The Russlander (13 page)

ithin weeks of Katya's returning home from Rosenthal, the weather turned as hot as summer and the tulips and irises flowered at the same time, a profusion of colour in the west garden happening all at once, not a gradual unfolding that made a person anticipate which beds would be the next to bloom. There was almost too much colour to take in, Katya thought as she went walking along the sand paths with Greta and Dietrich, the evening air still warm and saturated with the scent of lilacs. Dietrich had returned home shortly after they had, having completed his first year of Commerce Studies at a
Gymnasium
in Ekaterinoslav. She thought he had become puffed up and full of himself, and sounded much like his uncle David had during their recent visit in Chortitza. She didn't care to listen, and didn't mind when the two of them went on ahead where the white path curved round a grove of lilacs. But moments later when she rounded the curve, she was startled when a bough suddenly bent, and then swished back, stinging her face. Dietrich had twisted a cluster of pink lilacs from it, and was poking them into Greta's hair.

Katya awakened the following morning with a band of tightness in her abdomen, her tongue thick and tasting of metal. The air in their attic room was close and warm, and when she arose, the bedding held the shape of her body and rust-coloured spots of blood. It happens to all girls eventually, her mother explained when she demonstrated how Katya should fold the strips of cotton and pin them into place. She was not to worry about it but accept it for what it was, a nuisance to be endured. The washing and hanging of the banners of cotton must be done at night when the boys were asleep, and hung to dry on bushes behind the house. Her mother's hushed tone didn't suggest that Katya ought to be ashamed of the bleeding, but rather that it was a mystery, and one day she would understand. Katya guessed it had something to do with becoming a woman and having children, but what, and how, she couldn't imagine.

She helped Greta strip the bed and soak the stains. “Yes, it happens to me, too,” Greta said, sensing Katya's question. But she'd spoken in such a way to imply that was all she wanted to say.

Then Lydia must bleed, too, Katya thought. The girls she had gone walking with in Rosenthal. Her mother. Helena. Mary and Martha Wiebe, Oma. All of them knowing the secret and, like her, going about their day with a wad of cloth between their legs, and she had never suspected. The bulky cloth was awkward, and she was afraid it made her bow-legged and was grateful for the length of her skirt.

Later in the day a carriage came onto the compound with three men in it, looking for Abram. They were dressed in black Sunday frock coats and wore bowler hats, and she knew from their sombre demeanour that their visit was significant. When she went to the carriage house where Abram had gone with her father, she walked more slowly than she had ever walked, aware of the cloth chafing her skin, thinking that if she rushed, the pad would come apart, or give off an odour they might notice. Years later when her own
daughters began the nuisance, she would explain what it meant, and not leave them wondering. She would give them pamphlets ordered from a company that sold the supplies they needed each month. She would remember her first time, remember the men who had come looking for Abram, and realize that the news they had brought to Privol'noye that day meant the everyday lives of the Mennonites in Russia were about to become extraordinary, and the extraordinary, commonplace.

“People who know better than I seem to think there could be a war,” her father said at supper.

Katya went around the table, stacking dishes into a pan while her mother struggled with little Peter, attempting to tip a spoonful of warm oil into his ear. Katya may have moved a step closer to becoming a woman, but life continued as though it hadn't happened, and she was left wondering what the connection was between her discomfort and the description of a good wife in Scripture:
She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands, she riseth also while it is yet night and giveth meat to her household
.

The Archduke Ferdinand had been killed in Sarajevo, her father announced. Meetings were held throughout the colonies, and Abram had been voted to represent the colony of Yazykovo and head a delegation, which would go to St. Petersburg within days, to determine whether the threat of war was real, and to remind their one member in the Duma of the colonists' utmost loyalty.

“A war? With who?” her mother asked now, her face reddened with frustration as Peter twisted and thrashed.

“With Germany,” her father said, as though he was surprised that she'd had to ask.

“But not a war with us,” her mother said. “Come and help,” she said to Katya.

Katya held her little brother's head while her mother put the oil in his ear, stuffed it with wool and released him to go running after his brothers.

“Of course with us. One way or another, it means us,” her father said.

Katya saw the fear in her mother's face. “But not fighting,” she said, her eyes coming to rest on her sons as they went out the door to have a last hour of play.

Her father shook his head.

“Go and see where Greta and Dietrich are,” she said to Katya, a frown creasing the skin between her eyes.

As Katya went across the meadow, Greta and Dietrich were standing near the edge of the forest, and when they saw her Dietrich beckoned, then set his finger to his lips. She followed them into the forest, going along the path towards the sound of an axe ringing. When they came near to the site of the mausoleum, Dietrich stopped suddenly. “Devil, I don't want to see this,” he muttered, turned away, and went quickly down the path. Dmitri Karpenko, Sophie's father, was cutting down a tree.

With Dmitri was his daughter, Vera. Perspiration dripped off the end of his nose as the axe bit into a tree trunk. Vera turned, saw them, and tugged at her father's trouser leg. Dmitri's old grey face twisted in surprise, but as he realized Katya and Greta were alone, he spat into the palm of his hand and resumed hacking at the tree.

“Go on, Vera. Go with the girls, and you'll save me a trip,” Dmitri said between blows to the tree, his voice coming out in grunts.

When Vera wouldn't move, he set the axe aside and wiped his brow on his shirt sleeve. “What are you waiting for, you lump of goat manure? Go on. And remember, if you get into trouble over there, you'll be in trouble at home. She's starting work tomorrow,” he said to the air above Greta's head, his explanation that they were to take Vera to Privol'noye.

Vera went with them across the meadow and didn't look back, seemingly unconcerned about her father's gruff send-off.

Dietrich stood waiting for them at the Chortitza road, looking troubled. He questioned the presence of Vera, whose eyes grew wary at the mention of her name. Dmitri, assistant to the gardener, had been at Privol'noye for as long as they could remember; the miniature farm he'd carved for them from wood one Christmas still occupied a corner of the vegetable garden – barns, a Mennonite wagon painted green with red trim, draft horses and cows. He was assistant to the gardener, but his skill with woodworking had been put to use in the building of storage chests and tables, which both Aganetha and Katya's mother prized. Dmitri, despite his swearing, more than earned his pay, her father said. Dietrich puzzled aloud that he couldn't understand why Dmitri would poach a tree. He spoke to Katya and Greta over Vera's head in German, with an authority he hadn't possessed before. They shouldn't mention it to their father, he said. When his own father returned from St. Petersburg, he would decide when was the right time to tell him. Dmitri was too good a man to lose, he said.

Somehow Sophie had known Vera was coming. And she waited for them beside the Big House, her face flushed and anxious. Just then Helena Sudermann emerged from the summer kitchen, stopping Vera in her tracks. Helena grimaced as she took in Vera's dirt-smeared face and uncombed hair, the hem of her greasy tunic hanging loose on one side, the grime on her bare feet.

Mary and Martha Wiebe had been watching at a kitchen window and now came round the side of the house, Martha wiping her hands across her apron.

“What have we here, look Mary, a little girl, isn't that so?” Martha said. Her eyes misted with sympathy over the scruffy look of Vera.

“She can sleep with me,” Sophie said to Helena, sounding defensive.

“We were just recently saying how nice it would be to have a little girl in our room,” Mary said, and Katya realized – and was certain Helena did too – that the Wiebe sisters and Sophie had already discussed where Vera should sleep.

It was well known that the only Russians Abram would allow in the Big House were Sophie, and the furnace keeper, Kolya. Vera was being hired as an outside worker. She would milk the cows and work in the gardens, feed and butcher chickens, tend the lambs and calves. And she would take her meals and sleep with the half-dozen female workers in the women's quarters.

“Outside is outside,” Helena said, and then more softly, almost apologetic, “You know my brother's rule.”

Years later, Katya would tell her grandchildren how, in the late summer of 1914, a fever had spread like wildfire. Abram went with the delegation on a train to St. Petersburg, and Aganetha, feeling the need to be near men, took Helena and Dietrich to Ekaterinoslav to stay in the house of one of her married sons until Abram returned. During that time, the devil had been cast down onto the earth, Katya wanted to say to her grandchildren, but they were educated modern people and didn't believe in the Evil One, and so she told them a fever for war had broken out.

The train to St. Petersburg was packed to overflowing, she would say, as though she had been there and was not repeating what she'd heard. Soldiers rode on the tops of coaches and on the steps, hanging from the train for hours until others took their place. There had been such a high pitch of activity in St. Petersburg, carriages and motor vehicles going to and fro, crowds of people gathering at the Winter Palace, cannons and cases of ammunition lining the streets, ready to be shipped should they be needed. At Privol'noye,
a tension pervaded their lives. She remembered clearly there being a tension, as though rock plates in the earth were about to shift.

Her father surprised them by announcing they would have a holiday, an afternoon picnicking beside Ox Lake. For him to take time off was unusual, but when they overcame their astonishment, her mother made them pack up a supper, fill a wheelbarrow with straw, some wood for a fire, a rug for sitting on, quickly, quickly, she said, before your father changes his mind. She was as excited as they were, her cheeks gone rosy for a change. Go and invite the Wiebe sisters to come join us at suppertime, she told Greta, and Sophie, too. Greta should leave washing up the dinner dishes for later, just clear the table and stack the dishes in a pan and put it out of sight under a bed.

Then off they went, going single file, her father leading the way. They went along the elevated path that, each autumn, was blanketed with fresh straw which they were not to trample down, or else in winter the water would freeze in the pipes. The marmots had made the ground around the pipeline their home, and they stood at attention now and whistled as Katya and her family came walking along the ridge of earth covering the water pipe, the rodents so chubby that the fat hung from their little bodies, furry skirts covering their feet.

When it came near the time for cooking supper, Gerhard built a fire and let it burn down, kicked aside the embers and then emptied his pockets of potatoes. The embers flared, the light reflecting in her father's eyes as he sat on his haunches, an arm clamped around Johann's middle lest the boy become too interested in the bonfire. But Johann's attention was turned outward, to the edges of their picnic site, where dragonflies skimmed the tall grass and the surface of Ox Lake.

Within days of being home from
Mädchenschule
, Greta had found her place in the household routine, busy now, her nimble fingers shiny with fat as she speared sausages and slid them onto a sharpened stick for Katya to place on the spit. Greta wore her hair parted at the centre, rolled up, and fastened with combs. But, as usual, spirals of hair had worked loose and rimmed her forehead, and she blew at them to clear her eyes as she worked. A good girl, Oma had said of Greta when they were about to leave for home, and had pinched her cheeks. The word
good
resounding in Katya's mind, making her feel as though her shoes were in need of shining.