – klinge linge ling
, Ring, little bells, ring, everyone around Katya sang, while she thought that perhaps she was partly to blame that they faced the uncertainty of a new teacher and his ways. She, along with everyone else, should not have called Helena Moustache-Len. Now they were paying for it. Time would tell how much. In the front row, Sara lifted the hem of her dress and flapped it in time to their music, making the adults smile.
Lasst mich ein, ihr Kinder
, is so cold the winter.
Öffnet mir die Turen
, don't let me freeze to death. Ring, little bells, ring, they sang as
Lehrer
Pauls stood in the doorway listening, as if undecided whether or not he should come into the dining room.

“Look, there's our new teacher,” she whispered to Greta, who nodded as she sang; yes, she knew.

His reddish-blond hair and sharp features were what had reminded her of a fox. He was wary and anxious looking, and moved aside quickly whenever the Wiebe sisters and Sophie entered the room with platters of cookies and left again. Fearing that he was in the way, she knew. But as they sang he turned an ear to listen,
nodding as though counting beats, already becoming their tutor.

While they'd lined up to sing, Abram Sudermann had entered the room in a bustle with his brothers, each one wearing a dark vested suit and a cowboy hat, bringing with them the smell of tobacco and a rich odour of fermented cherries. He had taken his chair at the head of the table, set his hat on the floor beside it, his brothers sitting on either side of him doing the same. David had come without a jacket, and with the sleeves of his shirt rolled to the elbows. He'd chosen not to wear his cowboy hat, but carried it with him. He'd also chosen not to sit with his brothers at the table, but had found Katya's father and gone to stand with him and the other workers, those who lived at Privol'noye and didn't return to their homes in nearby villages at the end of a work day, or for holidays.