The Russlander Read Online Free Page B

the corner of the house and stood where they could see her, and she them. More workers and their families had begun to arrive, and several were gathered in a dark cluster near the platform at the back door. She waited for her father to say that she should come and go into the Big House through the back door with them, and when he didn’t, she waved and returned to the front entrance.
    She wanted to see the spectacle that could be viewed from the front door: sleigh-runner tracks along the avenue; chestnut treesspreading their spindly shadows across the yard. Beyond the Chortitza road lay the meadow, a stretch of radiant snow edged by the trees of Abram Sudermann’s forest. The brittle tree branches along the avenue rattled and clicked, and she listened, not wanting to hear anything other than frozen branches, not wanting to hear a baby crying in the forest, the cackling of Baba Yaga as she came flying in her mortar bowl, banging her pestle against its side as she hurried through the winter night with some evil intent. She didn’t believe in fairy tales, and so she didn’t want to hear Baba Yaga coming to pinch her arm to see if she would make a lean or fat meal.
    She believed that Cain had slain Abel, that an angel had protected Daniel against the lions, that Jonah had lived for a time in the belly of a behemoth. She believed the stories told by people around her. Stories which, on a dismal blustery day in the distant future and in another place, she would suddenly be asked to tell. An earnest, friendly young man with a tape machine would come knocking on her door, someone’s grandchild on a journey into the past. Wanting her to tell the stories of the people she had sat next to in church – yes, we went as often as we could, when the weather permitted us to go, she would tell him. It wasn’t always easy. Too cold or too wet. Too much snow. She and the man were in some way related; his grandparents had lived in the same colony she’d been born into. A colony of believers called to live in the world, but to remain separate from it, peace lovers, non-resisters who believed in turning the other cheek.
    Katya entered the vestibule, the bells jingling softly as she removed her boots and set them on a sisal mat already lined with boots of various sizes. She entered the front hall and the house surrounded her with its warmth, its cooking odours, the sound of laughter.
    Justina Sudermann stood in the doorway of the parlour, a slender young woman in a blue wool dress trimmed with pleatedtaffeta at the cuffs and yoke. Her hair was bound up at the back of her head like a skein of wool, a blond knot that shone whenever she moved. She was an older version of Lydia, a student in her third year in a
Mädchenschule
in Rosenthal. When Justina noticed Katya, she turned and beckoned to someone in the parlour. A stranger came to her side, a young man wearing a black Sunday coat, his Adam’s apple protruding sharply overtop his shirt collar. A fox, Katya thought as he took her in with his small red-rimmed eyes.
    â€œIs this one of them?” she heard him ask Justina, not taking his eyes off Katya.
    â€œKatya, come over here and greet Franz Pauls. He’s going to be your new tutor,” Justina said.
    She was struck silent by the news.
    â€œOh ho. So this is Katya. I saw the picture you made. It has lots of colour, doesn’t it?” Franz Pauls said.
    Did he mean too much colour? Had she put herself forward with too much colour?
    â€œDo you like to sing?” Franz asked, bending slightly at the waist as he spoke.
    There were voices and movement down the far end of the hall. Katya’s parents were the first to enter, her father carrying baby Johann, with Sara in hand. She was about to go to them when Franz Pauls said, “I’m sure you do like to sing. I think we could have quite a nice choir, don’t you think?”
    She didn’t know what to think. He had asked three