The Russlander Read Online Free Page A

psalm until her anger subsided. She hadn’t lost it, she said, meaning she had called, and asked for help. Which she would not have had to do in the first place if the yell-throat hadn’t started fighting.

    After supper her mother heated water and brought the bathing tub out from the pantry. She set it on the floor in the family room, arranged chairs around it which she draped with towels. Becausethey would attend the Sudermann’s annual Christmas Tree gathering at the Big House, this was their second bath this week. Greta had been invited to play crokinole at the Big House, and stay for supper. It was understood that Katya didn’t play board games, not until she could lose without anger, without sending game pieces flying. She sat now, enclosed in moist air that held the familiar odour of their evening meal of fried potatoes and onions, absorbed in the sight of her wet skin, the dimple of her navel. Her body was an oasis in the tub of water, and everything came to it, the soap bubbles, a cloth she had used to wash. She had bathed Sara, and then it was Gerhard’s turn, but her brother had begun to object to being scrubbed by his sisters and so he’d been left, as her father would be, to her mother’s hands.
    After they had all bathed, tension began to permeate the house as her mother fretted over loose threads, a spot of chicken gravy on a pair of trousers which required sponging. While her mother rushed about, Katya stood on a stool and recited the two verses of
Ihr Kinderlein, Kommet
to the room.
    â€œ
Sehr gut
,” her mother said when she finished reciting. The only thing she needed to remember was not to tuck her chin into her neck and pinch off her voice.
    She went with her family across the compound, the bells on her shoes jingling musically amid the sound of voices, as other people came from the workers’ houses, people whose feet were familiar with the pathways that eventually connected to a single lane of packed snow leading to the back door of the Big House.
    She wanted to widen the distance between herself and her family, and hurried on ahead. As she passed the stairwell of the Big House cellar, she sensed a presence. Then the darkness below was pricked with a sudden glow of light, and her legs went stiff. It was Kolya, she knew, the coachman’s son and keeper of the furnace.
For thou art with me
, she thought as she stuck her hand in her dress pocket and heldthe square of sheepskin, not because she was in danger of losing her temper, but for uneasiness. Kolya exuded an energy that made her wary. His bark is bigger than his bite, her father had said, and praised Kolya for being strong and willing to do the work of two men. He kept the Big House warm in winter, slept on a mattress in the furnace room, made trips across the yard with a wheelbarrow to a stack of manure bricks which he piled at the cellar door, a supply that kept the house heated throughout the night. He emerged from the dark stairwell, and she was relieved when he greeted her with a nod, drew on his cigarette and blew the smoke heavenward.
    Beyond her, the snow at the side of the house was lit up from the kitchen windows, and she passed through the light as quickly as she could, and then the light from the servants’ quarters, and her parents still hadn’t noticed the distance opening between them. She wanted to enter the house from the front door, to see the land beyond turned to silver by the winter moon. The windows in Helena’s, and in Abram and Aganetha’s room, were in darkness, and so the remainder of the way to the front of the house stretched before her dark with navy-blue shadows.
    She reached the front of the Big House, where halos of soft lamplight illuminated the entrance way, and stone steps, cleared of snow and sprinkled with salt crystals, led to a vestibule. She was about to go up the steps when her mother called. She hesitated, and when her mother called again, she returned to