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Page 21
Pavel died a few days after he unburdened his mind to Mr. Shimerda, and was
buried in the Norwegian graveyard. Peter sold off everything, and left the
country--went to be cook in a railway construction camp where gangs of
Russians were employed.
At his sale we bought Peter's wheelbarrow and some of his harness. During
the auction he went about with his head down, and never lifted his eyes.
He seemed not to care about anything. The Black Hawk money-lender who held
mortgages on Peter's livestock was there, and he bought in the sale notes
at about fifty cents on the dollar. Everyone said Peter kissed the cow
before she was led away by her new owner. I did not see him do it, but
this I know: after all his furniture and his cookstove and pots and pans
had been hauled off by the purchasers, when his house was stripped and
bare, he sat down on the floor with his clasp-knife and ate all the melons
that he had put away for winter. When Mr. Shimerda and Krajiek drove up in
their wagon to take Peter to the train, they found him with a dripping
beard, surrounded by heaps of melon rinds.
The loss of his two friends had a depressing effect upon old Mr. Shimerda.
When he was out hunting, he used to go into the empty log house and sit
there, brooding. This cabin was his hermitage until the winter snows
penned him in his cave. For Antonia and me, the story of the wedding party
was never at an end. We did not tell Pavel's secret to anyone, but guarded
it jealously--as if the wolves of the Ukraine had gathered that night long
ago, and the wedding party been sacrificed, to give us a painful and
peculiar pleasure. At night, before I went to sleep, I often found myself
in a sledge drawn by three horses, dashing through a country that looked
something like Nebraska and something like Virginia.
IX
THE FIRST SNOWFALL came early in December. I remember how the world looked
from our sitting-room window as I dressed behind the stove that morning:
the low sky was like a sheet of metal; the blond cornfields had faded out
into ghostliness at last; the little pond was frozen under its stiff willow
bushes. Big white flakes were whirling over everything and disappearing in
the red grass.
Beyond the pond, on the slope that climbed to the cornfield, there was,
faintly marked in the grass, a great circle where the Indians used to ride.
Jake and Otto were sure that when they galloped round that ring the
Indians tortured prisoners, bound to a stake in the centre; but grandfather
thought they merely ran races or trained horses there. Whenever one looked
at this slope against the setting sun, the circle showed like a pattern in
the grass; and this morning, when the first light spray of snow lay over
it, it came out with wonderful distinctness, like strokes of Chinese white
on canvas. The old figure stirred me as it had never done before and
seemed a good omen for the winter.
As soon as the snow had packed hard, I began to drive about the country in
a clumsy sleigh that Otto Fuchs made for me by fastening a wooden goods-box
on bobs. Fuchs had been apprenticed to a cabinetmaker in the old country
and was very handy with tools. He would have done a better job if I hadn't
hurried him. My first trip was to the post-office, and the next day I went
over to take Yulka and Antonia for a sleigh-ride.
It was a bright, cold day. I piled straw and buffalo robes into the box,
and took two hot bricks wrapped in old blankets. When I got to the
Shimerdas', I did not go up to the house, but sat in m sleigh at the bottom
of the draw and called. Antonia and Yulka came running out, wearing little
rabbit-skin hats their father had made for them. They had heard about my
sledge from Ambrosch and knew why I had come. They tumbled in beside me
and we set off toward the north, along a road that happened to be broken.
The sky was brilliantly blue, and the sunlight on the glittering white
stretches of prairie was almost blinding. As Antonia said, the whole world
was changed by the snow; we kept looking in vain for familiar landmarks.
The deep arroyo through which Squaw Creek wound was now only a cleft
between snowdrifts--very blue when one looked down into it. The tree-tops
that had been gold all the autumn were dwarfed and twisted, as if they
would never have any life in them again. The few little cedars, which were
so dull and dingy before, now stood out a strong, dusky green. The wind
had the burning taste of fresh snow; my throat and nostrils smarted as if
someone had opened a hartshorn bottle. The cold stung, and at the same
time delighted one. My horse's breath rose like steam, and whenever we
stopped he smoked all over. The cornfields got back a little of their
colour under the dazzling light, and stood the palest possible gold in the
sun and snow. All about us the snow was crusted in shallow terraces, with
tracings like ripple-marks at the edges, curly waves that were the actual
impression of the stinging lash in the wind.
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