The Russlander (49 page)

Her eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, and the clothing hanging from two lines at the far end of the room emerged like ghostly apparitions. Nela had worn her knuckles raw scrubbing for the Sudermanns and counted herself fortunate to be rewarded with a piece of ham for soup. Well, she, Katya, couldn't wait for such rewards. She strode across the room and yanked a shirt from the line, an underslip pinned beside it, and then a pillow casing, a towel. She went down one line and up the other one, wooden pegs flying across the floor as she tore free a nightshirt, a blouse, piece after piece of clothing. Clothing which she took with her back to her grandparents' room.

When she opened the shutters, sunlight streamed across the floor on which she had spread the apparel. Her sisters looked on in amazement as she carefully cut the clothing into pieces, her grandmother pacing and wringing her hands, no doubt expecting that at any moment lightning would strike the chimney, the roof would come crashing down.

The next day, she stood beside the table in the family room of what had been her grandparents' house while Dietrich paced back and
forth, his brow furrowed. She had been summoned by Justina to explain her action, and she had done so, strengthened by Lydia's absence, believing that she hadn't wanted to be part of her family's tribunal. For a long moment there was a silence, during which she observed Justina sitting at the table, staring at the scraps of material scattered across it. Dietrich went over to a bookshelf and ran his hand along it as though feeling the grain of its wood, or inspecting it for dust. Dietrich the Dust Inspector, she thought. The Dietrich she had known was almost unrecognizable behind an affected, officious manner of speaking, his shoulders squared and his back straight.

When her eyes met Justina's, she was surprised to see her look away.

“We understand. Of course you want to help your grandparents,” Justina said, the unspoken word
however
reverberating in the air between them.

She thought of how Justina had become so much like Aganetha. She had inherited her mother's manner of plucking at her skirt, her way of speaking, and she had inherited her mother's girth too, a body that had begun to rise around its frame of bones. Justina hadn't been blessed with children, and so there was no accounting for the flesh welling up around the wide gold band on her finger, the swelling of her stomach and hips.

“Everyone is in the same position. What if we all resorted to such means?” Barbara said as she bustled into the room.

They were waiting for her to apologize. To say that she realized the error of her act. From the summer room came the loud ticking of a wall clock – her grandparents'? she wondered. The summer room, which offered its view of Main Street, Rosenthal, and the changing world beyond. Where she had seen children caught in the orchard by Ohm Siemens just as they were about to help themselves to his pears, and then were made to stand in a row and recite a poem while Ohm clapped out the beat of their choral presentation.
Students going to and from school, their navy wool capes undone, the crimson lining flashing as the young women bounded down the steps and over to the gate. And she had seen the
podvodchiki
going to the train station, their wagons stacked with cannons and shell casings, which had been tooled in the factory of a pacifist. Teams of horses arriving from Jakob Sudermann's factory in Einlage, drawing a chain of wagons to be shipped for use at the front.

She would not apologize. That the first would be last and the last first in the kingdom of heaven seemed a hollow promise when her grandparents had to stay in bed to conserve energy because they were starving.

“Katherine, you're not alone. There are many like you and your grandparents,” Dietrich said, speaking softly, as though what he wanted to say was meant for her ears only. “Somehow the money to emigrate will be found. Already in the United States, and Canada too, our people are responding. We won't be left behind. If need be,” he added, chin lifted, voice raised, “I will put your names on our applications.”

She heard Barbara's sharp intake of breath, saw the quick glance she sent to Justina. Justina went over to Dietrich and put her hand on his arm. He turned away from her questioning gaze. “Papa would have done the same,” he muttered. And Katya, seeing this, wondered if it would really come to pass, or if Dietrich would, once again, go against his heart and do what he was told to do. The three of them now looked at her.

They had expected her to apologize, and she hadn't. Now they anticipated gratefulness, tears of joy, perhaps. Justina might be moved by such a display, Barbara gratified. Canada, a word on a map, a place to escape to, providing her grandparents would be able to sell their house and what furniture hadn't already been sold. She didn't know anything at the time about Canada except the little she had learned from the letters her grandparents received from
distant relatives in Manitoba. Letters complaining about too much or too little rain, about infestations of grasshoppers, about their children being forced to learn English in school.

Their attention was drawn towards the window at the sound of hoofbeats. The appearance of a horse in those days was infrequent, and worthy of notice. She heard the rattling of wooden planks, the grind of ironed-banded wheels against the road, and then she saw Kornelius. He's changed, she thought. His hair is shorter. Kornelius stood up before the horse had stopped moving. There goes an uncomplicated man, David Sudermann had said. Someone who says there is no God, and so there isn't one. Her father's question – Is that what he says, or is that what people say about him? – had gone unanswered.

Then the horse came to a halt, and Kornelius leapt down from the cart and strode up to the gate. Kornelius, bringing a gift, she would discover – a hedgehog that he had snared on the way and skinned – and the joyous news that Irma's prayers had been answered: Willy Krahn had been set free.

Each day, throughout the spring, she thought she saw Kornelius in every man who came walking down the street. Remembered the moment in the orchard when she had said yes, she would marry him. Then closed her eyes and accepted his kiss. He then told her of his desire to go to Canada, that he would take her there, take her sisters and grandparents too, if they wished to go. Her grandmother's opposition had been dampened by his generosity, and she now remained silent whenever Katya mentioned his name. Her grandfather had placed his hand on Katya's head, saying that, above all, he knew Kornelius to be an honest man, and gave her his blessing.

The next time Kornelius returned to Rosenthal, it was in the heat of the dry summer that followed, land turned as hard as stone from the lack of rain, and from the sucking thirst of hot winds. She had expected him, as he had sent a message with Willy Krahn: A Lutheran minister in a village near to Arbusovka had agreed to marry them, and he would come for her within a week. When Willy delivered the message, and a small sack of rye flour, his happiness for her and Kornelius was evident in his beaming, round face. Sara and Njuta looked on solemnly, their eyes moving from Katya to their grandmother, who, upon hearing the news, shook her head.

Katya listened for Kornelius's arrival in the middle of the night, heard the constant swish of wind in the trees along the street, her eyes itching with dryness as she stared into the darkness, mouth dry too, its skin chapped and rough. When she put her hand against her lips, she thought, this is what he felt with his mouth when he kissed me, and she couldn't tell whether her lips or fingertips were tingling. The sensation passed between them, and then she was feeling it in her breasts, and then
there
. Stop, she told herself, you will soon know. And although Kornelius wouldn't come for her during the night, she imagined she heard the faint rumble of wheels against the earth, but it proved to be a distant roll of thunder as, once again, rain clouds skirted around the valley and emptied far out on the scorched steppe.

During the week, while she waited, she believed that the women watched her as she went past their houses, believed that they, too, were holding their breath and waiting. Nela, perhaps, had spoken for them when she had said, At last, Katya. At last some happiness, yes? I wish you and Kornelius all of God's best.

When Kornelius came for her it was in his cart, pulled by his worn-out horse, and not in the old custom, with a team of matched horses, the groom wearing black serge and a white shirt, a passenger in his own flower-garlanded
federwoage
. The way he had likely come
calling for his first wife on their wedding day. Her Kornelius wore the only clothes he had, a twill jacket and patched trousers, and with a belief that their union had been ordained.

When he arrived, Katya was in the community garden with other women. They had gone there to weed and irrigate what vegetables had managed to survive. She was washing dust from her ankles in the Kanserovka Creek, which, now, in the heat of summer, was just a narrow ribbon of water. He brought his horse to a stop, stood up and shielded his eyes against the sun as he tried to find her among the women, who had by now gone silent.

Kornelius waited for her beside the cart as she struggled to slip her wet feet into her shoes, not taking the time to tie the laces, the soles of her feet squeaking inside the shoes as she hurried to meet him. When she approached, he held out a package tied with a frayed red ribbon.

“Lydia Sudermann said I should give this to you,” he said in answer to her questioning look. Lydia had seen him coming down the street and hailed him over. “She said she'd been saving this to give to you herself.” Then she had asked him to wait and went back into the house. Nela Siemens had come over to her gate and told him where he would find Katya, and before Lydia had returned with the parcel, Sara and Njuta appeared from the back of the Siemenses' yard and told him the same thing. “It must be hard to get lost here,” he said, with a sharp bit of laughter. “Big eyes, your sisters,” he said. “Both of them.”

The parcel was light and soft, and the paper crackled as Kornelius helped her climb up into the cart. He then stood for a moment, the muscles in his face working. “For sure, your sisters would like to come with us,” he said. “And you would like that too, yes?”

But it wasn't possible, she knew. The distance they needed to go meant that they would have to stay overnight with the Lutheran pastor and his family before returning the following day. Her sisters
would soon have her back, as she and Kornelius had agreed she would remain in Rosenthal and he in Arbusovka after they married, until the time came for them to leave Russia.

They went away from the community gardens, towards the outskirts of the town, where the road wound up the hill to the ridge of the plateau and beyond. Katya felt as if the women in the garden were still watching, felt the heat of Kornelius's thigh against her own. I don't know him, she thought, and she never would come to know him, not unless they began to talk. They had barely passed more than a few sentences between them. Sitting by his side, she grew tense, daring to glance at him only now and then, and at the horse, its mangy tail switching flies from its hindquarters. She looked down at the parcel on her lap, at the knot of the ribbon bow, then pulled it loose. The brown paper began to unfold and she spread it open. Lydia had given her a green cashmere dress, to be married in, she supposed. Tucked into its bodice were a pair of silk stockings, along with a note, which she opened and quickly read.

Katya's eyes swam with tears. She looked back at the town. What fences remained were grey from lack of paint, but sunlight glinted in all the windows, and the slate roof tiles held a sheen.