Peace Shall Destroy Many (16 page)

The sound of wheels and trotting horses outside roused Thom. The music rolled on; it was ten o’clock. He could not recall the time passing so quickly, and for a moment he wondered if the broadcast were true. It seemed incredible; shooting and murder in a cathedral while a service was going on. But then that was war. Once you were killing, what did a church matter? He wondered idly why the great general had gone to the cathedral. Could one kneel and thank God for having killed more of the enemy than they had been able to kill of you?

The door squeaked and the steps of Mrs. Wiens and Margret entered. Thom could discer
n only their shapes darkening the darkness of the kitchen doorway. His mother’s voice asked, “Is Helmut sleeping?”

“Since before nine.” Thom turned off the radio as Mrs. Wiens’ form crossed to the bedroom. Margret threw her coat on the couch in the corner and slouched beside it. Thom asked, “How did it go?”

“They argued—back and forth. That poor man—and her.” Margret’s voice was listless.

Mrs. Wiens came back, faceless in the gloom. “Now Margret, these things have to be talked through in the church. There must be discipline.”

“But why in the world do you—” Margret hesitated as Wiens slammed the door. “Oh, you don’t know, Thom, what it’s about with Herman.”

“I know all about it.” He sensed their astonishment as he dropped his words into their unawareness. His father’s shape
pushed into the room as Thom explained the day in February. Somehow, he had to add, “And Margret, I don’t care if there was disagreement: a Christian can’t just up and marry any person the storm blows into his house. There have to be rules.”

“So what’s he to do then? Tell her to stay out and freeze because if she comes into the house he may not be able to control himself? And why shouldn’t he marry her?”

She had lanced him to the quick. Why should Herman not have married Madeleine? The reason lay painfully open now: she was a half-breed, and a Mennonite just did not marry such a person, even if she was a Christian. He stared at the bared thought. Despite this summer’
s work with the breed children every Sunday afternoon, he suddenly knew that he had not yet seen them as quite human. At times a glimmer of it had been there, but not reality. Abruptly his vague relief at the last Bible class of the summer the Sunday before rose to his memory in stark, dreadful simplicity. Public school was beginning within a week, and he had felt relieved to conclude the summer lessons because if one of the children had become a Christian, what would he have done with that child? Had he even taught them as if they were capable of belief?

“Thom,” Mrs. Wiens spoke into his heavy silence, “why did you never say anything about your visit? Herman has always been friendly with the breeds, but how could you see all this—even at the picnic and all, and never mention anything to us? You’re almost twenty; you should have come tonight and explained what you knew.”

Wiens said heavily, “Well boy, what possessed you to put on you knew nothing? There wasn’t a word said about you.”

For a moment Thom wished they would all not say another word; simply go to bed. He was suddenly prostratingly
tired. Having pried so deeply into his own subconscious and having recognized such monsters there, he now wanted to say nothing. How could he now explain, even to himself, why he had agreed to silence when Herman had said, as he mounted Nance that winter day, “Thom, I wish you would not say anything to anyone. We’ll be living here; anyone can visit us; I’ll explain myself if anyone asks. Please, don’t mention it now—until some older member has been to see me.” Herman’s narrow face looked up at him; he knew he did not wish to be involved, bu
t then every church member was responsible for his church; otherwise he was too young to be in it. Now, considering the past eight months, he realized he had been agreeing to an experiment: does my church live up to Christ’s injunction to visit the lonely? And more. Though he had never admitted it to himself, Madeleine had sealed his lips. When Herman mentioned that she was, on her mother’s side, the great-granddaughter of Big Bear, of whom Thom had never heard, the woman had spoken softly and without show until the sunlight paled on the snow in the brief afternoon. She told of the great Indian who had ruled the Plain Crees as a true monarch; who had signed the treaty with the white man and given up a territory as great as many European countries; who, in his old age, could not prevent his blood-maddened warriors from massacring nine white men at Frog Lake because they believed that the Great White Mother had betrayed their contract. Hearing her tell of Big Bear, Louis Riel, Wandering Spirit, Thom glimpsed the vast past of Canada regarding which he was as ignorant as if it had never been: of people that had lived and acted as nobly as they knew and died without fear. For a few moments, she had become a person to him as she spoke, and unwittingly acting
on that comprehension, he had said to Herman, “Yes, I will say nothing.”

Now, understanding for the first time, he seized the simplest half-truth, “I didn’t want to get mixed up in it.”

His father said immediately, “Thom, that was not right—”

Margret interrupted, “You’d have done it exactly the same, Pa. There’s no point blaming him now.”

Mrs. Wiens, knowing them all, soothed sadly, “Don’t let’s quarrel.” She added, as an afterthought, “But it was a long time.”

Thom felt ire rise within him, “Yah. Eight months and not a soul visits Herman. How can they call themselves—”

Margret, her face fleetingly revealed as she rose from the couch and sat down rigid on the organ chair, broke in, “What about yourself? You didn’t go see him either after you found out—by accident.”

Thom’s mind leaped to a justification: he had thought about revisiting Herman—several times, but there was never an opportunity at the moment of thought and—he caught himself, ashamed. He could judge others well enough.

Chagrined, he asked, “Who did find out?”

“Block. Who else?” Margret’s voice could be aspic. “Last Wednesday.”

“Wednesday?” Thom did not understand.

“The Deacon didn’t explain right away, but during the evening it became pretty clear that he went there to check up on a bill Herman owed at the store. In the lull before harvest.”

“But Herman said he got all his stuff in Calder. I never see him at the store.”

“Oh, probably some little thing that everyone had forgotten about—except Mr. Block.”

Their mother said, “Margret, be decent. There’s no need to talk like that about him.”

“Mom, he made me so mad today—the way he talked. He wanted Herman just plain hauled through the mud, if he could only find enough. Why couldn’t they do what Mr. Lepp suggested—talk to her, and if she is really a Christian, let the matter stand?”

Wiens said, hunched on the couch and noisily removing his boots, “Lepp’s a good preacher, but I wonder where the church would go if he had his way. A church has to know where to draw the line. You can’t just have anything happening and pat it down with a few nice labels.”

“Mr. Lepp didn’t want to bend any principle. And why did the Deacon do it like that, after Herman explained and went out? As if he just wanted everyone to see how terrible it was—miss no detail of blackness—dragging Louis in too, about his drunkenness and being in jail. Can Madeleine help what her brother does? Even Elizabeth had enough. She looked downright sick. She told me she’d begged not to have to come, but he made her.”

Wiens returned, with a short humourless laugh, “She should be there! She wanted him badly enough years—” he caught himself.

“What?” both Thom and Margret exclaimed at once.

Mrs. Wiens said, distressed, “Pa, you have to drag that out now.”

“Mom, what are you talking about? Did Elizabeth and Herman once—” Margret leaned forward in the darkness. Thom sat rigid in amazement.

Dark, earthy matters. Mrs. Wiens could not have spoken of them, the eyes of her children intent on her fa
ce. Now, it
seemed they were just known voices—voices in the darkness. She said, sorrowing, “I guess the whole affair will come out now, one way or another. Well, perhaps not—since only we and the Lepps really know of it. Not if you keep your silence, Pa. But you’d both be too young to know. It was a year after we came; Dietrich Paetkau and his wife had just moved here. They lived on the quarter Aaron Martens has now. And Herman came with them as son.”

“They both weren’t very strong,” Wiens said, his voice reminiscent. “He died that winter of blood poisoning in his foot—no good handling the axe in the bush. They didn’t even get to the doctor. She died a few months later—never was strong. Herman lived there alone all winter—let’s see—’30—’31—about twenty-three then. Hmm—that was a hard winter—”

Wiens always bogged easily in remembrance, his head thrown back to stare at the ceiling. Mrs. Wiens continued. “And David told us (they were very good friends) that Herman wanted to have Elizabeth, so he went to the Deacon and asked if he would say yes if his daughter agreed; that they would have to start very poorly on the farm but—”

“Huh!” Wiens snorted in his odd manner, proud of their desperate beginnings, his very inflection reminding the children that they could never know the labours of pioneering, “We were all as poor as church-mice—only Block had a good start. Well, he had been here four years already.”

Mrs. Wiens said, “And Block hemmed and hawed and gave Herman no real answer, David said—”

“Guess he was different then than now.”

“Margret. Anyway, Herman talked to Elizabeth alone and she was willing, but her father said no. So Herman went to Pastor Lepp to ask what he should do. He said, well, perhaps
they could talk to the Deacon together about it. But when they three got together, the whole affair broke open.”

“That must have been something!” Wiens laughed shortly.

“And you laugh!” Mrs. Wiens’ voice sharpened. “It’s dreadful that such a thing should even happen!”

“True enough,” the older man said thoughtfully. He laughed easily, usually contented with the immediate superficial humour of a situation. Often, as now, his wife had to interpret for him. “It’s certainly sad enough.”

“Mom, what happened?” Margret said anxiously. Thom’s fingers traced the groove in the chair, stiffly.

“Herman was so persistent, I suppose, that Block finally blew up. He told him straight to his face, in front of Pastor Lepp, that he was a—bastard. Said he would never let his daughter marry the child of a slutty Mennonite and a heathen Russian farmhand.”

“Na, Mother,” Wiens interjected, “to use such language.”

“That’s exactly the way he said it—to hurt as much as he could.”

“Herman—in Russia?” Thom was jarred from his silence, staggered.

“It’s a sad story. Block knew the family in Orenburg in Number 17, north of where we lived.” Wiens blew his nose noisily, emotions honestly affected.

“It was a Quiring family. He was Elder in one of the larger villages, and he was so terribly strict he would let his girls do nothing. And one day they found out—with the Russian he used on his big farm and who slept in his own barn. Of course, the scoundrel ran away. The girl died a little later—the older married sister, Dietrich Paetkau’s wife, took the boy. They had no children of their own.”

“He’d rather let his daughter ruin herself slaving for him on his farm and die an old maid than see her many a decent man who can’t help the fault of his parents. Oh-h—” Margret sounded livid with rage.

“Well, we just saw how decent he was,” said Wiens.

“What should he do? Mennonites ignored him for fourteen years. The man is human.”

“Don’t quarrel,” Mrs. Wiens repeated. “There’s nothing we can do now. Mr. Block is probably convinced that he was right then, all this having happened. Herman was so struck, he sold the farm Paetkau had started and moved out to that homestead in the bush.”

“Did he know before?” Margret asked.

“David said no.”

They sat silent. There was only the shiver of leaves in the poplar-tree beyond the yard-fence and on the window-screen the probing whine of a mosquito that could not understand that summer was gone. The dark bulks of his parents and sister like presences about him, Thom stumbled, unbelieving.

“Did—things—like that happen—in Russia?”

“Sometimes,” his mother spoke as if only to him. “Everything wasn’t perfect there, either.”

“Well, it didn’t happen very often,” Pa was convinced. “Not like around here—Unger boys tramping off to war—Herman having to be expelled from the church for living with a breed woman—that sort of thing.”

“Oh, Pa, he’s married to her, and she’s a Christian—”

“So he says. Why doesn’t he ever bring her to church? Hasn’t been in church himself nearly all summer. Why didn’t she come then tonight and tell us herself?”

“’Cause she can’t speak a word of German. What should
she do there—sit and be gawked at? You heard yourself that they’re expecting a baby next month.”

“So it’s clear that we’ll never know exactly what went on there before they were married.”

“Can’t you take the man’s word? What would he gain by lying-”

Mrs. Wiens broke in. “Stop it! It’s far too late—we should be in bed.”

Wiens said, as if suddenly weary, “Yes. Gret, get the lamp for reading.”

As Margret moved into the kitchen, the three in the living-room sat silent again. Thom stared unthinkingly at the black bulge of the radio. A match burst in the kitchen. Margret reentered and they sat in the wavering light of the coal-oil lamp, staring at their laps, as Wiens thumbed through the worn Bible. He read, in slow German, without comment:

“My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if anyone sin, we have an
advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. And hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He that saith, I know Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in Him. He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked. Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning.”