The Testament of Yves Gundron (45 page)

I didn't cry, but I felt as if I might. “I love my brother and sister. I love them as much as you love Yves.”

“Then you'll go home with them. Won't you.”

“I don't know, Mandrik. I have work to do here.”

“Work.”

“Can we go inside? It's freezing.”

He stood up and led me inside. But he'd left the door open for however long, and the fire had dwindled down to ashes The cottage was cold. “Doesn't look like I can make you tea,” he noted, poking a stick at the embers. “I suppose I'm glad to know it was your work, the only thing keeping you here.”

Too much had already happened in the past day, and I was wound up tight. I sat down on the floor, and leaned back into the door to calm myself. The wind blew at me through the cracks. “Don't be this way. I never would have stayed, I never would have kept at this work if I didn't love you, and love Yves, and ove the whole village.”

“If you love me exactly the same as you love all the townspeople, you'd best be headed home now to pack your things.”

His vituperation hurt me, but it pleased me in its way as well. In his anger I saw the truth of the depth of his affection for me; and I could not help basking in that knowledge. I did not know then what would become of us, but I knew that if he had taken me so fully into his heart, I could not be banished from him, banished from this place I loved, by arbitrary turns of events.

CHAPTER NINE

THE BONE-COLD WINTER

t was new moon that evening. There was no mistaking the blackness. The sun went down like a rock into Maundering Stream, and the night offered not even one star in the dome of the sky. From the house I could hear the cow, Sophronia, nattering to her hay, but I could not see the barn. Ruth had been out with brother, sister, cart and horse since after lunch, and though I knew I could trust her with beast and vehicle, I worried for her. Even with brakes, accidents may befall one, as my feet attested. She had learned but halfheartedly the charms and spells to keep off danger; and now if it came to her, how could she defend herself? Strangers, who don't know the ways of the land and the names of its spirits, must seem succulent prey. No sound, however, came up the road as Adelaïda whisked her shuttle back and forth through the loom and Elizaveta untangled her wool. Elizaveta glowed with the heat of the fire, but my wife looked ill. It would be as long a winter as any in memory if she took sick; and I with the child to care for.

If the village to the west could make the winter shorter, I would be glad Dirk had discovered it.

Adelaïda crossed her arms over the warp, and rested her head upon them. The strings, already pulled taut, bowed down. Her wound braids were golden, but the fire did not afford them their usual sheen. “I
suppose it's a son,” she said, smiling my way, “because a daughter wouldn't give me so much grief.”

“Please don't be sick,”

“Daughters do as they're told—marry who they're told to, cook, weave, and bear children all their lives without complaint. Sons are willful.”

“Some daughters are, too,” said I, thinking of Ruth.

The color began, at last, to rise in her one visible cheek, and to flower like a bruise. “It's not women who leave and yearn.”

But I did not know what she meant—surely my wife, as I, had spent the last two days watching our visitor do exactly the thing she described, wreaking disappointment even in her venerable father across the sea. “Adelaïda,” I asked, placing what felt a broad and clumsy paw across her shoulder, “would you like some tea? Or a sip of cold water?”

“Water,” she said. “Thank you.”

Out in the brisk night, blacker than pitch, the water barrel had crusted with ice. I cracked it with the bowl and looked into the yawning darkness. A fine drop of rain fell upon my nose, then another upon my cheek. It was dour weather. I brought Adelaïda the chill rainwater, which steamed near the fire; she raised her head from the loom to accept it, her face now redder than the embers.

“Help me spin,” Elizaveta said, dangling a spindle from its thread as it wandered back and forth in its natural arc.

“Later.” Adelaïda waved a finger at the useless tool. “Yves, can you show her how?”

“I don't know how.”

“Papa doesn't know how?”

My wife nodded, her lips pursed tight. “They pave roads and go racing along them, but they can't make yarn.”

Enyadatta's clop came up the road, and quieted as she trod the damp dirt of the yard. Ruth shouted the beast's name as she pulled on the brakes, and her voice boomed out over the empty valley, over the machine's dull screech. Their harsh accents filled the air, as one body jumped off the cart and the other two, less boisterously, climbed.

Within the house, Adelaïda had set the chicken to roast in the embers, then returned to bed. Nurit and Eli began to gather and sort their things—which belonged to whom, and who would carry what, and
what would be left behind for their sister's succor. I liked that they thought she could be looked after by things in bright packages.

“Did Stanislaus go with the rest of his parishioners over the mountains?” I asked.

Ruth said, “His cottage looks deserted.”

My stomach gripped. “But tomorrow is the Lord's Day.”

They all exchanged glances. Eli said, “Maybe they'll be back tonight.”

I was coming to like Eli's way, his gentleness, but I did not believe him. “This will be the first Sunday in all my life I have not gone to hear the word of the Lord.”

“Nay,” said Adelaïda from the bed. “In times of trouble, with plagues and maladies, one never goes.”

“The first ordinary Sunday, then.”

My wife said, “But it will be no ordinary Sunday.”

I stirred the pot of broth that was boiling over the fire. “I should have liked to show the visitors our church. I should have liked them to meet our brethren.”

Nurit said, “If we come back again, we'll meet them.”

But however things might be if they came back again, things would not be as they were then.

After we ate our quiet supper I stripped to my underdrawers and crawled in beside my wife, whose wonderful body threw as much heat as the blazing fire. I heard them scuffling about the house a while more, removing their shoes and trinkets, then settling in against one another like piglets. Ruth would not leave with them, I reminded myself, yet surely some of her would—some part of her I, and my life on this farm, could never know. Long past the hour when everyone's breathing—even Nurit's—had quieted and evened out, I lay awake, listening to the fire. With all this family about, I expected my sister and brothers to make their appearance; but I watched, to my knowledge, the whole of the night, and heard nothing but the slow shifting of the burning logs, and the brash wind outdoors, which chased every last breath of autumn from our midst.

The morning dawned gray; the air, when I hurried outside for more wood, felt thick. The ordinary sounds of morning were softened by the
heavy blanket of cloud. In such dampness the fire took its time to draw, and our visitors, on the threshold of waking, instinctively burrowed deeper under their bright blankets. I thought of Hammadi, beneath the earth, of how even on the coldest mornings she had stamped her forefoot with happiness to see me, and had blown twin streams through her nostrils in anticipation. I thought of my father, who had paid no heed to the cold: “Weather's weather,” he often enough told me, “and work is work.” I was sour before the sun was full up because my toes smarted with cold. I was neither of their equal. Both of them were rotting, giving themselves up to the ground.

Adelaïda was hot as coals, and could not get out of bed for vomiting in the slop pot. “Don't you remember?” she whispered. “It was like this half the time Elizaveta was inside me. It's no cause for worry.”

But in truth, though I could remember a few weeks' indisposition, she had seemed to me then as robust as ever. “Even so,” I said, “I'll make breakfast.”

“Don't burn Ruth's bread until she wakes. She doesn't like it cold.”

I put on the kettle and sliced the bread. Before long, my housework woke them. They huddled around the fire in their blankets, and waited for their broth to grow hot.

Nurit said, “Ruth, I'm worried about you here all winter, snowed in. I'm not sure it's safe.”

“Come on,” Ruth said, tackling her as one would tackle a lamb to earmark. “It'll be an adventure.” Ruth pulled on two pairs of stockings before she laced her boots.

“Promise me you'll come home. You don't have to say when, but sometime.”

“I can't promise anything. But I mean to.”

Eli began to encase himself in layers of clothing.

“Do you want us to send you anything? Coffee? I'll leave you our toothpaste.”

“Send it how?”

Nurit peered up the chimney. “What am I thinking? I wish you had a phone.”

“We should go as soon as we can,” Eli said. “We should try to get as far as we can by nightfall.”

“And you know how to get back?”

“We marked our trail.”

I stuffed her bread into her bread burner, ruining the crusts. “I can take you in the cart to the foot of the hills.”

“Would you?” asked Eli, and Ruth said, “It would be a great help, but if you have work to do I can see them off myself.”

“It would be my pleasure and my duty both.”

We all continued to bundle into our clothes. Elizaveta hung over the edge of her hammock, whimpering to be let down. Once I had freed her, I went to hitch Enyadatta, who was furious at having to work in such dank weather. She kept turning her proud head from one side to the next, but I could not grant her wish and release her from labor. “It'll soon enough be spring,” I said, but she was not Hammadi; she did not understand the kindly import of human speech.

Within, when I returned, they were all finishing their toast. I could see them out in the great world, a lanky, dark-haired clan, burning their bread before they'd eat it, among their strange neighbors. I could not bring myself to taste the delicacy, but Elizaveta was finishing a slice slathered in Mandrik's plum jam. “Are you coming with us?” I asked her.

She waved her sticky fingers in the air, a private dance. “Is Roof going?”

Ruth squatted facing her, a damp rag in hand. “I'm not going. Nurit and Eli are going.”

Elizaveta shied from the cleaning, but could not escape; and her face relaxed, now that she was assured that she would not be left alone with her parents.

Ruth wrapped the child until she could hardly move, then muffled and cloaked herself. Eli, in the meanwhile, had broken a length of red wool from the shuttle. He strung his two gold rings upon it, then tied it round Elizaveta's throat.

“Eli,” Ruth said.

“No, she likes them. I want her to have them. Don't lose those, okay? They're special.”

Elizaveta gave a solemn nod. The string looked a strange talisman, but there was no mistaking the rapture on the child's face as she stroked her bejeweled breastbone. I said, “Eli, thanks,” and was surprised to feel a choking in my throat, that even thus, even in the body, would their presence have marked us.

“Godspeed,” Adelaïda said, her eyes still closed, “and a safe journey to the other side.”

They waved her farewell. I kissed my wife's warm forehead. Laden with a lifetime's supplies, they mounted the cart.

I turned to look at them. Already their thin faces seemed familiar, and now I would have to store them up for who knew how long. “From where do you depart?”

Eli pointed to the eastern ridge.

Ruth said, “That's how I came, too.”

“You must have sent us a sign,” he said.

The sun was veiled behind the promise of a thick snow.

As Enyadatta tore, despite her foul mood, along the road, I looked back occasionally to see how they fared, and their dark heads were bowed nearly to the floorboards. Still, when I caught Eli's eye, he looked happy.