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Page 89
When I told her I had no children, she seemed embarrassed. `Oh, ain't that
too bad! Maybe you could take one of my bad ones, now? That Leo; he's the
worst of all.' She leaned toward me with a smile. `And I love him the
best,' she whispered.
`Mother!' the two girls murmured reproachfully from the dishes.
Antonia threw up her head and laughed. `I can't help it. You know I do.
Maybe it's because he came on Easter Day, I don't know. And he's never out
of mischief one minute!'
I was thinking, as I watched her, how little it mattered-- about her teeth,
for instance. I know so many women who have kept all the things that she
had lost, but whose inner glow has faded. Whatever else was gone, Antonia
had not lost the fire of life. Her skin, so brown and hardened, had not
that look of flabbiness, as if the sap beneath it had been secretly drawn
away.
While we were talking, the little boy whom they called Jan came in and sat
down on the step beside Nina, under the hood of the stairway. He wore a
funny long gingham apron, like a smock, over his trousers, and his hair was
clipped so short that his head looked white and naked. He watched us out
of his big, sorrowful grey eyes.
`He wants to tell you about the dog, mother. They found it dead,' Anna
said, as she passed us on her way to the cupboard.
Antonia beckoned the boy to her. He stood by her chair, leaning his elbows
on her knees and twisting her apron strings in his slender fingers, while
he told her his story softly in Bohemian, and the tears brimmed over and
hung on his long lashes. His mother listened, spoke soothingly to him and
in a whisper promised him something that made him give her a quick, teary
smile. He slipped away and whispered his secret to Nina, sitting close to
her and talking behind his hand.
When Anna finished her work and had washed her hands, she came and stood
behind her mother's chair. `Why don't we show Mr. Burden our new fruit
cave?' she asked.
We started off across the yard with the children at our heels. The boys
were standing by the windmill, talking about the dog; some of them ran
ahead to open the cellar door. When we descended, they all came down after
us, and seemed quite as proud of the cave as the girls were.
Ambrosch, the thoughtful-looking one who had directed me down by the plum
bushes, called my attention to the stout brick walls and the cement floor.
`Yes, it is a good way from the house,' he admitted. `But, you see, in
winter there are nearly always some of us around to come out and get
things.'
Anna and Yulka showed me three small barrels; one full of dill pickles, one
full of chopped pickles, and one full of pickled watermelon rinds.
`You wouldn't believe, Jim, what it takes to feed them all!' their mother
exclaimed. `You ought to see the bread we bake on Wednesdays and
Saturdays! It's no wonder their poor papa can't get rich, he has to buy so
much sugar for us to preserve with. We have our own wheat ground for
flour--but then there's that much less to sell.'
Nina and Jan, and a little girl named Lucie, kept shyly pointing out to me
the shelves of glass jars. They said nothing, but, glancing at me, traced
on the glass with their finger-tips the outline of the cherries and
strawberries and crabapples within, trying by a blissful expression of
countenance to give me some idea of their deliciousness.
`Show him the spiced plums, mother. Americans don't have those,' said one
of the older boys. `Mother uses them to make kolaches,' he added.
Leo, in a low voice, tossed off some scornful remark in Bohemian.
I turned to him. `You think I don't know what kolaches are, eh? You're
mistaken, young man. I've eaten your mother's kolaches long before that
Easter Day when you were born.'
`Always too fresh, Leo,' Ambrosch remarked with a shrug.
Leo dived behind his mother and grinned out at me.
We turned to leave the cave; Antonia and I went up the stairs first, and
the children waited. We were standing outside talking, when they all came
running up the steps together, big and little, tow heads and gold heads and
brown, and flashing little naked legs; a veritable explosion of life out of
the dark cave into the sunlight. It made me dizzy for a moment.
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