The Testament of Yves Gundron (13 page)

“Nothing?”

“Smudge,” Ruth said. “Or nudge.”

“Use real words.”

“Nudge is a good word. I use it all the time. Or what about drudge? Pudge, Pudge, she's such a drudge. Or something.”

“What a fascinating home,” said the attaché, returning with his face bright.

“I hope its humbleness does not offend you.”

“No. I think the Archduke would like to visit a representative farm.”

“If you think so.”

“But has she any more decent clothes, Gundron?”

“She says she's dressed.”

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm doing the best I can.”

He looked her up and down. “I cannot say when it will be his Urbanity's pleasure to journey forth. Soon, though.” His men stood up dutifully behind him, and the blond one tootled at his instrument before their strange conveyance drew them away.

“Pudge, Pudge,” Ruth said, “she likes to eat fudge.”

Elizaveta laughed, though it was nonsense, and Adelaïda cast Ruth a dark look.

Four wheels and two axles meant that we could use our vehicles for a purpose never yet dreamed of: sport. What had been the tool of drudgery could now carry us for pleasure as we steered from behind with the reins. As the cart was easier to maneuver with its weight over four square points, we began actually to
enjoy
the jostling ride in its box, though we still had to be careful how we drove, as there was no sure way to stop the conveyance once it was in motion, except to turn uphill.

Can you imagine the thrill that passed from Hammadi's strong gait through the leather to my fingertips, and from the earth through the boards to my feet? I had so rarely before done a thing purely for its enjoyment, and here a task which once had been frightening and loathsome was become as pleasant as the first spring rains. When I drove the cart, the wind brought the blood into my cheeks and made my heart lively. Even on days besides Market Day, I began to hitch Hammadi to the four-wheel cart and to drive around, visiting my neighbors, my far fields, and the orchards. In my wanderings I found freedom, and a clear, strong voice with which to praise my Maker, despite that I had not, unlike now four generations of my immediate family, been granted the gift of song. Well could I imagine Clive's and Marvin's joy at such an invention—and great was my sorrow that I could not share with them my pleasure.

“Hey, Yves!” Jungfrau called to me one morning as I sped past.

As I could not slow down, I craned my neck to face him.

“Watch out you don't end up mad like your brother!”

“Your mother's a blacksmith's apprentice!” I called back, and sped on my way. For what did his opinion matter? My family had been strange for generations, not only because of my grandmother. My grandfather, Andras Gundron, who had brought the farm to its present size, was beset by visions in his fortieth year, and lived out his days fashioning figurines in wood and clay, some writhing in torment, others merely malnourished. His wife, Iulia, was the one washed up with the tide. She was also the first of us known to sing, though those of her songs my father saw fit to write down seem to have been mostly her sad complaints, or brief ditties about the weather.
¹
In her last days she began to pine for the sea and mimic its cries, which no doubt contributed to her being kept out of the churchyard. My father, Zoren, was an ordinary householder, as is his brother Frith still, but a third brother, Childrik, became a hermit in his young manhood and died of exposure soon after. My mother, Iona, grieved for two lost infant children all her days, kept their swaddling rags in full view, and talked about them always as if they still shared our home and our labors. With all his oddities, my brother had at least managed to keep the common touch, and had found his place in our town despite his decision not to participate in most of its ordinary activities. Everyone loved him, at the very least, for his fruit. All the generations of peculiarity had not marred my position. Indeed, though my inventions were sometimes viewed through narrowed lids, I was secure in my rank. What matter if Jungfrau looked askance at me now for enjoying the speed of my horse and cart?

Even in the rain I went out. I loved Hammadi's silky white hooves splashing in the mud, loved the fine spray that sprang from the tracks of the wheels, and loved the sound of us covering ground in what used to seem foul weather.

I invented a new word for what I was doing in the cart: Pass-Time. Our forefathers had no such word, for all they knew of time was that if they were not thrifty with it, they would starve come winter. Except during fierce snow and heavy rain, or for the occasion of a birth or a wedding, they could not devote time to mere pleasure. But with a horse
who could plow and an ample, stable cart for marketing, I had the greatest luxury of all: the ability to spend a portion of my time pursuing whatever activity, however useless, I desired.

Adelaïda had work of her own to do—I had not yet dreamed an invention to release her from the daily necessities of cooking, cleaning, carding, and spinning—but Ruth could help her now, and sometimes they both accompanied me, their eyes closed with the pleasure of movement, the wind in my wife's ample skirts. Elizaveta huddled into the rear of the cart, her palms outstretched and gripping the floorboards. And our Ruth seemed to love the fast motion, when she was not hunched over her books and writing implements. The four of us faced the wind and surrendered to the all-consuming speed. We did not talk, for each became lost in a private bliss. As I felt the ground beneath me and watched passing objects lose their outlines, giving up their shapes to the softness of the general blur, I began to understand my brother's pursuit of solitude, and began to feel in my own body the benefits he derived therefrom. Whether my wife, daughter, and charge experienced any profound emotion driving I cannot say, but when together we dismounted the cart, their eyes shone with the self-same brightness I felt in my soul. Indeed, one Sabbath after services I approached Father Stanislaus to tell him I had discovered a new sacrament. He twisted his face into a curt grin that pulled his hook nose farther downward and said, “Now, good brother. We keep these thoughts to ourselves in the house of God.”

We men are no different from a herd of sheep. Where the flock goes, there go I, caring little what I think so long as my brethren are nearby and I have sufficient grass to chew. So as I drove for pleasure through the town, I watched the germ of a thought take root in my neighbors' minds:
Perhaps
, they began to think,
we should go driving, too
. Ydlbert, of course, tried it first, with three or four sons scuffling in back and throwing one another over the sides. A few days later, some of the solidest householders among us could be seen encouraging their horses to a stately clip, their faces set against the deep frivolity of merely driving
around
. From the ground they looked as stiff as dying trees, but sometimes if I, too, was driving, I managed to catch a friendly eye even in the stern visage of my Uncle Frith, and the sensation buoyed me up as I bumped along the road. Soon the clatter of wheels and the caws of frightened-up birds sounded as common as the Vespers bells, and late at night we grew accustomed to hearing the youths go hollering by,
their cart beds full of ale skins and the laughter of such as red-haired Prugne Martin.

The best time for driving was, of course, Sabbath morning after services; we were not supposed to engage in work, so what ought to have been contemplation quite naturally gave way to the newfound pursuit of pleasure. As we had once passed one another walking to and fro, so now did we pass one another driving, and shouted our greetings over the heads of our beasts. Perhaps in years past one lone infidel would have polluted the Sunday calm with the rumbling of his cart; come that summer, fourteen or fifteen men drove along the same stretch of road, pulling their horses to the side to allow one another to pass. Though there had never before been any rules regarding this conduct, the courtesies of pleasure-driving rose up naturally, without any man's complaint. We had as much work to do as ever before, but with horses to draw our carts and plows, and with such stable carts to pull our stuffs to market, it seemed fine to take time to race. Never had I experienced such joy as I did trotting along the road, and I saw it—along with great gratitude—reflected in the faces of my peers.

Ruth was as full of questions as a four years' child—and fuller, for she had so many words at her command, and a working knowledge of a whole world whose ways were all around different from our own. When she arrived, in April, I thought she might simply be stupid, the way she pointed to the drop spindle or the bed warmer, asking, “What's this?” Adelaïda and I would exchange glances, then answer whatever was appropriate. “That's the drop spindle,” for example. Mandrik would sit in the corner and beam.

“What's it do?”

Uncertain she wasn't being poked fun at, Adelaïda lifted the spindle in one hand, the hank of fragrant wool in the other, and set the object spinning. Ruth watched as it fell, drawing out a long, thick yarn behind it. “Does it always come out the same thickness?” she asked. “What do you do for summer?”

Adelaïda picked the spindle up to start again. “I spin finer thread, naturally.”

“Huh,” Ruth said. “And you have to make enough of it to make enough fabric for everything you need?”

“Unless we want to go about with holes in our clothes. Every once in a while we buy something precious and fine. Like that blue linen.”

“Amazing.” She nodded at all of us in turn. “Wow.”

“Ruth,” my brother said, “you'll spoil them with so much wonder.”

Ruth colored under his admonition, however gentle. “No, I won't spoil them. They're spoiling me. You'll have to teach me to use it, Adelaïda, if it isn't too much trouble.”

“It you're still here when she's old enough to learn it, I'll teach you and Elizaveta together.” There was nor eagerness nor resentment in my wife's tone.

Unlike a four-year-old, Ruth retained the answer to each question, and usually scribbled it onto her snow-white paper. And after a time, as I began to grow used to her impertinences, I had no desire to snicker when she asked after something so basic that I could not imagine life without it. In fact, I began to be flattered when she sought out my wisdom about trees and crops, the nests of birds, and the plow.

One early Sunday morning in perhaps the second week of May, Ruth and Elizaveta followed me into the southern fields to check the progress of the rye, which was as sprightly as my daughter herself and already knee-high. It cast its gentle green hue upon the hill leading up to the house and barn, and down the hill toward the fence and my neighbors' land—which, I noted with pride, looked less well grown than my own. In honor of the warm weather, Ruth had begun wearing, about the house at least, a shirt with truncated sleeves that exposed her arms to the elbow. When first I witnessed this attire—of an otherwise pretty pink—I stammered and looked away, for soon enough, I felt sure, she would come to her senses and cover her skin. But the customs of her country must be different, indeed; and by the time we stood in my field together, I had grown accustomed to seeing her thus clad, if not immune to the beauties of her long, sun-freckled arms.

“What's down there?” she asked, pointing over the stone fence.

Elizaveta said, “Plants.”

“Franz Nethering, and Ion Gansevöort, Adelaïda's brother, and far to the west, Ydlbert's younger brother, Yorik.”

“Which way is west?”

I pointed; Yorik's chicken coop was just visible.

Elizaveta spun in a circle, singing,

Ruth, one fingernail ruminatively between her teeth, said, “They wish they could dance,” and my daughter's laughter lit up the fields.

Perhaps it was because only members of my family had ever done it before, but I liked someone who could rhyme. “Someone in your family must be a singer.”

She exhaled quickly through her nose—like a horse's substitute for laughter. “Hardly.”

“Came from the sea, then?”

Now she began to smile at me over her chewed finger. “Anyone can rhyme, you know.”

“Not everyone does.”

“Yves—what are they like, down there?” she asked, pointing into Yorik's yard.

“What do you mean, what are they like?”

She worked harder at her fingernail with the strong teeth. My sister, Eglantine, had once thus given herself an infection that bedded her for a week, but Ruth seemed to have no fear. “Do they grow what you grow, and make their own butter and cloth? Do their wives sing?”

“The singing's special,” I told her. “Only my brother and wife, in this generation. And the land is only good for certain things, you know. But each farmer chooses what grains to sow, so that if one crop is killed by blight, there are other stores to tide us all through winter. Gansevöort keeps a herd of cows for making cheese. He's a fine cheese maker.” How small it all sounded, issuing from my mouth.

“Would they mind if I went and talked to them?”

“What about?”

She shrugged her shoulders and kept her dark eyes fixed on me.

“I don't know that Wido Jungfrau wants to tell you how many chickens he keeps or how many eggs they lay; though Laight might chew your ear off about how he plans to buy his land from the Archduke. If he's not insensible with liquor.”

“And Adelaïda's brother?”

“A kind man.”

She nodded. “I won't make trouble. I want to talk to them, that's all. I want to find out as much as I can about this village. I need to.”

“Ruth, if you're going off about the countryside haranguing people, I'll have to give you gifts to appease them, and you'll have to put on another shirt.”

“Are short sleeves bad?” she asked, laying one palm protectively across the opposite elbow. “I mean, I know not for church, but not around the house, either?”