My Ántonia (Historical Novel). Willa Cather

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СКАЧАТЬ front wagon-seat. As we approached the Shimerdas’ we heard the frosty whine of the pump and saw Ántonia, her head tied up and her cotton dress blown about her, throwing all her weight on the pump-handle as it went up and down. She heard our wagon, looked back over her shoulder, and catching up her pail of water, started at a run for the hole in the bank.

      Jake helped grandmother to the ground, saying he would bring the provisions after he had blanketed his horses. We went slowly up the icy path toward the door sunk in the drawside. Blue puffs of smoke came from the stovepipe that stuck out through the grass and snow, but the wind whisked them roughly away.

      Mrs. Shimerda opened the door before we knocked and seized grandmother’s hand. She did not say “How do!” as usual, but at once began to cry, talking very fast in her own language, pointing to her feet which were tied up in rags, and looking about accusingly at every one.

      The old man was sitting on a stump behind the stove, crouching over as if he were trying to hide from us. Yulka was on the floor at his feet, her kitten in her lap. She peeped out at me and smiled, but, glancing up at her mother, hid again. Ántonia was washing pans and dishes in a dark corner. The crazy boy lay under the only window, stretched on a gunnysack stuffed with straw. As soon as we entered he threw a grainsack over the crack at the bottom of the door. The air in the cave was stifling, and it was very dark, too. A lighted lantern, hung over the stove, threw out a feeble yellow glimmer.

      Mrs. Shimerda snatched off the covers of two barrels behind the door, and made us look into them. In one there were some potatoes that had been frozen and were rotting, in the other was a little pile of flour. Grandmother murmured something in embarrassment, but the Bohemian woman laughed scornfully, a kind of whinny-laugh, and catching up an empty coffee-pot from the shelf, shook it at us with a look positively vindictive.

      Grandmother went on talking in her polite Virginia way, not admitting their stark need or her own remissness, until Jake arrived with the hamper, as if in direct answer to Mrs. Shimerda’s reproaches. Then the poor woman broke down. She dropped on the floor beside her crazy son, hid her face on her knees, and sat crying bitterly. Grandmother paid no heed to her, but called Ántonia to come and help empty the basket. Tony left her corner reluctantly. I had never seen her crushed like this before.

      “You not mind my poor mamenka, Mrs. Burden. She is so sad,” she whispered, as she wiped her wet hands on her skirt and took the things grandmother handed her.

      The crazy boy, seeing the food, began to make soft, gurgling noises and stroked his stomach. Jake came in again, this time with a sack of potatoes. Grandmother looked about in perplexity.

      “Have n’t you got any sort of cave or cellar outside, Ántonia? This is no place to keep vegetables. How did your potatoes get frozen?”

      “We get from Mr. Bushy, at the post-office, — what he throw out. We got no potatoes, Mrs. Burden,” Tony admitted mournfully.

      When Jake went out, Marek crawled along the floor and stuffed up the door-crack again. Then, quietly as a shadow, Mr. Shimerda came out from behind the stove. He stood brushing his hand over his smooth gray hair, as if he were trying to clear away a fog about his head. He was clean and neat as usual, with his green neckcloth and his coral pin. He took grandmother’s arm and led her behind the stove, to the back of the room. In the rear wall was another little cave; a round hole, not much bigger than an oil barrel, scooped out in the black earth. When I got up on one of the stools and peered into it, I saw some quilts and a pile of straw. The old man held the lantern. “Yulka,” he said in a low, despairing voice, “Yulka; my Ántonia!”

      Grandmother drew back. “You mean they sleep in there, — your girls?” He bowed his head.

      Tony slipped under his arm. “It is very cold on the floor, and this is warm like the badger hole. I like for sleep there,” she insisted eagerly. “My mamenka have nice bed, with pillows from our own geese in Bohemie. See, Jim?” She pointed to the narrow bunk which Krajiek had built against the wall for himself before the Shimerdas came.

      Grandmother sighed. “Sure enough, where would you sleep, dear! I don’t doubt you’re warm there. You’ll have a better house after while, Ántonia, and then you’ll forget these hard times.”

      Mr. Shimerda made grandmother sit down on the only chair and pointed his wife to a stool beside her. Standing before them with his hand on Ántonia’s shoulder, he talked in a low tone, and his daughter translated. He wanted us to know that they were not beggars in the old country; he made good wages, and his family were respected there. He left Bohemia with more than a thousand dollars in savings, after their passage money was paid. He had in some way lost on exchange in New York, and the railway fare to Nebraska was more than they had expected. By the time they paid Krajiek for the land, and bought his horses and oxen and some old farm machinery, they had very little money left. He wished grandmother to know, however, that he still had some money. If they could get through until spring came, they would buy a cow and chickens and plant a garden, and would then do very well. Ambrosch and Ántonia were both old enough to work in the fields, and they were willing to work. But the snow and the bitter weather had disheartened them all.

      Ántonia explained that her father meant to build a new house for them in the spring; he and Ambrosch had already split the logs for it, but the logs were all buried in the snow, along the creek where they had been felled.

      While grandmother encouraged and gave them advice, I sat down on the floor with Yulka and let her show me her kitten. Marek slid cautiously toward us and began to exhibit his webbed fingers. I knew he wanted to make his queer noises for me — to bark like a dog or whinny like a horse, — but he did not dare in the presence of his elders. Marek was always trying to be agreeable, poor fellow, as if he had it on his mind that he must make up for his deficiencies.

      Mrs. Shimerda grew more calm and reasonable before our visit was over, and, while Ántonia translated, put in a word now and then on her own account. The woman had a quick ear, and caught up phrases whenever she heard English spoken. As we rose to go, she opened her wooden chest and brought out a bag made of bed-ticking, about as long as a flour sack and half as wide, stuffed full of something. At sight of it, the crazy boy began to smack his lips. When Mrs. Shimerda opened the bag and stirred the contents with her hand, it gave out a salty, earthy smell, very pungent, even among the other odors of that cave. She measured a teacup full, tied it up in a bit of sacking, and presented it ceremoniously to grandmother.

      “For cook,” she announced. “Little now; be very much when cook,” spreading out her hands as if to indicate that the pint would swell to a gallon. “Very good. You no have in this country. All things for eat better in my country.”

      “Maybe so, Mrs. Shimerda,” grandmother said drily. “I can’t say but I prefer our bread to yours, myself.”

      Ántonia undertook to explain. “This very good, Mrs. Burden,” — she clasped her hands as if she could not express how good, — “it make very much when you cook, like what my mama say. Cook with rabbit, cook with chicken, in the gravy, — oh, so good!”

      All the way home grandmother and Jake talked about how easily good Christian people could forget they were their brothers’ keepers.

      “I will say, Jake, some of our brothers and sisters are hard to keep. Where’s a body to begin, with these people? They’re wanting in everything, and most of all in horse-sense. Nobody can give ’em that, I guess. Jimmy, here, is about as able to take over a homestead as they are. Do you reckon that boy Ambrosch has any real push in him?”

      “He’s a worker, all right, mam, and he’s got some ketch-on about him; but he’s a mean one. Folks can be mean enough to get on in this world; and then, ag’in, СКАЧАТЬ