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Page 86
She asked me whether I had learned to like big cities. `I'd always be
miserable in a city. I'd die of lonesomeness. I like to be where I know
every stack and tree, and where all the ground is friendly. I want to live
and die here. Father Kelly says everybody's put into this world for
something, and I know what I've got to do. I'm going to see that my little
girl has a better chance than ever I had. I'm going to take care of that
girl, Jim.'
I told her I knew she would. `Do you know, Antonia, since I've been away,
I think of you more often than of anyone else in this part of the world.
I'd have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my
sister--anything that a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is a part
of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of
times when I don't realize it. You really are a part of me.'
She turned her bright, believing eyes to me, and the tears came up in them
slowly, `How can it be like that, when you know so many people, and when
I've disappointed you so? Ain't it wonderful, Jim, how much people can
mean to each other? I'm so glad we had each other when we were little. I
can't wait till my little girl's old enough to tell her about all the
things we used to do. You'll always remember me when you think about old
times, won't you? And I guess everybody thinks about old times, even the
happiest people.'
As we walked homeward across the fields, the sun dropped and lay like a
great golden globe in the low west. While it hung there, the moon rose in
the east, as big as a cart-wheel, pale silver and streaked with rose
colour, thin as a bubble or a ghost-moon. For five, perhaps ten minutes,
the two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, resting on
opposite edges of the world.
In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every
sunflower stalk and clump of snow-on-the-mountain, drew itself up high and
pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up
sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out
of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and
that my way could end there.
We reached the edge of the field, where our ways parted. I took her hands
and held them against my breast, feeling once more how strong and warm and
good they were, those brown hands, and remembering how many kind things
they had done for me. I held them now a long while, over my heart. About
us it was growing darker and darker, and I had to look hard to see her
face, which I meant always to carry with me; the closest, realest face,
under all the shadows of women's faces, at the very bottom of my memory.
`I'll come back,' I said earnestly, through the soft, intrusive darkness.
`Perhaps you will'--I felt rather than saw her smile. `But even if you
don't, you're here, like my father. So I won't be lonesome.'
As I went back alone over that familiar road, I could almost believe that a
boy and girl ran along beside me, as our shadows used to do, laughing and
whispering to each other in the grass.
BOOK V
Cuzak's Boys
I
I TOLD ANTONIA I would come back, but life intervened, and it was twenty
years before I kept my promise. I heard of her from time to time; that she
married, very soon after I last saw her, a young Bohemian, a cousin of
Anton Jelinek; that they were poor, and had a large family. Once when I
was abroad I went into Bohemia, and from Prague I sent Antonia some
photographs of her native village. Months afterward came a letter from
her, telling me the names and ages of her many children, but little else;
signed, `Your old friend, Antonia Cuzak.' When I met Tiny Soderball in Salt
Lake, she told me that Antonia had not `done very well'; that her husband
was not a man of much force, and she had had a hard life. Perhaps it was
cowardice that kept me away so long. My business took me West several
times every year, and it was always in the back of my mind that I would
stop in Nebraska some day and go to see Antonia. But I kept putting it off
until the next trip. I did not want to find her aged and broken; I really
dreaded it. In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many
illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are
realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.
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