The Testament of Yves Gundron (30 page)

“I'm not sure how I feel about her helping with everything,” Adelaïda grumbled.

“You didn't like her lying about, and now you complain she lies about no longer. Which is it?”

Adelaïda raked hay onto my head below. “Both and neither. I suppose I'd like a home like other people's, with children about. Not so many grown people with their own pursuits.”

I grabbed her ankle, pulled her playfully down the ladder, and kissed her broad, fair brow. “Do you really mind this strange windfall nature has blown us?”

Her lips smiled, but her eyes followed halfheartedly. “It depends when you ask me.”

“I'm sure our neighbors' farms run more smoothly, but think, Adelaïda: ours is the one with the great unanswered question within its four strong walls.”

“She can't stay forever. That's all.”

“I'm sure she won't,”

I pulled her down beside me into the hay, and she allowed me to begin playing such a game as we had known more frequently before we had a child and a guest.

As it grew time to bring the harvest in, Ruth gave up her crutches altogether, and though she limped at each second step, she moved about the farm as freely as I. One morning, drawing with a stick in the yard's dust, she taught Elizaveta the first letters of our alphabet; another morning I took her out with me as I surveyed the fields and the sky, planning the shape and speed of my harvest. We started out north, in the wheat field nearest the fallows by the cairn, which she greeted with a friendly wave.

“How do you know,” she asked, “when it's time?”

“The rye comes ready a week before the wheat”

“But why not always wait a day longer for whatever it is to grow a day bigger?”

Such would have been my lot, this questioning, had my son lived; he would have been ten years old, nearly as tall and hale as Jowl, with the knowledge of my land in his bones. My stomach sank at the memory of his stunted form, but lest I grow melancholy before the stranger, I reminded myself how much trouble and strife a rambunctious son could be. Elizaveta never gave us a moment's worry; and so I remembered to be thankful for my prattling daughter. “If one waited ever, it would all rot in the fields.”

“But how do you know specifically? Why haven't you started yet?”

From where we stood, I could see the house and yard in the distance, our sheep in the hilly far field, my wife and daughter, both in red aprons, weeding the vegetable garden. Around us, obscuring us past the waist, the wheat bent and rippled to the modulations of a breeze I
could barely feel. Dared I tell her that over generations the land grew accustomed to our rhythms as we grew accustomed to its? That though I knew the general season for bringing in the harvest, I and all my brethren would feel it in the bones when the right morning came? None of this had ever seemed the least bit strange—for the world is as it is, and Nature offers no apologies for her ways. Now, hearing the question honestly put by someone who honestly did not know, I felt self-conscious. “Because it isn't yet time.”

Her eyes were most pleasant when she squinted into the sun—dark as the darkest night, and turned up in half-moons with friendly wrinkles. “I should have asked them for a tape recorder.”

“Pardon?”

“The Navy guys. They offered me equipment, and I should have taken them up on it, so I could record your voice, listen to you time and again. When I'm not here anymore.”

“Do not speak of them, Ruth. I would rather forget.” I picked a stalk and released the fair seeds into my hand. “I wonder what it will be like, when you are gone.”

“Like it was before I came, I guess.”

“But not exactly. No.” Adelaïda had changed already; and who could say if the stranger's departure would return her to her old ways.

Ruth looked about her. “You know, where I'm from, nobody farms. I think most of the food comes from factories.”

“Factories?”

“Man-made. Like pottery or cloth.”

Sometimes I did not understand her tales of the Beyond—as if artifice bore any relation to porridge or bread.

“You ought to take a lesson from my brother. When he talks of the far world, he says things that make sense.”

She regarded the fields as if she were their archduchess. “Do you think it would bother your brother, if I questioned him the way I question you?”

“He's the last person it would bother. He's the one who understands.”

“I tried when I first got here, but he seemed reluctant to talk to me. And I'm worried he'd think I was trying to usurp his place.”

“Nay, he has no mind for worldly position.”

She opened and shut her mouth without speaking.

“What?” I asked her.

“I'm shy of him. I never met a holy man before. I never met anyone like him.”

“Nor I, either, but you'll agree he's got a kindly soul.”

“Absolutely, but—” She sighed quietly through her nose. “Somehow I'm frightened of him, of that stillness in his gaze.”

“But a reflection of the heavens.”

She nodded. “I know you're right. And I know he likes me. And I'm so anxious to know more about his journeys.”

“I'm sure he'd be pleased if you asked him. He knows you better now, which might unloose his tongue.”

We started again uphill. I had ignored the crops—treated them, indeed, with flagrant disrespect—but they strained upward toward the sun as mightily as a farmer could hope. At each step I felt a wave of gratitude that despite my poor husbandry this year's produce would not disappoint. When I looked at Ruth, she was biting at her fingernails. I gave a slight tug at her apron string; and when she refused to look up, I realized something was amiss.

“What ails you, Ruth?” I asked.

The sun on his westward course beamed behind her, lighting auburn the edges of her hair. “What if my work here takes a long time?”

“It takes time to grow the flax, and time to spin and weave it. I wouldn't be ashamed.”

“I'm worried I'll outstay my welcome.”

I hoped she did not know how warily Adelaïda regarded her presence. “You'll worry about that when the time comes.”

“Sometimes I feel awful, eating your food, wearing your clothes—”

“We have to spare,” said I. “Through God's grace and my ingenuity, we have more than enough. It's an honor to use it thus.”

“I don't know how long this will take, Yves. If it takes another six months? A year? I don't want you to grow to hate me.”
¹

I stopped walking. “Have you nothing better to think about? In two days' time I'll start bringing in this harvest, and that will cost every
hour of labor, from the time the sun rises till after he sets, for the remainder of the season. If you are well enough to assist, in any way you see fit, I will greatly appreciate another set of hands, however inexpert. You have a great work ahead of you, yet you spend your time worrying against the possibility that I might grow tired of your presence. Why would I? Have you tired of me?”

“No.”

I shook my head. “Then what are you thinking?”

“I'm sorry,” she said.

“Think about your last end. It might arrive tomorrow.”

“I don't—”

“I have crops to bring in. Will you sit idly by in speculation?”

“No.” Her hair hung forward like her visage. “I'll help you.”

“And I'll help you in your work, when the time is right.”

She regarded me, but did not speak.

“If the harvest is good, and the winter safe and sure, I'll help you in this endeavor to the best of my ability.” I had not given a moment's consideration to her project, so why had these words issued forth? What did I care, the outcome of her poking about, when I had a farm and a family and a cart to attend? Nevertheless, the statement, when I made it, felt true to my marrow.
²

She said, quietly, “Thank you.”

Adelaïda, in the yard below, sang one clear, plain note out into the westering breeze that we might return home for porridge and vegetables. I closed my eyes briefly to allow the sound to wash over me. Her pitch rose, trilled, and fell, and the evening silence was as rich and full as all Heaven's bounty. We turned to heed the call, and pushed at the wheat stalks that brushed against our chests. All this, all around, was mine to reap. As we walked toward the house in silence, I contemplated the work I was about to begin, and thanked the Lord for my harness, that at least the grain would be easier to cart away.

Harvest is the most difficult work of the year—for though plowing requires as much sweat, the product of the labor is not so near to hand,
and one fears less any possible mistake. At harvest one is precious near the goal, yet the rain can, at any moment, wash the fruits of one's labor away; or fires, sparked by the anger of the sun, can tear through the stores, taking in a trice what might have lasted through spring. Most of the rest of the year we divide up our labor husband from wife, and we let children with milk teeth drift in and out of work, learning as they go. At harvest, however, each man's wife follows in the next row, wielding her scythe as expertly as he wields his own, and any child old enough to concentrate moment by moment is pressed into labor, gathering behind what the adults cut.

Market Day I bought a third scythe, the largest I could find, for Ruth, and when I returned home sharpened the other two once more against the singing stone until I feared to press my thumb against their blades. Adelaïda worked up to her elbows in a tub of dough, that we might carry bread with us into the fields at dawn and not return home until sundown. The night before we began, the whole house sweet with the scent of baking, we retired well before the sun, and lay in the gray dusk wild with anticipation for the morrow.

Adelaïda had already set the kettle to boil when I woke to hear my brother's song echoing up the road:

I stuck my sleep-addled head out the door and saw him coming with the sun's great glory behind him, and with Manfred and Jowl, Ydlbert's boisterous middle sons, gamboling out before him on the road.

“He sends you these two for the day,” my brother called, “and wishes you Godspeed.” He had a parcel of fruit tucked under one arm and a sheaf of papers under the other—a good sign.

We ate heartily, and the boys ate enough for ten Elizavetas. The child's brown eyes were wide and roving, and she set her doll to dance over the tabletop, upsetting the salt, so great was her excitement about
this event she was too young to remember from the year before. Ruth was already in the way, but beaming, so I forgave her, though certain my wife would not. Adelaïda packed three great loaves of bread, both wheat and rye, into her carrying sling, and a tub of butter, and two drinking gourds; then she filled two buckets with rainwater and gave them to the boys to carry splashing to the barn. As they went shouting out the door, my brother closed his eyes while his lips moved in prayer. I could not hear his words, but trusted in their efficacy.

I hitched Enyadatta. She could not be asked to draw so many of us (though her foot-stamping and head-wagging might also have been for show), so Mandrik and I walked alongside her, patting occasionally her lovely, reddish face. The water buckets, jostled by the movements of the cart, soon spilled most of their contents over Ydlbert's yelling sons, my shrieking, laughing daughter, and the women, who in truth did not seem greatly to mind.

“We'll have to send the boys back for more,” said Adelaïda.

“Later,” I said, turning to regard her. She stood wringing her red apron and blue skirt over the side of the cart, and laughing. The sun lit the side of her broad face, shining his rays into one perfect blue eye, and lighting up the gold in her hair. All the years of marriage and the hard labor of running a household had only increased her robust beauty. I caught her eye, and her grin widened to reveal her second set of dimples. Lest my mind wander utterly from the task at hand, I scanned the horizon, saw none of my fellow farmers as yet, and said, “Ruth, do you know a way to prevent the cart bouncing so?”

“Sure, but I'm not going to tell you.”

The boys hollered, always ready for a confrontation, and she, too, began to laugh. Mandrik walked with his hand on Enyadatta's neck and basked in the sun.

“I'm serious. I'm learning to keep my mouth shut.”

“You don't want to impinge upon our purity?” Mandrik asked.

“How can I, and then write about how you've always done things? Besides, with my big mouth I've told your brother all kinds of ways to improve this cart, and has he done anything to fix it?”

“Oooh,” exclaimed Jowl. “Trouble.”

“I have drawn up plans for braking this machine,” I countered. “But only after harvest is there time for tinkering.”

“My, how he changes as he grows older,” said Mandrik.

“Those of us who don't have the freedom to wander off to Indo-China must do our inventing when we can.”

“Anyone,” my brother said, his eyes happily closed to the warming rays, “may travel anywhere he wishes at any time. May he not, Ruth?”

“Within reason, sure.”

“It is only a matter of desire, of a deep longing to go.”

“I have a deep longing for my family not to starve come winter.”

“Then your course of action is clear, isn't it?”

The water had ceased to splash, so Manfred and Jowl took the drinking gourds and threw more of it upon one another. Elizaveta, who doubtless knew nothing but the general mood, expressed her glee. As we neared the boundaries of the property, I saw both Yorik von Iggislau and Franz Nethering hitching their beasts.