The Russlander (41 page)

All of winter the children spent hours sliding down the hill, and skating on a patch of ice Tina Funk's husband kept cleared on the Chortitza creek. Katya watched them from a pantry window, a small window that had recently been set into the back wall of the house. Her grandmother had requested the window. She didn't want to chance being surprised by a stranger coming to the house through the backyard when she was working in the pantry. She wanted to be able to see the children at play.

A table stood before the window, and one day Katya was at the table about to mix a batch of biscuits for their supper. She spooned fat from the jar and shook it onto the flour in the bowl. Beyond the window the children skated and slid on the creek, Sara, Njuta, and their cousins among them. They were dark stick figures set against the snowy creek bank, their arms and feet propelling them across the ice and away from the footbridge. They would round a curve of red willows and disappear from sight, moments later reappearing as they returned to the bridge to circle, and to warm themselves beside a bonfire that Funk, the train crossing guard, kept going beside the footbridge. That the man had found the necessary energy to do so had come as a surprise to everyone.

She picked up a spoon that was so light, it almost flew from her hand. The utensil reminded her of the tin spoons which had been chained to the tables in the workers' quarters in Privol'noye. She thought of her grandmother sitting on a chair in the family room, her feet hooked through its rungs to anchor herself to it, as though she were as inconsequential as the spoon and in danger of flying away.

She heard a door opening at the front of the house, feet stamping on the mat, Nela calling, “Where are the children?”

The children's voices had come to Katya in fragments while they played on the creek, as had the chirping of sparrows clustered in a bush beyond the window. She saw the sparrows lift up from the bush and flitter away, heard a sharpness in Nela's voice as she came through the hall calling, “Are the children outside?” She stood in the doorway of the pantry looking in at Katya, panting, her face constricted. “Papa said to warn you there are men, riders, coming towards the town.”

Katya looked across the creek and saw that the children were gone. My biscuits, she thought, and then dropped the spoon. She
raced down the hall, grabbing a cloak on the run, and out the back door, flinging the cloak about her shoulders as she ran across the yard towards the creek, Nela behind her. She neared the bridge and began to hear the sound of the riders, an echo skating along the ice, then turned and saw them coming down the hill into town, a horde of insects in an array of colours, on horseback, in
tachankas, droschkes
and farm wagons, light glancing off the riders' bayonets and swords as they rode alongside the telegraph and telephone lines. She thought she would remember for as long as she lived that flash of wire, a silver arc as tension was suddenly released and the wires whipped up as if they too were blades, slashing at the air before coming down, one by one. This was a story she would tell her children, to keep from telling the other. Although she had been much too far away to be able to see, she knew how the wires had arced and flashed silver.

The children must be hiding, she said breathlessly as Nela came up beside her on the bridge. She pointed to their footprints along the bank, going up into the willow bushes where the snow was deep. She saw her grandfather appear in the entrance of the barn door, his frantic gesturing that they should stay away. There was no movement among the willows, no indication that the children were there; the footprints, the scarred ice, the remains of the smouldering bonfire would look as though the children had finished playing, and all gone home. She reluctantly gave into Nela's urging that they should hide under the bridge.

She felt as though they had spent hours under the footbridge, but it must have been less than an hour, otherwise they would have been frostbitten. The sun hadn't set when she saw her uncle Bernhard come running from the barn in his limping, uneven gait across the barnyard to his house. Moments later two men appeared with her grandfather at the barn door. Then the men, carrying guns, set off
towards her uncle Bernhard and aunt Susa's house. A window at the back of the house opened and Bernhard pushed himself through it and dropped to the ground. He ran across the frozen creek, up its bank and into the bushes.

Soon after, the sun waned and the creek was cast in shadows that she and Nela crept through as they went to the children. When she called, their faces appeared above the willows. Njuta's round face, and the cheeks of several other children, were streaked with wet.

Within moments she saw someone hurrying along the creek towards them. Nela, recognizing the stooped figure of her father, went to meet him. They should come home now, he called, and Katya saw his relief and surprise to see so many of the town's children with her as they came through the willows down to the creek.

She couldn't stop the children from running to the stout old man and clustering about him. He cautioned silence, and they grew silent. He touched their shoulders and heads as though counting and blessing them at the same time. He and Nela would lead the other children back into the village, taking a circuitous route to avoid Main Street, believing what later proved to be true, that the best they could do when their town was occupied was try to stay out of sight.

Katya lay on the floor, Njuta curled into the curve of her body and Sara spooned into her back, both of them sleeping. In the bed across the room, her aunt Susa wept silently as the new baby nursed, and her two children slept on either side of her. A
schlaf
bench had been made up in the room for her grandparents, but although the night was almost ending, they were still playing host to the men who now occupied all the rooms of the house except for the one they were in, a small room beside the pantry.

She lay rigid, listening. Gradually the men grew quieter; some were already asleep, judging from the sounds of snoring that came through the walls. She heard voices in the family room suddenly rising in an expletive, a demand, a taunt. All night there had been sounds of glass breaking as stores and houses were pillaged. Demands had been made for hot meals and music. The two men who had gone looking for her uncle had brought Dr. Warkentine to come and treat a man's festering wound, and now as she thought of his visit, she remembered that he had once told her that she should try to pray.

The Lord is my shepherd. Yea, though I walk
, she breathed, while across the room her aunt's muffled weeping shook the bed. She wondered what had happened to her uncle, and the other men who, now fearing reprisal for having demanded the return of their stolen goods, had fled. At daybreak the bandits could track the men by their footprints in the snow, and bring them to their leader for his judgment. She heard a thump against a wall and uneven footsteps in the hall approaching the door to their room, felt a welling of hot air when the door opened and someone stood in the doorway holding a lantern.

“What are you keeping in here?” the man asked whoever was with him. His breathing was laboured as though from exertion, and drink.

Katya knew by his voice it was Simeon Pravda. It must have been Pravda who Dr. Warkentine had come to treat. Their leader, Opa had said, without saying who he was. A festering leg, one of his stumps, she thought. Would he recognize her? she wondered, her bowels suddenly churning as she thought of the crate of china dishes hidden in the attic.

“You said you wanted chicken. Well, the chicken is ready. I didn't cook a meal for you to let it sit and get cold.” Her grandmother was the person who had come with him, Katya realized.

“Little Mother, what are you hiding in here, eh?” Pravda asked.

“Nothing. My grandchildren, my daughter-in-law. But if you don't believe me, then go and see for yourself,” her grandmother said.

Katya heard him grunt and suck air, like someone who had just experienced a jolt of pain. His stump, she thought. He lifted the lantern and flooded the room with light. She kept her eyes closed, her breathing still.

“A nest of birds,” he said. “God bless them.” He laughed, and the light swung round towards the door, the room going dark as he went out into the hall, and the door closed behind him. The sound of his mirthless laughter hung in the room. She waited for as long as she could. She counted the minutes and held her breath as her intestines gurgled and ran with water. Then she got up and squatted over the chamber pot, remembering the grey light, the early-morning chill. The deep shadows lying between the summer kitchen and washhouse. That she had sensed bones creaking, a person concealed between the two buildings, watching as she had come by with her family. She remembered a light moving across a window in the women's quarters beyond the parade barn.

After the funeral she had tried to grab hold of what others had repeated, that if Abram had led the bandits to the strongbox buried in the garden instead of denying its existence, the outcome of that day might have been different. Now, with her heart racing and bowels rumbling, she closed her eyes and saw the silver cup in Pravda's small puffy hands. The presence of the cup had wiped out the memory of the dessert spoons and the silver tray that had gone missing so long ago, and so she hadn't yet wondered how these items had come to be in the well. She squatted over the chamber pot, fearing the men would hear the noises she was making, the small explosions coming from her body. She remembered Vera's crooked painted mouth, a crow's wing of black hair set against her
brow, the glitter in her eyes when she'd said, There's something in the well.

Her grandparents came to bed without acknowledging that she was still awake, and Aunt Susa was weeping. They didn't undress, nor had she. They had all gone to bed fully clothed. Her grandparents knelt beside the bench, their voices hives of whispers as they prayed.

How she managed to fall asleep, she didn't know. But she must have, as some time later she awakened to the sound of moaning, and for a moment she thought, Aunt Susa's baby is about to be born, forgetting that the baby was already three months old and at its mother's breast in the bed across the room. The sound was coming from another room, the moan of someone in pain. She saw that her grandmother was awake, sitting on the edge of the bed and listening.

“It's Kootzy,” her grandfather whispered.

Moonlight shone through the slats of the shutters, casting bars of light across her grandmother's white apron, her hands clasped in her lap. From somewhere in town a dog began to bark. “I know,” Oma said. “Warkentine said hot poultices. Brandy for the pain.”

“One of his own can do it,” Opa said.

“Yes,” Oma said. The bars of light seemed to move as her hands unclenched and her knees shifted as though she might turn and lie down on the sleeping bench beside him. She sighed, and then began to mutter. Scripture, or a prayer, the sound of
s
becoming sharp tiny hisses. She grew silent. “But do unto others,” she said, moments later.

“
Na
, Anna, don't you go to him,” her grandfather said.

No, don't go, Katya thought, her teeth clenched and jaw beginning to ache. Don't dirty your hands by touching him.

Her grandmother went around the mattress on the floor, and Katya felt the air move against her face. The thought of her touching Pravda filled her with revulsion.

In the morning she told her grandfather that she wanted to leave and, surprisingly, he agreed that she should go. He sat on the edge of the sleeping bench, his long hands dangling between his knees, his face tinged yellow, and haggard. She shouldn't stay in the same house as Pravda, but take her sisters and go away. How and where, he did not know, but he would try to make some arrangements. Sara and Njuta, their hair uncombed and clothing wrinkled, sat on the floor staring at the door as though they expected at any moment it might burst open. Their grandmother prepared breakfast for the men in the family room, her voice occasionally rising above theirs, surprisingly bright and cheerful sounding. They had become mice in a house of hungry cats, listening, eyes turning to the slightest sound, a voice rising in the street.

When Pravda and his men had eaten and gone outside, Katya took the opportunity to go to her room and gather up a bundle of clothing. Drawers were open and half-empty, and soiled clothing lay in heaps on the floor among broken bottles and the stubs of cigarettes, which had been ground into the floor. The room smelled of cow dung, unwashed hair and bodies, of vomit, she realized when she stepped into a sticky grey puddle near the wardrobe.

She went into the family room, where her grandparents were at the window, peering between the shutter slats. As at their house, as at all the houses across the street, the Siemenses' window shutters were closed. And, like them, people stood behind their shutters watching the street where Pravda's hooligans had gathered. Their Bat'ko sat in a troika which she recognized as having belonged to David Sudermann. The men were looking down the street and seemed to be waiting. Soon a wagon came in sight, and as it came nearer she recognized her uncle Bernhard, his dark beard matted with blood; David, his head bowed and wrists bound behind his back; and Olga's father. The man driving the wagon was Kornelius Heinrichs, hatless, without a coat or jacket, his shirt bloodied.

Just then Ohm Siemens came from his house and down the steps, wearing nothing but boots with his winter underwear and a greatcoat draped across one shoulder. Nela and her mother stood at the door watching as he went down the steps to the gate, carrying an auger. He called out to Pravda and his men, and immediately gained their attention. Within moments, like children in a high state of excitement, they swarmed around Ohm Siemens and followed him down the street, all of them, turning at the crossroads leading to the Ghortitza creek, their prisoners on the wagon forgotten, and unguarded.